![]() ![]() ![]() Susan is survived by her daughter, Jessica (Greg) Anderson and her three granddaughters, Paige, Jenna, and Natalie. She could be found watching all three play softball and watching Paige show livestock at the fair. Most of all, she enjoyed her granddaughters, who were the light of her life. She enjoyed cultivating and sharing them. ![]() She was an avid Hosta gardener and collected different varieties of rare Hosta. Her stuffed pizzelles and cookie trays were renowned and the favorites of many people. She ran the concession stand for the Western Pennsylvania Antique Tractor Pullers for over 15 years and currently served as the secretary of the organization. ![]() If you were in her presence, you did not go hungry. Everyone in the hospital knew “Laboratory Suzy” would be there to answer the phone on night shift. Suzy went on to work at Jameson Memorial Hospital from 1980 to 2019, retiring early due to her ongoing battle with cancer. She continued her education at Beaver County Community College, graduating in 1980 with an associate degree in medical laboratory technology. She was born on Octoin Ellwood City to the late Dominick and Elizabeth Pratt. Susan Elizabeth Pratt, 66, passed away peacefully at UPMC Jameson Hospital on June 1, 2023, after a six-year battle with cancer. ![]()
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![]() ![]() I got caught up in their excitement over reading and wanting to write their own stories about Dogman and I didn’t realize what the characters were doing or saying. One day I sat down to read with my preschooler and got really upset with myself that I was allowing them to read this. My mistake was assuming that some parents (and authors) don’t care what their kid is reading and what it is teaching them. ![]() My preschooler (who can also read) would be doing the same, and eventually the two of them would argue about who gets to read which book in the series. My 1st grader picked this up from the school book fair and I was ECSTATIC because he was so immersed in the book, was cracking up, and wanted to read it at all times of the day. I push my boys to get dirty and try new adventures and fail and make mistakes- but I cannot endorse this book. I want to start this off by saying that I am not a strict/clutch my pearls type of parent. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He’s a former NASA robotics expert who nowmakes a living drawing the geeky comic strip XKCD and writing books. And Randall Munroe is the perfect guy to take on a project like this. If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t really understand it. A nuclear reactor is a “heavy metal power building.” A dishwasher is a “box that cleans food holders.” The periodic table is “the pieces everything is made of.” Instead he draws blueprint-style diagrams and annotates them using only the 1,000 most common words in the English language. Constitution says-without any complicated terms. Munroe sets out to explain various subjects-from how smartphones work to what the U.S. So it was fun to read Randall Munroe’s new book, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, which will come out on November 24. I still go through that process today with different subjects. In vitro just means “in the glass”-as in test tubes. ![]() Over the years I’ve gotten comfortable with all the terms, but at first I had to keep reminding myself: Serum just means blood without the red and white cells. It is not unusual to be discussing the latest disease research and hear someone throw around words like serum and in vitro (and more complicated ones). I’ve found this is especially true if you work in an area like health. Terminology is an occupational hazard of philanthropy. ![]() ![]() ![]() David’s analysis is much more focused on himself and a few characters very close to himself - his father, his mother and step-mother, his sister and her husband and Netty Quelch his long-term nanny, now housekeeper. The structure is clever, though not original, but does tend to limit the novel more than most other Davies’ novels I’ve read. ![]() The novel is fundamentally the process of David’s analysis, or is it treatment, under the guidance of Dr. In a move that surprises even himself, he heads off to Zurich to the Jung Institute and puts himself under Jungian psychiatric care. (We who’ve ready the first volume of this trilogy, FIFTH BUSINESS know the truth of that event.) David, a very successful 40 year-old criminal lawyer, is having a hard time coping with his father’s death and his life in general. ![]() Since I have several reviews of Davies' work I have set up a page to collect my comments and other links to Davies' workĭavid Staughton’s father has been killed, probably murdered. New York: Penguin, 1983 from 1976 original THE MANTICORE THE MANTICORE Robertson Davies ![]() ![]() (Daniel Boone’s first emigrants to Kentucky left in 1773 but did so illegally, thanks to the Proclamation of 1763 limiting settlement to east of the Appalachian mountains.) McCullough offers a tantalizing glimpse of a future more defined by communitarianism than individualism ![]() Ohio has always been a pivotal state and the founding of Marietta marks the beginning of organized settlement in the successive western frontiers. Those first settlers were the “foremost pioneers” in both the literal and figurative sense, facing hard work clearing land for agriculture, the threats of disease and war with Native Americans, among other dangers. ![]() ![]() David McCullough puts the story much earlier, with the founding of what became the state of Ohio, and ends it during the civil war.Īt the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the American revolution, the Americans led by future president John Adams insisted on the cession of the lands north-west of the Ohio River to the Mississippi, the “Northwest Territory”. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Linking prehistoric archaeological remains with the development of language, David W. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language lifts the veil that has long shrouded these original Indo-European speakers, and reveals how their domestication of horses and use of the wheel spread language and transformed civilization. But who were the early speakers of this ancient mother tongue, and how did they manage to spread it around the globe? Until now their identity has remained a tantalizing mystery to linguists, archaeologists, and even Nazis seeking the roots of the Aryan race. Roughly half the world's population speaks languages derived from a shared linguistic source known as Proto-Indo-European. ![]() ![]() She also has her brother, Matt, by her side this time. She’s more feisty, and has finally started putting her foot down – particularly when it comes to her mother. As for our protagonist, Wendy, she has grown from the previous novel. He is a great addition to the cast who is quickly becoming my favorite of the male characters. Now comes Loki, the willful, irresistible bad boy. We meet again with the wonderful characters from Switched, accompanied by some new faces who are equally endearing. Even though it’s not constantly intense or heart pounding, there is enough going on throughout the book to make it easy to fly through it. ![]() The story itself, which starts off thick on the action, quickly dwindles down to a smoother course where we concentrate more on plot development. ![]() Everything is very complex with careful forethought. It’s clear that this world was made with great effort. We get a bigger look at what the future will have in store, not only for Wendy, but for the whole Trylle race. ![]() We learn a lot more about the politics of the Trylle as well as of the Vittra. ![]() We meet the queen, we visit the kingdom and we learn where Wendy fits in all of this. In Switched, we’re introduced to this new race of Trylle. It’s an honorable sequel with a lot of world building, plenty of characterization, and enough twists to keep you enchanted until the end. In this second installment of the Trylle trilogy, we reunite with Wendy inside this strange new world she’s still digesting. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Nevertheless, it was very, very pleasurable for a light read on a sleepy slightly hungover Sunday afternoon, in the bath. The plot is the weak point : I love inconsequential books about character development and 'learning how to live' but somehow this didn't quite hold itself together well enough. There's a fascinating description of the publishing industry - again, not romanticised. ![]() However, back to the book: this does a better job than almost any book I've ever read of making the reader feel the pleasure of living in a contemporary but historical city, and top marks to MR for celebrating its people as much as its buildings and not as cockney stereotypes. How ironic when our museums are all free - but then museums get a government subsidy and churches don't. Beautiful evocation of London, which made me long to rush out and see all the Wren churches, and also made me seethe with the fact that most of them by now charge quite high admission charges - no chance of popping into St Pauls to see the view from the west door right down to the altar at the far end when you'#d have to pay nearly £20 as an adult to do so. ![]() ![]() ![]() Sorry Finnikin and Trevanion, you came close!įavorite female character: Quintana. He is pretty much the ultimate character crush. ![]() A tormented mess of an assassin who discovers flawed family, true love, heroism and himself. ![]() ![]() I had some issues with Finnikin of the Rock (the first book) on my initial read, though I genuinely like it in retrospect, and Quintana of Charyn was excellent (and it and FotE are really one novel tbh) but FotE was my favorite - all the plot and romance and character development and near death experiences and ohhhh, my favorite OTP!įavorite male character: This one is hard, but Froi wins that one. SPOILERS GALOREįavorite Book: Froi of the Exiles. So I am going to do my own q/a thing for it, because it’s easier than a review and allows me to blab about it more. Objectively, the world building is problematic (those population numbers for Lumatere simply do not make sense in light of their cultural variety and political importance), but the language, the plot and, above all, the characters simply make it not matter. I haven’t fallen in love with a book (because it’s really one long novel, especially books 2 and 3) this hard in a very long time. So, I just finished the Lumatere Chronicles trilogy and I am totally bereft. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() So Kehlmann's Tyll is born around 1600 and plays tricks in the Holy Roman Empire of the 17th century. So why not employ the most famous, archetypical vagrant of all?, Kehlmann thought. ![]() The society back then was very static, there was basically no social mobility, and one of the few groups who could travel and experience different classes where vagrants. As the author explains, the choice of Tyll as the central character is more of a literary device: Kehlmann wanted to portray the society of the Early Modern Period, when people where caught in a time of constant change, turmoil and violence. But while the "original" Tyll was supposedly born around 1300 and travelled the Holy Roman Empire as a vagrant and provocateur, Kehlmann transports his Tyll into the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648). The most widely translated author writing in German today writes a book circling around the most famous German trickster: Every child around here grows up with the classic tales of Tyll Ulenspiegel (also: Till Eulenspiegel) which go back to Middle Low German folklore. Now Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020 ![]() |