![]() " This is a weird book for us,” Brubaker writes in his newsletter, going on to detail how the past year informed the story’s creation. ![]() ![]() Given that Brubaker and Phillips have routinely captured the hard-boiled tone in works like Criminal and The Fade Out, it will be exciting to see the pair tackle another aspect of film noir with this latest project. The pages capture the eerie, just left-of-center feel of a David Lynch film, while the masked couple headed to a costume ball can’t help but recall the ethereal, dreamlike quality of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. Looking at the preview pages by Sean Phillips and colored by Jacob Phillips (“ the best father-son team in comics,” according to Brubaker), Night Fever looks to be quite the departure for comics’ premier creative duo. ![]()
0 Comments
![]() ![]() Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce act their socks off. ![]() One of Philby's first assignments for the NKVD was to rifle through his father's papers. A Spy Among Friends: an extremely good espionage thriller if you can figure out how to watch it Double agents are everywhere. On a visit to Vienna in 1933-34, Philby met Litzi Friedman, a Communist of Hungarian Jewish descent, whom he secretly married and who persuaded him to become a Soviet agent. His father was nonchalant about this radical zeal: "Excess can always be toned down later," he said. Philby became a Communist sympathizer while at Cambridge University. His father was an able linguist who became a devoted adviser of King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, converted to Islam and was an intrepid desert explorer. ![]() In his fluent but derivative biography, "A Spy Among Friends," Ben Macintyre rehashes a familiar story. All the time, though, he was spying with ruthless efficiency for Soviet Russia, remitting many damaging Anglo-American secrets to Moscow. During the 1940s he was an efficient, debonair and popular officer in the U.K.'s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) who was expected to rise to its highest level. Kim Philby's duplicity has appalled and fascinated his compatriots for over half a century. ![]() ![]() ![]() Mere months later, Danny is gravely wounded at the Battle of the Somme, and his future is thrown into uncertainty. The young lovers believe that only together can they face the hardships the war brings.īut love is just the beginning. When, by chance, she encounters Danny, the handsome young soldier captures her heart and inspires her painting. She lives alone with her grandmother in the quiet French countryside, where her only joy is in her brush and palette. Out of brutal necessity, Danny has steeled himself against the trials and horrors of war, but he is completely unprepared to meet the love of his life in war-torn France.Īudrey Poulin has the soul of an artist. ![]() In the summer of 1916, Private Daniel Baker marches into battle with the boys of Nova Scotia’s 25th Battalion. ⚠️ This book will unfortunately be removed from the service on the 14th of May.įrom bestselling author Genevieve Graham comes a novel of love, loss, and honour amidst the horrors of war and its aftermath. ![]() ![]() What a wonderful, satisfying, and completely brilliant ending, though! Stephanie Burgis' writing hits new peaks here, with her usual perfect plotting and excellent dialogue being complemented by some great new characters. ![]() ![]() Speaking of Kat, when reviewing book two, I said ''With a little over eleven months of the year to go, it's hard to imagine I'll read another book with a central character as loyal, feisty, clever and altogether wonderful as Kat is." There's actually been one book with two such characters - Code Name Verity - but it's a close run thing! As ever, she is utterly superb and my enthusiasm at the thought of reading the final book in this trilogy was only dampened by the knowledge that this appears to be the end of Kat's adventures. But where Kat goes, chaos quite often follows, and this is no exception - can she fight off smugglers, make sure the wedding goes off smoothly despite Angeline's fiance's mother's objections, deal with the person following her, prepare for her Guardian initiation ceremony and find out the truth about her mother? I genuinely wasn't sure when reading this - as wonderful as Kat is, there are rather a lot of challenges there! It was a tense read which had me desperately hoping Kat would make it through. ![]() Kat's sister Angeline is about to be married, and the twelve-year-old witch is off to the wedding. ![]() ![]() ![]() I love how Beard explains things and could easily read her books all the time. I will be honest I did not read this very quickly but I still absolutely loved it. ![]() promises to shape our view of Roman history for decades to come.ġ00 illustrations 16 pages of colour 5 maps ![]() She introduces the familiar characters of Julius Caesar, Cicero, and Nero as well as the untold, the loud women, the shrewd bakers, and the brave Like the best detectives, Beard separates fact from fiction, myth and propaganda from historical record. In S.P.Q.R., Beard changes our historical perspective, exploring how the Romans themselves challenged the idea of imperial rule, how they responded to terrorism and revolution, and how they invented a new idea of citizenship and nation, while also keeping her eye open for those overlooked in traditional histories: women, slaves and ex-slaves, conspirators, and losers. But how did this massive city-the seat of power for an empire that spanned from Spain to Syria-emerge from what was once an insignificant village in central Italy? By 63 BCE the city of Rome was a sprawling, imperial metropolis of more than a million inhabitants. ![]() ![]() That said, despite all of that, I was drawn into the book. Rick waking up in the abandoned hospital is identical to the opening of 28 Days Later, while escaping the zombie hordes in the city is like that George Romero picture, oh what’s it called, oh right, ALL OF THEM! The Walking Dead feels like every zombie story ever plus some scenes are lifted wholesale from specific zombie movies. Robert Kirkman’s other creator-owned series, Thief of Thieves, reads like a shameless re-telling of Ocean’s 11 with generous helpings of Elmore Leonard (Out of Sight in particular). It’s taken me a while to get around to actually reading the world’s most popular comic (The Walking Dead #1’s bestselling single issue comic and the trades dominated the top 10 bestsellers list!) and it’s mostly because it feels very unoriginal. So begins Rick’s journey to find his family as, in a world where the end can come at any moment, he and the other survivors become the walking dead. ![]() When he awakens in the hospital weeks later, he finds himself alone in a world where the zombie apocalypse has happened – and his family have disappeared. Officer Rick Grimes gets shot in the call of duty and goes into a coma. ![]() ![]() ![]() She read it so many times she nearly memorized it. I decided not only did I want to become a writer, it was this I wanted to write." She chanced upon another book in the high school library, The Natural History of the Vampire. "It was the first heroic fantasy I'd read. When Laurell was 13, she discovered a short story collection titled Pigeons from Hell. From those stories Laurell got this lesson: "Rawhide and bloody bones will get you if you aren't good." Gentry related tales of horror originating in the hills of Arkansas, the state where she grew up. Laurell says that it was her grandmother, Laura Gentry, who was responsible for Laurell's interests in things that go bump in the night. She still believes she would have grown up to be a writer regardless. ![]() Her mother's death, her grandmother's role in raising her, and having grown up with no men in the home are "the three things that made me who I am," she says. ![]() Laurell's mother died in a car crash in 1969, after which time her grandmother held the household together. Hamilton was born in Heber Springs, Arkansas but grew up in Sims, Indiana, a hamlet with a population of about one hundred souls. ![]() ![]() It meanders a bit and I wondered where it was headed. It took me a while to get grounded in the story. This section establishes the many characters, along with their traits and motivations. The first two-thirds employs beautiful prose in depicting how a family changes over time. This book seemed to me like two books in one. ![]() ![]() I was unsure of the reason for this rather jarring choice until the end when it becomes apparent. The subsequent generations, Blanca and her daughter Alba, rebel against the family traditions, and form liaisons with revolutionaries.Īllende tells the story through two perspectives, a combination of third person omniscient interspersed with first person accounts from Esteban’s viewpoint. She is a spiritualist whose life is filled with tarot cards, visions, and paranormal experiences. He is prone to bouts of temper, which lead to violent outbursts, while viewing himself as the beneficent patrón. ![]() Esteban represents the traditional conservative past. ![]() It follows each character’s coming of age, their relationships, secrets, politics, and beliefs. The narrative follows the Trueba family, including patriarch Esteban Trueba, his wife, Clara, their daughter, Blanca, and granddaughter Alba. Multi-generational family saga based upon the social, political, and historical events that took place roughly from the 1920’s to 1970’s in Chile. ![]() ![]() ![]() The dramatis personae - landed English gentry - are presented, one or two at a time, with impish title cards, but the actors play it straight, with scant traces of the camp that disfigured Stillman’s last comedy, Damsels in Distress. He serves up this late-18th-century world with theatrical bravura. Above all, she offers a means of entry into a realm Stillman adores. But she’s attractive, clever, and admirably indefatigable. The woman must be defeated, yes, for the sake of her daughter. Stillman has no evident interest in hating Lady Susan Vernon (Kate Beckinsale). But it droops with contempt for its protagonist, a narcissistic, impoverished widow with designs on a married lord and an indifference to her teenage daughter. Heretical as it sounds, Stillman has improved on his source, Jane Austen’s pre– Pride and Prejudice epistolary novella commonly known as “Lady Susan.” (It was never titled.) The book reads like a novelist’s first stab at getting into her characters’ heads. The delight of its director, Whit Stillman, enlivens every scene, so what might have seemed stilted is full of human faces in exquisitely subtle states of panic. ![]() The elaborately formal period comedy of manners Love & Friendship has a different vibe than other movies of its ilk. Chloë Sevigny and Kate Beckinsale in Love & Friendship. ![]() ![]() Michael Jordan didn’t skip practices and lounge around in his free time. However, there is an important piece that many people don’t see-you don’t become the greatest by riding on your innate talent alone.Įinstein didn’t simply spend a few afternoons writing a book then kick back and relax. ![]() The answer to both questions is, of course, almost certainly “No.” The most exceptional people in any area would likely not be at the top without some innate abilities. Would Michael Jordan have been able to become the phenomenal player that he is without inherent talent for basketball? After all, Einstein couldn’t have revolutionized a field with a below-average intelligence, right? It’s easy to look at the achievements of exceptional people and think that their success comes from their innate gifts. ![]() The question is not so much one of how much we appreciate the value of work, but whether we have overemphasized the importance of natural ability. We know that working hard (and working smart) is a good way to achieve our goals. Of course, working hard has always been valued. You’ve probably heard of this movement before-it’s swept the nation and the world into a newfound appreciation for the potential to be found in hard work. ![]() |