![]() ![]() ![]() Yet when the truth comes to light, Sarah and Jeremy’s newfound love will be tested. His mission must remain a secret, even from the new wife who stirs his deepest longings. Tasked with unmasking London’s most scandalous author by his powerful family, Jeremy has no idea that his beautiful, innocent bride is the very woman he seeks to destroy. An especially tempting option when the clergyman in question is the handsome, intriguing Jeremy Cleland. Sarah knows discoverywould lead to her ruin, but marriage-to a vicar, no less-could help protect her from slander. Yet beneath Lady Sarah Frampton’s demure façade hides the mind of The Lady of Dubious Quality, author of the most titillating erotic fiction the ton has ever seen. In society circles she’s known as the Watching Wallflower-shy, quiet, and certainly never scandalous. E va Leigh’s deliciously sexy W icked Q uills of L ondon series continues as a Lady’s secret career writing erotic fiction is jeopardized by real-life romance. ![]()
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6/28/2023 0 Comments Rene descartes first meditation![]() His senses have deceived him before, so they could be deceiving him now, so he rejects all sensory-based beliefs. To avoid any false beliefs, his strategy is to doubt any belief he has that could be false or that he could be mistaken about. He sets out to devise a strategy to not just prevent having false beliefs but, more dramatically, to ensure that scientific research reveals truth, not error. Meditation 1: Skepticism and the Method of Doubtĭescartes begins by reflecting on the unfortunate fact that he has had many false beliefs. This two-part essay reviews Descartes’ process of reasoning and some of his arguments on these issues.ġ. It raises timeless and fundamental philosophical questions about knowledge, the self, the mind and its relation to the body, substance, causality, perception, ideas, the existence of God, and more. The Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) is a classic work that lays the philosophical foundations of this enterprise. ![]() In an era of great debate over the fundamental facts of nature-e.g., about the Earth’s place in the cosmos, the amount of energy in the universe, the circulation of blood in the human body-René Descartes’ (1596-1650) central goal was to establish a body of scientific knowledge that held the same degree of certainty as mathematical truths. ![]() ![]() ![]() Categories: Historical Philosophy, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind and Language, Philosophy of ReligionĮditor’s Note: This essay is the first in a two-part series on Descartes’ Meditations. ![]() 6/28/2023 0 Comments The Siege by Ismail Kadare![]() ![]() The Siege is certainly a calculatedly ambiguous and ambivalent novel, and yet it’s hard not to see politics everywhere in it. Heather McRobie asked last month why we need our eastern European writers to be dissidents at all politics is at the heart of writer’s reception, even if it is not at the heart of his oeuvre. His position is in part a response to the controversy at the heart of his slow introduction to the Western canon. I am dubious about the idea that any writer can avoid politics (indeed, previously Kadare has argued that merely the act of writing made him a dissident in Enver Hoxha’s totalitarian Albania), but Kadare in particular might find it hard to achieve this enviable separation. ![]() The second most interesting thing about reading The Siege comes in light of Kadare’s own insistence that he is not a political writer. and, of course, it’s the best your monoglot correspondent can manage. This is literary Chinese whispers, and yet both Vrioni and his English translator David Bellos seem to enjoy excellent reputations, and in a fascinating little essay Bellos has been admirably up front about his own problems with the process. I always preface any remarks about a translated novel with the admission that I feel uncomfortable making sweeping claims about prose style when I cannot read the author’s original work in the case of Kadare, almost all of his work – including this one – is available in English only through translations of Jusuf Vrioni’s French versions. I’ve been reading Ismail Kadare’s The Siege. ![]() 6/28/2023 0 Comments Drown by junot díaz![]() ![]() ![]() She informs him that Beto is thinking about going to business school. Mami asks him if he found Beto, and he tells her that he did not look for him. They watch the Spanish news, where they learn that a baby has fallen from a seventh-story apartment but wasn't harmed. When he gets back from the pool, he sees that she is still awake, and he sits next to her on the couch so that they can watch TV together. ![]() He says that his mother has "discovered the secret to silence" and moves around their apartment so quietly that sometimes he doesn't even realize she is there (94). He and Mami are living alone in an apartment. Yunior begins to reflect on his life at home. He sees the pool rules sign and remembers a moment from the past when Beto asked him what the word "expectorating" means, but Yunior refused to tell him. Yunior swims in the deep end for a while and then makes his way to the shallow end of the pool. Two kids swim past him in the pool and recognize him as the guy who sells them marijuana. When he gets there, he realizes that he is not the oldest person there, "but it's close" (93). ( Pato is a Dominican slur for a gay man, generally used in a derogatory manner.) He decides to look for Beto, going to the community pool where they used to hang out as kids. Yunior reveals that they used to be friends before Beto went off to college. "Drown" begins with Mami telling Yunior that his childhood friend, Beto, is back in town. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In addition, Iceland’s volcanic surfaces can be so puzzlingly alien-some say lunar-that NASA trained astronauts, including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, here in advance of the landmark 1969 moon landing. Today, it is hooded by a glacier that covers its summit crater to the depth of more than 650 feet. ![]() But seeing is one thing, and journeying quite another.Īt more than 700,000 years old, the volcano last erupted in the third century. This wasn’t difficult, given that Snæfellsjökull’s peak rises nearly 5,000 feet above sea level and, on a clear day, can be seen from Reykjavík-some 75 miles to the southeast. Taking a cue from Verne, I traveled to Snæfellsnes peninsula in West Iceland with my sights set on the iconic stratovolcano. ![]() Nevertheless, this dose of reality hasn’t stopped curious travelers from exploring the book’s geological protagonist: Iceland’s Snæfellsjökull. Though Verne was widely regarded in his day for the meticulous scientific research that informed his writing, what he posited in Journey has been roundly rejected: namely, that volcanic tubes lead to the Earth’s core. One hundred and fifty years ago, in 1864, the French novelist Jules Verne published one of his most ambitious works- Journey to the Center of the Earth. ![]() 6/27/2023 0 Comments The obelisk gate book![]() ![]() Told only from two main POV and one minor POV, Essun’s POV is where I had tons of problems with. It’s not a surprise, I knew right after finishing the first book that the second book won’t be as good, but I just didn’t expect it to be this much. For reasons I can’t mention to avoid spoilers, I’ll just say that the first book has the advantage of being fresh in every element Jemisin implemented and in my opinion, she failed to live up to it. To summarize my mixed feelings about this book, The Obelisk Gate is majorly inflicted with the infamous second book syndrome. ![]() I am severely disappointed with it and as usual, I will always be honest with my ratings and reviews regardless of the majority’s opinions, so here it is. Believe me when I say that I truly wish I could love this book the same way but I just can’t. It’s a work of a genius and I gave it 4.5 stars. At the time of posting this review, out of 12470 ratings, less than 200 readers rated this book below 3 stars, I am one of them. This is probably the most unpopular opinion I ever wrote so far. Sadly, it’s not a happy coincidence because I highly disagree with it. The Obelisk Gate just won the Hugo Award 2017 for Best Novel of the year category, and coincidentally, I finished reading the book on the same day the result of the award was announced. ![]() ![]() ![]() Neither of us was a seasoned cyclist our brand-new, blue Univega Gran Tourismo touring bikes with miraculous triple cranks had fewer than 100 miles on them. On July 2, 1981, I left on a cross-country bicycle journey with my best buddy, Thomas. Little did I know that years down the road our paths would cross. By the time I attempted my first long-distance bicycle trip on well-paved roads, she was Muddling Through in Madagascar, cycling nearly impossible roads without the aid of shocks, clipless pedals, or grip shifts. While I was having fights with my brother over which Saturday morning cartoons to watch, she was exploring Ethiopia … on a mule. She wrote of her adventures in the highly acclaimed book Full-Tilt: Ireland to India on a Bicycle. In 1963, Dervla Murphy hopped on her bike in Ireland and pedaled all the way to India. This article originally appeared in a 1998 issue of Adventure Cyclist magazine. ![]() 6/27/2023 0 Comments Dunk and egg the sworn sword![]() It was first published in the Legends II anthology series, a collection of short stories by authors such as Tad Williams, Orson Scott Card, and Neil Gaiman. Martin's Tales of Dunk & Egg, following the story of the hedge knight Duncan the Tall and his squire Egg, a year and a half after the events of The Hedge Knight. The Sworn Sword is the second in George R. See the References and Notes section for alternate editions' ISBNs ![]() ![]() ISBN 9780345475787 (Legends II: Dragon, Sword and King) ![]() Original novella in Legends II anthology released as standalone graphic novel prose novella republished in Legends II: Dragon, Sword, and King ![]() 6/26/2023 0 Comments How to draw the marvel way book![]() ![]() At this point I am very aware that I have not yet picked up my pencil or even cast a cursory doodle toward my clean sketchpad. Ok so far, so I turn the page and we’ve moved forward putting these various shapes together to create more complex objects. ![]() ![]() Buscema’s illustrations show his examples of how these shapes can be used to create everyday objects and give them realistic form. We are presented with three basic shapes the sphere, the cube and the cylinder, of which most everyday objects consist in some form or another. The first few pages explain that we need to train ourselves to think around objects in terms of shapes. A glance through the pages and it becomes clear that this chapter is all about drawing an object with some basic perspective and three-dimensional qualities to make it appear less flat. It’s a long time since I picked up a pencil with the aim of doing something creative. Apparently “anyone, even you or I, can draw some sort of circle or square’ which feels like quite an assumption to be honest. So I took a deep breath and opened up chapter 2 the secrets of form. We set one of our team the challenge of learning to draw comics the Marvel way. ![]() 6/26/2023 0 Comments Moneyball book sparknotes![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. You can read this before Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game PDF EPUB full Download at the bottom.īilly Beane, general manager of MLB’s Oakland A’s and protagonist of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that’s smaller than that of nearly every other team. Here is a quick description and cover image of book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game written by Michael Lewis which was published in 2003–. Brief Summary of Book: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis ![]() |