Excerpts Arthurian fantasy Read an Excerpt From Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword The Bright Sword, a story about imperfect men and women full of strength and pain, sheds a new light on Arthur’s Britain. By Lev Grossman | Published on July 19, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Bright Sword: A Novel of King Arthur by Lev Grossman, a brand new epic fantasy novel from Lev Grossman—available now from Viking. A gifted young knight named Collum arrives at Camelot to compete for a spot on the Round Table, only to find that he’s too late. The king died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, leaving no heir, and only a handful of the knights of the Round Table survive.They aren’t the heroes of legend, like Lancelot or Gawain. They’re the oddballs of the Round Table, from the edges of the stories, like Sir Palomides, the Saracen Knight, and Sir Dagonet, Arthur’s fool, who was knighted as a joke. They’re joined by Nimue, who was Merlin’s apprentice until she turned on him and buried him under a hill. Together this ragtag fellowship will set out to rebuild Camelot in a world that has lost its balance.But Arthur’s death has revealed Britain’s fault lines. God has abandoned it, and the fairies and monsters and old gods are returning, led by Arthur’s half-sister Morgan le Fay. Kingdoms are turning on each other, warlords lay siege to Camelot and rival factions are forming around the disgraced Lancelot and the fallen Queen Guinevere. It is up to Collum and his companions to reclaim Excalibur, solve the mysteries of this ruined world and make it whole again. But before they can restore Camelot they’ll have to learn the truth of why the lonely, brilliant King Arthur fell, and lay to rest the ghosts of his troubled family and of Britain’s dark past. On one unseasonably warm morning in April, two years after he’d come to Dubh Hall, it happened that, miraculously, there was nothing for Collum to do. He’d cleaned the other boys’ boots. He’d been shooed out of the kitchen and the stables. Nobody anywhere needed him. So he wandered out to the practice yard. Collum had seen the other boys there, training with swords. There were three of them, Alasdair’s son, Marcas, and two fosterlings from other islands. At first he just watched. Nobody looked at him. The boys weren’t fighting one another, they were just cutting and thrusting at the empty air in response to the barked commands of the marshal, a slender, dark-skinned Frank who looked like he had more than a dash of North African blood in him. This was what Collum had been promised. This was why they’d sent him here. He’d almost forgotten. The boys were red-faced and sweating in their lumpy padded clothes. They complained about the heat. When they stopped for a rest Collum cleared his throat and spoke. It was like a voice spoke through him, he didn’t know how or whose it was. It was like a wonder from the stories— a sword offered up from dark water. “May I start my training now?” The boys burst out laughing. The marshal looked at Collum with heavy-lidded eyes: a ragged child, desperately thin and ill-kempt, with a sore on his dirty cheek. “Not today, boy.” “But when may I?” “The hell would I know? Take it up with Lord Alasdair.” “He won’t say.” Collum’s face was on fire, but he couldn’t let it go. “He promised my father!” He found he couldn’t say “stepfather.” “A lord always keeps his promises, but till he does it’s none of my business.” Every instinct told Collum to slink back off to the smithy. But somewhere inside him, somewhere even he couldn’t see, he had come to the end. He’d waited and suffered as much as he could. It was like a plough hitting a buried boulder in a field, and the blade striking a secret unseen spark underground and stopping dead. He stepped up to the nearest boy, a wide-eyed, jug-eared child whose name he didn’t even know, and yanked the sword out of his hand. The boy was so surprised he didn’t even resist. The others grinned and hooted. This was going to be good. Buy the Book The Bright Sword Lev Grossman Buy Book The Bright Sword Lev Grossman Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Collum didn’t hear them. He was looking at the sword in his hand. He flipped it round and grasped it by the hilt. He’d never held one before. Branches, broomsticks, any number of pretend swords, but never a real one. Even this one wasn’t real, it was just a wooden training sword— wasters, they called them. It was surprisingly heavy; later he would learn that they were weighted with lead to be heavier than the real thing. But to Collum it felt like he’d grasped a lightning bolt directly from the hand of Jupiter himself. He had a dizzying, rising feeling, as if he were shooting up from the very bottom of his ocean of acedia, from the black depths all the way to the sunlit surface in one glorious go. The crushing weight was gone, all the colors were bright again, and he could breathe sweet air. It was like waking from a terrible dream. The jug-eared boy tried to grab his sword back but Collum wasn’t ready to let go. He scurried back out of reach. Jug Ears then made the mistake most boys do in a fistfight, and a lot of men, which is that he reared back to throw a great big punch, which meant that Collum saw it coming a mile away. Before he could throw it Collum whacked the boy on the side of the head then quickly jabbed him in the eye with his free hand. The boy put his hands over his face; Collum punched his face through his hands three more times and then kicked him in the balls. He wasn’t weak or a coward. He’d just had the bad luck to be in the way when Collum discovered the one single thing in life he was good at. Now Marcas and the other fosterling closed in, swords held in both hands in front of them. They had him two to one, but Collum understood instinctively that he had several advantages in this situation. They had the numbers, but that made them overconfident. It also meant they had to avoid each other, and that each of them was waiting for the other one to go first. Collum noted that he was the only left-hander in the yard, which made him an unfamiliar challenge, and even though the other boys had always seemed like giants to him, he saw now that he was actually spotting them both a couple of inches. Also unlike them, Collum was untroubled by any inconvenient notions about the correct way to use a sword. Circling to the left, so his adversaries were lined up in front of him, he batted Marcas’s blade aside with his own, then bashed him on his hands so that he dropped his sword, and rushed in and kicked him hard in both shins, one-two, and kneed him in the nose when he doubled over. The third boy’s fighting spirit was rapidly deflating. Collum screamed at him and charged, and he turned white and ran for the safety of the house. To this point the marshal hadn’t interfered, just observed it all silently, arms folded. He was a small, elegant man. His name was Aucassin. Now he sighed and slowly, unhurriedly, bent and picked up Marcas’s fallen waster from the worn grass. Collum had moved beyond fear into a state of total focus that bordered on the mystical. He was no longer Collum, he was a god among mortals, Jupiter Triumphans. He was Sir Lancelot du Lac himself, the lightning-struck sword Arondight bright in his hand! He woke up an hour later with bruised knuckles, a splitting headache, and a broken nose. Excerpted from The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. Published by Viking, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Cozy Horse Limited. The post Read an Excerpt From Lev Grossman’s <i>The Bright Sword</i> appeared first on Reactor.

A model, actress, and artist, Farrah Fawcett began her acting career in the 1960s before rising to international stardom as Jill Munroe in Charlie's Angels. Although at first, many didn't see her as much more than a pinup girl, over the course of her life, she proved that she had talent and range, acting in television, films, and Broadway performances. Read on to see how Fawcett started out as an... Source

With over 100 billion customers served between 1940 and 1994 (they stopped counting after hitting 100 billion) McDonald's is arguably the most recognizable fast-food chain in the world. While you probably know that they serve Big Macs and french fries, there's a lot of things about the popular restaurant that you probably didn't know, so grab yourself a milkshake and learn something new! It' Source

Millions of people celebrate Mardi Gras every year. It's a holiday that dates back thousands of years and is also called Carnival or Carnaval. It is popular in many countries, including the United States. And while New Orleans is one of the hot spots in the U.S., it's not the only place where you can join in on the festivities. If you like to party and are a little curious about the origins of... Source

A Sober, Reflective Trump Takes the Stage -- And Keeps It

In an effort to stop peckish fish from gobbling them up, scientists have developed special cradles to protect the young corals being used to rehabilitate reefs.With coral reefs under stress from the effects of climate change and pollution, researchers are looking for ways to quickly restore the damage caused. One of these is coral seeding, in which lab-grown baby corals are placed into disturbed reefs, but there’s a problem – reef-dwellers like parrotfish can sometimes eat the tiny polyps before they’ve had a chance to make a difference.Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and James Cook University (JCU) looked to how the devices used to seed the corals – the “cradles” – within the reef might be better designed to protect them.To do so, the team placed over 340 seeding devices in the Davies Reef, a part of the wider Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland, Australia. They used a mixture of devices, some with no protection, some with cages placed over them, and others with specially designed protective protrusions.Inspecting the seeding devices.Image credit: Carrie Sims/Australian Institute of Marine ScienceAfter surveying the devices at the 2-day, 3-month, and 8-month mark, the researchers found that young corals covered by cages had the highest survival rates. But, they argue, it’s not the most effective method overall – cages can be costly, they’re not that scalable and once they’re removed, fish start grazing on the corals again.“We need to find solutions that are effective at reducing the risk of predation on seeded corals, while also providing some access so the fish can graze and maintain the balance between the coral and competitive algae that also grow on the devices,” said lead author Taylor Whitman in a statement.“We need to look at solutions that are scalable and not too labor intensive, while taking into account the differing environmental conditions on the reef. It’s a complex challenge!”That balance, the team found, came from those seeding devices with side-facing crevices, which provided the growing corals with partial protection from the jaws of hungry fish.Not today, parrotfish.Image credit: Taylor Whitman/Australian Institute of Marine ScienceWhere the devices were placed also made a difference to survival.“An abundance of food for the grazing fish also seemed to help our seeded corals. Locations with nutritious algae (including cyanobacteria) or hard corals resulted in less attention from the parrotfish on our babies,” explained Whitman.Though the team says there’s still room for improving the devices, it’s hoped the study findings could be used to improve coral restoration strategies. “The speed at which climate change impacts are unfolding on coral reefs around the world is alarming and current restoration efforts can’t keep up. We must pioneer a toolkit of solutions that are both inexpensive and scalable to help protect and restore these precious ecosystems,” said Dr Cedric Robillot, Executive Director of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, which collaborated with the scientists.“These coral seeding devices are game changing”.The study is published in Scientific Reports.

Although it may seem like a joke from the 2000s, images of livestock killed under mysterious circumstances have been circulating on social media. These animals have not been eaten, leading people to suspect the notorious “Chupacabra.” The latest attack reportedly occurred in Veracruz. Residents of the Quetzapotitla community, part of Tlaquilpa in the Zongolica mountain range of Veracruz, Mexico, have reported the presence of a strange creature they believe to be the Chupacabra. According to social media posts, this creature has been attacking and killing cows, sheep, and goats. The concern is so real that they have formally requested assistance from the authorities. There are nine victims of an animal attack believed to be a Chupacabra. Residents claim that the suspected Chupacabra attacks their livestock by biting and inflicting severe wounds on the neck or lower abdomen, sometimes dismembering its victims. They have captured images of these grisly scenes in their fields. Despite finding animals in such conditions, the bodies are not devoured or completely taken away as would be expected with natural predators in the region. This has led some to speculate that the culprit might be a jaguar or panther. However, they find this unlikely, as other livestock shows no signs of injury, and the victims are not consumed. In the last few hours, at least nine dead animals have been reported, prompting hopes that the municipal police will intervene. To raise public awareness, the residents have shared their concerns on social media. The Chupacabra, which means “goat-sucker” in Spanish, is a legendary creature in folklore that is said to attack livestock, especially goats, and drink their blood. Reports of the Chupacabra began in the mid-1990s in Puerto Rico, but similar stories have appeared in various parts of Latin America and the southern United States. Descriptions of the creature vary, but it is often depicted as a reptilian creature with spikes down its back, or more recently, as a hairless dog-like animal. Despite numerous reported sightings and attacks, the existence of the Chupacabra remains unproven, with many attributing the phenomena to other predators or even hoaxes. The post Strange incident raises fears of Chupacabra attacks in Mexico appeared first on Anomalien.com.

Staunch Republicans may have loved President Trump's long speech on Thursday night, but it's easy to suspect that the journalists watching it were going to go beyond skeptical. Here's how the Associated Press summed up: "Rebranding Trump, former president recalls shooting details but avoids policy details." There wasn't any policy in that speech? Did they expect Trump to read paragraphs from the Heritage Foundation? NPR.org summed up the media themes: First came "A temporary appeal for unity," which felt phony to them, followed by "Trump returns to familiar rhetoric." They absorbed Trump's recounting of the shooting, but seemed almost relieved when it went back to Build the Wall and Drill, Baby, Drill.  Seconds after it ended, the taxpayer-funded PBS News Hour anchors Amna & Geoff were dismissing it as grievances and "falsehoods." PBS right after the speech. Amna Nawaz said the speech "veered into themes of grievance and politics and partisan issues of the past." Geoff Bennett: "The initial calls for unity quickly gave way to attacks on Democrats, to a litany of falsehoods, to a string of insults." pic.twitter.com/EkQiJGzsNA — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) July 19, 2024 On ABC, Jonathan Karl thought the speech would end up helping Democrats. Don't the networks routinely announce that every happening will probably help Democrats and hurt Republicans? Democrats think they “can beat this guy” because, ABC’s @JonKarl asserted: “This was filled with divisive rhetoric, he went back to the lies about the election. He disparaged ‘crazy’ Nancy Pelosi. He said terrible things about Joe Biden. This was not a unity speech.” #RNC2024 pic.twitter.com/EXLgpGEvij — Brent Baker ?? ?? (@BrentHBaker) July 19, 2024 On CBS, John Dickerson underlined the "fact checkers" would be extremely busy chasing down the lies. (But after Democrats speak, they're too emotionally invested to worry about facts.) “The fact-checkers probably should have a GoFundMe for trying to chase down all of the falsehoods” – John Dickerson on CBS News after Trump’s speech. pic.twitter.com/6C8XqYwPRW — Brent Baker ?? ?? (@BrentHBaker) July 19, 2024 They also broke out into their own Fact Checking mode. ABC anchor David Muir and justice correspondent Pierre Thomas were trying to "correct" the idea that crime is worse under the Democrats.  ABC’s @PierreTABC: “Crime has been dropping in this country for the last two years, and, in fact, if you look at the final year of the Trump administration he had one of the biggest surges in gun violence in recent history.” #RNC2024 pic.twitter.com/0ey2vsKvOA — Brent Baker ?? ?? (@BrentHBaker) July 19, 2024 On NBC, Hallie Jackson hit the typical talking point that this was no "unity" speech, it was another divisive speech: “This is who he has been for the past 8 years,” @HallieJackson. “While he nodded at the top to say he wanted to represent all of America, it turns out that comes with a catch” as he “insists he’s not a threat to democracy,” but “he wants unity on his terms only.” #RNC2024 pic.twitter.com/6zjbVxS1rp — Brent Baker ?? ?? (@BrentHBaker) July 19, 2024 MSNBC's Joy Reid aerobically sought to paint Trump as suffering from the exact same cognitive decline that Biden is displaying. Projection! Joy Reid claims if Joe Biden gave the type of speech Trump did, "Democrats would be demanding that the 25th amendment be invoked immediately. They would scramble even worse than they are now to jettison him..." She adds that his brain is going just like Biden's pic.twitter.com/tJPzlR36hg — Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) July 19, 2024 It wouldn't be a typical Trump-speech aftermath without someone attacking Trump's narcissism. On PBS, David Brooks caused laughter by talking about what a boring spectacle the speech became.  David Brooks on PBS, post-speech: There is no cure for narcissism. It's not just boring. I went to college. [Laughter] But it was a reflection of the character flaw that marred his presidency, that he is self indulgent, he's self absorbed, he's narcissistic, and undisciplined. pic.twitter.com/5U1J2kYAOh — Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) July 19, 2024 Speaking of egotists, Jonathan Capehart jumped in to say he was right all along that Trump would be divisive. He mocked a Trump-supporting congresswoman who said Trump would be a "new person" now that God has given him another chance. Capehart said "No! That's not what we saw!"   

CBS’s Stephen Colbert wrapped up his week of live reactions to the Republican National Convention early Friday morning by decrying the whole thing as “deeply, psychotically weird” because the party is trying to dismiss Donald Trump’s legal controversies as no big deal. Colbert would also welcome Sen. Bernie Sanders to The Late Show to claim that Trump is a threat to democracy because Elon Musk plans to give a Trump super PAC a lot of money and because Trump wants to drill for oil. During his opening monologue, Colbert lamented, “But the thing is none of this is normal. It's deeply, psychotically weird that this is happening at all. Less than four years ago, this man incited an attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation's history. Then he was impeached again.”     Rolling right along, Colbert continued, “Then he was indicted a lot. Then found liable for sexual assault and convicted of 34 felonies. And the Republicans are desperate for voters to forget all of that. Also, he's not currently the president, so it's weird that he spoke in front of a Zoom background of the White House.” If Republicans are not receptive to liberal concerns about the end of democracy, perhaps it is because the boy has cried wolf because later in the show, Colbert asked Sanders: Speaking of which, Elon Musk, your buddy Elon, said he would not be giving money to either candidate back in March but last week he said is going to give $45 million a month to a Trump Super PAC between now and the election, $180 million. If you would do whatever billionaires tell you, that money could be yours, Bernie. Have you thought about it? Sanders retorted, “Stephen, I haven't, but thanks for telling me. I'll take that into consideration, all right. But you raise a really important question. In a sense we should thank Musk for making this issue so obvious. What we have in America now is a corrupt political system. That’s it. We do not really live in a democracy. We live in a semi-democracy. You have the right to vote, but a billionaire out there has the right to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to further his or her aims.  For Sanders, oil drilling also represents a threat to democracy, “And what Musk has done and other billionaires are doing, falling into line behind Trump because they know they're going to give massive tax breaks if you're in the fossil fuel industry, you're going to ‘drill, baby, drill.’” Hyping President Joe Biden instead, Sanders added, “But there are billionaires who also support Biden. But to Biden's credit, Biden understands that we have to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United.” If Colbert wants people to take his Doomsday prophecies about the end of democracy seriously, perhaps equating democracy’s demise with fossil fuels isn’t the best idea. Here is a transcript for the July 19 show: CBS The Late Show with Stephen Colbert 7/19/2024 12:52 AM ET STEPHEN COLBERT: But the thing is none of this is normal. It's deeply, psychotically weird that this is happening at all. Less than four years ago, this man incited an attack on the U.S. Capitol in order to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation's history. Then he was impeached again. Then he was indicted a lot. Then found liable for sexual assault and convicted of 34 felonies. And the Republicans are desperate for voters to forget all of that. Also, he's not currently the president, so it's weird that he spoke in front of a Zoom background of the White House. … COLBERT: Speaking of which, Elon Musk, your buddy Elon, said he would not be giving money to either candidate back in March but last week he said is going to give $45 million a month to a Trump Super PAC between now and the election, $180 million. If you would do whatever billionaires tell you, that money could be yours, Bernie. Have you thought about it? BERNIE SANDERS: Stephen, I haven't, but thanks for telling me. I'll take that into consideration, all right. But you raise a really important question. In a sense we should thank Musk for making this issue so obvious. What we have in America now is a corrupt political system. That’s it. We do not really live in a democracy. We live in a semi-democracy. You have the right to vote, but a billionaire out there has the right to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to further his or her aims.  And what Musk has done and other billionaires are doing, falling into line behind Trump because they know they're going to give massive tax breaks if you're in the fossil fuel industry, you're going to “drill, baby, drill.” This is a good reason to support Trump. But there are billionaires who also support Biden. But to Biden's credit, Biden understands that we have to overturn this disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United.