Tag: Books

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Strange and Dangerous

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Piranesi is a spectacular novel by Susanna Clarke, winner of the Women’s Prize 2021, set in parallel universe made up of hundreds of halls and vestibules lined with statues each on different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid: He understands the tides as he understands the pattern of labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. The vestibules which triggers gradual memory loss and identity in newcomers. The upper level of the house is filled with clouds lower … Continue reading Strange and Dangerous

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Apprenticeship dominated training and skill in early modern Europe

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Apprenticeship dominated training and skill formation in early modern Europe. Years spent learning from a skilled master were a nearly universal experience for young workers in crafts and trade. In England, when apprenticeship reached its peak, as many as a third of all male teenagers would serve and learn as apprentices. In the Market for Skill, Patrick Wallis, professor of economic history at the London School of Economics, shows how apprenticeship helped reshape the English economy. He shows non-agricultural work in England was “anything but hereditary between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries”. Some historians see apprenticeship as a key ingredient … Continue reading Apprenticeship dominated training and skill in early modern Europe

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The act of Atonement

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Master storyteller, and author of more than 60 bestsellers, Stephen King’s rumours of retirement due to literary exhaustion, is unfounded as his shift of genre from horror to crime after recharging his creative batteries. Never Flinch is about a killer on a diabolical revenge mission, and another about a vigilante targeting a feminist celebrity speaker – featuring the beloved Holly Gibney. When the Buckeye City Police Department receives a disturbing letter from a person threatening to “kill thirteen innocents and one guilty” in act of atonement of the needless death of an innocent man”. Detective Izzy Jaynes has no idea … Continue reading The act of Atonement

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Love in the Therapeutic age

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Tanja and Jerome are navigating a long-distance relationship in a world of constant communication and emotional hyper-reflection. Whether they are texting one another trip updates from midday raves or debating the best trainers in the own-brand aisle of Decathlon, every gesture is controlled and self-aware. This is love in the therapeutic age. Both conform to the archetype: Tanja is a Berlin-based writer whose first book sits somewhere at the intersection of virtual reality and gay romance. “People who didn’t like it came across as cringingly proud of their dislike of a book that meant something to others, “ writes Randt, … Continue reading Love in the Therapeutic age

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Mother who raised and inspired two superstars

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Tina Knowles, the mother of icons Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: the woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. A life of grief and tragedy, love and heartbreak, the nurturing of her superstar daughters, and the perseverance and audacity it takes for a girl from Galveston, Texas to change the world. Why half of Destiny’s Child Beyoncé’s original four piece, left the group in 2000 in a flurry of bad-mouthing and lawsuits: we’re just old that “Beyoncé saw … Continue reading Mother who raised and inspired two superstars

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Eternal City, that bring its people to life

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Rome for centuries was an essential stop on the Grand Tour, part of the education of well-born visitors such as the great chronicler of Gilded Age, Edith Wharton.  A collection of short stories, set in Italy, France and America, with powerful portraits of women who live in “the world of propriety” at the turn of century, displaying emotions women feel in love, in jealousy, when they long for children or seek independence – and when their passions lead them to overstep the bounds laid down by exacting conventions. We see too what happens to those strong enough to break the … Continue reading Eternal City, that bring its people to life

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Consequences of our choices

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A brother and sister lost and found, in a novel from the author of the Patrick Melrose series, Edward St Aubyn’s Parallel Lines, the novel seizes your heart and enthrals your mind. “We set off in opposite directions and walked around the world until we met, and I’m very pleased we have…”. It is summer. Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him with a fragile hold on reality and a bigger to connect with the mother who abandoned him. His therapist, Martin Carr, also faces challenges, including his adopted daughter Olivia’s tenuous relationship with her biological … Continue reading Consequences of our choices

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Albatross loses its bearings to turn into an unmoored wanderer

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Mexican author Guadalupe Nettel’s novel Still Born, about motherhood, shortlisted fort the 2023, International Booker Prize, “Being a mother means being worried about someone else all the time”, mused its narrator Laura, explaining why she preferred to remain childless. Her latest book The Accidentals feature Mothers and labours of parenthood, where conventions of family life are examined, challenged and subverted. The protagonists of these eight stories each find the ordinary courses of their lives disrupted by an unexpected event are pushed into unfamiliar terrain: a girl encounters her uncle in hospital, who was cast out of the family for reasons unknown, … Continue reading Albatross loses its bearings to turn into an unmoored wanderer

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World’s first Agony Aunt column about love, sex and relatonships

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The Athenian Mercury – a London-based broadsheet, one-page, two-sided periodical, brainchild of John Dunton, a printer, not a therapist whose main aim was to make money. Walking in a London park one day, it occurred to him that the (male) patrons of London’s fashionable coffee houses might like to gin up their intellectual discussions with questions posed to a panel of experts – just Dunton and his brothers-in-law- and would pay to see the answers. Published and advertised as “Resolving all the most Nice and Curious Questions Proposed by the ingenious of Either Sex”, in 1690s London which included the … Continue reading World’s first Agony Aunt column about love, sex and relatonships

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Surviving to become the biggest toy company in the world

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Lego A/s  (The Lego Group), a Danish construction by production company based in Billund, Denmark, manufacturer of interlocking ABS plastic and rubber bricks. The company founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Christiansen,  a carpenter whose primary business of producing household goods had suffered due to the Great Depression.  He produced initially wooden toys, and developed interlocking bricks by 1947, naming it Lego, based on a Danish phrase leg godt, meaning “play well”. The name also means in Latin either “ I collect”, “ I compose”, “I choose”, “ I read”. After a fire in the woodworking department, Ole’s son, Godfred, decided to stop … Continue reading Surviving to become the biggest toy company in the world