First it was acid rain, then the ozone hole. Now, CO2 in the air is supposed to bring on a climate catastrophe. Is global warming really a threat, are the polar ice caps in danger of elting and are coastal areas of habitation under threat of a deluge? Do we therefore need an energy-CO2 tax?
Added by: badaboom | Karma: 5366.29 | Fiction literature | 6 October 2010
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Music of a Life
Makine (Dreams of My Russian Summers) is a Russian emigre who writes in the language of his adopted France, but retains a poetic intensity of vision that seems peculiarly Russian. His latest is an extraordinarily compressed brief novel, but it is a novel not a novella in scope nonetheless. It begins as the narrator, waiting for a train to Moscow somewhere in the wilds of Siberia, meets a mysterious musician, Alexe Berg, and is told his somber life story. Berg, a son of the intelligentsia growing up in the Stalin-shadowed '30s, is about to make his debut as a concert pianist, in 1940, when his parents are arrested, and he barely escapes, taking refuge with relatives in the Ukraine.
This fascinating historical novel brings to life the ancient Roman Empire, with all its decadence, vice, virtue, courage, splendor and magnificence. Told from the first person point of view, and closely following actual historical events and personalities, this is the story of Minutus Manilianus, a Roman knight who comes to manhood during the reign of Emperor Claudius.
Camelot: Roleplaying in the Court of King Arthur (Roleplaying Game)
Knights and Wizards!
They were the best knights in the world. They were advised by the most powerful wizard of all . . . Merlin himself! And their leader was King Arthur, bearer of Excalibur.
The story of Camelot is the story of chivalry itself. All the knightly traditions of fantasy . . . monster-slaying, maiden-rescuing, jousts, adventures in disguise . . . came from the tales of King Arthur, as told by a thousand years of bards. Now Camelot comes alive for the roleplayer.
Essentially this is a modern political thriller, told in flat American diction. Narrated by Derfel, an ordinary, likable man who rises through the ranks to become Arthur's friend and advisor in peace and war, the story doesn't follow the traditional patterns. Mordred is Uther's infant grandson, the legitimate king; Arthur is one of Mordred's guardians, sworn to hold the kingdom against the Saxon warlords until Mordred comes of age. Warfare is incessant. Arthur's dream of peace and unity seems unattainable.
