"Milan, 1497: Leonardo da Vinci is completing his masterpiece, The Last Supper. Pope Alexander VI is determined to execute him after realizing that the painting contains clues to a baffling — and blasphemous — message, which he is determined to decode. The Holy Grail and the Eucharistic Bread are missing, there is no meat on the table and, shockingly, the apostles are portraits of well-known heretics — none of them depicted with halos. And why has the artist painted himself into the scene with his back turned toward Jesus? The clues to Leonardo's greatest puzzle are right before your eyes."The Smoke Jumper ~ by Nicholas Evans (2001):
"The fire that was to change so many lives so utterly started with a single shaft of lightning. ... The woman, camped nearby with her group of troubled teenagers, slept on and heard nothing. She has brought them here by court order on a youth program to help them find themselves. But one among them will be lost forever. For soon the cocoon of fire will hatch to engulf the entire mountain and exact its deadly toll. And into this inferno will come the smoke jumper. His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his closest friend, Ed Tully, an ambitious young musician. Julia loves them both but the tragedy on Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them..."A Vindication of the Rights of Woman ~ by Mary Wollstonecraft (1792) is one of the earliest books on feminist philosophy. Wollstonecraft argues that women must be educated according to their class, since they had the major responsibility for educating the nation's children. Women are not ornaments or property to be traded in marriage, but human beings who deserve the same fundamental rights as men.
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Remember when you were a kid and getting new crayons was a big deal? Getting new books holds the same kind of magic for some of us big kids. Susan at Color Online came up with the idea of New Crayons to represent new books that arrived during the week.
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Will be interested to hear what you think of The Last Supper. I really enjoyed it. Then I read his follow up book, which I really didn't enjoy all that much! I haven't even checked to see if he has any other books out or not since then.
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