The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters : read online (free)

read The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters for free online :

http://www.onread.com/reader/191629

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell : read online (free)

read Black Beauty by Anna Sewell for free online :

http://www.onread.com/reader/191055

the hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien : read online (free)

read the hobbit by J.R.R tolkien online for free by the following link :

http://www.onread.com/reader/191038

the tale of two cities by charles dickens : read online (free)

Read the tale of two cities online for free :
http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/twocities/1/

book review : Shadow Hills

After discovering her sister Athena was plagued by similar nightmares before her death, Persephone “Phe” Archer decides to attend the boarding school in Shadow Hills, Massachusetts Athena applied to. Once she gets there, Phe finds herself investigating the town’s haunting past and how she might fit into it.

Despite a tentative beginning (I might have groaned a bit when the novel started with a dream), I was hooked by the end of chapter 1 with an electrifying meet-cute in a graveyard between Phe and her “dream” guy Zach. Their palpable chemistry is a main attraction in this fresh, thrilling take on the paranormal romance genre.


Phe is inquisitive and spunky, and though she tells us she’s broken inside, I didn’t really get that vibe from her. If anything, she felt too put together and self-possessed to be a 15 year old mourning her sister’s death. Zach is your typical brooding hottie hiding a paranormal secret, but he’s surprisingly gentlemanly and non-possessive. These two seem destined to be together…too bad Zach’s sister Corinne is dead-set on keeping them away from each other “for their own protection”.

And just why they'd be better off apart despite their undeniable, magnetic attraction is part of the mystery. The more secrets about the townspeople, their strange genetic make-up, and her own seemingly mythological part in the whole affair Phe uncovers, the more the more danger she puts herself in. Though we get enough answers and teases in this installment to get a good sense of what might be going on, I have a feeling we haven’t seen the end of Shadow Hills. And that’s fine by me – because I want more!

book review -- Building Up and Tearing Down: Reflections on the Age of Architecture

Paul Goldberger is the Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic for The New Yorker and Building Up is a collection of his pieces from that publication since he started in 1997.  Coincidently that year was the beginning of the last great architecture boom, which as of the Great Recession, is now a relic of the past.  In 1997 the Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao by Frank O. Gehry opened to the public and it brought with it the Bilbao Effect.  The architecture landscape following the Bilbao Effect is dotted with works by Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaus, Steven Holl, Zaha Hadid to mention just a few of these so-called starchitects.  Fittingly the works of all these architects appear in the book.

The book does a great job categorizing the Age of Architecture through its chapters.  The books starts with Buildings that Matter.  And love ‘em or hate ‘em the buildings that show up in this chapter certainly had a lasting effect on the field of architecture.  From Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall and Koolhaus’ Seattle Public Library to the 2008 Beijing Olympics architecture of Herzog and de Meuron’s “Bird’s Nest” and PTW’s “Water Cube” these buildings epitomize the innovation and excess of the time.

From there we take a look at some of the movers and shakers in Places and People. The role of these people in various aspects of the built environment are evident even today.  The Eames.  Mies van der Rohe.  Louis Kahn.  Robert Moses.  Daniel Burnham.  Try to teach an architectural history lesson without those guys.  It would be impossible.  Goldberger does a great job of telling a story while weaving in a lot of lesser known information.

Then there’s a chapter on New York.  From fashion to finance to design, New York City is always a leader.  With so many buildings in the city that never sleeps there are a lot of good and a lot of bad.  Goldberger is fair in his kudos and criticism.  And maybe more than any point in the book, Goldberger has a lot of critical things to say about things going on in New York.  Considering its the place he calls home, one may be surprised with his assessment of the city’s built environment.

While I enjoyed the book, my favorite chapter may have been Past and Present. Being a historic preservationist I take great interest in not only the protection of historic structures but also the way the past is represented and how new construction interacts with the existing fabric.  With examples from China and how’s they are dressing up commercial enterprises as traditional Chinese buildings and the true genius of Washington’s Mount Vernon (which he thinks is at least equal to Jefferson’s Monticello) Goldberger gives the past a fair shake (which isn’t always the case in the always super progressive world of starchitecture).  Furthermore he looks at the World War II Memorial on the nation’s Mall and the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial and how we build to memorialize the past.

And finally he ends the book with two fitting chapters, Museums and Ways of Living.  If any building will come to stand as the icon of the Age of Architecture it will certainly be the museum.  The building that started it all is, in fact, a museum- Bilbao.  Plus, we have to look no further than the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim, as case in point as to which building is the choice of architects.  This chapter includes, not surprisingly, pieces on: Bilbao, the British Museum (Norman Foster), Milwaukee Art Museum (Santiago Calatrava), Modern Art Museum of Forth Worth (Tado Ando), Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati (Zaha Hadid), Denver Art Museum (Daniel Libeskind) to name most of them.

The most poignant piece for me is the second to last entry.  And its seems about as far from architecture as a piece in an architecture book can be, but then again, maybe its as close to architecture as any other article comprised in this book.  This particular piece is actually fromMetropolis and is titled, Disconnected Urbanism. The article is essentially about the cell phone.  But the heart of the matter is that with the cell phone there is now a “blurring of distinctions between different kinds of places.”  New York is Miami is Los Angles is Houston is Boise.  As much as we architects like to think buildings matter, we may be over selling ourselves.  To the general public there is little distinction between what is happening on the streets of New York versus what is happening on the streets of Seattle.  We’re oblivious to it.

So it looks like its time to engage the public.  And once the shine wears off, it’s not going to be the large swooping titanium curves that does it.

book review : On Private Property: Finding Common Ground on the Ownership of Land

Written by published author and Professor of Law Eric T. Freyfogle, On Private Property: Finding Common Ground in the Ownership of Land is a thoughtful look at the recurring dilemma of the private property debate. When is eminent domain justified, and when is urban sprawl too much? When should land be put in public trust to preserve natural life, and when should private property owners' rights prevail? Though Freyfogle acknowledges the concerns of the property-rights movement, he warns that the movement is at risk of distorting the institution of private ownership itself, by completely severing its connections to responsible community welfare. Criticizing the land conservation movement for its excessive and indiscriminate payments to landowners, allegedly to use their lands well, and stressing that the landowner's responsibility not to alter lands in ways that bring ecological decline should not be overlooked, Freyfogle suggests a Landowner Bill of Rights that is vastly different from current property-rights measures being debated. Packed cover to cover with well-reasoned arguments that take both public and private needs into account, On Private Party is a welcome contribution to an ongoing dispute.