![]() ![]() Actually, all the actors do a great job with their roles even the contemptible ex-boyfriend is done so well he's actually enjoyable. (3) Gammon's performance as the dad he has made a career out of this type of character and he is spot on. ![]() ![]() Here are some of the reasons: (1) This takes place in real central California locations, not a Canadian city or town pretending to be "Christmastown, Anywhere." (It's usually part of the fun guessing if the locale is Ontario or BC, and here it's actually where it's pointed out to be, which is unique.) (2) There are three or four comic lines of dialogue that made me laugh, even howl, out loud (with the movie, not at it, which is also unique). As much as I've come to expect the hokey, predictable story lines and cliché characters, this movie doesn't exactly break from all that completely, but I was impressed by how entertained I was. We have sat through a lot of dreck and truly painful, endless, tiresome TV movies. Every Christmas my wife and I make a point to watch as many Hallmark, Lifetime and ABC Family holiday movies as possible. ![]()
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![]() ![]() When McMurtry died in 2021, he left an impressive estate. Despite the wide acclaim that made him welcome in any corner of the world, his 84 years ended in 2021 in the same place they began-Archer City, Texas, a small town of fewer than two thousand roughly halfway between Dallas and Lubbock. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove and an Academy Award for the Brokeback Mountain screenplay (which he shared with frequent collaborator Diana Ossana). If you read Texas Monthly, it’s likely he needs no introduction, but we’ll offer a brief one anyway: he wrote Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, Terms of Endearment, The Evening Star, and Horseman, Pass By (which was made into the film Hud, starring Paul Newman), among dozens of others, during his five-decade career. Larry McMurtry was one of the definitive storytellers of twentieth-century Texas. ![]() ![]() ![]() He occupies a place in philosophy of language alongside Wittgenstein in staunchly advocating the examination of the way words are used in order to elucidate meaning. Harnish.Īfter serving in MI6 during World War II, Austin became White's Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford. Alston, François Récanati, Kent Bach, and Robert M. ![]() ![]() His work in the 1950s provided both a theoretical outline and the terminology for the modern study of speech acts developed subsequently, for example, by (the Oxford-educated American philosopher) John R. Austin is widely associated with the concept of the speech act and the idea that speech is itself a form of action. John Langshaw Austin (Ma– February 8, 1960) was a British philosopher of language, born in Lancaster and educated at Shrewsbury School and Balliol College, Oxford University. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Here are cherished memories, evocative and insightful, for every woman who recalls fondly what she was like.when she was a girl. ![]() These are some of the remarkable women who offer a glimpse into what inspired them when they were girls: Author of Nobody Was Here & The Pity Party (Scholastic) & lots of other secret books published under secret names. Extraordinary women from the worlds of politics, sports, entertainment, literature, music, and beyond relive the early moments that shaped them: the first friendships and academic pitfalls, the consuming crushes and favorite outfits. Discover the defining moments and fondest memories of some of the world's most celebrated women!īased on the popular WE: Women's Entertainment television series and featuring an introduction by famed television journalist and author Linda Ellerbee, When I Was a Girl presents a collection of timeless girlhood tales. ![]() ![]() ![]() Her marriage to the son of a prominent government official will come crashing down if he finds out who she really is - an immigrant whose parents purchased forged paperwork to secure her future.ĭani isn't found out when she graduates, at least not so far as she can tell, but life throws her a different curve ball. ![]() Once she graduates, Dani is guaranteed to live in the lap of luxury as one of her husband's two wives. The school is responsible for training young women to be wives and mothers to their country's elite men. We Set the Dark on Fire centers on Daniela Vargas, the Medio School for Girls' top student. You can read an excerpt from Mejia's debut novel below. Young adult fans, take note! Bruja author Tehlor Kay Mejia's debut novel, We Set the Dark on Fire, has finally arrived, and it's a dazzling Latinx fantasy story. ![]() ![]() ![]() These wildly mismatched allies – a strait-laced animal doctor, and ex-prostitute, a poet, a painter, and even the Artful Dodger-like young daughter – must ultimately choose between the banality and constraints of human life and the unholy immortality that Polidori offers. Joining forces with the girl's unlikely parents, they are plunged into a supernatural London underworld whose existence they never suspected. The Rossettis know the time has come – Polidori must be stopped. And he has resurrected Dante's dead wife, transforming her into a horrifying vampire. ![]() ![]() He is determined to possess the life and soul of an innocent young girl, the daughter of a veterinarian and a reformed prostitute he once haunted. Polidori is also the supernatural muse to his niece and nephew, poet Christina Rossetti and her artist brother Dante Gabriel.īut Polidori's taste for debauchery has grown excessive. A malevolent spirit roams the cold and gloomy streets of Victorian London, the vampiric ghost of John Polidori, the onetime physician of the mad, bad and dangerous Romantic poet Lord Byron. ![]() ![]() Peake has been compared to Dickens, Tolkien, and Peacock, but the Gormenghast trilogy is truly unique. On every day of the year from three hours before daybreak until about eleven o'clock, when the scaffolding and ladders became a hindrance to the cooks, the Grey Scrubbers fulfilled their hereditary calling." "The walls of the vast room which were streaming with calid moisture, were built with gray slabs of stone and were the personal concern of a company of eighteen men known as the 'Grey Scrubbers'. Peake's command of language and unique style set the tone and shape of an intricate, slow-moving world of ritual and stasis: The Gormenghast royal family, the castle's decidedly eccentric staff, and the peasant artisans living around the dreary, crumbling structure make up the cast of characters in these engrossing stories. ![]() The trilogy continues with the novels Gormenghast and Titus Alone, and all three books are bound together in this single-volume edition. ![]() Mervyn Peake's gothic masterpiece, the Gormenghast trilogy, begins with the superlative Titus Groan, a darkly humorous, stunningly complex tale of the first two years in the life of the heir to an ancient, rambling castle. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() "My father would say, 'You can't know what you don't know." "Exactly! I'd be like, 'What are you talking about?'" Alexander continues. "My grandma used to say things like, 'Dishwater gives back no images,'" he explains. The "rules" are based on the peculiar sayings and proverbs he picked up from his family when he was growing up. ![]() The Playbook is a kind of follow-up to The Crossover. The two main characters are basketball champs, and their father gives them "basketball rules for life." Alexander says young people really took to these rules, so he decided to expand on that idea. He and musician Randy Preston have been touring to schools around the country, performing songs based on Alexander's books. Instead, it’s a collection poems and essays called The Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot and Score In This Game Called Life. Alexander’s latest book returns to basketball as a metaphor. ![]() ![]() Really, don't miss this one!Ī Christian Alternate World Amnesiac Hero Romp Honestly, I could listen to this storyteller all day! This is a classic from the Golden Age of Fantasy, and the narrator is golden. The other accents and voices are distinctive and each evokes a particular sense of that character. In this book, the hero's slight Danish inflection is done perfectly. I've listened to several of his audiobooks, and he just flabbergasts me with the range of his characterizations. See what I mean? Clever.) That said, I have to say that Bronson Pinchot is completely phenomenal. (See, for example, his analysis of the source of the curse on the Giant's gold. ![]() ![]() His empirical understanding of things that look magical are clever. I like the scientific-nerd-in-a-magical-environment. ![]() I like that there are many different encounters with many different challenges instead of one huge mega-battle. I like the slowly revealing details of the quest as the hero recovers memories. ![]() It's a great story, a stand-out among many of the same genre from the same time. This was a favorite book of mine many (MANY) years ago, and I was interested in remembering why I liked it so much. ![]() ![]() But it had its many admirers, including the French novelist Gustave Flaubert, who gushed in a letter to Turgenev, "What an exciting girl that Zinochka is!" The Countess Lambert, a close acquaintance of Turgenev, told the author that the Russian emperor himself had read the novella to the empress and been delighted by it. Others condemned the impropriety of that subject matter, namely a father and son in love with the same woman and a young woman who was the mistress of a married man. Some criticized its light subject matter that did not touch upon any of the pressing social and political issues of the day. Here Turgenev is retelling an incident from his own life, his infatuation with a young neighbor in the country, Princess Catherine Shakhovskoy (the Zinaida of the novella), an infatuation that lasted until his discovery that Catherine was in fact his own father's mistress.Ĭritics were divided. The author claimed it was the most autobiographical of all his works. ![]() It tells the love story between a 21-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy.įirst Love was published in March 1860 in the Reader's Library. ![]() It is one of his most popular pieces of short fiction. First Love ( Russian: Первая любовь, Pervaya lyubov) is a novella by Ivan Turgenev, first published in 1860. ![]() |