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| Top left: father and son; Botton left: granddaughter and grandmother; Right: sister and brother My photos, edited with Snapseed and collaged with PicFrame; text by Phonto |
What Changes Everything Book description, from the publisher’s website:
After Todd Barbery, director of a humanitarian organization working with refugees, is assaulted and kidnapped on the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan nothing remains the same. How could it?
What Changes Everything is the story of Todd’s wife, Clarissa, who tries to save her husband, while her own life spins out of control in the dark nights of Brooklyn. There on the night streets, she meets Danil, an angry New York graffiti artist whose life was derailed by a loss in the same incomprehensible war half a world away. Danil’s mother Stela writes letter after letter from her bookstore in Cleveland in hopes of comprehending the loss of one son on an Afghan battlefield and of reconnecting with Danil, who abandoned her in anger when his brother died. This is also the story of Mandy, a mother from Texas, grappling with the fury of a wounded son who barely made it home from that war. And it’s Todd’s story, too, who for only a moment let down his guard in a Kabul marketplace and now confronts the worst of possibilities.
But, remarkably, What Changes Everything also tells another story: the true story of Mohammad Najibullah, the last president of Afghanistan during the Communist era, whose fall from power was made final by the arrival of the Taliban. The letters in this novel from Najibullah to his three daughters are imagined, but the author had the privilege of lengthy exchanges with one of them, who shared recollections of her father—and a poem her mother had written about him.
Masha Hamilton braids the lives of all these characters, real and imagined, into a powerful novel about the grace of human connections in a world that is so often too harsh and dangerous to face alone,
Someday, Someday, Maybe: A NovelBook description, from the publisher’s website
It’s January 1995, and Franny Banks has just six months left of the three-year deadline she set for herself when she came to New York, dreaming of Broadway and doing “important” work. But all she has to show for her efforts so far is a part in an ad for ugly Christmas sweaters, and a gig waiting tables at a comedy club. Her roommates--her best friend Jane, and Dan, an aspiring sci-fi writer--are supportive, yet Franny knows a two-person fan club doesn’t exactly count as success. Everyone tells her she needs a backup plan, and though she can almost picture moving back home and settling down with her perfectly nice ex-boyfriend, she’s not ready to give up on her goal of having a career like her idols Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep. Not just yet. But while she dreams of filling their shoes, in the meantime, she’d happily settle for a speaking part in almost anything—and finding a hair product combination that works.
Everything is riding on the upcoming showcase for her acting class, where she’ll finally have a chance to perform for people who could actually hire her. And she can’t let herself be distracted by James Franklin, a notorious flirt and the most successful actor in her class, even though he’s suddenly started paying attention. Meanwhile, her bank account is rapidly dwindling, her father wants her to come home, and her agent doesn’t return her calls. But for some reason, she keeps believing that she just might get what she came for.Comments: I've long since owned up to my guilty-pleasure reading of celebrity memoir, but celebrity-penned fiction is something I've been more hesitant to try. But I was willing to set aside any misgivings for Lauren Graham, the actress who embodied one of my all-time-favorite TV characters, Lorelai Gilmore of Gilmore Girls, especially after I learned that she read the audiobook of her semi-autobiographical first novel, Someday, Someday, Maybe, herself.
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| Clockwise from top left: Central Park, New York City; Memphis Zoo, Memphis, Tennessee; Bridgeport, California; Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey, California My photos, edited with Snapseed and collaged with PicFrame |
Plot synopsis:
Leonato (Clark Gregg), the governor of Messina, is visited by his friend Don Pedro (Reed Diamond) who is returning from a victorious campaign against his rebellious brother Don John (Sean Maher). Accompanying Don Pedro are two of his officers: Benedick (Alexis Denisof) and Claudio (Fran Kranz). While in Messina, Claudio falls for Leonato's daughter Hero (Jillian Morgese), while Benedick verbally spars with Beatrice (Amy Acker), the governor's niece. The budding love between Claudio and Hero prompts Don Pedro to arrange with Leonato for a marriage.
In the days leading up to the ceremony, Don Pedro, with the help of Leonato, Claudio and Hero, attempts to sport with Benedick and Beatrice in an effort to trick the two into falling in love. Meanwhile, the villainous Don John, with the help of his allies Conrade (Riki Lindhome) and Borachio (Spencer Treat Clark), plots against the happy couple, using his own form of trickery to try to destroy the marriage before it begins.
A series of comic and tragic events may continue to keep the two couples from truly finding happiness, but then again perhaps love may prevail.
Sparknotes guide to the play
Full text of the playThe unofficial distinction between Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies is that the comedies end with weddings, and the tragedies with deaths. That would qualify Much Ado About Nothing as a comedy even if it weren’t laugh-out-loud funny...and more than five hundred years on, it can still make audiences laugh, even when it’s presented in language we don’t understand as well as its original Elizabethan-era viewers did.
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