Pages Tagged “Death”
Reviews
- The Word of Unbinding and The Rule of Names
★★★★☆
Ursula K. Le Guin
The original two stories set in Earthsea, before Le Guin wrote the novels. Each stand-alone, each interesting both in itself and in seeing what the series and its themes grew from.
Les Misérables
- Get Me To The Courthouse On Time Getting to not-Valjean's trial is a lot more complicated than a scene change. It's more like Hurley trying to make Flight 815.
- Meeting Marius Marius grows up in a staunch royalist household, but when he learns they've lied about his Bonapartist father, he starts questioning everything.
- Bones Reading up on the Paris Catacombs. How did Hugo not include them in Les Mis???
- (From) Drinking to Revolution Grantaire holds court in a tavern, the barricade goes up, Javert is discovered, and Marius has a very different experience getting into the combat zone.
- Hey Barricade, Who’s in Charge Here? Initial skirmishes on the barricade, the first deaths, Marius' suicide mission, Gavroche pushing things a bit too far, and Valjean reaching another crisis.
- Passing Peak Ammunition The barricade holds against several attacks the next morning, but they start running out of bullets...and defenders. Adieu to Gavroche and Javert.
- Last Stand at the Barricade Hugo lays out the main theme of the book, 1000 pages in. The barricade falls, the surviving defenders retreat to the tavern, and Grantaire wakes up at last.
- Jumper Javert's decision to commit suicide doesn't take long to tell, but it's an interesting scene that calls back to other dilemmas he's faced.
- This is the End Without Javert, Valjean pursues himself to his own shocking decline, stopped only when Thenardier tries and fails to blackmail Marius. Sadly, it's too late.
- Jealousy Éponine literally arranges to get Marius killed because he rejected her. And arranges to die herself, because she has no hope for her future.
- Derailing Javert’s One-Track Mind What undoes Javert is that he can't handle uncertainty. He's by-the-book, starkly authoritarian, and as soon as he has to think about things, he bails.
- Authority Javert is authoritarian, but he's not a leader. He's a follower, because he craves certainty.
Blog Posts
- Ten Shots
Off-duty cop fires ten shots at an unarmed intellectually disabled man and his family from twenty feet away, killing him and critically wounding his parents, because he pushed him in a Costco food line 3.8 seconds earlier. No charges filed, because he had “no choice.” 10 shots at 3 unarmed people. 20 feet away. In […]
- Wondering About Age and Food Allergy Deaths
OK, this is a bit morbid, but bear with me. Most news stories about deaths from food allergies feature children or teenagers, maybe young adults in their twenties. You read about grieving parents. You rarely read about the 40-year-old who leaves behind a grieving spouse and kids. Food allergies send a lot of people to […]
- Mike Wieringo (1963-2007)
This weekend I re-read Tellos, a fantasy comic book that ran from 1999-2000. Writer Todd Dezago and artist Mike Wieringo took a 6-month hiatus to prepare the next story arc, but that arc never materialized. Just a few one-shots and an anthology mini that explored backstories and aftermath, with a few hints at the upcoming story. Though […]