My Oxford Year is an incongruous story of a second chance. The lead character, Ella Durran is described as an accomplished political consultant with unwarranted poetry spark inside her. Coming to Oxford for English Literature program paid by the Rhodes she’s won herself, she meets and falls in love with the cute, mysterious poet with […]
Synopsis There is an octopus lying with its tentacles spreading languidly on Lily’s head. Its eyes are defiant, they’re staring at me. When did it come? How did I not see it before now? Jenny, my therapist asks me what happens with my 12 year old dachshund. I tell her, there is an octopus on […]
Synopsis With a ring on her finger, and wine in her hand, Dannie is not even one ounce high on her engagement night. If anything, she is sleepy. She consciously notices that there’s really nothing unexpected tonight. One thing about Dannie is that she is the farthest from a romantic, she doesn’t savor things like […]
Synopsis A great hockey player can’t be made from natural talent only. Highly consistent training, that is the real key. Those two make the secret combination to produce a star. A star that the whole town raises its head at with worshiping eyes. Beartown is a hockey town. And in here, Kevin Erhdal is almost […]
The Honey-Don’t List is a helplessly romantic story with a super adorable male-protagonist. Oh my God, don’t get me wrong, I did love Carey, but James? Ugh, I loved loved loved him. I was delighted that he’s always straightforward about his feelings and well, it’s just that, in general, he’s such a lovable guy. And btw, my fondness towards the male character is a quite rare case in CLo’s books.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
That morning, Claude shows up wearing something unmistakably a girl dress. He says that he wants to go to school in it. He seems sure of his wish, but Rosie is baffled. This is not the kind of things that you decide during rush hours like this. It’s something that you take time to think about. So Rosie tries the easy way first, she tells Claude to change. He refuses. Rosie tries to convince him that he should change for school, and he still can wear the dress at home. No, it’s not what he wants. He wants to wear the dress to school. Again, Rosie tries to coax him. But he’s having none of it. He throws tantrums, which is very unlike his usual self. Pause. Rosie is perplexed. It’s not so much that she won’t accept a daughter who used to be her son, but how would other people react?
The only cabin around here is the house with full glass windows bounding it. A hen night, in this kind of house? A full-on aquarium in the middle of nowhere? This starts to feel even more like a mistake, and Nora feels uneasy. Behind the house is dark woods that goes deep with unseeable end. Against it, the house looks eeriely like a stage to Nora. It’s as if, there are a lot of eyes in the woods staring at them going about their lives on the see-through platform.
Alias Grace is a work of fiction wreathed around real events. The center figure of the story, Grace Marks, was an infamous 16 year old Canadian maid who was convicted for murdering both her master, Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery. Grace Marks was on her run with her fellow-servant, James McDermott to the United States when they were arrested not long after the murders. Only the Kinnear case was tried, and both Grace and James were found guilty, and were sentenced to hang. However, only James’ execution went through. To her lawyer’s credit, Grace slipped from the lynch, was instead to continue her life sentence in prison.
In 1975, Pol Pot and his Communist organization, Angkar, took over Cambodia. Loung Ung, the writer of this harrowing record, is a daughter of a servant of the regiment before Angkar. First They Killed My Father is her account of the unimaginable tragedy and persecution that her family had to endure from the beginning till the point where they get to exit from it. During the period of 1975 to 1980, child Loung already lost family members, was forced to survive independently, struggled to last from starvation, malnourishment, and the killings.
Eventually, the book closes up with that even though grass on the other side often looks greener, family and dignity are two things that the Asians value greatly. Both are some sort of supremacy in our civilization. And also, those are the reasons why, as enticing as it is, it’s never easy to jump to another boat.