ABOUT THE BOOK Born in Jerusalem, Israel on June 9, 1981, Natalie Hershlag grew up to be Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman. An only child, she moved to the United States with her parents, Avner Hershlag and Shelley Stevens in 1984. Her father, an Israeli fertility doctor, and mother, an artist from Ohio, gave their only child a strong upbringing in Long Island, New York where they stressed education and travel. Natalie’s first language is Hebrew, but she has spoken English since she was a toddler. Natalie visited Israel twice a year as a child, and thanks to her father she still has dual citizenship. She attended Conservative Jewish day school through the seventh grade “to preserve my Hebrew and my sense of Israel more than anything religious,” Natalie told the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. As a child growing up on Long Island, she found her classmates treating her differently after she began getting work as an actress. It started as early as her first film role in Leon: The Professional in 1994. “In seventh grade, I cried every day when I came back from shooting The Professional,” she told the Jewish News agency in 2002. Years later, she would find the same isolation due to her fame while attending college. Because of her parents, Natalie chose to attend the Ivy-League Harvard University when most of her counterparts were finding themselves in the tabloids by getting in trouble. Natalie drew upon her Israeli background when she penned an op-ed piece in her college newspaper objecting to a law student’s essay condemning Israel. She objected to his assertion that the Middle Eastern country is a “racist colonial occupation ... (in which) white Israeli soldiers destroy refugee camps of the brown people they have dispossessed.” EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Family is important to Natalie. When she won her Golden Globe for Black Swan, she made a point to thank her grandmother Bernice, who lives in Cincinnati. In fact, it is this branch of Natalie’s family that could be responsible for Natalie’s foray into acting. Bernice’s husband Art, who changed his last name from Edelstein to Stevens, started the family showbiz tradition by starring in his own ads for his windows company, according to an article in The American Israelite. Natalie’s parents, Avner and Shelley, who met at a Jewish Center at Ohio State University, strived to maintain a strong extended family for their only child even after their move to New York. Bernice told the Cincinnati Enquirer in a quote that was included in the American Israelite that she visited her daughter’s family in New York several times a year and, “even though Natalie and I have never lived in the same city — we bonded when she was a baby.” The family had settled in the New York area after moving from Israel and Natalie experienced a serene upbringing. As a youth she attended exclusive and competitive theater camps like Stagedoor Manor and Usden Camp in the Catskills. She was discovered by a Revlon agent when she was 10 at a Long Island pizza parlor and acting in movies like Heat and Mars Attacks! early in her career. Natalie starred as Anne Frank on Broadway in 1998, a role she found extremely personal. “I grew up with the Holocaust, because my grandparents lost their entire families,” Natalie told the Jewish News. She even found a similar story to Anne’s in her own family. “My grandfather's 14-year-old brother was also hidden, but one day he couldn't take it anymore and he ran outside and was shot.” She found the role so emotional that she often found herself crying offstage. She told the Jewish News that “It's a stunning realization when you come to see how much historical memory affects you,” she says... ...buy the book to read more!
Most people are excited about their wedding day. However, the wedding day itself isn’t nearly as important as the years of marriage to follow. If you’re truly committed to being married “for better or for worse,” you need to learn how to communicate appropriately with your significant other. About 20 percent of marriages end in divorce within the first five years of the marriage, and most of these marriages fail because of communications issues. Although financial problems, problems with relatives, and problems in the bedroom are among the top reasons for divorce, the real issue usually has to do with the way the couple communicate about these problems. In my experience as a coach-in-training, people are often afraid to talk about problems because they don’t want to mess up the relationship. I’ve struggled with this as well, and I’ve found that every time I swallow anger, sadness or other negative feelings, I get depressed. Eventually, the feelings come out in a negative or destructive way, leaving me feeling embarrassed and causing unnecessary hurt to people I love. I’ve learned that honesty draws me closer to my significant other as well as allowing me to avoid that entire pattern. In any case, failure to communicate can cause tiny problems to become dealbreakers. For example, if you don’t say anything about your partner’s tendency to leave dishes in the sink, your partner may continue to leave the dishes undone and when you can’t stand it anymore, you might fire off a list of accusations that quickly become an argument. Lack of communication can also lead to partners feeling defensive or picked on if criticized by the other partner, and 93 percent of couples who fight unfairly or attack one another verbally will get divorced within 10 years of marriage. You’ll need to tone up your communication skills to help deal with bigger issues, too. The addition of a new baby into a family, a child going off to college, or a marriage partner changing jobs can cause both partners to become stressed out and then not deal with one another appropriately. Communication is even more important when a couple faces these types of situations; without communication, marriage partners will blow off steam by complaining to other people about one another or get buried in work so that they don’t have to speak to each other. Poor communication causes marriage partners to feel undervalued and unloved, and this in turn can cause partners to forget that they love one another in the first place. Once this shift occurs, partners begin to see one another as enemies and begin fighting each other out of a misplaced sense that their worth as human beings is being threatened. Once the marriage has been derailed in this manner, it’s difficult to get it back on track. Marriages that have deteriorated to this point require intervention from a counselor trained in teaching couples communication skills in order to stop the progression towards divorce. Whether you’re newly married or have been married for a while, you can learn to communicate better with your partner and resolve common problems. As communication skills increase, so will your emotional intimacy. The strength of your bond will keep the marriage from becoming another divorce statistic, regardless of what problems you have to face together.
ABOUT THE BOOK How can I accept that disaster has overtaken my life when the world continues to move so tranquilly through its cycles?"- The Magistrate Waiting for the Barbarians is JM Coetzee’s third novel and was published in 1980. It quickly garnered popular and critical attention for the relatively young South African author. It was awarded the CNA Prize (South Africa’s top literary award), the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (Britain’s literary prize for authors under 40), and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Scotland’s top publishing award as well as one of the oldest literary awards in the UK). This short but powerful novel was written during the time that Coetzee taught literature at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He had returned to his native country in 1972 after the United States government.. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK He is fascinated with uncovering the mysteries of this ancient town, and speculates on the possible ends their civilization came to. Did they succumb to the barbarians of old and die encamped within the walls? The Magistrate is not overly ambitious, and yet it soon becomes clear that even his modest hopes will prove extravagant. “When I pass away I hope to merit three lines of small print in the Imperial Gazette,” he says. “I have not asked for more then a quiet life in quiet times.” Despite the Magistrates temperate inclinations, he proves to be a ruthless observer of both his own nature and that of those he encounters. His awakening consciousness is unsparing and brutal as it systematically uncovers and destroys his illusions about life and the world. The sleepy frontier town, not even having facilities for prisoners, has idled along without event under the Magistrates stewardship, but has come recently to the Empire’s attention as stories of unrest among the barbarians have stirred the officials of the Third Bureau of the Civil Guard into action. The barbarian tribes, who are fishing people and aboriginals living a nomadic lifestyle on the edges of civilization, are rumored to be arming and organizing against the Empire. Colonel Joll and his men, the “doctors of interrogation,” come to the frontier with a particular theory of interrogation, “First I get lies, you see—this is what happens—first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then the truth,” Joll explains. “That is how you get the truth.” The Magistrate comments dryly, to himself: “Pain is truth, all else is subject to doubt.” Noting that about once every decade there is an eruption of hysteria about the barbarians, the Magistrate does his best to accommodate the Third Bureau, but finds himself impelled towards an inevitable confrontation with the powers he has served with a half-indifferent complacence for so many years... Buy the book to continue reading! Follow @hyperink on Twitter! Visit us at www.facebook.com/hyperink! Go to www.hyperink.com to join our newsletter and get awesome freebies! CHAPTER OUTLINE JM Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians + About the Book + Sidebar: A very brief introduction to colonization and Apartheid + Introducing the Author + Overall Summary + ...and much more
ABOUT THE BOOK Nora Roberts scoffs at spineless heroines ... “Weak, passive people don’t make good characters,” she says. She is equally brutal about needy men: “If a man wants someone to take care of him, he should get a dog as a companion and live with his mother.” - Washington Post It was a dark and stormy night - although it may not have been stormy or even dark, but the infamous blizzard of February 1979 was enough to lock Nora Roberts inside with her two young sons board games and a rapidly decreasing supply of chocolate. For something new to do, she grabbed a tablet and began writing her first novel in longhand and voila, she had found what she was meant to do. By 1980 her first novel was published From such humble beginnings, Nora Roberts today has written over 200 books, countless articles and stories and earns over $60 million each year. Not bad for a highschool graduate with no formal college or writing training. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Her writing is full of strong powerful women, able to solve problems, and able enter into healthy solid relationships with men. Another thing that makes her writing unique is that unlike most romance writing, the point of view is not always female. Roberts, with four older brothers and two sons, understands the male point of view - something she learned since she was surrounded by men all her life. (She finally has a grand-daughter, so the streak of only male relatives is over.) This often gives her books a new perspective and understanding of those stalwart heroes of romantic fiction. Her women are quite capable and not waiting to be rescued. They are equal adversaries of the men, and their relationships capture the sexual tension that permeates each page. Roberts’ lovers hover between the sublime and the mundane, treating sex as a wonderful useful outlet, but it is not the all encompassing flame that obfuscates the remainder of life. One of the reasons that romance literature is so soundly denigrated by reviewers and literary types is that it is fiction written by women for women. When a man writes a “romance” novel, it is immediately categorized as something else, so that it won’t fall under the chick lit stigma. As Roberts says “Unless "a guy writes one and they call it something else. And it gets reviewed and made into a movie ... A woman writes it and it's just one of those," she says. "I mean, how long are you going to fight that battle?" Meg Cabot, the author of the Princess Diaries novels, says is the cornerstone of her success. "Her heroes and heroines are so strong yet so flawed. They have these personal handicaps, and that's something that's made Nora's books so different to many written in the past, because the characters are so relatable." Roberts keeps her finger on the pulse of her readers’ interests and produces works that reflects the times. For instance in her The Circle Trilogy (2006), Roberts draws upon the rising interest in the supernatural, Irish mythology, wicca, witches, alternate worlds, vampire hunters, and of course vampires at war with humanity. She has three couples and despite adversity, produces a happy ending. Her three female characters are strong women; capable of leading nations and battles, conjuring spells and demon slaying as everyday occurrences. Her male characters are hot tempered, testy and brave, equal to the women in every way - even the ‘vampire hero’. Roberts fills her books with pop culture references, with characters drinking a “coke” or watching TV, using a laptop or even copying shower schematics to translate to a more medieval world. What works best though is the interplay between the characters, the sexual tension and its ultimate release.
ABOUT THE BOOK How can I accept that disaster has overtaken my life when the world continues to move so tranquilly through its cycles?"- The Magistrate Waiting for the Barbarians is JM Coetzee’s third novel and was published in 1980. It quickly garnered popular and critical attention for the relatively young South African author. It was awarded the CNA Prize (South Africa’s top literary award), the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (Britain’s literary prize for authors under 40), and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (Scotland’s top publishing award as well as one of the oldest literary awards in the UK). This short but powerful novel was written during the time that Coetzee taught literature at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He had returned to his native country in 1972 after the United States government.. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK He is fascinated with uncovering the mysteries of this ancient town, and speculates on the possible ends their civilization came to. Did they succumb to the barbarians of old and die encamped within the walls? The Magistrate is not overly ambitious, and yet it soon becomes clear that even his modest hopes will prove extravagant. “When I pass away I hope to merit three lines of small print in the Imperial Gazette,” he says. “I have not asked for more then a quiet life in quiet times.” Despite the Magistrates temperate inclinations, he proves to be a ruthless observer of both his own nature and that of those he encounters. His awakening consciousness is unsparing and brutal as it systematically uncovers and destroys his illusions about life and the world. The sleepy frontier town, not even having facilities for prisoners, has idled along without event under the Magistrates stewardship, but has come recently to the Empire’s attention as stories of unrest among the barbarians have stirred the officials of the Third Bureau of the Civil Guard into action. The barbarian tribes, who are fishing people and aboriginals living a nomadic lifestyle on the edges of civilization, are rumored to be arming and organizing against the Empire. Colonel Joll and his men, the “doctors of interrogation,” come to the frontier with a particular theory of interrogation, “First I get lies, you see—this is what happens—first lies, then pressure, then more lies, then more pressure, then the break, then more pressure, then the truth,” Joll explains. “That is how you get the truth.” The Magistrate comments dryly, to himself: “Pain is truth, all else is subject to doubt.” Noting that about once every decade there is an eruption of hysteria about the barbarians, the Magistrate does his best to accommodate the Third Bureau, but finds himself impelled towards an inevitable confrontation with the powers he has served with a half-indifferent complacence for so many years... Buy the book to continue reading! Follow @hyperink on Twitter! Visit us at www.facebook.com/hyperink! Go to www.hyperink.com to join our newsletter and get awesome freebies! CHAPTER OUTLINE JM Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians + About the Book + Sidebar: A very brief introduction to colonization and Apartheid + Introducing the Author + Overall Summary + ...and much more
Most people are excited about their wedding day. However, the wedding day itself isn’t nearly as important as the years of marriage to follow. If you’re truly committed to being married “for better or for worse,” you need to learn how to communicate appropriately with your significant other. About 20 percent of marriages end in divorce within the first five years of the marriage, and most of these marriages fail because of communications issues. Although financial problems, problems with relatives, and problems in the bedroom are among the top reasons for divorce, the real issue usually has to do with the way the couple communicate about these problems. In my experience as a coach-in-training, people are often afraid to talk about problems because they don’t want to mess up the relationship. I’ve struggled with this as well, and I’ve found that every time I swallow anger, sadness or other negative feelings, I get depressed. Eventually, the feelings come out in a negative or destructive way, leaving me feeling embarrassed and causing unnecessary hurt to people I love. I’ve learned that honesty draws me closer to my significant other as well as allowing me to avoid that entire pattern. In any case, failure to communicate can cause tiny problems to become dealbreakers. For example, if you don’t say anything about your partner’s tendency to leave dishes in the sink, your partner may continue to leave the dishes undone and when you can’t stand it anymore, you might fire off a list of accusations that quickly become an argument. Lack of communication can also lead to partners feeling defensive or picked on if criticized by the other partner, and 93 percent of couples who fight unfairly or attack one another verbally will get divorced within 10 years of marriage. You’ll need to tone up your communication skills to help deal with bigger issues, too. The addition of a new baby into a family, a child going off to college, or a marriage partner changing jobs can cause both partners to become stressed out and then not deal with one another appropriately. Communication is even more important when a couple faces these types of situations; without communication, marriage partners will blow off steam by complaining to other people about one another or get buried in work so that they don’t have to speak to each other. Poor communication causes marriage partners to feel undervalued and unloved, and this in turn can cause partners to forget that they love one another in the first place. Once this shift occurs, partners begin to see one another as enemies and begin fighting each other out of a misplaced sense that their worth as human beings is being threatened. Once the marriage has been derailed in this manner, it’s difficult to get it back on track. Marriages that have deteriorated to this point require intervention from a counselor trained in teaching couples communication skills in order to stop the progression towards divorce. Whether you’re newly married or have been married for a while, you can learn to communicate better with your partner and resolve common problems. As communication skills increase, so will your emotional intimacy. The strength of your bond will keep the marriage from becoming another divorce statistic, regardless of what problems you have to face together.
ABOUT THE BOOK Nora Roberts scoffs at spineless heroines ... “Weak, passive people don’t make good characters,” she says. She is equally brutal about needy men: “If a man wants someone to take care of him, he should get a dog as a companion and live with his mother.” - Washington Post It was a dark and stormy night - although it may not have been stormy or even dark, but the infamous blizzard of February 1979 was enough to lock Nora Roberts inside with her two young sons board games and a rapidly decreasing supply of chocolate. For something new to do, she grabbed a tablet and began writing her first novel in longhand and voila, she had found what she was meant to do. By 1980 her first novel was published From such humble beginnings, Nora Roberts today has written over 200 books, countless articles and stories and earns over $60 million each year. Not bad for a highschool graduate with no formal college or writing training. EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Her writing is full of strong powerful women, able to solve problems, and able enter into healthy solid relationships with men. Another thing that makes her writing unique is that unlike most romance writing, the point of view is not always female. Roberts, with four older brothers and two sons, understands the male point of view - something she learned since she was surrounded by men all her life. (She finally has a grand-daughter, so the streak of only male relatives is over.) This often gives her books a new perspective and understanding of those stalwart heroes of romantic fiction. Her women are quite capable and not waiting to be rescued. They are equal adversaries of the men, and their relationships capture the sexual tension that permeates each page. Roberts’ lovers hover between the sublime and the mundane, treating sex as a wonderful useful outlet, but it is not the all encompassing flame that obfuscates the remainder of life. One of the reasons that romance literature is so soundly denigrated by reviewers and literary types is that it is fiction written by women for women. When a man writes a “romance” novel, it is immediately categorized as something else, so that it won’t fall under the chick lit stigma. As Roberts says “Unless "a guy writes one and they call it something else. And it gets reviewed and made into a movie ... A woman writes it and it's just one of those," she says. "I mean, how long are you going to fight that battle?" Meg Cabot, the author of the Princess Diaries novels, says is the cornerstone of her success. "Her heroes and heroines are so strong yet so flawed. They have these personal handicaps, and that's something that's made Nora's books so different to many written in the past, because the characters are so relatable." Roberts keeps her finger on the pulse of her readers’ interests and produces works that reflects the times. For instance in her The Circle Trilogy (2006), Roberts draws upon the rising interest in the supernatural, Irish mythology, wicca, witches, alternate worlds, vampire hunters, and of course vampires at war with humanity. She has three couples and despite adversity, produces a happy ending. Her three female characters are strong women; capable of leading nations and battles, conjuring spells and demon slaying as everyday occurrences. Her male characters are hot tempered, testy and brave, equal to the women in every way - even the ‘vampire hero’. Roberts fills her books with pop culture references, with characters drinking a “coke” or watching TV, using a laptop or even copying shower schematics to translate to a more medieval world. What works best though is the interplay between the characters, the sexual tension and its ultimate release.
ABOUT THE BOOK Born in Jerusalem, Israel on June 9, 1981, Natalie Hershlag grew up to be Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman. An only child, she moved to the United States with her parents, Avner Hershlag and Shelley Stevens in 1984. Her father, an Israeli fertility doctor, and mother, an artist from Ohio, gave their only child a strong upbringing in Long Island, New York where they stressed education and travel. Natalie’s first language is Hebrew, but she has spoken English since she was a toddler. Natalie visited Israel twice a year as a child, and thanks to her father she still has dual citizenship. She attended Conservative Jewish day school through the seventh grade “to preserve my Hebrew and my sense of Israel more than anything religious,” Natalie told the Jewish News of Greater Phoenix. As a child growing up on Long Island, she found her classmates treating her differently after she began getting work as an actress. It started as early as her first film role in Leon: The Professional in 1994. “In seventh grade, I cried every day when I came back from shooting The Professional,” she told the Jewish News agency in 2002. Years later, she would find the same isolation due to her fame while attending college. Because of her parents, Natalie chose to attend the Ivy-League Harvard University when most of her counterparts were finding themselves in the tabloids by getting in trouble. Natalie drew upon her Israeli background when she penned an op-ed piece in her college newspaper objecting to a law student’s essay condemning Israel. She objected to his assertion that the Middle Eastern country is a “racist colonial occupation ... (in which) white Israeli soldiers destroy refugee camps of the brown people they have dispossessed.” EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK Family is important to Natalie. When she won her Golden Globe for Black Swan, she made a point to thank her grandmother Bernice, who lives in Cincinnati. In fact, it is this branch of Natalie’s family that could be responsible for Natalie’s foray into acting. Bernice’s husband Art, who changed his last name from Edelstein to Stevens, started the family showbiz tradition by starring in his own ads for his windows company, according to an article in The American Israelite. Natalie’s parents, Avner and Shelley, who met at a Jewish Center at Ohio State University, strived to maintain a strong extended family for their only child even after their move to New York. Bernice told the Cincinnati Enquirer in a quote that was included in the American Israelite that she visited her daughter’s family in New York several times a year and, “even though Natalie and I have never lived in the same city — we bonded when she was a baby.” The family had settled in the New York area after moving from Israel and Natalie experienced a serene upbringing. As a youth she attended exclusive and competitive theater camps like Stagedoor Manor and Usden Camp in the Catskills. She was discovered by a Revlon agent when she was 10 at a Long Island pizza parlor and acting in movies like Heat and Mars Attacks! early in her career. Natalie starred as Anne Frank on Broadway in 1998, a role she found extremely personal. “I grew up with the Holocaust, because my grandparents lost their entire families,” Natalie told the Jewish News. She even found a similar story to Anne’s in her own family. “My grandfather's 14-year-old brother was also hidden, but one day he couldn't take it anymore and he ran outside and was shot.” She found the role so emotional that she often found herself crying offstage. She told the Jewish News that “It's a stunning realization when you come to see how much historical memory affects you,” she says... ...buy the book to read more!
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.