Legal knowledge doesn’t just come from textbooks and lectures. Last year, we asked Martin Partington, author of Introduction to the English Legal System, for his top ten film recommendations for law students and aspiring lawyers. This year he turns his attention to inspiring books that will get you thinking about our legal system, our society, and the role of lawyers – what would you add to his list?
The post Top ten essential books for aspiring lawyers appeared first on OUPblog.
Today is Easter Sunday for the majority of the world’s 2.4 billion Christians (most Orthodox Christians will wait until May 1st to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus). After the long penitential season of Lent, Christians are greeting each other with joyful exclamations of “He is risen,” and hearing in glad response, “He is risen indeed, hallelujah!”
The post The God-man resurrected: a philosophical problem for the Incarnation appeared first on OUPblog.
Easter, commemorating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, is historically the most important of all Christian festivals, even though in some Western countries it has largely lost the religious significance it retains amongst the Orthodox; nevertheless it merits discussion in a broader context not only because it is often a public as well as a religious holiday, or indeed because even Christians may be baffled by its apparently capricious incidence, but because the history of its calculation illustrates many complexities of time-reckoning.
The post The origins of Easter appeared first on OUPblog.
Imagine that your local pub had a weekly, book themed quiz, consisting of questions like this: ‘Which writer concerned himself with religious toleration, explored vegetarianism, was fascinated (and sometimes repelled by) sexuality, and fretted over widening social inequalities, experienced urban poverty first hand while at the same time understanding the causes of man made famine?’
The post The two faces of Leo Tolstoy appeared first on OUPblog.
Book: Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy, Book 3)
Author: Laini Taylor
Pages: 624
Age Range: 13 and up
Dreams of Gods & Monsters is the final books in Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. (See my reviews of Book 1 and Book 2). If you have read the previous books, you will certainly wish to read Dreams of Gods and Monsters. I think that it wraps up the series in a quite satisfactory manner, while leaving the door open for other books set in the same world.
As in all of Laini's books, the prose in Dreams of Gods and Monsters is rich and evocative, particularly when addressing love and longing. The characters are so fully developed that even when they surprise you, you find their change/growth consistent. The world-building in this series is very strong, with this third book in particular making the history of Eretz (and Earth as conceived by Laini) more clear. The plot is full of twists and surprises, including a character newly introduced in the final book who plays a pivotal role.
I will confess that I had to put this book aside about half-way through, and read something else. The characters were facing so much suffering that I needed a break. But once I came back to Dreams of Gods and Monsters, I read eagerly to the end, and was pleased by the interweaving of plot strands as well as the personal resolution for Karou.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes (though in truth one could open this book at random and find something lyrical and worth quoting on nearly every page):
"Out of betrayal and desperation, amid hostile beasts and invading angels and a deception that felt like an explosion waiting to happen, somehow, here was a beginning." (Page 30, Karou)
"So much to rue, but to what end? All unlived lives cancel one another out. She had nothing but now. The clothes on her back, the blood in her veins, and the promise made by her comrades. If only they would keep it." (Page 110, Karou)
""My wife likes to say that the mind is a palace with room for many guest. Perhaps the butler takes care to install the delegates of Science in a different wing from the emissaries of Faith, lest they take up arguing in the passages."" (Page 274, a Professor of Science)
"No one would understand it, but who cares? She'd just glare at them until they went away. That worked in almost any situation." (Page 419, Zuze)
Dreams of Gods and Monsters is a must-read conclusion to the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. If you haven't read the first two books, and you enjoy fantasy novels with strong characters (particularly strong female characters) and lavish world-building, you are in for a treat. Gather up all three books, and immerse yourself in Laini Taylor's world of angels and monsters, battles and resurrections, suffering and love.
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (@LBKids)
Publication Date: April 8, 2014
Source of Book: Purchased it on Kindle
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This site is an Amazon affiliate, and purchases made through Amazon links (including linked book covers) may result in my receiving a small commission (at no additional cost to you).
© 2014 by Jennifer Robinson of Jen Robinson's Book Page. All rights reserved. You can also follow me @JensBookPage or at my Growing Bookworms page on Facebook.
Category: Young Adult FantasyKeywords: Fantasy, Dragons, Souls, ReincarnationFormat: ebook, HardcoverSource: PurchasedSynopsis:DESTRUCTION
The Year of Souls begins with an earthquake—an alarming rumble from deep within the earth—and it’s only the first of greater dangers to come. The Range caldera is preparing to erupt. Ana knows that as Soul Night approaches, everything near Heart will be at risk.
FLIGHT
Ana’s exile is frightening, but it may also be fortuitous, especially if she can convince her friends to flee Heart and Range with her. They’ll go north, seeking answers and allies to stop Janan’s ascension. And with any luck, the newsouls will be safe from harm’s reach.
CHOICE
The oldsouls might have forgotten the choice they made to give themselves limitless lifetimes, but Ana knows the true cost of reincarnation. What she doesn’t know is whether she’ll have the chance to finish this one sweet life with Sam, especially if she returns to Heart to stop Janan once and for all.Kimberly's Review:It’s a really hard review for me to write. I had such hope for this series, especially because I enjoyed the first book so much.
While the first book in the series,
Incarnate, is catching and fresh, I felt more and more distance from the characters as the series wore on. So by the time book three, the last book, came out, I was not heavily invested in the story or the main characters. Mostly, I wanted to see how it ended.
I think there was a lot of potential in the first book. The series is easy to read. The premise is intriguing. Souls reincarnated over and over again? 5,000 years of it? Imagine the baggage! The emotional turmoil! There was so much I wanted from this series! But sadly for me, it didn’t deliver.
There’s a lot of action, but not a whole lot of descriptions. A lot of the time I felt like I was mostly reading actions and dialogue, but I didn’t have a good sense of the motivation behind each character. Nor did I feel particularly drawn to any of them. I know I’m supposed to like Ana, and her devotion to New Souls is admired, but character wise, I felt like she was hollow. I still wasn’t sold on Sam either. Even in the first book, I didn’t totally buy him as the big love interest. He is sweet and kind but totally, utterly boring. Someone told me that they sometimes find some YA books hard to read because they play into male fantasy characters for teenage girls. And for this one, I would have to agree with them.
Sam is dull. Yes, he’s a musician, he’s been alive for 5,000 years. He has a little bit of baggage, as he is eaten by a dragon like 30 times, but overall, Sam mopes about playing music and telling Ana of his undying love to her. Really, Sam? Where’s the passion, the hurt, the strength? Where’s the madness and motivation and challenge? No, Sam is more like a wet noodle from a very old bowl of soup.
The secondary characters are not solid for me either such as Stef. Stef, who is reincarnated over and over again as Sam’s best friend and sometimes love interest, fades into the background by book three and nothing is really resolved. Even the big bad guy, the big evil, the man with the plan who wants to enslave everyone, is an annoying gnat you want to swat away. He's not the immediate danger, no matter how far into the series I got. I was more concerned with the townspeople wanting to kill Ana and her friends and the pregnant mothers who may have No Soul babies.
Imagine you have a town of people who have lived and loved over and over again for 5,000 years. It’s like an never-ending high school filled with love, hope, emotional angst and incestuous relationships. (I mean that as in my boyfriend is now your boyfriend, and now he’s my boyfriend again, etc.) But instead, we barely brush the surface of the last 5,000 years and what this means to each of the characters.
I’m sorry I didn’t enjoy
Infinite. While I love the idea of the story and the possibilities of what it could have brought, I was left disappointed in the series and ending.
Author Jamie Haden tells how she came to be a published author. Her latest release
Illuminate-Alive, She Cried is available now in print and on Kindle. You can get it here:
http://goo.gl/g6qKF (it is FREE to Prime users)
A few years ago, I was at the library with my daughters doing research on Native Americans when I asked them to check out a book. It was springtime, a beautiful day, and the last place they wanted to be was inside a public library watching me take notes. When my oldest said there was nothing at all that interested her, I laughed and told her I would write something. She certainly didn't think I was serious, but I must have been because a few months later, I had a 90,000-word novel on my computer. That was a few years back, and now I am thrilled to say the second book in The Talisa Santiago Series is now in print.
In Illuminate-Alive, She Cried, I wanted to create a world that was wholly different from anything my daughters had ever known, a place removed from society, entirely void of cell phones, computers, television, shopping malls, restaurants, theaters and the like. A remote Indian reservation deep within the Great Smoky Mountains was the ideal setting for the backdrop of a novel that would divulge the mystery of Native American spirituality, deep-rooted beliefs, secrets, dangerous desires, and communications with the spiritual.
As I wrote Illuminate, I only told my daughters bits and pieces of the manuscript and promised they could read it in its entirety if it ever made it to print. Their copies are now in the mail, and I can't wait for them to open the book, hold it in their hands, and read the written word I created for them. That will make it all worthwhile.
About the book: Some say the concept of rebirth is simply a metaphor for living a better life, a holier life. For seventeen-year-old Talisa Santiago, such a resurrection is anything but a metaphor. It is her reality.
Talisa knows she can communicate with the spiritual world. She is the granddaughter of a shaman and going between two different worldly dimensions is something she realizes she is destined to do. However, what she doesn’t count on is what fate has in store for her.
After surviving the first hurricane of the season on the island where she lives, Talisa learns that her life is in grave danger. She must leave immediately and retreat to live with a secretive clan of Indians on a remote reservation deep within the Great Smoky Mountains.
Her blood brothers, three shifters who have the desires of both man and animal, surround her, promising everlasting friendship and protection. Now, Talisa will put her life in their hands, depart from her mother, and begin the journey of a lifetime. However, the majestic mountains hold many secrets and danger lurks in the night. There are evil tricksters everywhere that want her dead. As Talisa falls prey to the confusion of her own sexuality, she unleashes an untamed passion that may get them all killed.
About the author: Jamie Leigh Haden is the author of Spirit Seeker, a young adult fantasy. Jamie lives and writes near the seashore in North Carolina. She has a Bachelor's degree in philosophy. Jamie is currently working on An Unimagined Life, the sequel to Illuminate-Alive, She Cried.
Visit her official site:
Resurrection by Mandy Hager (Random House)
In 'The Crossing' Book One Maryam discovers that the elders who govern their island are really a religious cult that use and abuse the native islanders. Maryam flees Onewere Island with Ruth, Joseph and Lazarus in a boat to the unknown...
In 'Into the Wilderness' Book Two the foursome land on an isolated island and find the remains of a slaughtered people. They patch their boat and set off determined to find help for Joseph, whose reoccurence of a deadly illness worsens. They are struck by a vicious storm and drift for days until they are rescued by people who treat the refugees as prisoners. They are thrown into a detention camp and Lazarus shows sign of the illness that killed his brother Joseph. Maryam looks for a cure to save Lazarus and to take back to her people...
In 'Resurrection' Book Three Maryam willingly asks to be taken to where she was picked up by the boat people. She spends several days back on the deserted island until Lazarus joins her in his yacht. Together they sail back to their island and endeavour to tell their people they do not have to be slaves to the elders any more...
The trilogy deals with a variety of issues including rape, unwanted pregnancy, slavery and religious fanaticism. Tough going for teenage readers but Mandy Hager tempers it with hope, love, excellent writing and a powerful ending.
Mandy Hager won the Esther Glen Award for Fiction for her novel 'Smashed' and Best Young Adult book in the New Zealand Post Book Awards 2010 for 'The Crossing'.
ISBN: 9781869795221 RRP $19.95
I was sitting in the living room watching the kids at play. I noticed that the entire group of residents, were having a ball. My nose raised high to the sky.
I was irritated at best. The fact that the adults were engaging in such activity, was so irresponsible. I fought back the screams. I was close to tearing the whole lot of them from limb to limb. What idiots they were. Laughing joking having fun.
You see my point yet. Here is another. Last eve the family and myself were quietly enjoying a movie. Oh what peace, you could literally here a pen drop. The wonders of the movie "Toy Story," are amazing. I ran out and picked up every sequel. You could hear nothing, but small bits of laughter, and the crunch of popcorn munching in their little mouths.
About an hour into the movie, we heard some yelling just outside the door. It took one leap, from the couch just to watch the folk yelling and threatening to end one anothers lives. Everyone else stood at their doors in awe as well. Such madness! I choose to participate in, but the noise of the family and children screaming aggrevated me so.
The age appropriate thing to do was to perhaps call the authoritys. The noise was sheer disturbance of the peace. Althought the yelling in the home was abit much, no one was in danger. Its ok to relax once in a while.
Tonight is completely different for once in a long time. The noise is well over the civilized level. The children have no desire to abide by the rules. Inside voices don't seem to exist, and my smile is vividly bright. I found it age appropriate to spend some time with my family. I also found it fulfilling to enjoy the laughter and join in the fun.
It sure was far more age appropriate than to stand idly by and watch two adults embarrass themselves and their familys by fighting in the streets. I think its also age appropriate to know when its time to check yourself, and stand up for whats and right and wrong.
I checked myself about my irritation at good wholesome fun, and the ignorance of street fighting. It was needed, and the age appropriate thing to do.
I know there are many LJ-ers who have migraines and who also are on Lipitor, so I thought I'd share something that I learned when I saw my migraine specialist earlier this week. Apparently statins like Lipitor lower the levels of Coenzyme Q10 in the body, and studies have shown that lower levels of Co-enzyme Q10 result in a higher incidence of migraines.
Dr. Stuart Tepper, of the New England Center for Headache told me to take 200mg of Co-Enzyme Q10 twice a day to counteract the Lipitor.
Just passing it on, FWIW...
Read the rest of this post
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Thank you so much Mark. I truly appreciate your time and support. Peace and Blessings, Jamie
I have always wanted to visit the Smoky Mountains. Happy to have you visit my blog!