![]() ![]() ![]() “I bet with those blue eyes that girl’s a Jew or a jinn’s daughter,” says one. His neighbours are generally hostile to this illegitimate child. Years later Behrouz reflects on his charge: “She had somehow acquired the ability to be two things in one.” This ambiguity continues, for as Aria grows, she wavers between opposed categories: rich and poor, educated and illiterate, orthodox Shia Muslim and something else. It’s usually a boy’s name meaning “the Iranian race”, but Behrouz intends the musical sense of the word: “little tales, cries in the night”. Carrying her home to the impoverished tenements of the southern city, Behrouz – an army driver who, as a motherless boy, pretended to be a mother himself – names her Aria. Unwanted by her father and so abandoned by her mother, in 1953 a baby girl is found under a mulberry tree in wealthy north Tehran. ![]()
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![]() ![]() ![]() But like the Showcase, that neighborhood was growing, and ultimately could no longer accommodate the event. The Showcase went back to LoDo the next year, adding more venues and an outdoor stage. Ever since Westword published its first issue in September 1977, we’d always offered comprehensive coverage of the music scene in the free weekly issues and had even sponsored shows, but this was the first major musical event we’d produced.Īnd it wouldn’t be the last. On one October night, we filled a handful of venues in LoDo with dozens of local bands for the first-ever Westword Music Showcase (with tickets a whopping five bucks). ![]() Back in 1995, the Colorado Rockies were just finishing up their first season at Coors Field when we got in the game with the Westword Music Showcase. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Written by Simon Cox, author of Cracking the Da Vinci Code and a well-known lecturer described by the BBC as a "historian of the obscure," it offers a treasure trove of fascinating facts and revelations. All those looking for the real story behind the legend of the Illuminati will find the answers in this enlightening guide. But at the end, they were left wondering what was true and what false. Millions of readers have avidly pored through Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, where they encountered a world filled with ancient Christian symbolism, secret societies, and pagan signs. Dan Brown's bestselling novel, Angels & Demons, has become an international success to rival his blockbuster The Da Vinci Code-and this invaluable A to Z resource will help those fans unlock its many mysteries. ![]() ![]() ![]() The best part of Trashlands is the worldbuilding and description. ![]() Once I got that through my thick skull and focused on the human element, it was much more enjoyable. I kept waiting to figure out the big plot, which didn’t ever come because it’s really a story about this near-future world and Coral’s journey. I went into this expecting more action, so it took me a while to get into the story. She’s trying to save up enough plastic to buy her son’s freedom, which is really the heart of the story. ![]() Children do the sorting, including Coral’s son who was taking from her. Coral and other “pluckers” collect plastic from toxic rivers, which is either traded or sent to factories to be sorted and melted into bricks. They are just trying to survive in a dystopian world where plastic is currency. She’s a 30-something (redheaded!) mom, living in a bus with the guy who adopted her and the older man who is her long-term partner. While told from several different characters’ perspectives, Trashlands centers around Coral. I mean, the cover featured a couple of my favorite colors, so what could go wrong? Lol. I got a copy from Alison herself through Twitter in exchange for a review, and I rolled with it. Trashlands by Alison Stine is yet another one on that list, but it turned out okay. I’ve been a mess lately with picking reads without really knowing what I’m getting into. ![]() ![]() ![]() The novel manages to capture and convey the vastness of Mother Russia, her story and her potential * Boston Sunday Herald * What's impressive about Russka is Edward Rutherfurd's audacity - and his erudition * Washington Post * Impressive. a very good read indeed * The Times * Even textured, with just the right amount of spice, it is the literary equivalent of hot cakes * Sunday Telegraph * Rewarding reading. ![]() It is a series of ingeniously linked short novels, with a great deal of history painlessly delievered. ![]() From Russia's dawn and the cruel Tatar invasions to Ivan the Terrible and the wild Cossacks, from Peter, Catherine and the days of War and Peace to the drama of the Revolution and the extraordinary events of today - here is Russia's story in a spellbinding novel - history recreated with breathtaking detail and passion. Through the life of a little town east of Moscow in the Russian heartland, Edward Rutherfurd creates a sweeping family saga from the baffling contradictions of Russia's culture and her peoples - bleak yet exotic, brutal but romantic, land of ritual yet riddled with superstitious fears. ry to reveal that most impenetrable and mysterious of lands - Russia. In this vast and gorgeous tapestry of a novel, serf and master, Cossack and tsar, priest and Jew are brought together in a family saga which unrolls through centuries of histo. Panoramic, sweeping, monumental, haunting- a story of four families which spans the centuries of Russia. ![]() ![]() But all begins to change when a new boy comes to town and mysterious lights appear in the desert sky. Sia clings to the stories her grandmother and mother tells, her garden with growing stalks of corn, the candles she lights at the beginning of the world (two cacti reaching for each other in the desert) and her dad and best friend. Years after her mother was deported and presumed dead after she tried to cross the Sonoran desert, Sia suffers microaggressions and ignorance at the hands of classmates (including the awful son of the corrupt sheriff who called ICE on Sia’s mom). ![]() ![]() Sia’s story is one happening all over America, a child fighting for herself and her family’s rights when the leaders and authorities in her town say she should not have any. I also think that it should be required reading in America for readers of all ages, not only because it is timely and necessary, but it is a marvel of a novel-blending realistic issues with science fiction seamlessly. I can say, however, that Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything by Raquel Vasquez Gilliland is a magical gift of a novel, pure moonlight, shining, and hopeful. I can’t speak to that representation in the book and whether it is true to the experience. I want to preface this review by saying that as a white woman in America, I have experienced the privilege that comes with that and have never faced family deportation. ![]() ![]() ![]() But when their son Harry joins the Royal Flying Corps in France, the Cavendish family are forced to face the unavoidable truths about themselves, the society in which they thrive, and the secrets they can no longer bear. And yet…Īt the risk of undoing the Cavendish name with scandal, William and Octavia Cavendish have been living a lie, maintaining a marriage out of duty rather than passion. On the first morning in May, 1915, with a splendid view that reached across the gardens to the Vale of York, nothing seemed lovelier or less threatening. More beautiful, and more terrible…įrom inside their sprawling estate of Rutherford Park, the Cavendish family had a privileged perspective of the world. When May came that year in Rutherford, it was more beautiful than anyone could ever remember. Now comes the new novel of Rutherford Park by the acclaimed Elizabeth Cooke… “I found myself addicted to Rutherford Park, much as I was to Downton Abbey” (Margaret Wurtele on Rutherford Park). ![]() ![]() The pursuit of happiness has become the pursuit of diversion in the midst of prosperity. According to Percy, most of our lives these days are diversions that become progressively more disappointing. According to Pascal, most of our lives are diversions, escapes from what we really know, evidence of our misery without God. ![]() Diversions, of course, get your mind off yourself, relieve your stress, help out in alleviating your fears, your anxieties, your boredom. ![]() And it did.įrom Percy’s view, our bookstores are mostly filled with two kinds of books-self-help books and diverting or entertaining books about scandal-ridden law firms or extraterrestrials or vampires or a bunch of sexually obsessive shades of grey. Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos is subtitled “The Last Self-Help Book.” He said he gave the book that title so that it would end up in the self-help section of bookstores. Several posts will be required to lay out even the basics about being lost in the cosmos. It was published in 1983, and I’m one of the very few Americans celebrating the book’s 30th anniversary. Here’s my recommendation: Lost in the Cosmos by the philosopher-physician-novelist Walker Percy. So lots of readers (about six) have written me asking for advice on what book they should read to turn their lives around. ![]() ![]() ![]() Ace wants to make things right, any way that he can Liam just wants Ace to go away. Ace sees this as a second chance with the man that he should never have left Liam sees it as his personal definition of hell. The solution? For them to be stashed together in a safe house, until the coast is clear… much to Ace’s delight, and Liam’s disgust. ![]() He still does, mostly.īut now Ace has royally screwed up, and his life and Liam’s are both in grave danger. ![]() Ace made that choice, and he made sure that Liam hated him for it… and Liam did. ![]() He walked away from the only person who really, truly knew him and loved him, and returned to a life of hiding and lies. Three years later, Ace was tapped as club Vice-President, and he ended things with Liam to keep them both safe. Ace’s club, surrounded by Ace’s one-percenter MC brothers, who’d kill them both in a heartbeat if they knew that Liam and Ace were gay. Ten years ago, Liam ‘Spider’ Valance’s eyes first met Ace Cuddy’s in the worst possible place in the world: the Fallen Angels motorcycle club bar. ![]() ![]() So it’s no surprise that the History Channel has remade the landmark series in hopes of attracting a new generation of viewers. But the fraught racial history of the United States as portrayed in Roots remains as significant, raw, and pertinent to modern times as ever. Television audiences for individual series have shrunk dramatically since then, with the fragmentation caused by cable and streaming options. Many who watched took the series’ lessons to heart and were inspired to investigate their own family histories. It became a worldwide sensation, the first TV miniseries to do so. It was, at the time, the most-watched single episode of US television in history (a record broken by the M*A*S*H finale in 1983). The eight-night run culminated in a finale that drew an audience of 36 million households, or about 100 million people. The audience grew as the week progressed. ![]() When it first went out on 23 January 1977, something entirely different happened: an incredible 29 million households tuned in. ![]() |