....I just read the Hunger Games Trilogy... and was impressed with it... it is allegorical narrative of slavery... from self loahting, trans generational oprression, romaneque poltics... Panem et Circuset....
I was recommended three books by vice President of Finance (M/A) of a european equavalent of a exxon type energy company .....started reading one... by v
1. The Frackers... A story of the FRACKING revolution of the technological and socila developments
2. Too big to fail... the story of the 2008 banking crisis... .I reccommend this...there is a documentary based on it i beleive .. i down loaded it and it is an easy read so far ,,,, it is written from a narrative perspective... like he was having a cup of coffee and the head of Golman sax called...
3. A book about human factors in the Macondo disaster !
me too Wahalla…i finally read one n was impressed…read all three n watched the movies….the books were excellent….extremely allegorical
Just finished reading Black on Red My 44 Years Inside the Soviet Union by Robert Robinson
An autobiography of a man born in Jamaica, raised in Cuba and then the US who is invited to go to the Soviet Union in 1930 to share his toolmaking and engineering skills and remains there through many purges, WW II and finally gets to leave in 1974. He is a testament to self discipline, pride in workmanship and strength of character. Robinson received many accolades for his work. He gives great perspective of life of Russians and what it is really like to be a black in the USSR.
Robert Robinson was an engineer who became one of the most prominent Americans to live in the Soviet Union. Because of his presence in the U.S.S.R. in the 1930s, Robinson became an international celebrity, meeting often with many famous African Americans who lived in and traveled to the Soviet Union. He personally experienced Stalinism and its various political purges, as many of his co-workers “disappeared” without a trace. He also experienced the paradox of Soviet internationalist discourse, which touted racial equality against the reality of the Russian people’s virulent racism against all non-Russian people, especially those of African origin. Born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1906, Robinson and his Dominican mother, Octavia, lived in Cuba, where she worked for physician. Robinson trained in Cuba as a mechanical engineer before immigrating to the United States in 1930. He settled in Dearborn, Michigan, where he worked as one of a handful of black machinists at the Ford Motor Plant in the city. That same year, a Soviet delegation visiting the plant to study Ford assembly-line production techniques, offered Robinson a higher salary, better living accommodations, and other perquisites to move to Stalingrad and work in a tractor factory. Robinson accepted the offer, returning […]
If you don't fight for what you deserve, you deserve what you get.
We are > Fossil Fuels --- Bill McKibben 350.org
Currently reading Station Eleven, heard good reviews and it is much acclaimed, the premise sounds a little out there but enjoying it so far.
About the book
My fourth novel is about a traveling Shakespearean theatre company in a post-apocalyptic North America. It's also about friendship, memory, love, celebrity, our obsession with objects, oppressive dinner parties, comic books, and knife-throwing.
Knopf's jacket copy:
"An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame, and ambition set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, from the author of three highly-acclaimed previous novels.
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as The Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it."
Rereading THE RULE OF FOUR by IAN CALDWELL wich was published back in '08 so as to tackle new release of sequel THE FIFTH GOSPEL...sigh...5yrs between books n mi memory not all that it use to be
these books r very literary...based on " a mysterious 15th-century manuscript, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili . This rare text (a real book) contains embedded codes revealing the location of a buried Roman treasure"....
“Masterful...The Fifth Gospel is that rare story: erudite and a page-turner, literary but compulsively readable. It will change the way you look at organized religion, humanity, and perhaps yourself.” —David Baldacci
“A gripping thriller rich with human drama and forbidden knowledge.” —Lev Grossman
A lost gospel, a contentious relic, and a dying pope’s final wish converge to send two brothers—both Vatican priests—on an intellectual quest to untangle Christianity’s greatest historical mystery.
Ten years ago, Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason’s The Rule of Four became a literary phenomenon that sold nearly two million copies in North America and was hailed by critics as “ingenious…profoundly erudite” (The New York Times), “compulsively readable” (People), and “an exceptional piece of scholarship” (San Francisco Chronicle). Now, after a decade of painstaking primary research, Ian Caldwell returns with a masterful new thriller that confirms his place among the most ambitious popular storytellers working today.
In 2004, as Pope John Paul II’s reign enters its twilight, a mysterious exhibit is under construction at the Vatican Museums. A week before it is scheduled to open, its curator is murdered at a clandestine meeting on the outskirts of Rome. That same night, a violent break-in rocks the home of the curator’s research partner, Father Alex Andreou, a Greek Catholic priest who lives inside the Vatican with his five-year-old son. When the papal police fail to identify a suspect in either crime, Father Alex, desperate to keep his family safe, undertakes his own investigation. To find the killer he must reconstruct the dead curator’s secret: what the four Christian gospels—and a little-known, true-to-life fifth gospel known as the Diatessaron—reveal about the Church’s most controversial holy relic. But just as he begins to understand the truth about his friend’s death and its consequences for the future of the world’s two largest Christian Churches, Father Alex finds himself hunted down by someone with a vested stake in the exhibit—someone he must outwit to survive.
At once a riveting intellectual thriller, a feast of biblical history and scholarship, and a moving family drama, The Fifth Gospel is “a story of sacrifice, forgiveness, and redemption. Peppered with references to real-life people, places, and events, the narrative rings true, taking the reader on an emotional journey nearly two thousand years in the making” (Library Journal, starred review). - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.ca/The....BDRXc00Q.dpuf
Publication Date:October 30, 2012
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.
With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?
The Parasol Protectorate is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.
This bundle includes the whole series: Soulless, Changeless, Blameless, Heartless, and Timeless.
Now reading "The Frackers" A history of FRACKING by a Wall Street Journal Journalist....
And a book called Black Poppies on the black Experience in WWI. I read this in the bath. Has a Chapter on Norman Manleys war time experience.... I find it unsatisfactory... A major mistake. He looks at the WIR... got some facts wrong, they also fought in East Africa. It looks at it simply from a british perspective.. ignoring htatehrre were thousand of German black soldiers ... no mention of the indians.. But it is grist to teh mill so to speak!
Publication Date:October 30, 2012
Alexia Tarabotti is laboring under a great many social tribulations. First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire -- and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.
With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?
The Parasol Protectorate is a comedy of manners set in Victorian London: full of werewolves, vampires, dirigibles, and tea-drinking.
This bundle includes the whole series: Soulless, Changeless, Blameless, Heartless, and Timeless.
I read the first two in the series. The writing is fairly witty and the heroine is likable.
Right now, I'm reading a bio of Peter the Great. Can't remember the author's name or the complete title but will come back with info. It's a fascinating book and I'm learning a great deal about Russia and seeing how the past influences the present day.
in the first chapter u see how little has been done...the very things written about 110 years ago still plague Kingston today as evidenced in a recent article by Sarah Manley
in the first chapter u see how little has been done...the very things written about 110 years ago still plague Kingston today as evidenced in a recent article by Sarah Manley
Good book but it edoes not identify the Spanish Irish heiress......that Marcus claimed he was engaged to!!!!!!!
did u read the Sarah Manley article....one about the White Dinner in Emancipation park juxtaposed with Riverton burning...?
where is it ????
I thought that the white dinner was a bad idea.... i noted it in passing. Just saw the picture in the gleaner on line and never read the article... images of Gone with the Wind kind of deal... with the same bad after taste.... But hten i saw Michelle Obama at a similar event.....
I passed by emancipation park last year and saw the mammary enhanced female....her breasts were bountiful....
I actually like that sculpture and thought it was an evolution of Negro Arouse, ... which i think is my favourite public statute....
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Jamaican-born novelist Winkler recounts the journey of Taddeus Augustus Baps, a 47-year old Jamaican man who becomes a duppy, or spirit, after he dies. Shocked by his unexpected death, Baps discovers he's unable to touch anything earthly and quickly surmises his new status will enable him to overhear scandal and rumor, eavesdrop on backbiting and tale-telling and witness men grind on their housekeepers. But before Baps can have any fun, a deceased thief arrives to escort him to heaven, where nothing measures up to Baps's expectations, especially the minibus—not chariot—trip to the Promised Land. Once in heaven, Baps meets Miss B, a country general store proprietress who takes him as her lover until she's called to another duty. After her departure, a perennially cranky Baps takes control of her shop and struggles to get the other heavenly villagers to respect him. In addition, Baps befriends God, bickers with a conflicted American philosopher and travels in an effort to expand his otherworldly horizons. Winkler (Dog War) earns a lot of chuckles as he pokes fun at cultural stereotypes and the afterlife. (Mar.) 
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