![]() ![]() ![]() Gladwell is a journalist author of several best-selling books, including The Tipping Point and Blink co-founder of Pushkin Industries and host of the podcast Revisionist History. Scholars suggest that when the nation’s founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence that people are entitled to the “pursuit of happiness,” they shifted from a Christian focus on reaching heaven to a secular emphasis on attaining earthly success through ambition and autonomy.) Around the time of America’s founding, Immanuel Kant promoted the idea that a person is “what he makes of himself,” as he and his fellow Enlightenment philosophers ushered in a growing secularism. (Shortform note: The myth of the self-made man is central to American culture. ![]() Instead, he says success depends just as much on factors that lie beyond the individual and the individual’s control, including where and when they were born, what kind of family they were born into, how they were parented, and how much money their family has. However, in Outliers, Gladwell argues that the self-made man is a myth. This is the basis of the idea of the self-made man (or woman), who has earned their success and is in control of their destiny. We assume that they must be exceptionally gifted, intelligent, or passionate, and that these personal qualities are the keys to their success. When we learn about someone who’s extremely successful-an outlier-we often want to know what that person is like. 1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Outliers ![]()
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![]() Ginny is a powerful narrator in the sense that her emotions are so raw, her revelations (both to us and to herself) so succinct and powerful - I ached for her loss while I felt embarrassed for her weakness, perhaps because I saw in myself the same tendency to overlook things just to keep the peace.Īs a painful family drama, this book is beautifully written: a harsh picture of a family falling to pieces in grand King Lear style. As a vital part of everyone’s life - especially for Ginny, her sister Rose and their husbands - the farm is a blessing and a millstone and is both the impetus and the excuse for so many decisions. But it is Larry especially whose choices and influence served to dig the well of hurt that not one of them were able to avoid drinking from. The farm itself as a character is palpable. Our narrator, the eldest daughter Ginny, tells us what follows, a downward spiral of failed expectations, misunderstandings, jealousy and flat-out insanity. While life isn’t perfect, it is routine and familiar - until the day that Larry decides to give his farm to his children as an inheritance. ![]() In Iowa there is a family farm owned by a man named Larry Cook, who has three grown daughters. ![]() ![]() ![]() When Martin's sister discovers Joan's charade, they strike a bargain: Joan can remain within the safe walls of Birch Hall, as long as she doesn't allow Martin to fall in love with her-for their flirtation would surely ruin them both. And Martin is determined to earn that trust. ![]() But her flighty persona seems to hide something far more intriguing-a secret self she trusts with no one. ![]() Lord Fenbrook has no intention of marrying, and certainly doesn't consider his notoriously scatterbrained cousin a prospect. But luck must be on her side-just when it seems all is doomed, she runs straight into the arms of Martin Hargrove, Earl of Fenbrook, who mistakes her for his distant cousin, Daphne. A thief and a fugitive from the mental hospital where she was falsely committed, she's now on the run from her former partners in crime. A romantic debut starring a reluctant earl and the beautiful thief who has put them both in danger-and stolen his heart. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() “As lush and languid as its Sri Lanka setting.What captures readers is the way the story rolls in waves, mimicking how Amrith looks at himself, then looks away. Silver Winner, Young Adult Category of ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award.Finalist, Governor General’s Literary Award.Canadian Library Association Book of the Year.Othello,with its powerful theme of disastrous jealousy, is the backdrop to the drama in which Amrith finds himself immersed. He finds himself falling in love with the Canadian boy. Then, like an unexpected monsoon, his cousin arrives from Canada and Amrith’s ordered life is storm-tossed. Amrith’s holiday plans seem unpromising: he wants to appear in his school’s production of Othello and he is learning to type at Uncle Lucky’s tropical fish business. ![]() He tries not to think of his life “before,” when his doting mother was still alive. Fourteen-year-old Amrith is caught up in the life of the cheerful, well-to-do household in which he is being raised by his vibrant Auntie Bundle and kindly Uncle Lucky. The setting is Sri Lanka, 1980, and it is the season of monsoons. ![]() ![]() ![]() However, her social and political influence on Surrealism extends far beyond the novel, and beyond her influence as Breton's "notorious muse". She is remembered as the "first impossible mad love dreamed of by André Breton". Until recently, the legacy of Lise Deharme has been told in the margins of books on Surrealism and Surrealism’s father, André Breton. Using the pen name Lisa Hirtz, she published her first book: Il était une petite pie (with 8 pochoirs by Joan Miró) in 1928. In 1927 she married Paul Deharme, the radio pioneer who worked with surrealist Robert Desnos. ![]() As a result of an incident that occurred during her visit, which is recorded in André Breton's Nadja, she would become known as the "dame au gant," or the Lady of the Glove. In January 1925, she visited the Paris Bureau of Surrealist Research. ![]() Lise Deharme (née Anne-Marie Hirtz – 19 January 1980) was a French writer associated with the Surrealist movement.ĭeharme was born in Paris in 1898. ![]() ![]() ![]() Read moreĪnother smoking hot story from Lorelei James. This is my favorite of the series so far. I also enjoyed the dynamics of their families and the issues that arose there. I think James did a great job dealing with all the ups and downs of their relationship in a realistic manner and I was really rooting for them. He wanted to keep things on a purely physical level, but AJ was getting under his skin and he didn't know how to handle it. He didn't want to admit to any feelings for AJ, in case she did the same thing. Cord had relationship issues since his first wife left him. She knew what she wanted and wasn't going to have it any other way. ![]() She had a good head on her shoulders and I truly admired her for not wanting to settle. ![]() She had to grow up fast and she wasn't a typical 22 year old. However, my concerns were laid to rest with AJ's maturity. I have to admit that I had a problem with their ages at first AJ being 22 and Cord being 35. ![]() His reaction when she propositions him is great. AJ, now 22, has decided that she's waited long enough for Cord to notice her and takes matters into her own hands. Cord has always seen AJ as his kid sister's best friend. AJ has been in love with Cord since she was 5 years old. Even though the sex was hot, it was the characters that drew me in. ![]() ![]() ![]() The story’s unyielding harshness is somewhat mitigated by its strong undercurrent of friendship and loyalty an author’s note gives further background on this important piece of history. ![]() Transferred from one taxing assignment to another, the children form deep bonds, supporting and caring for each other, but Lida’s desperate anxiety about Larissa is a constant heavy backdrop to her bleak existence, and to the novel. Orphaned before the book opens, Lida and her five-year-old sister, Larissa, are separated in the early pages after that, Lida and her fellow child laborers endure relentless days of cruelty-cold, hunger, filth, abuse, and grueling work-punctuated by deaths. In Stolen Child, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch introduced readers to Larissa, a victim of Hitlers largely unknown Lebensborn program. ![]() While most were older teenagers or in their 20s, some were as young as 12-or younger, like 10-year-old narrator Lida, who pretends to be 13 to avoid an even-worse fate. Originally published in Canada in 2012, this grim novel from Skrypuch ( Last Airlift) offers an inside look at a little-known aspect of WWII: the Nazis’ capture of millions of non-Jewish youths, many of them Ukrainian, who were forced to become slave laborers, known as Ostarbeiters. ![]() ![]() ![]() We're given more than enough flashbacks of the most insignificant scenes we're already aware of that offer nothing to the story but words on a page. Throughout this book were given repetitious words/descriptions of things without any real detail of their meaning or purpose within the story. Chloe, I understood that she was a very fearful and timid girl but do you understand how annoying it is to READ stuttering dialogue for an entire story? It s-s-sucks. We barely learned anything about him because there was no actual development of his character! There wasn't anything intriguing or even attractive about his character. ![]() In reality, he seemed like a boy (yes boy, not man), a boy with an infatuation with a troubled girl. Lucca was built up to be this dangerous, sexy, possessive, enigmatic man. ![]() Everybody is entitled to their opinion but I don't, for one second, believe all these 5, 4, & 3 star reviews, but instead think people were just so caught up in the hope and anticipation of this book they mistook it for being worthy of praise. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised after the disastrous waste of time that was Chloe, but I had hope. Writing is an art and I respect anyone with the courage to expose their art to the world, however The disappointment is real. ![]() ![]() ![]() In this scary world, there are still scythes on the fringes, working to evade or undermine this new order, as well as a group hand-picked by the Thunderhead to create a mysterious settlement in an unknown tropical location. The reasonable and responsible old-guard scythes have mostly all been eliminated, and the most corrupt and power-hungry scythe of all has taken over, with the goal of nothing less than world domination. In The Toll, the world is, basically, going to hell in a handbasket. ![]() And it works, for the most part… except that it’s still true that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and there are those among the scythedom who revel in their own power and the thrill of the kill, rather than seeing themselves as servants of the greater good. To preserve the fine balance of resources and needs, the only authority left in the world is the scythedom - people given the authority and responsibility to “glean” a certain percentage of the world’s population in order to make sure that the perfect world can continue to support everyone who’s left. ![]() In these books, author Neal Shusterman presents a post-mortal world, where an all-knowing AI has become sentient and has solved all of the world’s problems, from starvation to disease to crime to poverty. The Toll wraps up the futuristic story begun in 2016’s Scythe and continued in 2018’s Thunderhead. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() In its fourth weekend, Disney and Marvel’s ” Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. ![]() The 10th installment in the “Fast and Furious” franchise starring Vin Diesel has lagged behind more recent releases in the series, bringing in $23 million domestically for a two-week total of $108 million for Universal Pictures. It ranks as the fifth biggest Memorial Day weekend opening ever. “The Little Mermaid” made moviegoers want to be under the sea on Memorial Day weekend.ĭisney’s live-action remake of its 1989 animated classic easily outswam the competition, bringing in $95.5 million on 4,320 screens in North America, according to studio estimates Sunday.Īnd Disney estimates the film starring Halle Bailey as the titular mermaid Ariel and Melissa McCarthy as her sea witch nemesis Ursula will reach $117.5 million by the time the holiday is over. ![]() |