Author: rrn69

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Swimming with dolphins…

rrn69

A English girl named Ishmaelle “born in a windswept cottage in the coast of Kent in the year  1843,” where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After the death of her parents and infant sister, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Call Me Ishamelle reimages the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from a female perspective. Guo was inspired by a real-life story of 18-year-old Rebeca Ann Johnson who sailed out of Nantucket to Massachusetts, as the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, as part of the crew of the Nimrod, … Continue reading Swimming with dolphins…

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“Britain’s passion for esoteric Black music”

rrn69

After the world war, the UK and America were the dominant forces responsible for emergence and evolution of nightclubs and electronic dance music from the 1950s onwards. Transatlantic Drift traces the rhythmic journey of dance music, following the pulse as it bounced between Europe, North America and Caribbean. Music, dance styles and nightclub spaces are not created in isolation; they are shaped by collective influences and shared experiences. Two British academics, Milestone, a sociologist, and Morrison, music journalism lecturer, reveals the interconnected story of dance music, taking in hotspots such as New York, Detroit, London, Manchester, Chicago, Düsseldorf and Ibiza. Britain’s love … Continue reading “Britain’s passion for esoteric Black music”

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Testing the limits of her loyalty

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May Hanover was a good girl growing up, well behaved, top of her class, a compulsive rule-follower. Raised by a first-generation Chinese single mother with high expectations, May did not have room to slip up, let alone fall. Her friends did not call her “the Little Sheriff for nothing.” But even good girls have secrets, regrets and when it comes to friendship with Lauren and Kelsey, she’s had her fair share of both. The bond -forged when May was just twelve years old- has withstood a tragic accident, individual scandals, heartbreak and loss. Now the three friends have reunited for … Continue reading Testing the limits of her loyalty

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Avalanche on Black Sunday

rrn69

Magical tale of climate catastrophe – a pure dust storm  is the new novel from the Pulitzer Prize shortlisted author Karen Russell, in The Antidote where the moving dust looks like a mountain range, or an avalanche on Black Sunday, April 1935, in the central plains of the US. Mid-afternoon, the temperature dropped; birds chattered, horizon turned black to flatten wheatfields, burying houses  and vaporising every memory stored inside the Antidote. She wakes up empty- as bankrupt as America. If her customers ever discover the truth, her life will be in danger. “The onrushing cloud, the darkness, and the thick, choking dirt, made this … Continue reading Avalanche on Black Sunday

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Jetsam of our truths

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Booker Prize-longlisted Dublin-born, Irish author, resident of New York, Colum McCann’s epic novel Twist is about connection, disconnection and destruction. McCann watches seavengers on a coastal dump in Ghana collecting fragments of copper and rubber worth “a week’s worth of food” from discarded lengths of fibre-optic cable. In Twist, inspecting a damaged end of a data-carrying cable, Anthony Fennel, a journalist in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea: the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world’s communication across the ocean floor and what happens when they snap. Separated from his son and sunk … Continue reading Jetsam of our truths

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Battle for hearts, minds, literature, and intellects

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Charlie English explains how the CIA helped Poland’s underground print banned books, as over ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain. In 1950s Polish émigré Jerzy Gledroye was running out of cash, after launching a literary review in Paris to save Polish literature from the communist onslaught. In France, funding was scarce, and the Polish people stranded there after the Second World War were improvised and many French intellectuals were enamoured with the USSR. Giedroyc went in search of money in America, as the CIA officers who were keen to undermine Soviet Union censorship, offered him $10,000 … Continue reading Battle for hearts, minds, literature, and intellects

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Brasil Brasil The Birth of Modernism at The Royal Academy

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There are at least eleven artists featured at this engaging and colourful exhibition. Over 130 works are tastefully displayed for your delectation. Between 1910 and 1970 the modernist approach to art emerged and finally flourished. The Afro Brasilian experience is mentioned about these inspiring artists. Political situations are alluded to in background information on the emergence of the Birth of Modernism.Anita Malfatti is one of the artists who spearheaded the movement and Tarsila do Amaral is also celebrated as a leading female figure of Brasilian Modernism.Many of the works displayed come from private collections as well as Brasilian Public Collections. … Continue reading Brasil Brasil The Birth of Modernism at The Royal Academy

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Greed, lies and Veil of Secrecy

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Former Wall Street Journal reporter, editor and Bloomberg’s investigative journalist Duncan Mavin’s Melt Down exposes a crisis year for Credit Suisse’s 2023 implosion, with a lucid account of how greed and complacency of bosses and employees destroyed the bank. For centuries Swiss banks have served the globe’s wealthiest individuals, employing a strict culture of anonymity and gaining massive wealth in the process. In March 2023, bank runs and panic among depositors of smaller US lenders spread to customers of Credit Suisse. As the crisis deepened Credit Suisse remained highly solvent across a reassuringly wide range of metrics, but said it … Continue reading Greed, lies and Veil of Secrecy

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Oscar Piastri wins Chinese F1 Grand Prix

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Oscar Piastri led Lando Norris to make McLaren dominant one-two in the Chinese Grand Prix ahead of George Russell’s Mercedes. The Australian was rarely more than four seconds ahead of Norris, led from pole and lost first place only briefly in the period around the leaders’ only pit stops. Norris was struggling with fading brakes in the closing laps but had enough of an advantage to hold Russell to third position. Max Verstappen finished fourth. Charles Leclerc drove an outstanding race in a Ferrari with a damaged front wing, his pace forcing Ferrari to order team-mate Lewis Hamilton out of … Continue reading Oscar Piastri wins Chinese F1 Grand Prix

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Better and clearer practices in “the evidence”

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Kucharski, a professor of mathematics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, explores how proof is not just a mathematical concept but a vital tool in decision-making, justice, and survival. From the medieval Islamic world to the recent pandemic, scientific progress has relied on different methods of establishing fact from fiction. Today, in the face of ever-increasing disinformation, how we prove things – to ourselves and others- has never felt more urgent. There is far more to proof than axioms, theories and scientific §       of someone’s guilt, or deciding whether to trust a new type of financial transaction, weighing … Continue reading Better and clearer practices in “the evidence”