![]() ![]() ![]() Then they hide behind, “Well, it’s fiction!” (“Well, how do we know she was a Ptolemy?”) This can reach ridiculous lengths and come to ridiculous conclusions. I ran into a lot of that with Cleopatra, where people said that as long as there was one iota of ‘doubt’ (usually meaning their own doubt, not experts’ doubts) then the gate was wide open to claiming just about anything. Since my goal is to resurrect the person (as much as humanly possible, so they would be pleased and say, “hey, that’s just the way it was!”) that means I am a stickler for accuracy and don’t have much truck with the idea that ‘history is what you make it’-‘well, who can say what really happened’ etc. But do you think that there is a point at which historical fiction can go too far? If so, how would you describe the boundaries of what is acceptable and not? Or don’t you think there can be a hard and fast rule? And if not, do you think “anything goes”? What historical standards do you hold yourself to? ![]() We all know that any work of imagination has to go beyond the recorded facts. ![]()
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![]() Rather, Kiper shows the healthy brain is riddled with cognitive biases that impede the work of caring for a person with an impaired mind. One caregiver says, referring to a famous case study by neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, it’s “like being an anthropologist on Mars.”īut a caregiver’s slip-up isn’t necessarily the result of character flaws or a lapse in compassion. ![]() They traverse warped realities that operate under different rules of time and memory. “It’s not cruelty but desperation that drives us to confront them with the truth.”Ĭaregivers aren’t mere observers to cognitive decline but the “invisible victims” of dementia disorders, Kiper writes. “We want to reestablish a shared reality,” Kiper writes. ![]() Often, the spouses, children, and loved ones of people living with dementia succumb to arguing or pleading with their patients, despite reason. ![]() This is the focus of Kiper’s “ Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain” - not the mind of the patient, but the caregiver. ![]() BOOK REVIEW - “Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain,” by Dasha Kiper (Random House, 272 pages). ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Will Storr’s superbly chosen examples range from Harry Potter to Jane Austen to Alice Walker, Greek drama to Russian novels to Native American folk tales, King Lear to Breaking Bad to children’s stories. So, how do master storytellers compel us? In The Science of Storytelling, award-winning writer and acclaimed teacher of creative writing Will Storr applies dazzling psychological research and cutting-edge neuroscience to our myths and archetypes to show how we can write better stories, revealing, among other things, how storytellers-and also our brains-create worlds by being attuned to moments of unexpected change. Storytelling is an essential part of what makes us human. ![]() They drive us to act out our dreams and ambitions and mold our beliefs. The compelling, groundbreaking guide to creative writing that reveals how the brain responds to storytelling, based on the wildly popular creative writing classStories shape who we are. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() As the twinkling lights of nightclub marquees yield to the rising flames of a fascist revolution, these three will struggle to survive using whatever means - and people - necessary. Shielding Aristide from the expected fallout isn't easy, though, for he refuses to let anything – not the crooked city police or the mounting rage from radical conservatives – dictate his life.Įnter streetwise Cordelia Lehane, a top dancer at the Bumble Bee Cabaret and Aristide's runner, who could be the key to Cyril's plans-if she can be trusted. They suit each other: Aristide turns a blind eye to Cyril's clandestine affairs, and Cyril keeps his lover's moonlighting job as a smuggler under wraps.Ĭyril participates on a mission that leads to disastrous results, leaving smoke from various political fires smoldering throughout the city. Trust no one with anything – especially in Amberlough City.Ĭovert agent Cyril DePaul thinks he's good at keeping secrets, especially from Aristide Makricosta. ![]() " delivers a stellar performance, imbuing each character, even the minor ones, with a fully realized personality.Kowal's background in theater allows her to maximize the emotional impact of each pivotal event." - AudioFile Magazine, Earphones Award Winnerįrom author Lara Elena Donnelly, comes a debut spy thriller, Amberlough, where a gay double-agent schemes to protect his smuggler lover during the rise of a fascist government coup ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Colum McCann confronts this theory of language in his novel TransAtlantic. When people in power use language in a strategic way in order to control the way the world is perceived, it is easy to become unknowingly indoctrinated. By constructing language in a strategic way, one can influence your linguistic determination, directly affecting your perception of what you think and see around you. ![]() The formation of thought is formed by the language in which the thought is expressed, not by an individual's independent processes. Thiong'o suggests that language has a much stronger effect on an individual than one might expect. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, a Kenyan novelist and post-colonial theorist, argues that "he choice of language and the use of language is central to a people's definition of themselves in relation to the entire universe" in his book Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (4). ![]() ![]() At first, Sando is enigmatic and aloof but later takes the boys under his wing. Bruce and Loonie are drawn to the sea, and whilst there they meet Sando, an “aging” surfer (he’s in his mid-thirties!). Though when it does, it is perhaps not what we imagined at the start of Bruce’s story. We know from the outset that SOMETHING BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN. Suicide or something else? Bruce says something else, and begins to recount the story of his experiences, opening with how he met his crazy, daredevil friend, Loonie. The novel opens with Bruce as an experienced hard-bitten paramedic, arriving at the scene of young teen found hanged. It tells the story of Bruce Pike, a teenager in small-town Australia during the late 60s. Breath is a slender novel, coming in at under 300 pages with largeish print and plenty of page breaks. I guess at its heart, it’s a coming of age story. ![]() ![]() ![]() I hesitate, therefore, to “recommend” the book, but Breath contains some lyrical writing that gently examines its difficult themes. In the latter stages, it also has strong sexual themes and probes into the devastating effects of abuse. ![]() It’s a meditation on teenage rebellion, and is fully capable of giving GeekDad readers sleepless nights. Breath by Tim Winton is not for parents who are faint of heart. Still not much non-fiction here at Word Wednesday towers, so, like last week, I thought I’d write about the fiction I’ve been reading. ![]() ![]() ![]() Do you think that the story would have ended differently if the animals had got into the boat in a different order?Įxploring the text in context of our community, school and ‘me’ Exploring the theme of the text.Why do you think the lightest animal sank the boat?. ![]() After readingĪfter reading Who Sank the Boat? for enjoyment, have a class discussion about their initial reaction to the story and their predications as to who sank the boat. Stop each time Pamela Allen asks “Do you know who sank the boat?” and encourage students to revise their predictions after each animal hops in the boat. Discuss who is the heaviest and who is the lightest. Ask students to revise their predictions now that they can see all of the animals. The book introduces new characters other than the cow and the donkey near the beginning of the book. Which would be more likely to sink the boat? Why?. ![]() What do you know about the size and weight of a cow and a donkey?. ![]()
![]() ![]() It can't be said that the director was overawed by his source material or that - even with the 79-year-old author functioning onscreen as a kind of narrator and presiding spirit - he has failed to make it his own. ![]() Unfortunately, the movie is just as difficult to get at but not nearly as alluring. In print, we're puzzled but fascinated by Bowles's inscrutability, by his subterranean style of inference and suggestion it's seductive, this harem dance. Neither can the Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci in his frustrating, monotonously obscure movie version. In telling his story, the author engages in a kind of literary dance of the seven veils he just can't seem to come across with it. In his 1949 novel "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles devotes about as much energy to not saying what he means to say as he does to saying it. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Oil palm plantations showed more negative effects followed by forestry plantations, whereas coffee and cacao agroforestry plantations had no significant effects. Plantations presented negative effects on both bird species richness and abundance. We examined those effects in function of plantation type, latitudinal zone (temperate or tropical), geographical context (mainland or island), zoogeographic zone, and biodiversity hotspots. We conducted a meta-analysis based on 144 case studies to assess the effects of four types of plantations (forestry, oil palm, coffee, and cacao) on bird species richness and abundance. Despite many studies that have compared bird diversity between natural and productive systems, a global synthesis is still missing and important for understanding how biodiversity is being altered. ![]() The increasing expansion of productive lands around the world during the last decades constitutes a strong driver of biodiversity loss, as they are usually established near to high diversity areas. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Vast is set in the far future, after multiple waves of colonization have moved out from Earth (which has since itself been destroyed). On top of all this, this scale and big ideas are woven alongside excellent character formation and a plot that builds tension so effectively that long years of pursuit between vessels with slow relative velocities still feels sharp and urgent. Vast provides all this, with some truly beautiful descriptions of stellar evolution thrown in for good measure. I’ll get right to it: Linda Nagata’s Vast is everything you want epic sci-fi to be: a huge scope in time and space, a compelling look at the horizons of human and technological evolution, and a celebration of the wonder of the universe itself. ![]() Gollancz edition (1990) cover by Bob Eggleton ![]() |