Ralph Sylvester ’50 (left) talks with Bates rowing team members Aidan Braithwaite ’23 of Milton, Mass., Isaac Levinger ’24 of Rockville, Md., and Charles Renvyle ’25 of Hopkinton, N.H., during the dedication of the new rowing shell at Perry Atrium in Pettengill Hall on April 29, 2023. That’s because it was a hope come true for the Bates rowing program: to name a Bates boat in honor of the man who sat before them, Ralph Sylvester ‘50 - nonagenarian, World War II combat veteran, and beloved member of the Bates and Lewiston-Auburn communities. With that, a big cheer erupted from the crowd gathered in Pettengill Hall’s Perry Atrium on April 29 - the loudest coming from members of the Bates rowing teams. In a soft but steady voice, he said, “I christen thee Ralph Sylvester.” The 98-year-old man leaned forward in his wheelchair and slowly poured a glass of champagne onto the hull of the newest Bates rowing shell. Share on Email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on LinkedIn
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I’ve finally realized that lighter, more fast-paced fiction is all I have in my wheelhouse right now, and I’m okay with that. Part of the problem is that, ironically enough, my attention span has been almost non-existent since the beginning of the COVID stay-at-home orders in March. Trail guides! They aren’t exactly meant to be read cover-to-cover. I would find myself pulling up trail guides on my Kindle instead. This book asks for more thought than I’m able to give at that point in my day. I’m more of a fiction reader but I do like to concurrently read a nonfiction book and I add that in at night. I first checked it out on May 22 and here it is, June 29, and I’m 27% finished with it. But I’m just not getting anywhere with this book. I’m so guilty of spending too much time on social media and the internet and everything else that tries (successfully) to steal my attention away from the here and now. Title: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy So when a confused and frightened demon pops up in a Sicilian theatre, Artemis is there to meet him. Artemis Fowl, teenage criminal mastermind, has solved temporal equations that no human can. Even the fairy scientists cannot predict the next one.But someone can. Now the spell's deterioration is accelerating and the demon materializations are erupting. But the spell went wrong, and they were catapulted into Limbo. All the families agreed, except the demons.The demons planned to lift themselves out of time until they were ready to wage war on the humans once more. When the fairies realized they'd never win, they moved their civilization underground and hid. Ten thousand years ago, humans and fairies fought a great battle. If you did sign up to participate in the buddy read or just want to offer your opinion, here is our reading schedule: Warning: If you’re not participating in the buddy read and haven’t yet read the books, please note that there may be spoilers in the discussion comments (you know, if I’m not the only person participating…heh…it could happen…) so advance at your own discretion. Presented as a new translation of an ancient text, The Naming evokes the rich and complex landscape of Annar, a legendary world just waiting to be discovered. The first book in a projected quartet, Alison Croggon’s epic about Maerad and her remarkable yet dangerous gift is a beautiful, unforgettable tale. Now, she and her mysterious teacher must embark on a treacherous, uncertain journey through a time and place where the forces of darkness wield an otherworldly terror. It is only when she is discovered by Cadvan, one of the great Bards of Lirigon, that her true identity and extraordinary destiny unfold. She doesn’t yet know she has inherited a powerful gift, one that marks her as a member of the noble School of Pellinor and enables her to see the world as no other can. Maerad is a slave in a desperate and unforgiving settlement, taken there as a child when her family is destroyed in war. Published May 10th 2005 by Candlewick Press The most serious of these was her father’s abusiveness towards her mother, and sometimes, also, to Mary and her siblings. The couple had more children in the years that followed, and Mary would eventually be one of seven.Īs an adult, Wollstonecraft told her husband, William Godwin, about her childhood, particularly its unhappy elements. She was the second child of Edward Wollstonecraft, an English weaver, and Elizabeth Dickson, an Irish woman from a wine-merchant family. Wollstonecraft was born in her grandfather’s house on Primrose Street, in Spitalfields, East London, close to where Liverpool Street Station is now. By looking at this part of her life, we gain a fuller picture of how she came to be an influential feminist thinker and writer. The radical ideas contained within it were informed and fomented by the circumstances of her youth in London, and the people who surrounded her there. Having been unpopular in the decades after her death as details of some of her more unconventional attitudes and actions came to light, she only began to gain proper recognition for her contribution to feminism one hundred years after A Vindication was first published. But fewer of us know much about the woman herself, or the circumstances of her early life in particular. This most famous of her works is well known as one of the earliest examples of feminist philosophy and continues to be read by many people today. contains uncommonly novel ideas and presents them in an engaging manner.Ħ – Notable. A helpful and/or enlightening book that combines two or more noteworthy strengths, e.g. presents the latest findings in a topical field and is written by a renowned expert but lacks a bit in style.ħ – Good. A helpful and/or enlightening book that has a substantial number of outstanding qualities without excelling across the board, e.g. A helpful and/or enlightening book that is extremely well rounded, has many strengths and no shortcomings worth mentioning.Ĩ – Very good. Often an instant classic and must-read for everyone.ĩ – Superb. A helpful and/or enlightening book that, in addition to meeting the highest standards in all pertinent aspects, stands out even among the best. Here's what the ratings mean:ġ0 – Brilliant. Books we rate below 5 won’t be summarized. Our rating helps you sort the titles on your reading list from solid (5) to brilliant (10). We rate each piece of content on a scale of 1–10 with regard to these two core criteria. Helpful – You’ll take-away practical advice that will help you get better at what you do. Whatever we select for our library has to excel in one or the other of these two core criteria:Įnlightening – You’ll learn things that will inform and improve your decisions. At getAbstract, we summarize books* that help people understand the world and make it better. They are preoccupied with their own gossip, flirtations, and novelties. The sanatorium is a weird, self-absorbed world, with strange patients from all over Europe. The central figure is more anti-hero than hero: Hans Castorp is a young man from Hamburg who visits for three weeks, but stays for seven years. The whole novel is set in a Swiss sanatorium, in the years leading up to 1914. You feel that Mann is forcing his readers to work out meanings, and find their own motivation to keep reading. It’s over 700 pages long, and not a lot happens. However, The Magic Mountain is not an easy read. You may know him through the beautiful film of his novel, Death in Venice. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929 and is one of Germany’s greatest twentieth-century writers. Thomas Mann is an author who deserves to be taken seriously. There have 100 children's books, 40 novels, and 20 collections of her stories published. Her books The Haunting and The Changeover: A Supernatural Romance both received the Carnegie Medal of the British Library Association. While the plots of many of her books have strong supernatural elements, her writing concentrates on the themes of human relationships and growing up. Her novels have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Catalan and A Margaret Mahy was a well-known New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. Among her children's books, A Lion in the Meadow and The Seven Chinese Brothers and The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate are considered national classics. Margaret Mahy was a well-known New Zealand author of children's and young adult books. Securing food and shelter was the major focus of our lives. One of Keats’ childhood friends, Martin Pope, wrote this about their shared childhood: These were the years of what is called the Great Depression in America, when a small handful of people made a lot of money but the vast majority of people struggled to pay bills and make ends meet. His family never had enough money for him to go to art school so he had to take different jobs to support himself and his family. Throughout his childhood the young Keats struggled to be an artist. Many years later, as a grownup himself, Ezra Keats realized how difficult it must have been for his father to save pennies and buy these art supplies for him. This is because he had seen many artists struggle to make a living and he didn’t want his son to live in poverty like he himself was forced to.īut despite all his warning to Jacob about starving artists, Benjamin Katz would sometime bring home for his son tubes of paint and inexpensive paintbrushes. The young Jacob could paint and draw wonderful pictures even before he entered school but his father didn’t really want his son to be an artist. Burton invites readers to discover anew the relevance of the biblical narrative for African Christians as well as Scripture's influence on African Christianity. Coming to the modern era, he examines the achievements of African Christianity and visionary efforts to adapt and reclaim Christianity for the African context. He then chronicles the African presence in the church from the New Testament onward, paying particular attention to the growth of Islam in Africa as well as the impact of European colonialism and the slave trade. Beginning with the Old Testament, he explores the geography of biblical Africa and moves beyond stereotypical discussions of African ethnicity and identity. In this comprehensive study, Keith Burton traces the story of biblical Africa and the place of the Bible in the land of Ham. Even today, modern misinterpretations of Scripture argue for God's curse upon the dark-skinned peoples of Africa. But African Christianity has had a long and conflicted history. According to some estimates, Africa will soon have the highest concentration of Christians in the world. |