5/10/2023 0 Comments Wicked lovely book![]() ![]() I'm definitely continuing with this series because I'm excited to see what comes next. The characters are all nicely drawn, and I like the spin on the fairy world (traditional yet also new), and I love the new take on the love triangle trope, with a nice, strong female lead who calls some pretty great shots. ![]() I love urban-ish fantasy involving dangerous fairies, so this one was right up my street. When she discovers that one of them is the Summer King and he has chosen her to be his queen, her world gets even more complicated than it is already. It's uncomfortable, but she manages, until two of the fairies start following her, day after day. So she lives her life pretending as best she can that she doesn't see the horror all around her all the time. If they should ever find out that Aislinn can see them, it would be bad. It isn't the fun parlor trick it may seem, though, because fairies are *everywhere* and completely dangerous. Except that she can see fairies, just like her mother and her grandmother before her. The story follows protagonist Aislinn, who has the Sight (the ability to see faeries), and whose life begins to unravel when it seems the fey-folk develop a sudden interest in her. ![]() She currently lives with her family in Arizona. Wicked Lovely is a young adult/urban fantasy novel by author Melissa Marr. Aislinn is a normal high school senior, does well in school and stays out of trouble, obeys her grandmother (who has raised her since her mother died). She is best known for the Wicked Lovely series for teens, the Graveminder for adults, and her debut picturebook Bunny Roo, I Love You. ![]()
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5/9/2023 0 Comments Vampire blindsight![]() ![]() ![]() It has advantage on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution saving throws, and it is immune to all nonmagical damage, except the damage it takes from sunlight. ![]() In addition, if air can pass through a space, the mist can do so without squeezing, and it can't pass through water. It is weightless, has a flying speed of 20 feet, can hover, and can enter a hostile creature's space and stop there. While in mist form, the vampire can't take any actions, speak, or manipulate objects. Anything it is wearing transforms with it, but nothing it is carrying does. Its statistics, other than its size and speed, are unchanged. While in bat form, the vampire can't speak, its walking speed is 5 feet, and it has a flying speed of 30 feet. Traits Shapechanger: If the vampire isn't in sun light or running water, it can use its action to polymorph into a Tiny bat or a Medium cloud of mist, or back into its true form. ![]() 5/9/2023 0 Comments A pocketful of rye marple![]() ![]() I do feel that Miss Marple plays a much bigger role in this book than she did in the previous book I read and I am looking forward to reading more books in this series. The use of the rhyme was brilliantly played and once again, I was left stumped in trying to put it all together. I loved all the misdirection and lies that appear in this case and how it wasn’t until Miss Marple shows up that things start to make sense and that apparent random crimes all seem to be connected. I think I really need to start at the beginning of the series to see if this is always the case, though I suspect it might be. In this book, she does show up sooner than in the last book, about halfway instead of closer to the end, but still. Again, as with the book last month, I found it strange that she doesn’t make an appearance right away. This is another Miss Marple book, now my 2nd one I’ve read. ![]() I happened to have the alterative choice sitting on my bookshelf, sent to me last year by the publisher and decided it was a sign to finally read it…and I’m so glad I did! Moving right along in the #ReadChristie2023 Challenge, I’m 4 for 4 this year! The prompt for April is poison and the main selection is Sparkling Cyanide, however one of the alternative choices was A Pocket Full of Rye. Thank you William Morrow Paperbacks, #partner, for the finished copy of A Pocket Full of Rye in exchange for my honest review. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In her thirties, Potter published the highly successful children's book The Tale of Peter Rabbit and became secretly engaged to her publisher, Norman Warne, causing a breach with her parents, who disapproved of his social status. Because she was a woman, her parents discouraged intellectual development, but her study and paintings of fungi led her to be widely respected in the field of mycology. She had numerous pets, and through holidays in Scotland and the Lake District, developed a love of landscape, flora, and fauna, all of which she closely observed and painted. Helen Beatrix Potter was an English author, illustrator, mycologist, and conservationist who is best known for her children's books, which featured animal characters such as Peter Rabbit.īorn into a wealthy household, Potter was educated by governesses and grew up isolated from other children. ![]() 5/9/2023 0 Comments Superintelligenz nick bostrom![]() ![]() He points out that we have the advantage in that we are the authors of this fate, unlike our primate relatives. ![]() ![]() In his bestselling book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, the Oxford University professor and the founding Director of the Future of Humanity Institute highlights that just as the fate of gorillas depends on the actions of humans rather than on gorillas themselves, the fate of humanity may come to depend on superintelligent machines. In many ways, he personifies the need for thinkers to collaborate at the intersection of disciplines in order to fully understand the opportunities and challenges represented by artificial intelligence. He calls artificial intelligence “the single most important and daunting challenge that humanity has ever faced.”īostrom is an extraordinary polymath, having earned degrees in physics, philosophy, mathematical logic, and neuroscience. (See links to each below.) Nick Bostrom is perhaps the most influential thinker on safety concerns associated with the march toward artificial intelligence. If you are a regular reader of this column, you have gained the perspectives of eight of the leading thinkers on the topic. There has been a lot written about the transformational power of artificial intelligence. ![]() 5/9/2023 0 Comments Home by jeannie baker![]() ![]() Circle traces the flight of the Bar-tailed Godwits, the endangered Australian shorebirds that make the longest unbroken migration of any bird – a total of 11,000 kilometres. She has published fourteen illustrated children’s books since 1975, many of which question our dichotomous relationships with nature. Perhaps you recognise the author? Maybe you grew up admiring Baker’s extraordinary, well-researched and beautifully presented works. They include books that have children giggling and gasping, books that reel them in with actions and phrases, books that will leave them silent in wonder, and books that encourage questions and develop imagination beyond the pages.Ī book that I find myself reading several times a week is Circle by Jeannie Baker, published in 2016. ![]() In my wheelie suitcase of tricks, I have a stash of my favourite picture books. One way to relearn that curiosity is to spend time with children and watch how they discover the world for the first time.Īs a relief teacher who teaches more than a hundred children a week, I encourage expression of that curiosity through sharing quality children’s literature. Sometimes in our jaded-by-life, paying-bills world, we forget to ask questions like children – questions that reveal true wonder and curiosity. ![]() 5/9/2023 0 Comments Intimations zadie smith review![]() ![]() The most compelling observations in “Postscript: Contempt As a Virus” bring us back to the acute uneasiness of the present moment as reflected in behaviors by British prime minister Boris Johnson’s senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, who violated shelter-in-place orders in Great Britain, and also the brutality of Floyd’s murder. ![]() Deeply personal, it serves as a centering conclusion to a collection written in a fractured, terrorizing time, as if Smith is reminding herself of her anchors. The series of vignettes that make up “Screengrabs” uses Smith’s sharp writing skills to create several disparate portraits-one of a man who runs a nail salon in New York, another of the IT student whose “style” is a trait of youth, and still another of a “heavy smoking” neighbor, among others. The last essay, Intimations, is an annotated list of people in Smith’s life who have bestowed gifts upon her. Her essay on “The America Exception” is a challenge to President Trump’s misplaced nostalgia. A major voice of contemporary literature, Smith gently and thoughtfully takes on a broad range of issues that are personal to her but speak universally to many of us. The six personal essays that comprise this compelling brief volume gives us novelist Smith’s (Swing Time) impressions and thoughts during the pandemic lockdown following the killing of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. ![]() 5/8/2023 0 Comments Beyond order 12 rules![]() ![]() ![]() Discover in this book of exceptional power 12 simple yet profound rules for sorting yourself out, setting your house in order, and improving the world–by starting with yourself. Peterson discusses discipline, responsibility, freedom and adventure, distilling the world’s wisdom into twelve wide-ranging essays, practical and profound. Join those who have already found inspiration and direction in Dr. The condemned men were taken into a room one at a time, and there the camp guards sprang on them. ![]() And outside the compound stood the small house of the Third Section. What does the nervous system of the lowly lobster have to tell us about standing up straight (with our shoulders back) and success in life? Why did ancient Egyptians worship the capacity to pay careful attention as the highest of gods? What dreadful paths do people tread when they become resentful, arrogant and vengeful?ĭr. They would take the opposition members with their things out of the camp compound on a prisoner transport at night. ![]() Peterson tells us why skateboarding boys and girls must be left alone, what terrible fate awaits those who criticize too easily, and why you should always pet a cat when you meet one on the street. Humorous, surprising and informative, Dr. Renowned psychologist Jordan B Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos combines the hard-won truths of ancient tradition with the surprising revelations of cutting-edge scientific research. ![]() ![]() ![]() This collection of fragmented, meandering observations and introspections cannot be described as a novel it is more an insomniac's journal, written in the persona of an accounting clerk in Lisbon, Bernardo Soares. During his lifetime, his only fame was as a minor literary figure who co-founded the short-lived publication Orpheu after his death in 1935, 25,000 documents – essays, plays, poems, even horoscopes – were found in his attic and the academic scramble to assemble them began. He employed more than 70 different characters, imaginary identities that read one another's writing and wrote one another's obituaries. A postmodernist poet posthumously adopted as part of the Portuguese canon, Fernando Pessoa (below) adopted a series of voices – or "heteronyms" – in which to write. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Forest Service and Juvenile Court in Vernal, Utah. Katy was also employed by Halliburton, FMC, U.S. She worked at Granger Medical as a Medical Assistant in SLC. How we are going to miss her at our gatherings, kissing everybody and taking pictures. We could always count on Kaye to be there. We don't think that we ever visited Kaye without spending hours gathered around her kitchen table, telling stories and laughing until (As she would say) "The tears ran down her legs." Kaye was very dear to us and we had many fun and loving experiences. She made every person she was with feel like family. Katy was employment at Michele's Modeling in SLC to put herself though beauty school. She graduated from Roosevelt High school in 1964. She married Wilford Eugene Jensen on April 2, 1966. There are not many who know how to truly be a friend but Katy definitely did. Kaye was a darling baby and grew up into the cutest girl. Craig and Vida LaRae Wilcken on Decemin Heber City, Utah. Kaye "Katy" Wilcken Dow, age 71, passed away at University of Utah Hospital on January 3, 2016. ![]() |