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Showing posts from February, 2015

The Circle by Dave Eggers

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The Circle by Dave Eggers Mae Holland had moved back in with her parents after graduating from Carleton. She was $234,000 in school loan debt and took the first job offered to her at the utility company. It had been eighteen months since she started that job and she hated every second of it. Arriving on the campus of the Circle was the pivotal moment in her life. The Circle was the most powerful internet company in the world, employing ten thousand people on its San Vicente campus, as the driving force of the electronic age. Annie, Mae’s best friend since college, was one the Gang of 40 that consisted of the most crucial minds in the company. TruYou was the driving force for the Circle. With TruYou users had one identity, one account and one password for everything they needed on the web. It was the pathway to vanquishing false identity and everything you needed to accomplish you could, with TruYou. The goal was to one day close the Circle, making life transparent to all. I

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

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Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge Nyx Triskelion is going to marry the Gentle Lord and then she is going to kill him. By killing him she will free her kingdom from the grip of the demons that have been attacking Arcadia, driving the victims insane. Nyx’s father Leonidas had made a bargain with the Gentle Lord before Nyx and her twin sister Astraia were born. Leonidas and his wife Thisbe wanted children but she hadn’t been able to conceive. The Gentle Lord would grant him twin girls as long as he was given one as a bride. Leonidas agreed. Thisbe died while delivering the second of the twins, Astraia. Leonidas chose Nyx as the daughter to marry the Gentle Lord revealing the truth to her at age nine. He then began training her to murder The Gentle Lord, freeing the kingdom. Nyx went into her marriage knowing that she was sacrificing herself for her family and the people of Arcadia. The last thing she ever expected was to fall for the Gentle Lord who asked her to call him Ignifex. There

Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki

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Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki with Rande Brown Masako Tanaka was born in Kyoto, Japan in 1949, the last of eleven children. She lived with her parents and seven of her siblings for the first five years of her life. Unbeknownst to her she had three older sisters that were leaving in Gion Kobu, working in okiyas, what we know as geisha houses. At a young age Masako was actively being pursued by the proprietress of the Iwasaki Okiya, Madame Oima. She was in desperate need of an atatori, a successor, to run the okiya when she was no longer able. It was at the age of five that Masako decided to leave her family and move to the okiya. She would eventually take on the name of the family and forever be known as Mineko Iwasaki. Within the pages of the autobiography Mineko divulges what it was like for her to leave her family, her passion for dance, how she strived and became the most successful geiko (the word commonly used for geisha in Kyoto) of her time. Geisha, A Life is an i