Young adult fiction author John Green, whose books include The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska, recounted a story on Twitter about receiving a signed copy of his book from the notoriously media-shy author after the birth of his son. When my son Henry was born, Ms. Lee signed a copy of Looking for Alaska for him with the inscription, "Welcome to the world Henry Atticus. That book is my most prized possession. Lee lived a private life, but she was quietly and extraordinarily generous.
- One Gone Cat.
- O Dem Golden Slippers?
- Carla Sandrin author page.
- A Walk in the Park!
- Sara Baume is readers' nominee for Guardian first book award 2015?
Oprah Winfrey Oprah Harper Lee my 1st favorite author! Senator Tim Kaine timkaine Harper Lee's lessons of race and dignity inspired me to become a civil rights lawyer. Her work endures and will inspire generations to come February 19, Young adult fiction author John Green, whose books include The Fault in Our Stars, Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska, recounted a story on Twitter about receiving a signed copy of his book from the notoriously media-shy author after the birth of his son.
John Green johngreen When my son Henry was born, Ms. Aaron Sorkin Tim Cook news. Order by newest oldest recommendations. Show 25 25 50 All. Copies made of more durable materials inevitably fail to capture all the subtleties of the writer's voice, and are thus shunned. In order to preserve their literary heritage, the Allatians have to lock away their most precious manuscripts in forbidding libraries where few are granted access. Ironically, the most important and beautiful works of Allatian writers are rarely read, but are known only through interpretations made by scribes who attempt to reconstruct the original in new books after hearing the source read at special ceremonies.
For the most influential works, hundreds, thousands of interpretations exist in circulation, and they, in turn, are interpreted and proliferate through new copies. The Allatian scholars spend much of their time debating the relative authority of competing versions and inferring, based on the multiplicity of imperfect copies, the imagined voice of their antecedent, an ideal book uncorrupted by readers.
They are a race of mechanical beings.
- Navigation menu;
- WELCOME TO MY BLOG.
- Top 5: Traditional Chinese Recipes.
- Sara Baume is readers' nominee for Guardian first book award | Books | The Guardian.
It is not known if they began as mechanical creations of another older species, if they are shells hosting the souls of a once-organic race, or if they evolved on their own from inert matter. A Quatzoli's body is made out of copper and shaped like an hourglass. Their planet, tracing out a complicated orbit between three stars, is subjected to immense tidal forces that churn and melt its metal core, radiating heat to the surface in the form of steamy geysers and lakes of lava. A Quatzoli ingests water into its bottom chamber a few times a day, where it slowly boils and turns into steam as the Quatzoli periodically dips itself into the bubbling lava lakes.
The steam passes through a regulating valve — the narrow part of the hourglass — into the upper chamber, where it powers the various gears and levers that animate the mechanical creature. At the end of the work cycle, the steam cools and condenses against the inner surface of the upper chamber. The droplets of water flow along grooves etched into the copper until they are collected into a steady stream, and this stream then passes through a porous stone rich in carbonate minerals before being disposed of outside the body.
This stone is the seat of the Quatzoli mind. The stone organ is filled with thousands, millions of intricate channels, forming a maze that divides the water into countless tiny, parallel flows that drip, trickle, wind around each other to represent simple values which, together, coalesce into streams of consciousness and emerge as currents of thought.
UNCORRUPTED a novel
Over time, the pattern of water flowing through the stone changes. Older channels are worn down and disappear or become blocked and closed off — and so some memories are forgotten. New channels are created, connecting previously separated flows — an epiphany — and the departing water deposits new mineral growths at the far, youngest end of the stone, where the tentative, fragile miniature stalactites are the newest, freshest thoughts. When a Quatzoli parent creates a child in the forge, its final act is to gift the child with a sliver of its own stone mind, a package of received wisdom and ready thoughts that allow the child to begin its life.
UNCORRUPTED a novel by Carla Sandrin | Blurb Books Canada
As the child accumulates experiences, its stone brain grows around that core, becoming ever more intricate and elaborate, until it can, in turn, divide its mind for the use of its children. And so the Quatzoli are themselves books.
Each carries within its stone brain a written record of the accumulated wisdom of all its ancestors: Each mind grows from a seed inherited through the millennia, and every thought leaves a mark that can be read and seen. Some of the more violent races of the universe, such as the Hesperoe, once delighted in extracting and collecting the stone brains of the Quatzoli.
How Sara Baume made it on to the Guardian first book award longlist
Still displayed in their museums and libraries, the stones — often labeled simply "ancient books" — no longer mean much to most visitors. Because they could separate thought from writing, the conquering races were able to leave a record that is free of blemishes and thoughts that would have made their descendants shudder.
But the stone brains remain in their glass cases, waiting for water to flow through the dry channels so that once again they can be read and live.