6/30/2023 0 Comments Dreamland by Kevin Baker![]() ![]() “One of the interesting dilemmas of historical fiction,” Baker says during a call to his home in New York, “is how much room a writer has to make things up. No, the exhilarating loops and turns of plot that make Kevin Baker’s historical novel so entertaining are inventions of the author’s own imagination. Esther organized the women of the needle trades and fell in love with “Kid Twist” at Dreamland, the fantastical Coney Island amusement park that burned to the ground in 1911. ![]() Nor did he have a sister named Esther who worked at the infamous sweatshop, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. So far as we know, however, “Gyp the Blood” was not whacked on the head with a shovel by “Kid Twist” just as he was about to break “Trick the Dwarf”‘s back in a dingy dive in lower Manhattan (thus setting the well-oiled wheels of our story in motion). ![]() “He was eventually electrocuted for his role in the murder of ‘Beansie’ Rosenthal.” “‘Gyp the Blood’ was a real person who actually used to break men’s backs on a two-dollar bet!” says historian Kevin Baker about the most malevolent character in his novel, Dreamland. ![]()
0 Comments
6/30/2023 0 Comments 1st break all the rules![]() ![]() ![]() Key Three: Build Up Talents and Navigate Around Weaknesses While this is more challenging with larger or more standardized teams, you need to adjust as much as possible to ensure a more effective result. When you set goals, you need to keep these talents in mind to adapt to each employee. Question #3: What do your employees need? As you now know, every employee has a unique set of talents that inform the way that they work. This adjusts the focus of your desired outcomes toward your new approach to fulfilling your company’s mission. Adapt your goals as you change your strategies. ![]() Question #2: What does your company need? While a company’s core mission typically remains the same over time, the strategies you use to execute that mission change. Use this information to inform your organization’s goals by zeroing in on the items that your customers feel passionate about. Use focus groups or customer surveys to ask your clientele what they want and expect from their experience with you. Question #1: What do your customers need? This is the first question you need to ask because, without customers or clients, your company has no value. ![]() 6/30/2023 0 Comments Tracks by Louise Erdrich![]() One poem is titled “A Love Medicine.” Like her other work, many of the poems are monologues: people telling stories, remembering, painting images that flicker with color and light. ![]() ![]() One section of Jacklight is about the same kind of butcher shop where much of The Beet Queen takes place. ![]() When a thin woman dies and her friends struggle with her deadweight, it’s “as if death had entered and filled the marrows of her bones with sand.” A flowering tree in the night is “a scratch of light against the gray of everything else, tossed in a film of blossoms.”Įrdrich’s 1984 book of poetry, Jacklight, reveals the sources of her prose style, as well as the thematic origins of her novels. Her sentences move lyrically they’re carefully crafted and often breathtaking. Erdrich’s strength is not stylistic variety but a consistent, unique voice, attentive to the sounds and suggestions of words. But the second book is very similar to the first. Her second novel, The Beet Queen, has had a milder reception, not because it’s any less good on the contrary, it’s more polished, more securely structured than Love Medicine. When Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine appeared in 1984, it was greeted with enthusiastic, almost hyperbolic, critical praise and showered with half a dozen awards, including the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
6/30/2023 0 Comments Troubadour by Mary Hoffman![]() ![]() ![]() But the Pope is trying to track Bertran down and so is somebody else: Elinor, a young noblewoman, in love. The lands of the peaceable Cathars - deemed heretics - are now forfeit and under threat from crusaders who have been given authority by the Pope to take the Cathar domains by force. A troubadour, Bertran, witnesses the brutal murder of the Pope's legate, and risks his life to warn others of the war that he knows is certain to follow this act. This is a story of persecution and poetry, love and war set in thirteenth century southern France. ![]() |