![]() ![]() Can love, especially the kind that touches hearts at Christmas, overcome her fears and his quest for greatness? With the help of a very special wedding dress, there just might be a Christmas miracle. But JoJo and Buck have opposing life goals, and there's no middle ground. If you HAVE read The Wedding Dress and The Wedding Chapel, however, you are in for an extra special treat. ![]() Seeing JoJo in The Wedding Shop reminds him there are things more important than his career. In this latest novel, Rachel Hauck continues her Wedding Collections series, as well as returning to Heart’s Bend, Tennessee, but The Wedding Shop can easily be read as a standalone. Busy with his career, Buck hasn't had time for family and friends, much less love. But when her high school crush returns to town, her buried feelings surface. Working with her cousin Haley in The Wedding Shop, JoJo has no aspirations of love. Buy products such as Royal Wedding: A Royal Christmas Wedding (Series 4). However, news of his mother's illness brought him home to Hearts Bend for the holiday season. Woven within the threads of the beautiful hundred-year-old gown is the truth about Charlotte's heritage, the power of faith, and the beauty of finding true love. Country music sensation Buck Mathews has charmed the world with his smile and his music. Each woman teaches Charlotte something about love in her own unique way. Now that she's home, she never wants to leave again. Her onetime love of adventure ended when her life in the big city came crashing down. ![]() ![]() For JoJo Castle there is no place like home. The Wedding Dress Christmas December comes to quaint Hearts Bend, Tennessee, with a blanket of white and the glitter of Christmas lights. ![]()
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![]() “Only it seems to me that once in your life before you die you ought to see a country where they don’t talk in English and don’t even want to.” Yes, there is, even though our time on earth is short. “There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.” ![]() The Stage Manager’s answer is no, saints and poets maybe, and I like to count myself among the ranks of the latter, since I have written poetry most of my life. “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it-every, every minute?” She was based on Edgar Lee Masters’ grandmother and, honest to goodness, I make a pilgrimage to her grave in Petersburg every five years or so.) These words were spoken by Lucinda Matlock in Spoon River Anthology. “It’s like one of those Middlewestern poets said, ‘You’ve got to love life to have life, and you’ve got to have life to love life.” Each playgoer, of course, will have a different list, but I want to discuss today the lines that strike a chord with me as I watch the play being performed. One big reason for this is the pointed significance of certain lines as we hear the characters say them. It is not a play that always resonates with 17-year olds, yet it is one that sticks in one’s memory as we grow older and become more aware of the meaning of the situations Wilder presents to us. Over the past quarter century, I have taught OUR TOWN to high school juniors, trying as best I can to make it relevant. ![]() QND students experiencing OUR TOWN this week. ![]() Lines From OUR TOWN That Hit Me Where I Live ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s “a collection of books relating to Down syndrome for children, parents and professionals for a variety of subjects such as behavior, sexuality, dating, education, memoirs, resources and children’s books.” We’ve posted the entire list here for your reference. ![]() ![]() Nelly Pujalt, mother to two year old Ariel, took several days and put together an entire document containing the name of every book she could find. A common question among parents in the Down syndrome community is, “What are some books including kids with Down syndrome?” Regardless of what online support group you’re in, there’s always a post naming off several books that promote inclusion and the disability community but those lists never quite capture the vast collection that actually exists. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Snyder's script sold for $500,000 after a major studio bidding war. His first spec screenplay sale was in 1989 for the script Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot - which ironically would later star Rocky actor and writer Stallone. Originally published in 2005, Snyder wrote the book in an attempt to explain and break down the various beats that he felt most successful screenplays should have. The late Blake Snyder wrote what became a pinnacle screenwriting book for any new screenwriter coming onto the scene - Save the Cat. In the context of screenwriting, those elements have been seemingly replaced by the notion that secret formulas can make up for that. In a world and industry always in search of quick solutions and easy formulas to follow for success, we often forget what really drives us to greatness - truth, heart, and instinct - three elements that can be found throughout the Rocky screenplay. Right? Not according to Rocky, and most other successful screenplays. And then your final "image" has to be on page 110. Your all is lost moment must always be on page 75. ![]() Your break into Act II is required to be on page 25. On page 12 you need to have your catalyst moment presented. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He notes the “tasteless, strained, diluted flavor of white people food.” “Microaggression” is a term anyone paying attention to race and gender issues in America has heard, but in this flinty debut novel, there’s nothing micro about them, as when a Machiavellian female colleague who may be sabotaging Wallace’s experiments tells him that “I have to prove myself because you and men like you are always counting me out" and then goes on a dizzying bender of benighted cultural appropriation. His friends are white so are his colleagues. Having just arrived from Alabama, Wallace has a lot of whiteness to adjust to. He’d also like some semblance of a relationship with Miller to work out, never having had a boyfriend before meanwhile, Miller isn’t certain he’s gay. Wallace is a graduate student in the Midwest, desperate for his genetic experiments on nematodes to be successful. A young gay black man comes of age at a moment when American culture feels bitter and closefisted. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() They also happen to be terrific books, the climate apocalypse need not be boring or more importantly need not be about the last dregs of humanity scrabbling around for food and resources. New York 2140 (Kim Stanley Robinson), Austral (Paul McAuley) and Clade (James Bradley) are three recent, off the top of my head examples that consider possible outcomes and solutions. What I’m finding interesting though is the way authors are taking these gloom and doom predictions and speculating how we might adapt as a species during and after the ecological shit hits the fan. ![]() That’s fair enough, unless you’re a denialist, or so optimistic you believe we can pull ourselves out of the mire through technology, you need to acknowledge that of all the threats that face us as a species, it’s the big one. There’s a 98.7% chance (stat not verified) that a science fiction story set on Earth in the near to medium-distant future will, in some way, involve the effects of climate change. ![]() ![]() ![]() Pan's stunning debut novel alternates between past and present, romance and despair, as one girl attempts to find herself through family history, art, friendship, and love. ![]() With lyrical prose and magical elements, Emily X.R. The only thing Leigh is certain about is that she must find out the truth. Overwhelmed by grief and the burden of fulfilling her mother's last wish, Leigh retreats into her art and into her memories, where colours collide and the rules of reality are broken. Leigh is far away from home and far away from Axel, her best friend, who she stupidly kissed on the night her mother died - leaving her with a swell of guilt that she wasn't home, and a heavy heart, thinking she may have destroyed the one good thing left in her life. Leigh doesn't know what it means, but when a red bird appears with a message, she finds herself travelling to Taiwan to meet her maternal grandparents for the first time. Pan (eProof) - Leigh Chen Sanders is sixteen when her mother dies by suicide, leaving only a scribbled note: 'I want you to remember'. The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily X. ![]() ![]() ![]() It’s kind of neat that this lizard can make itself look like other animals, but it isn’t using that power to accomplish anything. This lizard gets introduced even before Bink, the protagonist. Sooo, we start with three paragraphs about a lizard sitting on a rock. If its malice could strike him, he would be horribly dead. Yet as it shifted into the form of a basilisk it glared at him with such ferocity that Bink’s mirth abated. It was a chameleon, using its magic to mimic creatures of genuine threat. ![]() It had assumed the forms of obnoxious little monsters, but not their essence. Feeling threatened by the approach of human beings along the path, it metamorphosed into a stingray beetle, then into a stench-puffer, then into a fiery salamander.īink smiled. Start Your Book With Something That MattersĪ small lizard perched on a brown stone. Join me as I delve deep into the pit that is A Spell for Chameleon’s first chapter, and in so doing discover important lessons for writers everywhere. Xanth is a sprawling behemoth of 39 novels, with more still on the way. That’s right, it’s time to look at chapter one of A Spell for Chameleon, the first book of Piers Anthony’s Xanth series. ![]() It has been a difficult search, but I have found a nemesis of near equal awfulness, so that I may also be lauded a hero of the literary battleground. Stories are told in the halls of Mythcreants of the day Chris did battle with Eragon’s first chapter and emerged bloody * but victorious. ![]() ![]() It was an example of how much of my knowledge about the world has come from fiction. The Concubine’s Daughter was a good antidote for some recent heavier reading. I don’t have a Kindle or like, although I am open-minded about one being in my future. ![]() (I feared that she would have a checklist of the important factors that correlate to academic success, and would write us off from day one.)Īs you can deduce from my book reviews, I spend quite a bit of time reading real books, mostly from the library. When our youngeset kid started kindergarten the teacher came to visit each child before school started, and I felt the need to explain that we did not have a lot of books in the house, but we made extensive use of the public library. I do not romanticize books, turn them over in my hands to treasure, rever and keep forever. I’m not sure how I feel about this topic. Here is today’s offering (from Huffington Post), about the future of books. ![]() My sister is supplying fodder for my blog. ![]() ![]() ![]() My fears, however, were laid to rest once I read the first few pages of the book. As a result, I felt trepidation about the notion of reading this latest series, which was designed to showcase yet another Smith creation - this time what appears to be a new hero aptly named Gyre. Honestly, Onomatopoeia was lame as hell and really didn’t deserve to be brought back. That particular series, Batman: Cacophony, just seemed self-serving in that it focused on a villain Smith created during his run on Green Arrow named Onomatopoeia. I especially loved his run on Green Arrow from a few years ago.īut, I didn’t dig his last DC limited series, which also starred Batman (and was drawn by Widening Gyre artist Walter Flanagan). It’s not that I hate Smith’s work on the contrary, I usually enjoy what he does - in the movies and in comics. ![]() I didn’t really expect to like Batman: The Widening Gyre - the new limited series written by film director/occasional comic book scribe Kevin Smith. ![]() |