![]() The benefit is that Mayor Clod’s problems raising funds and his ongoing demonisation of the Lizard People can generate a multitude of jokes, but the downside is that some matters just float around to no great purpose. He’s also spread plots over several episodes rather than compacting them. ![]() ![]() The barbed brilliance is still present, but more sporadically than previously, as if Russell packed most of what he wanted to say in the first six chapters fearful the series would be cancelled from under him as Prez had been, and only a few items from his list remained for these stories. ![]() It was surely just preaching to the converted, but nonetheless bold and hilarious for that. Mark Russell and Steve Pugh’s first volume of The Flintstones took aim at much of what’s wrong with present day America and nailed it unerringly. ![]()
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![]() The book’s themes of the universality of experiential religion, the suppression of that knowledge by exploitative forces, and the use of psychedelics to reconcile the human and natural worlds make it a fascinating and timely read. The authors have played critical roles in the modern rediscovery of entheogens, and The Road to Eleusis presents an authoritative exposition of their views. ![]() Although controversial when first published in 1978, the book’s hypothesis has become more widely accepted in recent years, as knowledge of ethnobotany has deepened. ![]() The authors then expand the discussion to show that natural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual rituals across history and cultures. ![]() In this groundbreaking work, three experts-a mycologist, a chemist, and a historian-argue persuasively that the sacred potion given to participants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactive entheogen. The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece for nearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strange accounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. –Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions “…one of the two best kept secrets in history, and this book is the most successful attempt I know to unlock it. ![]() ![]() ![]() While it is a book taught in many schools, Of Mice and Men has been a frequent target of censors for vulgarity, and what some consider offensive and racist language consequently, it appears on the American Library Association's list of the Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century. (English "The best laid plans of mice and men / Often go awry.") The title is taken from Robert Burns' Scots language poem " To a Mouse": "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley". Steinbeck based the novella on his own experiences working alongside migrant farm workers as a teenager in the 1910s, before the arrival of the Okies that he would describe in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. ![]() ![]() Published in 1937, it narrates the experiences of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. Of Mice and Men is a novella written by John Steinbeck. ![]() ![]() ![]() Polo spent four years marching along the silk road to the capital of Beijing. The Silk Road refers to a combination of routes that link China to Central Asia. They passed through South China Sea to Sumatra and the Indian Ocean, and finally docked at Hormuz. Polo then explored southern cities of China, and the trio returned home in 1292. The trio stayed in the Khan's court for 17 years and acquired wealth in form of jewels and gold. They then met the King at Shangdou (Xanadu, near Hohhot), and then went to Beijing. The trio went through Armenia, Persia, and Afghanistan to Pamirs.Īfter Kashgar and the Taklamakan Desert, they reached Suchow ( Dunhuang ) city and Marco stayed there for a year.Īfter Xinjiang, the trio traveled to Inner Mongolia. In 1271, his father and uncle took him along to China then called Cathy. His father and uncle, who had been to China before during their trading on the Silk Road, had one time visited Kublan Khan who was an emperor in the Yuan Dynasty. Marco Polo's journey to China was itself inspired by his father's and uncle's traveling to the country after listening to their stories. Although it is not clear where he was born (either at Curzola, off the coast of Dalmatia or at Venice), Marco Polo grew up in Venice. ![]() ![]() The immortal undead are closing in, and they want vengeance for the lives Rose has stolen. Then a strange darkness begins to grow in Rose's mind, and ghostly shadows warn of a terrible evil drawing nearer to the Academy's iron gates. Unfortunately, when it comes to gorgeous Dimitri Belikov, some rules are meant to be broken. ![]() Her best friend, Lissa - the last Dragomir princess - must always come first. Rose knows it is forbidden to love another guardian. Rose is dedicated to a dangerous life of protecting Lissa from the Strigoi, who are hell-bent on making Lissa one of them. The powerful blend of human and vampire blood that flows through Rose Hathaway, Lissa's best friend, makes her a Dhampir. She must be protected at all times from Strigoi the fiercest vampires - the ones who never die. Lissa Dragomir is a Moroi princess: a mortal vampire with a rare gift for harnessing the earth's magic. ![]() WHAT IF FOLLOWING HER HEART MEANS ROSE COULD LOSE HER BEST FRIEND FOREVER? ![]() ![]() ![]() With ever more frequent dreams of his father’s death and waking visions of feathers on the river’s surface, Benji finds his definition of reality bending. Surrounded by his mother and three aunts, he lives day to day, struggling to keep his head above water. Even years later, he’s buried in his grief, throwing himself into managing Big Eddie’s convenience store in the small-town of Roseland, Oregon. Everyone called it an accident, but Benji knows it was more. Ruv, who Vadoma says is Sam’s true cornerstone.įive years ago, Benji Green lost his beloved father, Big Eddie, when his truck crashed into a river. ![]() ![]() His parents are happy, Gary and Tiggy still eat sass for breakfast, Randall is somehow alive despite being older than the gods, the King rules with a gentle hand, Kevin the dragon is as gross as ever, Morgan sighs a lot, Ryan continues to be dashing and immaculate, and Sam is close to convincing Prince Justin they will be best friends forever.īecause Vadoma, the leader of the gypsy clan and Sam’s grandmother, has come to the City of Lockes with a dire prophecy written in the stars: a man of shadows is rising and will consume the world unless Sam faces his destiny and gathers the five dragons of Verania at his side.Īnd she brings along her second-in-command, a man named Ruv. A year has passed, and while Sam’s been captured five or six more times since then, things are pretty great. Once upon a time, the wizard’s apprentice Sam of Wilds got his happily ever after in the arms of his cornerstone, Knight Commander Ryan Foxheart. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Sometimes I think they want me to turn into the evil witch they assume I am. Most of the other students in here would be delighted if Orion killed me like one more evil thing that’s crawled out of the drains. Just give me a chance and I’ll level mountains and kill untold millions, make myself the dark queen of the world. Forget the hordes of monsters and cursed artifacts, I’m probably the most dangerous thing in the place. I don’t need help surviving the Scholomance, even if they do. I’m not joining his pack of adoring fans. Far as I’m concerned, he can keep his flashy combat magic to himself. I decided that Orion Lake needed to die after the second time he saved my life.Įveryone loves Orion Lake. classified as Fantasy, General Fiction.published Septemby Penguin Random House Audio, Penguin Random House.read by Anisha Dadia for 10 hours 59 minutes.A Deadly Education ( The Scholomance #1) ![]() ![]() ![]() Lost and confused, hungry but finally free, the four lions roamed the decimated streets of Baghdad in a desperate struggle for their lives. In the spring of 2003, a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad zoo during an American bombing raid. Now, in this provocative graphic novel, Vaughan examines life on the streets of war-torn Iraq. Vaughan has displayed an understanding of both the cost of survival and the political nuances of the modern world. In his award-winning work on Y THE LAST MAN and EX MACHINA (one of Entertainment Weekly’s 2005 Ten Best Fiction titles), writer Brian K. ![]() Ideas & Inspiration for The Stars Beneath Our Feetįrom one of America’s most critically acclaimed graphic novel writers – inspired by true events, a startlingly original look at life on the streets of Baghdad during the Iraq War. ![]() ![]() ![]() Bradbury enjoyed a relatively idyllic childhood in Waukegan, which he later incorporated into several semi-autobiographical novels and short stories. Early LifeĪuthor Ray Douglas Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Illinois, to Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, a lineman for power and telephone utilities, and Ester Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant. ![]() Bradbury won the Pulitzer in 2007, and is one of the most celebrated authors of the 21st century. ![]() He is also remembered for several other popular works, including The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes. His best known novel is Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian study of future American society in which critical thought is outlawed. Ray Bradbury was an American fantasy and horror author who rejected being categorized as a science fiction author, claiming that his work was based on the fantastical and unreal. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The upshot of the catastrophe, beyond almost immediate initiatives to provide aid and relief to the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the tragedy, has been a long, if dwindling, sequence of headlines and appeals by seemingly altruistic celebrities to create permanent (and swift) change in a place that has gone through constant transformation-not necessarily for the good-over the past three decades. ![]() The devastating earthquake that rocked the southern end of Haiti in January 2010, almost three years ago, caused such havoc and piled so much misery over a country that was already enduring one of the most alarming situations in the western hemisphere, that inevitably the world’s attention was forced onto an issue it stubbornly sought to ignore. ![]() |