![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() "We don’t know whether this network even exists, nor how extensive it is, or whether this is just his preoccupation with online gaming,” Goodwin said. Despite his claims of belonging to a network, experts say his profile is that of a loner increasingly living life in the virtual world. Whether Breivik is insane, as his lawyer has suggested, is being debated. More from GlobalPost: Who is the Norway shooter? The network Breivik claims to belong to is a modern day Knights Templar, the order of Christian crusaders who in modern times are popular with conspiracy theorists and feature in the novels of Dan Brown, the author of "The Da Vinci Code." He claims to have met in secret with a like-minded group to reconstitute a modern Knights Templar. He had a extensive Facebook network and had built up substantial online links." “Online, he was certainly active in terms of far-right blogs such as Brussels Journal and Gates of Vienna. “It’s clear from his manifesto that he was slowly withdrawing from wider civil society,” said Matthew Goodwin, an expert on right-wing extremism at Britain’s University of Nottingham. And the killer's online fantasy world is a scary place indeed. That has turned attention to his influences, specifically violent online video games and anti-Islam websites that encourage the notion of a clash of civilizations. BERLIN, Germany - Norwegian police said Tuesday they believe Anders Behring Breivik acted alone when he killed 76 people last week. ![]()
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![]() Its author, Imogen Binnie, never intended to write a novel that would cause more than that. Nevada, one of the first releases from the now-defunct trans-run and trans-lit-focused Topside Press, barely caused a blip on the broader literary world’s radar when it was released in 2013. ![]() “We’ll talk, and she’ll cry, and I’ll set her up a Livejournal so she can sort through all her feelings and then I’ll leave and totally learn something about myself, too.” Maria is not wrong to assume this about James, exactly - the duck is quacking and walking - but you can’t just tell someone she’s trans before she comes to that conclusion herself, or she’ll steal your drugs and ditch you in a casino. “I’m gonna go talk to that girl and tell her that she’s a girl,” Maria decides shortly after they cross paths. He’s intrigued by Maria’s rock-star vibe she becomes convinced that he’s actually a trans woman in desperate need of saving from his dissociative male façade. ![]() After her girlfriend dumps her and she loses her job and apartment, Maria does what any of us would do: She steals her ex’s car, snags a bunch of heroin, and road-trips out West - where she meets a small-town Nevada Walmart clerk named James H. It follows Maria Griffiths, a conflict-averse, often inebriated trans woman who sucks at communicating in every aspect of her life except when she’s blogging. ![]() Nevada opens in New York sometime immediately post–Great Recession. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() How closely are the American people paying attention to the actual processes threatening our institutions while distracted by the bread and circuses? How can we be so sure Trump’s transgressions will amount to a momentary blip along the arc of our future? Checks and balances do not have an agency of their own. Taken together, his bet is a direct challenge to Dewey. ![]() When he abets the gutting of institutions such as the Environmental Protection Agency, he tests our reliance on research and facts. When he dismisses the media, he tests our commitment to truth. When he refuses to disclose his taxes, he tests our desire for transparency. Underneath the policies of the Trump administration is a test of the moral culture of Americans-to see what they will stand for. Those who believe that the strength of our institutions will win the day miss the slow but steady effort to undermine the social fabric that makes them possible-by habituating us to cruelty, by treating facts as fiction, and by suspending the idea that we each, regardless of our national affiliation, are worthy of respect. Dewey’s concern is as urgent today as it was in 1939. ![]() ![]() ![]() ★ "It's romantic without being gooey and tear-jerking without being campy-what more could a reader want?"- BCCB, starred review ★ "This is distinguished by the dreamy California setting and poetic images that will draw readers into Lennie's world."- Publishers Weekly, starred review "Nearly everyone who's staggering through life in the wake of a loved one's death will recognize themselves in this brilliant, piercing story."- The Denver Post "In this amazing tale of love and loss, Nelson introduces a cast of characters who make the reader laugh and cry."-NPR's The Roundtable ![]() a gripping love triangle."- Shelf Awareness "The author brilliantly navigates Lennie's course between despair and hope, sorrow and humor. "Nelson's first novel is tender, romantic, and loaded with passion."- The Horn Book ![]() ![]() ![]() “With the smile on his lips, as if he were doing the most natural thing in the world, the stupid will appear on the spur of the moment to spoil your plans, destroy your peace, complicate your life and work, make you lose money, time, good humor, productivity, and all this without malice, without remorse and without reason. They’re an unorganized group, without a leader or norm, but in spite of that, they act in perfect harmony, as guided by an invisible hand. ![]() “The stupid ones are more fearsome than Mafia, the military-industrial complex or the Communist International. The 5 basic laws of human stupidity, according to Cipolla ![]() ![]() ![]() Thirty years after these four lovers' fates collide, the Greek goddess Aphrodite tells their stories to her husband, Hephaestus, and her lover, Ares, in a luxe Manhattan hotel room at the height of World War II. But that's before he meets Colette Fournier, a Belgian chanteuse who's already survived unspeakable tragedy at the hands of the Germans. ![]() A gifted musician who's played Carnegie Hall, he's a member of the 15th New York Infantry, an all-African-American regiment being sent to Europe to help end the Great War. When they fall in love, it's immediate and deep-and cut short when James is shipped off to the killing fields.Īubrey Edwards is also headed toward the trenches. She's a shy and talented pianist he's a newly minted soldier with dreams of becoming an architect. ![]() It's 1917, and World War I is at its zenith when Hazel and James first catch sight of each other at a London party. ![]() ![]() Kipling in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was among the United Kingdom's most popular writers. ![]() His children's books are classics one critic noted "a versatile and luminous narrative gift". He is seen as an innovator in the art of the short story. His poems include " Mandalay" (1890), " Gunga Din" (1890), " The Gods of the Copybook Headings" (1919), " The White Man's Burden" (1899), and " If-" (1910). ![]() Kipling's works of fiction include the Jungle Book duology ( The Jungle Book, 1894 The Second Jungle Book, 1895), Kim (1901), the Just So Stories (1902) and many short stories, including " The Man Who Would Be King" (1888). He was born in British India, which inspired much of his work. ![]() Joseph Rudyard Kipling ( / ˈ r ʌ d j ər d/ RUD-yərd 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was an English novelist, short-story writer, poet, and journalist. ![]() ![]() Thúy's impressionistic approach means the book can feel rudderless, but the stories are poetic and powerful. The accounts of escape and arrival are exciting, but Ru is more about observation and atmosphere, and the doubts of an uprooted woman who wonders whether good fortune means enough bags to waterproof your refugee-camp squat, or enough money to buy a pair of shoes "whose price in my native land would be enough to feed a family of five for one whole year". ![]() Thuy reflects on the what her ideal American dream is by finding inspiration from the stories of those around her. Kim Thuy’s experiences are a perfect example on how the American dream is eye opening and a big struggle. Thúy's debut contains around 100 vignettes, some dealing with her journey, others delving into the strange customs of Canada, the taste of noodle soup and the fate of friends and neighbours. Throughout Kim Thúy’s Ru, the American Dream is very common. Born into a wealthy South Vietnamese family as the Tet offensive rages, she flees the Communist regime, endures a brutal boat journey and a Malaysian refugee camp, and emerges, cold and mute, in Quebec. ![]() ![]() ![]() "L ife is a struggle," runs a Vietnamese proverb, "in which sorrow leads to defeat." Thúy's fictionalised memoir adopts a similarly unsentimental attitude to a life of extremes. ![]() ![]() ![]() I could, instead, write something about the author, and how it is said that he killed himself with a silver bullet, fashioned from the handle of a sugar bowl, which is certainly a suitably macabre anecdote. In which case, what else should I focus on? Well, The Manuscript could be said to be a Gothic novel, with ghosts featuring heavily, and I did once, as a child, apparently claim to have seen one sitting on the end of my bed, but that was likely the overactive imagination of a troubled little boy. ![]() Even a self-obsessed blabbermouth has his limits. As much as I want to engage and entertain the reader, to build a relationship with the reader, I don’t much fancy going there. So as I came to write about Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa I was understandably perturbed when I realised that group sex is so central to the novel’s plot. I tend to introduce these reviews with a story or anecdote inspired by the text in question, something, in most cases, from my own past or present life. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets Gaëtan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can…completely. Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France…but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. ![]() In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says good-bye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. ![]() |