On a brief Thanksgiving trip to my native Kansas, I hoped to visit the National Orphan Train Museum and Research Center, dedicated to preserving stories and artifacts related to the movement, in Concordia. So no wonder, when I read about the U.S.’s 75-year Orphan Train social experiment, it resonated so strongly with me. My own daughter came to me at ten months on a train from Yiwu City to Hangzhou in China’s Zhejiang Province. to Guatemala and Ethiopia and China to meet their new children. Later in the twentieth century and early in the twenty-first, in our contemporary versions of the Orphan Trains, planes from Vietnam and Korea brought escorted children to new families in the U.S and took new adoptive parents from the U.S. Between 18, around 200,000 homeless, abandoned, and orphaned American children were sent by train, mostly from New York City, to new homes, mostly in the Midwestern U.S.
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After World War II, the first test flights using used rhesus monkeys. After having read this book, and knowing how space travel affects the human body and its bodily functions, would you, if given a chance, want to go into space? Of all the problems/issues Roach describes-biological, social, psychological-which would be the hardest for you?ĥ. What is the most difficult challenge for long-term manned (or womanned) space travel?Ĥ. Talk about the toll that zero gravity has on humans-biologically and psychologically. Does this book's irreverent look at space travel deflate your balloon-reverence you may have felt for the men and women who don space suits and enter the zone of zero gravity? Does the book bring astronauts back down to earth a bit too precipitously for your taste? In other words, has Mary Roach made human space travel a noble endeavor.or an absurd one?ģ. Most reviewers have talked about the humor in Mary Roach's book, a number using the word "hilarious." What do you find particularly funny in Packing for Mars? Does her humor enhance her narrative.or, as one lonely reader thought, become tiresome and distracting?Ģ. It tells the sad story of mystery novelist Frank Cairnes who, following the death of his son in an unsolved hit-and-run accident, vows to track down the driver of the car and exact revenge. So opens this Nicholas Blake novel which is regarded by many to be the author’s finest work and which certainly must rank as his most distinctive. But I am going to find him and kill him … “ I don’t know his name, I don’t know where he lives, I have no idea what he looks like. So, 1 down and 15 to go with a classic pre-war mystery: The Beast Must Die by Nicholas Blake, which begins: There are several challenge levels to commit to and one can of course change as it progresses – I will attempt to read 16+ eligible books before the year is out. Over at My Reader’s Block Bev has started (and in fact already completed!) a year-long challenge for 2011 – to read a pre-determined number of classic detective stories of a pre-1960 vintage. both timely and ultimately transcendent.” - The Los Angeles Times Beagin may sooner be hotter than a farm-to-table restaurant in a bougie upstate town, but her work will be around much longer. “One of the funniest books of the last few years. “A fantastic, weird-as-hell, super funny novel” ( Bustle), Big Swiss is both a love story and a deft examination of infidelity, mental health, sexual stereotypes, and more-from an amazingly talented, singular voice in contemporary fiction. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship… While Big Swiss is unaware Greta has eavesdropped on her most intimate exchanges, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. One day, Greta recognizes Big Swiss’s voice in town and they quickly become enmeshed. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. The house is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. “One of the funniest books of the last few years” ( Los Angeles Times) about a sex therapist’s transcriptionist and her affair with one of the patients. “Wild…hilarious…so good.” - Cosmopolitan, Best Books of the Year * “A laugh-out-loud bad romance for Gen Xers and an ode to misfits who just want to belong.” - Oprah Daily * “Always interesting…too fun to stop.” - Vanity Fair This was the world that created the King James Bible. Jacobean England was both more godly and less godly than it had ever been, and the entire culture was drawn taut between the polarities. This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson and Bacon of the Gunpowder Plot the worst outbreak of the plague England had ever seen Arcadian landscapes murderous, toxic slums and, above all, of sometimes overwhelming religious passion. In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the accession and ambition of the first Stuart king of the scholars who labored for seven years to create his Bible of the influences that shaped their work and of the beliefs that colored their world, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a painting or a building, but a book.Ī network of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England. He informs us that the war was not a spontaneous event but was long in coming. Atkinson provides an informative overview of colonial life, nature of warfare, and the growing importance of the thirteen colonies for the British Empire. The British Are Coming goes beyond traditional literature that focuses on battles and leaders and instead examines events, issues, and attitudes of the colonists and their British brethren. In this book, Atkinson masterfully weaves the big picture with events and interesting historical tidbits, providing the most engaging work on the American Revolution from 1775-1777. The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777, is the extraordinary first volume of Atkinson’s greatly anticipated trilogy about the American Revolution. Rick Atkinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of An Army at Dawn, is acclaimed for his deeply researched, stunningly vivid narrative histories. The British Are Coming The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 Rick Atkinson This does not end well (the ending involves hallucinations and suicide).Įggers' protagonist Alan Clay also finds himself at the back end of his sales career without much to show for it. In Miller's work, aging salesman Willy Loman overvalues his importance and success in the workplace to prop up his failing pursuit of the American Dream. Novelist Pico Iyer called it "a kind of "Death of a Globalized Salesman." ( Source)Īnd we think Iyer's reference to Arthur Miller's play couldn't be more spot on. If you paid attention in your American Lit 101 classes, you'll find something eerily familiar about Dave Eggers' A Hologram for the King. This book delivers a whole lot in the way of emotions-existential angst, your loneliness, your fear of death, your confusion about life-but it's no kind of life-affirming laugh riot. After all, the trailer suggests a plot about lovable Tom Hanks making his way through the desert, having hilarious cultural misunderstandings, and finding love.īut you'd be wrong. If you've seen the trailer for the film adaptation of A Hologram for the King, you might think that this book is going to be a life-affirming laugh riot. Jumping ahead two years, Golden Son falls squarely on the adult side of things, stripping away almost all of those YA trappings. My big complaint about Red Rising was the tonal difference between Young Adult presentation and very much adult content. But after this jarring start, Golden Son finds its footing and climbs the corpse-strewn mountain of grimdark science fiction. It reads almost as if Brown changed his mind about what would happen in this sequel. So much of what was set up in that previous book either has already happened and been glossed over. The first hundred pages of Golden Son are an abrupt shift of gears from Red Rising. Conspiracies that Darrow must exploit if he is to bring about revolution. But even a Gold is not safe from danger, and conspiracies abound. Find my review of Red Rising here-ĭarrow has infiltrated Gold society, and now rises rapidly through their ranks. The authors devote considerable space to biographies of some of the leading figures in the resurgence material that was, for me, eye-opening. Another section covers the appearance, suppression and resurgence of the left-hand path in the West. The first gives a broad historical overview of the 'sinister' left-hand path of sex magic, focusing on its roots in ancient India. The book is divided, chronologically and logically, into several sections. Considering the complexity and density of the content, probably a wise decision, but this reader was left wondering, time and again, 'where on earth did they pick up that piece of information?' The authors provide a list of references without connecting them to the text by citations. The lurid cover and its amateurish typography left me unprepared for the content: well-written, articulate, with a nice blend of scholarship, humour, and frank language. He goes to a summer art program at Brown University with his best friend Ezra, who is also 17 and gay, as well as his other friends, some of whom are much less supportive of him. Felix Ever After is a story about identity, self-discovery, and young love.įelix Love is a 17-year-old black gay transgender man, living part-time with his dad and his best friend in New York City. You’re perfect.” These are the words on the dedication page of the novel Felix Ever After, written by the author Kacen Callender, who is trans and uses he/they pronouns. “For trans and nonbinary youth: You’re beautiful. |