![]() ![]() Brás Cubas dedicates his book to the first worm that gnawed his cold body: “To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs” (Portuguese: Ao verme que primeiro roeu as frias carnes do meu cadáver dedico com saudosa lembrança estas Memórias Póstumas). The fact of being already deceased allows Brás Cubas to sharply criticize the Brazilian society and reflect on his own disillusionment, with no sign of remorse or fear of retaliation. The novel is narrated by the dead protagonist Brás Cubas, who tells his own life story from beyond the grave, noting his mistakes and failed romances. ![]() ![]() ![]() The 1881 novel anticipates anticipates a style and form that we now describe as “postmodern.” I’ll share a few excerpts in the future, but for now, here’s the Wikipedia summary (lazy, I know, but I think it’s a bit better than this Oxford UP edition’s blurb): I got Gregory Rabassa’s translation (I dipped my toe into his translation of Miguel Ángel Asturias’s 1963 novel Mulata a few weeks ago).īrás Cubas reminds me a lot of Tristram Shandy so far-short sharp funny chapters that bop forward and backward. I picked it up because of an oblique recommendation via Twitter a few weeks ago when I was raving about Antonio di Benedetto’s novel Zama. I picked up Brazilian author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis’s 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas today. ![]()
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![]() ![]() If I had to name the theme of this book it would be "lust". Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?Įxcellent novel and extremely well written! It's WELL worth the credit!! Susan Duerden is amazing and she yet again met all my expectations for her narration. ![]() Have you listened to any of Susan Duerden’s other performances before? How does this one compare? So disturbing, but also immensely entertaining. It's very disturbing, as your rational mind is telling you the relationship is very, very wrong but your emotional side is rooting for the characters to end up together. It's akin to being emotionally dragged into the abusive cycle yourself. All of these novels have kind of scary and (let's admit it) abusive heroes who make you want to punch them in the face but are written so well you're drawn back to them instantly after the slightest resolution. I felt it was very similar to Breathless by Anne Stuart and Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire. ![]() What other book might you compare Potent Pleasures to and why? I hated them and loved them and I was way more emotionally involved with these characters than is healthy, I'm sure. I loved how multidimensional the characters were. What did you love best about Potent Pleasures? ![]() ![]() ![]() This unique book emphasizes spiritual commitment as an essential facet of LGBTI/queer consciousness and addresses such burning themes as coming out, the importance of self-acceptance, gay marriage, gay bashing, and the ethics of gay sex. In particular, he encourages LGBTI people to reclaim their spiritual heritage without apology. ![]() Daniel Helminiak, author of the best-selling What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality, looks at the relationship between sexuality and spirituality, first, from a humanistic perspective and, then, a more familiar Christian point of view. A down-to-earth look at the spiritual power of sex Sex and the Sacred examines the spiritual dimension of human sexuality in a way that is free of religious affiliation but still open to traditional religion and belief in God. ![]() ![]() Margaret's books have been published in the United States, Norway, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, China and other countries. ![]() She works at her home in Winnipeg during the winter and on the veranda of her cottage in Northwestern Ontario in the summer months. Since then Margaret has published nine more YA books. It quickly became a bestseller after appearing in bookstores in 1987. An artist for many years, Margaret decided to write a YA novel and Who Is Frances Rain? was published by Kids Can Press. ![]() ![]() Award winning author, Margaret Buffie, was born and grew up in the west end of Winnipeg, attended various schools - graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba. ![]() ![]() ![]() It is expertly read by award-winning narrator Jonathan Keeble. James' ghost stories includes tales from Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, More Ghost Stories, A Thin Ghost and Others, and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories. James are available to download in one collection. Choose from Same Day Delivery, Drive Up or Order. With a skillful introduction to the genre and notes on each story by Sims, The Phantom Coach is a spectacular collection of ghostly Victorian thrills.įor the first time, the complete works of M. Read reviews and buy The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories - by Henry James (Paperback) at Target. ![]() Jacobs ("The Monkey’s Paw") will turn you white as a sheet. ![]() Edwards’s chilling story gives the collection its title, while Ambrose Bierce ("The Moonlit Road"), Elizabeth Gaskell ("The Old Nurse’s Story"), and W. The Phantom Coach includes tales by a surprising and often legendary cast, including Charles Dickens, Margaret Oliphant, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as lost gems by forgotten masters such as Mary E. Michael Sims, whose previous Victorian collections Dracula’s Guest (vampires) and The Dead Witness (detectives) have been widely praised, has gathered twelve of the best stories about humanity’s oldest supernatural obsession. Ghost stories date back centuries, but those written in the Victorian era have a unique atmosphere and dark beauty. An American-born writer who eventually settled in England, Henry James was born in 1843 and passed away in 1916. ![]() ![]() ![]() I've never read a book from start to finish." "Although your father is a very clever man, of course. He buys her a new Jaguar so they can impress the other families in the snooty area they live in. He comes home on weekends so she can wash his clothes. He calls to make sure that no one is there with her every day. ![]() So she takes a shortcut through Digby Road, that bad part of town that his father has forbidden her to go.īryan's father has set ways that he wants his wife to act while he works away from home. ![]() On the way to school that morning that Bryan thinks the time is being added his mom is running late taking his sister and Bryan to school. You could take one step too many and fall over the edge of a cliff. It's the difference between something happening and something not happening. James knows all kinds of facts so Bryon becomes obsessed with the fact. Byron Hemming's friend James informs him that two seconds are being added to the year. ![]() ![]() ![]() And it turns out the handsome dream-hunk she's sharing a rental car with on her trip up Interstate 5 is actually a government agent trying to bust her. I know it was about a woman called Ashley Harrison who, for some reason that escaped me, is suspected of being a drug smuggler or something. I'm not going to try to review this movie in earnest, because I've already admitted that I don't remember anything about it. They are all dreadful, and everyone knows that, but people keep watching them-including me, apparently. ![]() That was an exaggeration, but I find myself overwhelmed by the proliferation of these things. I commented once before that at Christmastime, the Hallmark Channel "produces at least 600 movies a day". And, let me tell you, that doesn't narrow it down much. The reason it took so long is that all I knew about it was that it came on the Hallmark Channel at some point in the last month and a half and that it was a Christmas movie. It took me 20 minutes of searching to figure out what the name of this movie was so I could look it up on Rotten Tomatoes. ![]() ![]() ![]() He also published two novels, one book of original poetry, seven books of translated Irish poetry, a biography, an autobiography, three travelogues on Ireland, eight plays, two selected anthologies of Irish writing, five books of literary criticism, and over three hundred articles and reviews on cultural, social and political issues. ![]() In a literary career that spanned forty-four years (1922 - 1966), he produced eleven collections of short stories. Forty years later, this summation of O’Connor’s accomplishments is still germane.īorn Michael O’Donovan in Cork in 1903, he became a prolific writer under the pseudonym Frank O’Connor. Macmillan’s foreword captures something of O’Connor’s personality as well as the significance of his achievements. The young Irish rebel and the mature war-time friend of Britain, the eccentric librarian, the enthusiastic man of the theatre and the meticulous self-taught scholar, the sonorous translator of Irish poetry and the superlative short-story writer, the inspiring public lecturer and the dogged master of the seminar – all were unquestionably the same unique and original man. Yet everything he did, however unexpected or even contradictory it might seem, was informed by the same single-minded and passionate integrity. Frank O’Connor had two names and lived a life of many facets. ![]() ![]() ![]() These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. ![]() Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Rue des Maléfices – Straße der Verwünschungen.It is a unique and elegiac meditation on grief, memory and longing, and of the redemptive power of stories and nature. Ghostland is Parnell’s moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – and what is haunting him. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn and Graham Swift’s Waterland to the archetypal ‘folk horror’ film The Wicker Man… ![]() ![]() James, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood to the children’s fantasy novels of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper from W. He explores how these landscapes conjured and shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema, from the ghost stories and weird fiction of M. In Ghostland, Parnell goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British Isles, our lonely moors, our moss-covered cemeteries, our stark shores and our folkloric woodlands. For comfort, he turned to his bookshelves, back to the ghost stories that obsessed him as a boy, and to the writers through the ages who have attempted to confront what comes after death. In his late thirties, Edward Parnell found himself trapped in the recurring nightmare of a family tragedy. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() It is the middle class that does not accept its fate and function, that believes in social mobility, that envies the style and security of the networked rich on the one hand, and the claims to authenticity of those who earn their keep by the sweat of their brows or by facing real danger, on the other. ![]() No, it is the hard-working, hard-consuming middle class that feels the annoyance. Members of the upper class don’t mind broaching the topic of class either, says Fussell, since they know themselves to be on top of the system, securely above the fray. And nor, really, do they want to, the upper classes being perceived, for all their money, as weightless and effete, and the middle classes as slaves of the marketplace, cogs in the bureaucracy, and generally “loathsome in their anxious gentility.” 1 ![]() 1. “You reveal a great deal about your class,” writes Paul Fussell, “by the amount of annoyance or fury you feel when the subject is brought up.” People of the working class, he explains, generally don’t mind thinking or talking about it, since they know there is little they can do to change their station. ![]() |