The Mayfair Witches

The Lives of The Mayfair Witchesnovels are a trilogy written by the horror author Anne Rice. They feature the Mayfair Family, haunted by a demon called Lasher. The trilogy consists of: The Witching Hour, Lasher, and Taltos. From The Mayfair Witchescollection, only The Witching Hour seems to provide much of a coherent story, though the other works have considerable information on Rice’s world of witchcraft, spirits, and human-like aliens as well as the Mayfair family of witches itself. The three titles are excellently read by Joe Morton, Lindsay Crouse, and Tim Curry, but it’s unclear what the producer was trying to accomplish by arranging the set out of chronological order. The action in Lasher logically follows that of The Witching Hour, which ends describing the relationship of Rowan Mayfair with the spirit Lasher. Taltos seems to be a vehicle to redefine Lasher, killed off in the earlier work, as a demon who assumed the identity of Mr. Ash/St. Ashlar, a nonhuman, nonvampire being whose kind live for millennia. There’s a lot of pseudomyth touched up with Catholic or voodoo imagery and laced liberally with incestuous or otherwise taboo sex: a Mayfair dynasty no doubt but with no discernible witchcraft and quite a fixation on the female breast. Buy the book

An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

The Oxford Philosophical Texts series consists of authoritative teaching editions of canonical texts in the history of philosophy from the ancient world down to modern times. Each volume provides a clear, well laid out text together with a comprehensive introduction by a leading specialist, giving the student detailed critical guidance on the intellectual context of the work and the structure and philosophical importance of the main arguments. Endnotes are supplied which provide further commentary on the arguments and explain unfamiliar references and terminology, and a full bibliography and index are also included. (Buy the book)

The Dandy Frightening the Squatter

About thirteen years ago, when the now flourishing young city of Hannibal, on the Mississippi River, was but a “wood-yard,” surrounded by a few huts, belonging to some hardy “squatters,” and such a thing as a steamboat was considered quite a sight, the following incident occurred:

A tall, brawny woodsman stood leaning against a tree which stood upon the bank of the river, gazing at some approaching object, which our readers would easily have discovered to be a steamboat.

About half an hour elapsed, and the boat was moored, and the hands busily engaged in taking on wood. (read more…)

Anais Nin

Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was a French-born author of Spanish, Cuban, and Danish descent who became famous for her published journals, which span more than sixty years, beginning when she was eleven years old and ending shortly before her death. Anais is also famous for her erotica, which not only proves sensual, but also acts as a study of human sexuality in its perfection and flaws. (read more…)

OJ’s ‘If I Did It’ manuscript leaked online

OJ Simpson contemplated suicide during his infamous Bronco chase, according to an alleged manuscript of his unpublished book If I Did It which was leaked onto the internet today. “I was in tremendous pain, and I saw nothing but more pain ahead of me, and I decided to end it. I realized, I can make this stop. One shot to the flicking head and it’s over,” an excerpt reads, as posted on gossip website TMZ.

The manuscript begins with the passage:

I’m going to tell you a story you’ve never heard before, because no one knows this story the way I know it. It takes place on the night June 12, 1994, and it concerns the murder of my ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her young friend, Ronald Goldman. I want you to forget everything you think you know about that night because I know the facts better than anyone. I know the players. I’ve seen the evidence. I’ve heard the theories. And, of course, I’ve read all the stories: That I did it. That I did it but I don’t know I did it. That I can no longer tell fact from fiction. That I wake up in the middle of the night, consumed by guilt, screaming.

(read more…)

The Best Life Diet by Bob Greene

What sets Bob apart from all the other experts who claim to have plans that work is that he admits that weight loss is difficult: seventeen years of watching people struggle to lose weight on a seemingly endless string of trendy crash diets, only to backslide and regain the pounds they’ve shed, have taught him that dropping pounds is not simply a numbers game. By acknowledging that it is not simple laziness but a complicated web of social rituals, cultural expectations, and habits that drives people to gain weight, Greene is able to attack the problem of weight loss realistically and offer not a short-lived, quick-fix formula, but a long-term program that accounts for the challenges and constraints of the real world. Buy The Best Life Diet

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

No book in modern times has matched the uproar sparked by Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, which earned its author a death sentence. Furor aside, it is a marvelously erudite study of good and evil, a feast of language served up by a writer at the height of his powers, and a rollicking comic fable. The book begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta (“for fifteen years the biggest star in the history of the Indian movies”) and Saladin Chamcha, a Bombay expatriate returning from his first visit to his homeland in 15 years, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations. Rushdie’s powers of invention are astonishing in this Whitbread Prize winner. Buy The Satanic Verses

Index of Forbidden Books (Index of Prohibited Books)

Created originally by Pope Paul IV in 1557, the infamous Index of Forbidden Books is a list of books which all Roman Catholics were prohibited from reading or even owning except under special circumstances and with ecclesiastical permission. This was a very serious prohibition because those Catholics who violated it could be punished with excommunication. Books were placed on this Index because they expressed ideas which were contrary to Catholic morals, contrary to Catholic teachings, contained theological errors, or in any way posed a threat to the power of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Enforcement of the prohibitions was given to the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church, later renamed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Updates to the Index were added regularly by either the Congregation or the Pope until its 20th edition in 1948. The Index of Forbidden Books was finally abolished in 1966 by Pope Paul VI because its existence and enforcement had become inconsistent with the growing spirit of free inquiry which had been promoted in the Second Vatican Council. It had also become quite evident that the prohibition simply wasn’t preventing Catholics from becoming aware of and even familiar with the idea that the Index was designed to suppress.
Source: About.com

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor was the first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient’s will to resist disease. It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term ‘cancer personality’ and speak more soothingly of ‘disease-producing lifestyles’ . . . AIDS and Its Metaphors extends her critique of cancer metaphors to the metaphors of dread surrounding the AIDS virus. Taken together, the two essays are an exemplary demonstration of the power of the intellect in the face of the lethal metaphors of fear. (read more…)

Tillie Olsen, feminist author

Tillie Lerner Olsen (January 14, 1912–January 1, 2007) was an American writer, associated with the political turmoil of 1930s and the first generation of American feminists. Though she published very little, Olsen was enormously influential for her treatment of the lives and thoughts of women and the poor and for drawing attention to why women have been less likely to be published authors (and why they receive less attention when they do). The extent of her centrality to American feminist fiction has caused some critics to be frustrated at simplistic feminist interpretations of her work. In particular, several critics have pointed to a greater role than is traditionally seen for Olsen’s Communist past. (read more…)