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Showing posts from November, 2014

"My Drunk Kitchen: a Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going With Your Gut" by Hannah Hart

***        In March of 2011, a college student named Hannah Hart uploaded a video to her YouTube channel in which she attempts to cook grilled cheese while drinking wine and providing witty commentary--and without any cheese. By 2014, My Drunk Kitchen had reached over a million subscribers, while Hannah herself has become one of the most prominent YouTube personalities, and has collaborated with countless other YouTubers on video and charity projects, brought several celebrities onto her own channel (including chef Jamie Oliver, actress/writer Felicia Day, and novelist John Green), and even co-wrote/produced and starred in an independent film. So naturally the next logical step is to publish a book. ***       My Drunk Kitchen: A Guide to Eating, Drinking, and Going With Your Gut is an insightful and humorous cross between a cookbook and a self-help book in which Hannah offers both recipes and life advice in a comic, sarcastic, and only slightly self-depreciative

"The Bone Clocks" by David Mitchell

  *** The Bone Clocks is the latest novel from David Mitchell, the author who brought the world Cloud Atlas. Set up as a series of six 100 page novella sections, The Bone Clocks follows the life of a teenage runaway named Holly Sykes from her adolescence to her old age; while at the same time following the story of an ancient secret organisation twisting the laws of nature, science, and morality in order to perpetuate the ideals and hunger for eternal youth. *** A foray into the realm of realistic fantasy, this latest novel by Mitchell explores the idea of conscious reincarnation and randomly chosen rebirth--what happens when a select portion of the  population is born with a genetic predisposition to be able to transfer their consciousness from the body they currently occupy to either the body of a currently alive individual (temporary, and usually with the consent of the person) or an individual who has just died (permanent, and with the understanding that they will co

"Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary" by J.R.R. Tolkien

        In the years following the death of J.R.R. Tolkien, his son Christopher (being named as literary executor to his father’s unfinished works) has been completing and publishing many of his fathers as-yet unpublished works. This includes The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales of Middle Earth (which Middle Earth fans would recognise as source material for some of the plot lines in the newer Hobbit movies) as well as The Tale of Sigurd and Gudrun, The Fall of Arthur, and most recently Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. ***       In addition to writing The Lord of the Rings series (which has undoubtedly become one of the most well recognised staples of geek culture, having spawned movies, comics, cartoons, video games, and table games from just one trilogy and its prequel), John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a renowned professor of English language and literature, holding multiple positions at Oxford. It is here that he worked on translations of poetry from Old