Did her internalized dislike for her own son shape him into the killer he’s become? How much is her fault? But Eva was always uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood. Neither nature nor nurture exclusively shapes a child’s character. And certainly not the mother of a boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much–adored teacher in a school shooting two days before his sixteenth birthday. Reilly, this resonant story of a mother’s unsettling quest to understand her teenage son’s deadly violence, her own ambivalence toward motherhood, and the explosive link between them remains terrifyingly prescient.Įva never really wanted to be a mother. The inspiration for the film starring Tilda Swinton and John C.
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I must admit that one of the main reasons I love Awkward is that it steers clear from any romance. Rather, Awkward proves an engrossing story about what it means to make mistakes, make amends, and move forward. Focused on Peppi Torres’s struggles to fit in, make friends, and save the art club, it spans a number of topics without ever feeling muddled. Middle school is never dull.Īwkward by Svetlana Chmakova is a brilliant addition to the number of middle-school graphic novels currently on the market. Can she overcome her embarrassment to apologize? And can the two them find a way to unite their opposing clubs–art and science? One thing is certain. But soon she discovers that Jaime may be just the friend she needs. On her first day at her new school, Penelope (Peppi) Torres pushes a boy so she will not be labelled his nerdy girlfriend. Duncan's Ruthless Gods, showing a castle surrounded by trees. And it didn’t really work until I had done like a year of research on Russian and Polish folklore and kind of used that to the base that I then built around.” That kind of high fantasy where there’s no real world analog, you’re just kind of making everything up,” she explained. I had always written fantasy like Dungeons and Dragons. “It took a lot of research, because I wasn’t grounding it in the real world before this. I kept writing the first 15,000 words over and over and not really getting anywhere.”īut it was her decision to dig into Slavic storytelling traditions that helped her breakthrough. “But it took so long to go from the tiny idea of a girl that can talk to gods to something that was viable. All good books come from Skyrim,” Duncan laughed. “I was playing Skyrim when I got the idea. Like most creative projects, The Something Dark and Holy trilogy began with a lot of trial and error-and a most unexpected source of inspiration. Renowned for his biographies of William Wilberforce, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther, Metaxas is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, the witty host of the acclaimed Socrates in the City conversation series, and a nationally syndicated radio personality. What Happens When One of America’s Most Admired Biographers Writes His Own Biography?įor Eric Metaxas, the answer is Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Life-a poetic and sometimes hilarious memoir of his early years, in which the Queens-born son of Greek and German immigrants struggles to make sense of a world in which he never quite seems to fit. You know those shameful thoughts? Those troubling body parts? We’ve all got ’em! Check out this spunky protagonist going through precisely what you’re going through!Ĭrafting an appropriately spunky protagonist, though, is trickier than it sounds. So: one job of the children’s book writer is to penetrate this dark and secretive kingdom and let some light in. Every child is the despotic ruler of a nation in crisis - the child’s face printed on the currency that’s being burned in the streets. My parents have gone out to dinner? They must be plotting to abandon me. My shirt is stained? I must be a fundamentally rumpled creature. The megalomaniac’s cackling Mine, all mine! becomes the child’s wretched lament: Mine (oh God)…. Squabbling parents dying relatives the defeats of far-off sports teams - these are all, when you’re a child, personal judgments rendered by a cosmos that happens to be headquartered in your bedroom. Because to be self-centered in the way of a child is to suffer exquisitely. This sounds like an indictment ( Does anyone want to know whether I feel like hearing Moana again? ), but I mean it as a call for compassion. As anyone who’s ever been, or been near, a child can tell you: children are self-centered. It's not as sexy as criminal law or civil rights, but there's a nerdy appeal, not unlike space exploration or old literature. Patent law is much more interesting than the broader public realizes. But it is at times woefully off base, which is a shame. If the law had been accurate, I would have given it a much more positive review. Last Days is an entertaining, engaging, and informative read, at least with regard to history. But I'm enough of a patent geek to have taken a particular interest in The Last Days of Night, which was recommended in an ABA newsletter (Best legal fiction of 2016). I'm an attorney with a strong background in patents, but no technical background so not a patent attorney. The Last Days of Night is an historical fiction about the Edison/Tesla/Westinghouse current wars-one of the greatest patent battles of all time, told from the perspective of burgeoning attorney Paul Cravath. A movie of The Last Days of Night is in production, slated for release in 2018. Moore has also seen success as a screenwriter, having won an Oscar for best screenplay with The Imitation Game. The Last Days of Night is Graham Moore's second novel, after The Sherlockian. Undertakes a gamma ray experiment with marigolds that wins a prize at Younger daughter, Matilda, plain and almost pathologically shy, hasĪn intuitive gift for science. Pretty but highly strung girl subject to convulsions while the Frowzy, acid-tongued, supporting herself and her two daughtersīy taking in a decrepit old boarder, Beatrice Hunsdorfer wreaks a Revolves around the dysfunctional family consisting of single motherĪnd her two daughters who try to cope with their abysmal status in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds The title refers to the girl's high school science experiment. She embodies the spirit of a survivor and follows her path to self discovery. The storyline follows that of a dysfunctional family and the main character Tillie, who defies the work of her mother's manipulation. Of the most significant and affecting plays of our time. Vindictive widow and her two young daughters has been hailed as one Greatest successes, this powerful and moving study of an embittered, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is aįull-length drama by Paul Zindel. About the Play: The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds has long been a favourite of acting teachers forįemale monologues and female/female scenes. Protesting segregation, they believed, failed to adequately address the poverty and powerlessness that generations of systemic discrimination and racism had imposed on so many Black Americans. By 1966, the civil rights movement had been gaining momentum for more than a decade, as thousands of African Americans embraced a strategy of nonviolent protest against racial segregation and demanded equal rights under the law.īut for an increasing number of African Americans, particularly young Black men and women, that strategy did not go far enough. To comprehend the arguments against the metamathematical programme, and to appreciate how profoundly the philosophical method employed actually shaped the content of Wittgenstein's philosophy, it is necessary to make an intellectual biographical reconstruction of their philosophical framework, tracing the Hertzian elements in the early as well as in the later writings. In effect, Wittgenstein's controversial response to David Hilbert and Kurt Gödel was deeply influenced by Hertz and can only be fully understood when seen in this context. Logical paradoxes and foundational problems including those of mathematics were seen as pseudo-problems requiring clarity instead of solution. Wittgenstein applied this method successfully to critical problems in logic and mathematics throughout his life. The German physicist Heinrich Hertz played a decisive role for Wittgenstein's use of a unique philosophical method. Wright) and the rebellious firebrand Frances (Deborah Hay). Materia, who desperately wants a son to please her estranged father, gives birth instead to three daughters in the remote New Waterford: the vivacious and musically gifted Kathleen (Samantha Hill), the devout and responsible Mercedes (Jenny L. Part One, subtitled “Family Tree,” begins with the story of self-made Cape Bretoner James Piper (Tim Campbell), a burly, imposing piano tuner who, at age 19, falls in love with the 12-year-old Materia (Cara Rebecca), who comes from a strict Lebanese-Canadian family and is promptly disowned by her family. Those fans will likely be content watching the story unravel, scene by laborious scene, even if people unfamiliar with the source material might be scratching their heads and shifting in their seats. |