Tag Archives: Theme of the Week

Theme of the Week: Rudyard Kipling

rudyard-kipling1

The theme for this week is Rudyard Kipling, an English author, famous for his works,  Just So Stories and The Jungle Book which earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.

Just So Stories, was a in part a tribute to his late daughter, for whom Kipling had originally crafted the stories as he put her to bed. The book’s name had in fact come from Josephine, who told her father he had to repeat each tale as he always had, or “just so,” as Josephine often said.

Below is a link to Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem “If-” spoken by the famous British actor Sir Michael Caine. It is a tribute to Leander Starr Jameson and is written in the form of paternal advice to the poet’s son. As poetry, “If—” is a literary example of Victorian-era stoicism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWvcwVWCcnY

Inspirational Quotes


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Inspirational Quotes


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Theme of the Week: Jane Austen

jane-austen

The theme for this week is about Jane Austen, an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the privileged British social class who lived entirely off rental income (landed gentry), earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism, biting irony and social commentary as well as her acclaimed plots have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics.

Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry. She was educated primarily by her father and older brothers as well as through her own reading. The steadfast support of her family was critical to her development as a professional writer.

Enjoy two film trailers adapted from Austen’s most popular novels, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice.

Sense and Sensibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns17RQr1yK8

 

Pride and Prejudice:

Inspirational Quotes


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Inspirational Quotes


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Book of the Week: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products by Leander Kahney

“An adulating biography of Apple’s left-brained wunderkind, whose work continues to revolutionize modern technology.” —Kirkus Reviews

In 1997, Steve Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away at Apple’s headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. Jony Ive’s collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world’s most iconic technology products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. Ive’s work helped reverse Apple’s long decline, overturned entire industries, and created a huge global fan base. Yet little is known about the shy, soft-spoken whiz whom Jobs referred to as his “spiritual partner.”

Leander Kahney offers a detailed portrait of the English art school student with dyslexia who became the most acclaimed tech designer of his generation. Drawing on interviews with Ive’s former colleagues and Apple insiders, Kahney “takes us inside the creation of these memorable objects.” (The Wall Street Journal)

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The Little-Known Story of Jony Ive’s First Apple Product Design

jony-ive-article1

Jony Ive hasn’t always been the tech design colossus that he is today — in fact, it turns out that his highly acclaimed design chops had very humble origins at Apple. Business Insider has published an excerpt from Leander Kahney’s book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products that details Ive’s first time heading up an Apple design project, in this case the Newton MessagePad 110 that was a sequel to the first-generation Newton that infamously failed to set the tech world on fire in the early 1990s.

After the original Newton got panned in early reviews, Apple put Ive in charge of the project to right the ship. Although no Newton will ever be seen along the same lines as the iPhone or the MacBook Air, Ive did bring some real improvements to the device that were readily apparent. You’ll be unsurprised to know that Ive worked to make the device’s stylus thinner and he also redesigned the device’s lid with a spring-loaded mechanism that opened up the device when you pressed down on it.

The result was a device that won several design awards despite the fact that it didn’t sell anywhere close to what Apple had hoped. And more importantly, the Newton MessagePad 110 won Ive many admirers within the company and set the stage for his later triumphs.

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Theme of the Week: Celebrating Authors of November

This week we celebrate authors of the past and present who had birthdays in the month of November. Check them out below.

november authors3

Row 1: (L-R) Adeline Yen Mah, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Leander Kahney, Albert Camus Row 2: (L-R) Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, David Nicholls Row 3: (L-R) Roger Lancelyn Green, Jonathan Swift, L. M. Montgomery, Luke Rhinehart Row 4: (L-R) George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Richelle Mead

Albert Camus

(November 7, 1913 – January 4, 1960)

Camus was a French Nobel Prize winning author, journalist, and philosopher. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature “for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times.”

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Mark Twain

(November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881) and Tom Sawyer’s sequel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).

  huck

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Bram Stoker 

(November 8, 1847 – April 20, 1912)

Stoker was an Irish author known today for his 1897 Gothic novel, Dracula.

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Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(November 11, 1821 – February 9, 1881)

Dostoyevsky was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky’s literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. The Double was made into a film in 2013.

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Luke Rhinehart

(November 15, 1932 – )

George Cockcroft, known by his pen name Luke Rhinehart, is an American writer, most notable as the author of The Dice Man series.

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Richelle Mead

(November 12, 1976 – )

Mead is a bestselling American fantasy author. She is known for the Georgina Kincaid series, Vampire Academy. It was made into a film in 2014.

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Leander Kahney

(November 25, 1965 – )

Kahney is a technology writer and author. He is a former managing editor, and previously a senior reporter, at ‘Wired News’, the online sister publication of ‘Wired’.

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Winston Churchill

(November 30, 1874 – January 24, 1965)

Churchill was a British politician and Nobel laureate who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955. Widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the 20th century, Churchill was also an officer in the British Army, a historian, a writer and an artist. Churchill is the only British Prime Minister to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature since its creation in 1901, and was the first person to be made an honorary citizen of the United States.

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Roger Lancelyn Green

(November 2, 1918 – October 8, 1987)

Green was a British biographer who became known primarily for his writings for children, particularly his retellings of the stories of King Arthur, King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, and Robin Hood, The Adventures of Robin Hood.

 

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Adeline Yen Mah

(November 30, 1937 – )

Mah is a Chinese-American author and physician. Chinese Cinderella: The Secret Story of an Unwanted Daughter describes her experiences growing up in China during the Second World War.

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Jonathan Swift

(November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745)

Swift was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, poet and cleric who is remembered for such work as Gulliver’s Travels.

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George Eliot

(November 22, 1819 – December 22, 1880)

Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of several novels, including The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861)  and Middlemarch (1871–72), most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.

 9780141198910.jpg (258×400) 

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Robert Louis Stevenson

(November 13, 1850 – December 3, 1894)

Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. His most famous works are Treasure Island, Kidnapped and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

  

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David Nicholls

(November 30, 1966 – )

Nicholls is an English novelist and screenwriter. His book, One Day, was turned into a film in 2011.

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Frances Hodgson Burnett

(November 24, 1849 – October 29, 1924)

Burnett was an English playwright and author. She is best known for her children’s stories, in particular Little Lord Fauntleroy (1885-86) and The Secret Garden (1911). Both were made into films.

 

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L. M. Montgomery

(November 30, 1874 – April 24, 1942)

Montgomery was a Canadian author best known for a series of novels beginning with Anne of Green Gables, published in 1908. Anne of Green Gables was an immediate success.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Which Book Would You Read?

To celebrate Mark Twain, we’d like to ask, which book would you read?

tomThe Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Author: Mark Twain

ISBN: 9780230030336

Perhaps the best-loved nineteenth-century American novel, Mark Twain’s tale of boyhood adventure overflows with comedy, warmth, and slapstick energy. It brings to life and array of irresistible characters—the awesomely self-confident Tom, his best buddy Huck Finn, indulgent Aunt Polly, and the lovely, beguiling Becky—as well as such unforgettable incidents as whitewashing a fence, swearing an oath in blood, and getting lost in a dark and labyrinthine cave. Below Tom Sawyer’s sunny surface lurk hints of a darker reality, of youthful innocence and naïveté confronting the cruelty, hypocrisy, and foolishness of the adult world—a theme that would become more pronounced in Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Despite such suggestions, Tom Sawyer remains Twain’s joyful ode to the endless possibilities of childhood.

Price: 5,5 GEL

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huckThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Author: Mark Twain

ISBN:9781405072342

“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the only one of Mark Twain’s various books which can be called a masterpiece. I do not suggest that it is his only book of permanent interest; but it is the only one in which his genius is completely realized, and the only one which creates its own category.” T. S. Eliot

Huckleberry Finn, rebel against school and church, casual inheritor of gold treasure, rafter of the Mississippi, and savior of Jim the runaway slave, is the archetypical American maverick.

Fleeing the respectable society that wants to “sivilize” him, Huck Finn shoves off with Jim on a rhapsodic raft journey down the Mississippi River. The two bind themselves to one another, becoming intimate friends and agreeing “there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.”

As Huck learns about love, responsibility, and morality, the trip becomes a metaphoric voyage through his own soul, culminating in the glorious moment when he decides to “go to hell” rather than return Jim to slavery.

Mark Twain defined classic as “a book which people praise and don’t read”; Huckleberry Finn is a happy exception to his own rule. Twain’s mastery of dialect, coupled with his famous wit, has made Adventures of Huckleberry Finn one of the most loved and distinctly American classics ever written.

Price: 5,5 GEL

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princeThe Prince and the Pauper

Author: Mark Twain

ISBN: 9780140436693

When Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper was published in 1881, the Atlanta Constitution sang its praises in no uncertain terms: “The book comes upon the reading public in the shape of a revelation.” A timeless tale of switched identities, Twain’s story revolves around the miserably poor Tom Canty “of Offal Court,” who is lucky enough to trade his rags for the gilded robes of England’s prince, Edward Tudor. As each boy is mistaken for the other, Tom enters a realm of privilege and pleasure beyond his most delirious dreams, while Edward plunges into a cruel, dangerous world of beggars and thieves, cutthroats and killers. Befriended by the heroic Miles Hendon, Edward struggles to survive on the squalid streets of London, in the process learning about the underside of life in “Merry England.”

With its mixing of high adventure, raucous comedy, and scathing social criticism, presented in a hilarious faux-sixteenth-century vernacular that only Mark Twain could fashion, The Prince and the Pauper remains one of this incomparable humorist’s most popular and oft-dramatized tales.

Price: 15,9 GEL

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