Whereas Floating Flies and How to Dress Them was about the dry fly, fly tying and to some extent the entomology of the chalk stream, Dry-Fly Fishing... was about fishing the dry fly. It was the consummate "how-to" manual for the dry-fly fisherman. It was not only about methodology, but also about the ethics and purism of the dry fly on English chalk streams. The volume begins by spelling out the various pieces of fishing and personal equipment the dry-fly angler should possess. The pros and cons of different rod styles are discussed, along with fly lines, reels and the various miscellany a fly angler should carry. Although Halford did not invent dry-fly fishing, before this volume, no one had laid out in such detail the equipment recommendations needed to be a successful dry-fly angler. Such were Halford''s recommendations that they were routinely referenced by the fly-fishing trade: A short, but concise Chapter 2 discusses the distinction between a floating (dry) fly and a sunk fly, with emphasis on the superiority of the floating fly as characterized by this concluding statement: Chapters 3-5 go into great detail about how, when and where to cast the dry fly on the typical chalk stream. These chapters are heavily illustrated with casting techniques and comprise nearly 20% of the entire 1st edition. The bulk of the remaining chapters deal with the entomology of the chalk stream, fly selection and trout behaviour.

Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice

The story begins in 1965 during the Watts Riots in Los Angeles, California. 23-year-old Lloyd Hopkins is still with the National Guard and is deployed to help handle the situation. It is during this riot that Hopkins kills his first man, a deranged armory sergeant who was hunting down and killing African Americans. Eighteen years later Hopkins is now a sergeant with the LAPD and has the highest number of arrests of any officer in the department''s history. He is considered a genius by many of his associates for his uncanny ability to make intuitive leaps of logic when tracking down criminals. Soon his abilities are put to the test when he investigates the brutal murder of a woman who was disemboweled in her apartment. Hopkins quickly deduces that the person responsible for this murder has in fact been killing women since the late 1960s, but has never been caught because he always changes his modus operandi. A subplot of the novel involves Hopkins'' relationship with his family. He adores his three daughters and deeply loves his wife, though he is chronically unfaithful to her. His wife loves Lloyd, but begins to realize that his habits are not healthy for their children, particularly his propensity for telling them about the cases that he has worked on.

Blood on the Moon

Because her mother is still in the hospital and has yet to wake up, Clary is now living at Luke''s house. Her emotions are further tangled when Simon abruptly kisses her one day at his house and begins calling her his girlfriend. Jace has been exiled from the Institute under suspicions of being a spy for Valentine. He heads to a bar, having nowhere to live now, only to discover that a were child was slain nearby and that the pack wants his help. Jace refuses to help and is attacked by the pack, only to be saved by Luke. After some prompting by Luke, Jace goes to the Institute to confront Alec and Isabelle''s mother who had kicked him out, who reveals that the Inquisitor was coming and she was only trying to spare him. Clary returns to Luke''s home and receives a text message from Isabelle; Jace has angered the Inquisitor and has been imprisoned in the Silent City. While sitting in his cell, Jace hears something attacking everyone and discovers that Valentine has killed the Silent Brothers to get the second Mortal Instrument, the Soul-Sword. Clary, Isabelle, and Alec respond to a distress call from the Silent City, only to discover the slaying of the Silent Brothers. Clary frees Jace, only for the Inquisitor to appear and accuse Jace of going along with Valentine, as the sword was the only way to prove his guilt or innocence. Magnus Bane offers to keep Jace as a prisoner in his apartment, where he and the others try to figure out Valentine''s potential plans. In order to prove Jace''s innocence they go to the Fairy Realm. However, Clary is tricked into consuming fairy food, and is only allowed to leave by kissing "whom she most desires", at first Simon offers to kiss her, however Clary instead kisses Jace in order to gain her freedom. This angers Simon, who storms off after they return to their realm. Clary later argues with Jace over their obvious feelings for each other despite being siblings. Jace suggests keeping the relationship a secret, to which Clary replies that it would eventually be discovered anyway and is unwilling to lie to their friends and family. Later Raphael shows up with Simon, who has been almost completely drained of blood and fed vampire blood. As the only way left to save him, Simon is transformed into a vampire, which causes Clary to ignore Jace as a result of her guilt over his death and transformation. While discussing how to potentially tell Simon''s mother about his new undead status, Maia is brought into the house with wounds too severe for Luke to treat. Magnus is brought to heal Maia while Jace, Simon, and Clary battle demons outside the house. Jace and Clary later go after the demons to finish them off, where Valentine offers protection if Jace joins him and comes back to Idris. Jace refuses and the next morning the Inquisitor appears with claims that Jace was with Valentine and threatens to kill Jace if Valentine doesn''t return the Mortal Instruments. The Inquisitor once again imprisons Jace, planning to have a trade with Valentine; Jace''s life for the Mortal Instruments. Jace tries to tell her that it won''t work, which the Inquisitor refuses to believe. During this time Maia is attacked by the Demon of Fear while traveling to see Simon, after which Valentine kidnaps her. Clary and the others discover Maia''s kidnapping and rescue her, but not before Valentine kills the newborn Simon. Jace manages to restore life to Simon by feeding him his blood, after which the Inquisitor appears. After seeing Jace''s star shaped scar, she suddenly kills a demon that was attacking him. She dies during the process, leaving Jace confused at her sudden change. Meanwhile Clary confronts Valentine on the boat after being kidnapped by one of his demons and brought to him, where she falls in the water and is saved by nixies the Fairy Queen sent to help. The group escapes by truck, where Simon discovers that Jace''s blood has made him a "Daylighter" that can tolerate the sun. After a talk with Luke about love and his regrets of not telling Clary''s mother how he felt about her, Clary attempts to tell Jace of her love for him and sudden change of mind to start a relationship needless of its consequences. However, before she can say anything, he tells her that he will only act as her brother from then on, breaking her heart. As Clary reels from this, she''s then informed by a woman named Madeline that she knows how to wake her mother.

City of Ashes

The book is the story of a young man, William Crimsworth, and is a first-person narrative from his perspective. It describes his maturation, his loves and his eventual career as a professor at an all-girls school. The story starts off with a letter William has sent to his friend Charles, detailing his refusal to his uncle''s proposals to become a clergyman, as well as his first meeting with his rich brother Edward. Seeking work as a tradesman, William is offered the position of a clerk by Edward. However, Edward is jealous of William''s education and intelligence and treats him terribly. By the actions of the sympathetic Mr. Hunsden, William is relieved of his position and gains a new job at an all-boys boarding school in Belgium. The school is run by the friendly M. Pelet, who treats William kindly and politely. Soon, William''s merits as a professor reach the ears of the headmistress of the neighboring girls school. Mlle. Reuter offers him a position at her school, which he accepts. Initially captivated by Mlle. Reuter, William begins to entertain ideas of falling in love with her, only to have them crushed when he overhears her and M. Pelet talk about their upcoming marriage. Slightly heartbroken, he now treats Mlle. Reuter with a cold civility and begins to see the underlying nature of her character. Mlle. Reuter, however, continues to try to draw William back in, pretending to be benevolent and concerned. She goes so far as to plead him to teach one of her young teachers, Frances, who hopes to improve her skill in languages. William sees in this pupil promising intelligence and slowly begins to fall in love with her as he tutors her English. Jealous of the attention Francis is receiving from William, Mlle. Reuter takes it upon herself to casually dismiss Frances from her school and hide her address from William. It is revealed that as she was trying to make herself amiable in William''s eyes, Mlle. Reuter accidentally fell in love with him herself. Not wanting to cause a conflict with M. Pelet, Crimsworth leaves his establishment and moves out, in hopes of finding Frances. Eventually bumping into his beloved pupil in a graveyard, the two reconcile . William gets a new position as a professor at a college, with an exceedingly high wage. The two eventually open a school together and have a child. After obtaining financial security, the family travels all around England and settle in the countryside next to Mr. Hunsden.

The Professor

The novel and its trilogy use the Moonshae Isles as its setting. Kazgoroth, the Beast, has come into the world to destroy the power of the Earthmother. Changing its shape as needs be, the Beast goes across the island of Gwynneth, corrupting everything in its way. Its destination is a large gathering of Northmen raiders at Oman''s Isle, in the middle of the Moonshaes, where they are preparing an assault on the kingdom of Corwell. The Northmen don''t realize yet that this is going to be more than just a plundering raid. They don''t know that their leader isn''t King Thelgaar Ironhand, but the Beast, who has killed the king and assumed his shape. Meanwhile, the Earthmother, aware of the danger and hurting from the corruption brought to the land, her body, by the vile presence of the Beast, awakes her children - the Leviathan, the Pack, and Kamerynn, the Unicorn. They will try to stop Kazgoroth in different ways, but that won''t be enough. At Caer Corwell, the seat of the king of Corwell, rumour brings word of war coming to the kingdom. Preparation is under way, but the Ffolk don''t know where the enemy will strike. It is up to Tristan to organize the Ffolk against this both human and demonic threat. In his fight against the odds, helped by Robyn, he will grow into the responsible leader that should inherit his father''s kingdom.

Darkwalker on Moonshae

The novel opens with a brief scene written in the third person: at a remote location in Tibet, a man in local costume, backed by a group of native people, confronts a woman at the head of an exploratory expedition. There is a sudden sense of realization as the man and woman recognize each other as siblings; the man collapses, overcome by shock. The story then switches to a first-person account, written by John Robertson after his meeting with his sister Ellen. Thirty years earlier, at the age of 25, Robertson had been traveling through rural Tibet; wandering away from his party, he had gotten lost and had fallen over a precipice. He was nursed back to health by local villagers, but his memory was deeply impaired. It was only when his sister found him that he regained his recollection. He returns to the United States with her, to face a society that is vastly different from the one he knew in his youth. Around 1920, while Robertson was living obscurely in Tibet, America had adopted a system of economics described as being "beyond Socialism", a strain of nationalism that answered all the questions posed by socialism without actually being socialist, renovating its society and culture; and from there it had continued to develop into a more efficient nation, through "social evolution" and a vague "new religion." Robertson is surprised to learn that his sister is the president of a college &mdash; and is astounded to realize that she is a married college president. He meets his brother-in-law and nephew and niece, and is repeatedly challenged in his traditional attitudes. He is not a feminist; on the ship homeward he meets an attractive and vivacious young woman, and thinks of her, "My sister must have been mistaken about her being a civil engineer. She might be a college girl &mdash; but nothing worse." Most of the book consists of John Robertson being instructed, by his family members and others, in the new, rational, well-organized social order. Gilman''s America of 1940 is a country with no poverty or prostitution, "no labor problem &mdash; no color problem &mdash; no sex problem &mdash; almost no disease &mdash; very little accident &mdash; practically no fires," a place in which "the only kind of prison left is called a quarantine," where problems of deforestation and soil erosion are being remedied, and in which "no one needs to work over two hours a day and most people work four...." The central chapters in the book deliver Gilman''s program for reforming society. She concentrates on measures of rationality and efficiency that could be instituted in her own time, largely with greater social cooperation &mdash; equal education and treatment for girls and boys, day-care centers for working women, and other issues still relevant a century later. Yet Gilman also allows for technological progress: electric power is the motive force in industry and urban society, power generated largely by the tides (a technology that is only being developed in the early twenty-first century in the real world), plus "wind-mills, water mills," and "solar engines." And the sky is full of "airships." People now practice a "new humanitarianism." Vegetarianism is in fashion, hunting is out, and zoos are no more. (Gilman''s concept of animal rights, however, provides for the elimination of predators, to save their prey.) Tobacco and alcohol are also out of fashion, because emancipated women condemn those habits. Robertson does not find it easy to accept the new social order; his sister gently mocks him as an example of "An Extinct Species of Mind," as exotic as a "Woolly Mammoth." He even longs for the noisy, dirty, crowded chaos of the cities of his youth, in preference to the clean, quiet, "beautiful" cities of 1940. In his discontent, Robertson travels to his home state of South Carolina to visit his Uncle Jake, an old farmer and a determined reactionary who rejects the radical improvements of the past thirty years. Uncle Jake still practices subsistence farming with his elderly wife and middle-aged spinster daughter Drusilla. Robertson remembers his cousin Drusilla, ten years his junior, as a darling child &mdash; and is shocked by the harsh and deprived life she lives. His "thirty years in Tibet," which had weighed heavily upon his thoughts, now seem like "a holiday compared to this thirty years on an upland farm in the Alleghanies of Carolina." He convinces Drusilla to marry him, to salve his own loneliness and to give her a better life &mdash; and in doing so Robertson comes to accept the superior modern world he had previously resisted.

Moving the Mountain

Nordau begins his work with a ''medical'' and social interpretation of what has created this Degeneration in society. Nordau divides his study into five books. In the first book, Nordau identifies the phenomenon of fin de siècle in Europe. He sees it as first being recognised, though not originating, in France, ''a contempt for the traditional views of custom and morality.'' He sees it as a sort of decadence, a world-weariness, and the wilful rejection of the moral boundaries governing the world. He uses examples from French periodicals and books in French to show how it has affected all elements of society. Nordau accuses also society of becoming more and more inclined to imitate what they see in art. He sees in the fashionable society of Paris and London that ''Every single figure strives visibly by some singularity in outline, set, cut or colour, to startle attention violently, and imperiously to detain it. Each one wishes to create a strong nervous excitement, no matter whether agreeably or disagreeably.'' Nordau establishes the cultural phenomenon of fin de siècle in the opening pages, but he quickly moves to the viewpoint of a physician and identifies what he sees as an illness. ''In the fin-de-siècle disposition, in the tendencies of contemporary art and poetry, in the life and conduct of men who write mystic, symbolic and ''decadent'' works and the attitude taken by their admirers in the tastes and aesthetic instincts of fashionable society, the confluence of two well-defined conditions of disease, with which he [the physician] is quite familiar, viz. degeneration and hysteria, of which the minor stages are designated as neurasthenia.'' The book deals with numerous case studies of various artists, writers and thinkers (Wilde, Ibsen, Wagner and Nietzsche to name but a few) but its basic premise remains that society and human beings themselves are degenerating, and this degeneration is both reflected in and influenced by art.

Degeneration

The two leads, Anna and Claire, argue over Claire''s new found "Love" while Anna''s Scottish maid, Catherine, is brought to tears by her employer''s harsh verbal rebukes. Things get tense as Anna, a mistress to a wealthy gentleman, tries to talk Claire out of her profession of love for another: a young woman. Claire, on the other hand, has already made plans with her young love to meet at Anna''s house in the hopes that she will be able to persuade her new love to engage in a "vile assignation." Things go awry, however, when the girl arrives and recognizes that an emerald necklace that Anna is wearing belongs to her mother. The plot line focuses on whether Anna and Claire will be able to find a way to hold on to both the girl and her wealthy but unfaithful father. The play is delivered through quick, witty Victorian-era dialogue, mixed with double entendres and vernacular expressions, to explore the relationship between the two women and their maid. Through humor and nuance, the play explores the negotiation, conflict, compromise and reconciliation that arise in their relationship.

Boston Marriage

How I Became A Nun chronicles a year in the fantastic internal and external life of an introverted six-year-old called César, who sees herself as a girl but is referred to by the rest of the world as a boy. In the beginning of the novel, her family moves to a bigger town Rosario, where her father takes her for a promised Ice-cream. The child is horrified at the taste of the Strawberry ice-cream, which disappoints the father. He insists that she finish her ice-cream and stop being difficult. After tasting the ice-cream himself, he realizes it is contaminated and in an altercation ends up killing the ice-cream vendor. The child gets cyanide poisoning and spend his/her time in the hospital, often suffering from delusions. Once out of the hospital, she learns that her father has been sent to eight years of prison. She joins school, three months late into the class and finds herself disconnected from a class which has learned to read. Thus she gets drawn into her own world of make-believe and imagination. Her only friends are her mother and a boy named Arturo Carrera. In the end, she is kidnapped by the wife of the ice-cream vendor who was killed by her father. The wife, in an act of vengeance, throws Cesar into a drum of Strawberry ice-cream, which seems to have become the girl''s biggest horror. The story as told by young César captures a child''s sense of wonder and naivete, and blurs the categories of what is imagined and what is real.

How I Became a Nun

The story describes a young middle-class Englishwoman who "had no luck." Though outwardly successful, she is haunted by a sense of failure; her husband is a ne''er-do-well and her work as a commercial artist doesn''t earn as much as she''d like. The family''s lifestyle exceeds its income and unspoken anxiety about money permeates the household. Her children, a son Paul and his two sisters, sense this anxiety, and Paul even claims he can hear the house "whispering" There must be more money. Paul tells his Uncle Oscar Cresswell about betting on horse races with Bassett, the gardener. He''s been placing bets using his pocket money and has won and saved three hundred twenty pounds. Sometimes he says he is "sure" of a winner for an upcoming race, and the horses he names do in fact win, sometimes at remarkable odds. Uncle Oscar and Bassett both place large bets on the horses Paul names. After further winning, Paul and Oscar arrange to give the mother a gift of five thousand pounds, but the gift only lets her spend more. Disappointed, Paul tries harder than ever to be "lucky". As the Derby approaches, Paul is determined to learn the winner. Concerned about his health, his mother rushes home from a party and discovers his secret. He has been spending hours riding his rocking horse, sometimes all night long, until he "gets there", into a clairvoyant state where he can be sure of the winner''s name. Paul remains ill through the day of the Derby. Informed by Cresswell, Bassett has placed Paul''s bet on Malabar, at fourteen to one. When he is informed by Bassett that he now has 80,000 pounds, Paul says to his mother: "I never told you, mother, that if I can ride my horse, and get there, then I''m absolutely sure – oh absolutely! Mother, did I ever tell you? I am lucky!" "No, you never did," said his mother. The boy dies in the night and his mother hears her brother say, “My God, Hester, you’re eighty-odd thousand to the good, and a poor devil of a son to the bad. But, poor devil, poor devil, he’s best gone out of a life where he rides his rocking horse to find a winner.”

The Rocking-Horse Winner

Juliette is raised in a convent. However, at age 13 she is seduced by a woman who immediately explains that morality, religion and other such concepts are meaningless. There are plenty of similar philosophical musings during the book, all attacking the ideas of God, morals, remorse, love, etc., the overall conclusion being that the only aim in life is "to enjoy oneself at no matter whose expense." Juliette takes this to the extreme and manages to murder her way through numerous people, including various family members and friends. During Juliette''s life from age 13 to about 30, the wanton anti-heroine engages in virtually every form of depravity and encounters a series of like-minded libertines. She meets the ferocious Clairwil, whose main passion is in murdering young men. She meets Saint Fond, a 50-year-old multi-millionaire who commits incest with his daughter, murders his father, tortures young girls to death on a daily basis and even plots an ambitious scheme to provoke a famine that will wipe out half the population of France. A long audience with Pope Pius VI is one of the most extensive scenes in Juliette. The heroine shows off her learning to the pope (whom she most often addresses by his secular name "Braschi") with a verbal catalogue of alleged immoralities committed by his predecessors. The audience ends, like almost every other scene in the narrative, with an orgy. Soon after this, the male character Brisatesta narrates two scandalous encounters. The first is with "Princess Sophia, niece of the King of Prussia", who has just married "the Stadtholder" at the Hague. This is presumably intended for Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange, who married William V of Orange, the last Dutch Stadtholder, in 1767, and was still alive when Juliette was published. The second encounter is with Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.

L''Histoire de Juliette

During the Oklahoma Land Run, Cissy and her parents arrive from the east to settle in Florence Town, a new settlement. Within a few days, it becomes apparent that a local railroad company wants to use the land for itself and attempts to purchase it from the people of the town. The townspeople don''t want to sell their land, and after falling foul of the railroad company, the director announces that no trains will stop at the town. Suffering hardship through having no railroad connection, the townspeople decide to make efforts - both legal and illegal - to stop the train that passes through their town. The story documents the life of Cissy as she grows and people in the town struggle to make some sort of living. Rumours of a young girl''s death under the wheels of a train sparked a sabotage of the railway removing a length of rail, and blocking the road crossing. Realising what damage to human life they might cause, the townspeople manage to reconstruct the track before the train comes through, thereby averting disaster. Deciding that they should take a more peaceful approach to persuading the trains to stop, the townsfolk hold a fair to show their community off to a trainload of passengers, hijacked by a group of the town''s men. Following the success of the Florence Fair, and the overwhelming response from the passengers pressuring the railroad company to stop ignoring Florence, trains begin to stop at the town after that, which allows the town to grow. To pay tribute to the town''s new start, and in a gesture of reconciliation towards the railroad company, it is renamed Olive, hence the "Olive Branch Line". The book may be partly influenced by the Enid-Pond Creek Railroad War, and is dedicated to the people of Enid, "who did stop the train".

Over 8000 Takeaways For Your Brain!

Read - Listen - Learn

Dry-Fly Fishing in Theory and Practice

By Frederic M. Halford

Blood on the Moon

By James Ellroy

City of Ashes

By Cassandra Clare

The Professor

By Charlotte Brontë

Darkwalker on Moonshae

By Douglas Niles

Moving the Mountain

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Degeneration

By Max Nordau

Boston Marriage

By David Mamet

How I Became a Nun

By César Aira

The Rocking-Horse Winner

By D. H. Lawrence

L'Histoire de Juliette

By Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, Marquis de Sade

Stop the Train

By Geraldine McCaughrean