Famous Short Story

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Emory to host poet Marilyn Chin for online reading    Miami Herald

E ven though Christmas is a couple of months behind us , it's time to reflect on a British Christmas tradition from the Victorian era, one that's as festive as mistletoe and Christmas crackers. Whether you've read the original story, (published in 1843), seen it on stage, or watched one of the movie adaptations,  most of us will have encountered Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol in some form or another.  Telling the story of a miser, who is visited by four ghosts that teach him about Christmas spirit and  goodwill, it's one of Dickens' most successful works and hasn't been out of print since it was first  published 179 years ago. However, his other Christmas stories have declined greatly in popularity  since their release. Curator of The Charles Dickens Museum, Emily Smith, told the press: "they  were really popular during the 19th century, but they have lost that connection today." ...

This Week in Fiction Alexander MacLeod on Resentment and Empathy Your story in this week's magazine, "Once Removed," is about a young couple's visit, baby in tow, to a distant relative. Amy, the story's protagonist, feels alienated from her partner Matt's many family ties. Is there something special, experientially, about being from a large family? Photograph by Heather Crosby Gionet I think so. In large families, or in any group in which more than two generations are intimately entangled, it gets a little harder to imagine oneself as the first person who has ever come this way, experiencing all the ancient dramas that have always flowed around birth or death or love or aging or money. This can be good or it can be bad. Certainly, if you're a kid from a large family, and you never had your own bedroom or much control over what you ate for dinner, you might long for the kind of privacy, or the sense of personal autonomy or control, that an only child may ta...

When I, Robot came out in 2004, it was met with mixed reactions from fans. Some had no issues with it, while others hated the movie with a passion. This is because I, Robot shares its title with the first of Isaac Asimov's Robot series and includes Asimov's three laws of robotics but doesn't have many similarities with the author's works beyond that. I, Robot has been accused of not staying true to Asimov's work, having a cookie-cutter plotline and clumsily combining Asimov's ideas. What some fans may not know is that I, Robot originally started as a screenplay called Hardwired , written by Jeff Vintar. Hardwired was more of a murder mystery and was much more in line with Asimov's three laws than  I, Robot . When Hardwired was acquired by Twentieth Century Fox, Vintar changed the screenplay so it would serve as a prequel to Asimov's work to explain why robots were outlawed. When Will Smith agreed to take part ...

D.H. Lawrence understood early on that his calling was to divide readers and friends. He hated to be silenced but loved to be hated. "It's either you fight or you die," he wrote in a late poem , taunting his readers as the matador taunts the bull in the mesmerizing opening of his often hateable novel The Plumed Serpent. Burning Man: The Trials of D.H. Lawrence by Frances Wilson Buy on Bookshop Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 523 pp., $35.00 It's extraordinary how far he succeeded: what extremes of love and hate he has provoked. For decades after his death, every critic, almost every reader, had their opinion about Lawrence. Responding to his statement that his "great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh," they granted him power to redeem or defile the world. Some modeled themselves on his characters, using four-letter words, wearing brightly colored stockings, rejecting formal educations to follow Ursula's calling in The Rainbow to become fully herse...

Here we round up new and forthcoming children's titles, including a YA trilogy opener, a graphic novel about a housecat, a novel in verse about a girl coming of age, a picture book about different domiciles, and many more. Wakers by Orson Scott Card. S&S/McElderry, $19.99; ISBN 978-1-4814-9619-3. In this launch of the Side Step trilogy, Card ( Duplex ) explores metaphysics and alternate timelines when a group of teens wake in an empty cloning facility. Housecat Trouble by Mason Dickerson. Random House Graphic, $12.99; ISBN 978-0-593-17345-9. Using a soft palette and rendering facial expressions comically emotive, debut creator Dickerson mixes magical elements in this graphic novel about a housecat named Buster defending his home against invading monsters. Golden Girl by Reem Faruqi. HarperCollins, $16.99; ISBN 978-0-06-304475-3. A teen of Pakistani descent faces her penchant for "borrowing" things and navigates puberty-related changes in Faruqi's ( Amira...

Fantasy is a tricky genre to define, as it frequently overlaps with romance, sci-fi, horror, and more. Fantasy, in some form, has always been part of world literature. From One Thousand and One Nights (sometimes called The Arabian Nights ), Beowulf, and The Odyssey to other myths and epics, magical and supernatural elements in literature are timeless and universal, but they aren't strictly speaking part of the fantasy genre. Most critics also consider magical realism a separate genre from fantasy, despite some similar elements. Although I've personally enjoyed many of these books and series, I tried to explain how they were influential in both positive and negative ways and criticism they've received. Also, saying one book helped pave the way for others doesn't necessarily mean one author directly imitated another. More broadly, the earlier book's popularity contributed to an environment where books on similar themes would sell. These books have had major impa...

This top e-learning platform empowers adults to learn a new language in the most efficient manner with the help of education experts. Indonesia, the 4th most populous country in the world, is home to one of the biggest and fastest-growing economies in Asia. With more than 270 million people and 17,000 islands, Indonesia offers a world of economic and travelling opportunities. One way to capture this market is to learn Bahasa Indonesia, the country's official language. For this, there's BingoIndo, the leading e-learning platform that has been successfully supporting adults to acquire the Indonesian language with English as the medium of instruction. Their team is made up of Indonesian lecturers, teachers, curriculum developers, and course creators who all ensure that students learn the best way possible. "Unlike other multi-language learning platforms, we are specialized and focused on only teaching Bahasa Indonesia on our platform," said a BingoIndo represent...

3 February 2022, 15:47 Could your copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone be worth £20,000? Here's how to tell... Loading audio... If you're anything like us, you've probably read all the Harry Potter books at least twice over. And while your old copies might be gathering dust on the shelf, it turns out they could be worth thousands. The first of the novel franchise - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone - was released all the way back in 1997 and was originally sold for around £4.50 in book shops. Your Harry Potter book could be worth thousands. Picture: Alamy However, some copies are extremely rare due to a small misprint on page 53 where the word 'wand' is written twice. If you skip to this part of the book, you'll see a letter from from Professor McGonagall at Hogwarts that tells students what they need to bring to school. It reads: 1 wand 1 cauldron (standar...

[unable to retrieve full-text content] Teaching Gatsby: Educators consider Fitzgerald classic a must-read    Index-Journal

Rather than train Dane Whitman (Kit Harington), it may be that Blade's plan after Eternals is to take the Ebony Blade for himself. A shocking cameo in which Mahershala Ali's Blade could be heard saying " sure you're ready for that, Mr. Whitman? " officially introduced the iconic vampire hunter to the MCU. Not only that, but it laid the groundwork for an interesting future for Sersi's human love interest. Following Eternals' cryptic tease about Dane's family secret, the movie teased his MCU future with the live-action debut of the Ebony Blade. Known for being able to cut through nearly any material, the Ebony Blade is one of the most powerful weapons in the Marvel Universe. Plus, it's the signature sword of Dane Whitman's comic book counterpart – the Black Knight. Armed with the Ebony Blade, Black Knight was a major member of the Avengers during the 1980s and the early 1990s. In fact, there was a time when his prominence in Marvel Comics all...