Title: Harmony, USAAuthor: Lewis Bryan Publisher: BookLogixPublication date: April 22, 2015Stars: 4
Summary: Harmony, USA, the quintessential, idyllic small town, is full of beauty and simplicity. But behind the scenes of this neatly kept town lies a killer, and once you begin to peel back the layers, Harmony has secrets upon secrets.
Everything you convinced yourself is good and pure about small-town life is challenged. One by one, the secrets of Harmony are revealed. You must decide what is right, as you believed it, and what is justice.
Will those who have done evil ever pull themselves away from the darkness, or will their past consume them forever?
Harmony lays in the balance.
Review: Harmony, USA by Lewis Bryan was an interesting book to say the least. You would not expect what happens in this little town. Bryan does a great job with the theory of small towns have their secrets. Harmony sure had plenty. Each page kept me intrigued to find out what happened. I myself am not a big fan of mysteries, I feel like you can pick out the killer in the first few pages. But Bryan’s mystery was one that was hard to break. He wrote it in a way that kept you interested yet you couldn’t name the killer. It took me till almost the end of the book to figure it out and I was still shocked at who it was. Although I did feel like focus of the book was not around the killer so much has around sexual assault. There was something that made me feel uncomfortable at times when every character had been sexually assaulted at some point or another. Regardless of that fact the book was extremely well wrote and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a fast yet good read.
-Victoria
Monday, 19 May is Victoria Day in Canada, which celebrates the 195th birthday of Queen Victoria on 24 May 1819. In June 1837, at the age of 18, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as the Empire was called then.
Queen Victoria would reign for more than 63 years, longer than any other British Monarch to date. The Victorian Era, as it came to be known, was a time of expansion of the British Empire, as well as modernization and innovation following the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century.
To celebrate Victoria Day, we’ve chosen a few of her most famous quotations to illustrate her life and legacy.
On being shown a chart of the line of succession, 11 March 1830
Theodore Martin The Prince Consort (1875) vol. 1, ch. 2
On the Boer War during ‘Black Week’, December 1899
Lady Gwendolen Cecil Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1931) vol. 3, ch. 6
“The Queen is most anxious to enlist every one who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.”
–Queen Victoria, letter to Theodore Martin, 29 May 1870. From Oxford Essential Quotations.
“What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but I own I can not enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic.”
–Queen Victoria, letter to the Princess Royal, 15 June 1858. From Oxford Essential Quotations.
The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (5th ed), edited by Susan Ratcliffe, was published in October 2012. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (7th ed), edited by Elizabeth Knowles, was published in 2009 to celebrate its 70th year.
Oxford Reference is the home of reference publishing at Oxford. With over 16,000 photographs, maps, tables, diagrams and a quick and speedy search, Oxford Reference saves you time while enhancing and complementing your work.
Images: 1. Queen Victoria in her Coronation Robes by George Hayter. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 2. Portrait of Queen Victoria, 1843 by Sir Francis Grant. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 3. Wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert engraved by S Reynolds after F Lock. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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Devastation & Loss
What a week it has been in Victoria. The bush fires have been devastating. Never have we seen fires like these. Lives lost, homes destroyed and business/livelihood lost. It is a sad time for so many in Victoria. I have friends still waiting and praying their homes are safe and the feeling of helplessness is enormous. I was reflecting on the Marysville fires yesterday with concern for the restoration in that area. Marysville was a pretty little town in Victoria in a fairly remote area. It relied on the tourist trade and now that the businesses have been burnt to the ground, many of the residents are left without means of income. Even if they rebuild through insurance claims the time out will be financially challenging. It is like a war zone there.
Ways to help:
Power in Prayer:
I believe there is great power and hope in prayer and I ask all who read this to please pray for the families of lost ones and that the weather brings more rain and less wind to help the situation.
Buy Groceries:
This Friday, Coles supermarkets are donating all profits to the Fire Relief and so I encourage everyone to shop on Friday 13th February and stock up your pantries to help with the financial relief. Good on you Coles!
Bid for a Painting on Ebay:
In addition to my personal contribution I would like to donate some art for the fund and will be posting some paintings for sale on here. All proceeds will be donated to this cause also. Buyers can bid on Ebay. Please check back over the next couple day to see what I post for sale on Ebay. Remember any bid will be a contribution toward helping these people.
We face a few challenges of late with the economy slowing up and floods and fires in Australia, but it is amazing how much a nation has cope with when we band together and support one another. I encourage everyone to think about how they can contribute and to act on it.
For those suffering the most I pray you reach out to the most powerful resource you can ever have. Have hope in God Almighty and pray even if you haven’t prayed before. Jesus will hear your prayers. Faith of a mustard seed can be heard from a God who loves everyone of us no matter where we are or who we are. God Bless you all!
Though she ultimately lost out to Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic Party nomination for President of the USA, there was much to be excited about, I think, in the fact that Hillary Clinton was running for the top job. After all, how rare for a woman to climb the political ladder to such heady heights. But she wasn’t the first. Here, Philip Carter, Publication Editor for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, introduces an excerpt from the biography of Victoria Clafin Woodhull. She was the first woman to run for the US presidency, in 1872, and was, one might say, the original presidential maverick. I can tell you, it really does make for fascinating reading. Over to Philip…
For 50 years, until her death in 1927, Woodhull lived in England where—as in the USA—she attracted considerable attention for her ambition and unorthodox lifestyle. The Oxford DNB biography, written by the dictionary’s editor Lawrence Goldman, brings together the two halves of Woodhull’s remarkable transatlantic life. The following is an extract from her biography which can be read in full either on the ODNB website, or can be downloaded as a podcast.
The sisters faced criticism and opprobrium in England as in America. Henry James’s novella The Siege of London (1882) was read by many as a fictionalized account of Victoria Woodhull’s campaign to woo and win her third husband. Angered by constant public references to her past, in February 1894 Victoria Woodhull Martin and her husband brought an action for libel against the trustees and the librarian of the British Museum for making available to readers two pamphlets in the library on the Beecher–Tilton affair that were admitted to be libels against her….
… Featured in Country Life (14 June 1902), she engaged in local educational and rural philanthropy, but ceased any involvement in women’s suffrage or purity campaigns. A particular enthusiasm was for a scheme to develop a women’s agricultural community at Bredon’s Norton, renting out small plots of land to allow women to learn the rudiments of farming. She was one of the earliest motor car owners in Britain, driving a Mercedes Simplex and undertaking motoring tours in Britain and France, and was a founder member of the Ladies Automobile Club (1904). Having long urged that the fourth of July should be celebrated as Interdependence Day, she became a leading promoter of Anglo-American links, active in plans to mark the centenary (December 1914) of the treaty of Ghent….
….[at her daughter’s] instigation, a memorial plaque to her mother was unveiled in Tewkesbury Abbey in July 1943, paying tribute to her as ‘An American citizen long resident in this neighbourhood who devoted herself unsparingly to all that could promote the great cause of Anglo-American friendship’. Victoria Woodhull died an honoured member of her adopted country and community in a life of two quite distinct halves. That she was able to recreate herself so successfully in England after such notoriety and ignominy in America was tribute to her remarkable adaptability and force of personality.
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The libraries in Victoria BC, the subject of an ongoing (166 days as of today) strike, are being closed and employees are being locked out. Here is the statement from the library
Due to the ongoing strike by CUPE 410, the Greater Victoria Public Library today announced that it will serve 72-hour lock-out notice on the union. It is anticipated that the 72-hour lock-out notice will take effect on Sunday, February 17 2008 at 5:01pm.
Here is the web site statement of the union.
In the 165 days since we started taking strike actions, the employer’s bargaining agent has made no attempt to restart negotiations. Since early in 2007, they have simply refused to discuss the major outstanding issues. Library workers experience this as a contempt for their needs, and for their contributions to the quality of life in the Capital area.
Here is a short article from the Vancouver Sun on the subject and a longer one from the Globe & Mail. Here is an column from the Victoria Times Columnist with some details about the actual money they’re talking about wagewise. One of the interesting parts of the ongoing saga is that some library workers, as part of their protests regarding promised but not delivered pay equity with other municipal workers, were waiving overdue fines for all patrons, costing the library between $40,000 and $50,000 per month. This likely endeared them to some of their patrons but was a interesting form of civil disobedience on the job. A few blogs posts on the subject here, and here. [updated because I had the title/location wrong and needed to republish]
Not long ago I had a chance to see Caroline B. Cooney give a speech to the New York Public librarians (children & YA) on a variety of interesting topics. At one point she cited her book Code Orange and explained where she got the inspiration for the tale. In 2003 there was an incident in Sante Fe where a librarian found a most peculiar bookmark:
Librarian Susanne Caro was leafing through an 1888 book on Civil War medicine when she spied a small, yellowed envelope tucked between the pages. Freeing it, she read the inscription "scabs from vaccination of W.B. Yarrington's children" in the corner, with the signature "Dr. W.D. Kelly," the book's author.
After some research, the 23-year-old Santa Fe, N.M., woman decided not to open the envelope. "The only thing I could find connected with it," she said, "was smallpox."
Cooney thought about the incident. What if it was a boy who found the scabs? A bored teenage boy? A bored teenage boy who played with them, crushed them up, and maybe even tasted them? Good plot material, no?
Well there was a fun blog piece on
Things Found in Books. I was unaware that
bacon was a legendary bookmarkish find. You learn something new every day.
Thanks to
Dan for the link.
Title: Harmony, USA
Hi! Thanks for the link and for spreading the word. :)
Hell hath no fury like a librarian scorned.
Thanks for the link - always good to get a bit more exposure!
Day 3 of our lockout, I’m already bored of stomping up and down in the cold for four hours at a time…
[…] But while that garnered some public support, it raised the ire of the library system’s governing board. It issued the lockout notice midweek, closing down the nine libraries in the Capital Region yesterday at 5:01 p.m.”We have a responsibility to protect the assets of the library,” said Chris Graham, chair of the Greater Victoria Public Library Board, in a news release. “The strike activities by the union are having a severe fiscal impact and the library is losing important streams of revenue, while employees are continuing to be paid.” Mr. Graham said the loss of more than $40,000 in uncollected fines has hurt the library system.” via Jessamyn West @ http://www.librarian.net/stax/2251/library-lockout-in-victoria/ […]