Ten top books about communes

Ewan Morrison is the author of four novels: Swung, Menage, Distance, and Close Your Eyes, and a collection of short stories.

For the Guardian he tagged his top ten books about communes, including:

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

This story centres around a young boy, Bit, and his confused relationship with the largely naked polygamous, vegan older people who won't quite admit to being his parents. There are sensuous depictions of daily processes, making soy cheese and cake and even a birth which Bit assists in. Arcadia is an example of how you can make a compelling story out of the daily mess of commune living by making something go horribly wrong. Thankfully for novelists (and maybe regretfully for the world) communes usually collapse dramatically.

Read about another novel on the list.

Arcadia is on Jami Attenberg's top ten list of dysfunctional families in literature.

The Page 69 Test: Arcadia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ben Tanzer's "Orphans"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Orphans by Ben Tanzer.

About the book, from the publisher:

With Orphans, Ben Tanzer continues his ongoing literary survey of the 21st Century male psyche, yet does so with a newfound twist, contemporary themes set in a world that is anything but. In this dystopian tale of a future Chicago, workers are sent off to sell property on Mars to those who can afford to leave, leaving what’s left to those who have little choice but to make do with what’s left behind: burnt out neighborhoods, black helicopters policing the streets, flash mobs, the unemployed in their scruffy suits, robots taking the few jobs that remain, and clones who replace those workers who do find work so that a modicum of family stability can be maintained. It is a story about the impact of work on family. How work warps our best intentions. And how everything we think we know about ourselves looks different during a recession.

This idea is writ large in the world of Orphans, where recession is all we know, work is only available to the lucky few, and this lucky few not only need to fear being replaced on the job, but in their homes and beds.

It is also a story about drugs, surfing, punk music, lost youth, parenting, sex, pop culture as vernacular, and a conscious intersection of Death of a Salesman or Glengarry Glen Ross with the Martian Chronicles.

Looking to the genre of science fiction has allowed Tanzer to produce something new and fresh, expanding both his literary horizons, and the potential market for his work. Tanzer also looks to the story of Bartleby the Scrivener with Orphans, and the question of what are we allowed as workers, and expected to be, or do, when work is fraught with desperation. Ultimately, Orphans is intended to be a contemporary story about manhood and what it means in today’s world, told from the perspective of work and family, and how any of us manage the parameters that family and work produce; but it’s a story told in a futuristic world, where our greatest fears are in fact already realized, because there isn’t enough of anything, and we are all too easily replaced.

Visit Ben Tanzer's blog and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Orphans.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books for people who loved "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo"

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Rebecca Jane Stokes tagged seven books for people who loved The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, including:

Snow Angels, James Thompson

Ah, outsider fiction! This award-winning crime novel is penned by an American living abroad in Finland. It’s not only the start of a pretty sensational crime series, but it also features a body being discovered on a reindeer farm. Classic Christmas reading, am I right? I’m right.

Read about another entry on the list.

Visit James Thompson's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Snow Angels.

The Page 69 Test: Helsinki White.

My Book, The Movie: Helsinki White.

The Page 69 Test: Helsinki Blood.

My Book, The Movie: Helsinki Blood.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Ucko & Robert Egnell's "Counterinsurgency in Crisis"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Counterinsurgency in Crisis: Britain and the Challenges of Modern Warfare by David H. Ucko and Robert Egnell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Long considered the masters of counterinsurgency, the British military encountered significant problems in Iraq and Afghanistan when confronted with insurgent violence. In their effort to apply the principles and doctrines of past campaigns, they failed to prevent Basra and Helmand from descending into lawlessness, criminality, and violence.

By juxtaposing the deterioration of these situations against Britain’s celebrated legacy of counterinsurgency, this investigation identifies both the contributions and limitations of traditional tactics in such settings, exposing a disconcerting gap between ambitions and resources, intent and commitment. Building upon this detailed account of the Basra and Helmand campaigns, this volume conducts an unprecedented assessment of British military institutional adaptation in response to operations gone awry. In calling attention to the enduring effectiveness of insurgent methods and the threat posed by undergoverned spaces, David H. Ucko and Robert Egnell underscore the need for military organizations to meet the irregular challenges of future wars in new ways.

Learn more about Counterinsurgency in Crisis at the Columbia University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Counterinsurgency in Crisis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laura van den Berg's 6 favorite unconventional mystery novels

Laura van den Berg's second story collection, The Isle of Youth, explores the lives of women mired in secrecy and deception.

For The Week magazine, she tagged six favorite unconventional mystery novels. One book on the list:

Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me by Javier Marías

In the opening pages, a woman dies a sudden and mysterious death in the arms of her lover. He in turn is forced to confront the dark and inscrutable corners of his soul.

Read about another book on the list.

Visit Laura van den Berg's website and blog.

Writers Read: Laura van den Berg (January 2010).

--Marshal Zeringue

Gail Oust's "Rosemary and Crime," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Rosemary and Crime by Gail Oust.

The entry begins:

I’ve confided to friends on occasion that if I had a do-over, I’d run off to Hollywood and be a casting director. For some strange reason, the thought of finding just the right person for the right role appeals to me. When I’m in the zone, I can see the scenes in my books playing out on a movie screen inside my head.

Now who would play the lead of Piper Prescott in my little who-dun-it?

In my own private Fantasy Land, I possess a time machine. I’d turn back the years just a bit and make a younger Reba McEntire my leading lady. Like Piper, she is red-haired, sassy, and, in spite of adverse circumstances, determined to make her mark on the world.

Her ex-husband, CJ, who dumped her in favor of chasing ambulances and a bimbo in a short-skirt, would be played by a fortyish Alec...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Gail Oust's website.

My Book, The Movie: Rosemary and Crime.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven of the best books on writing

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Kathryn Williams came up with a list of eleven top books on writing. One book she tagged:

On Writing, by Stephen King

You don’t have to be a fan of King’s writing (or his made-for-TV movies) to find real worth in the suspense master’s “memoir of the craft.” In a highly accessible way, King writes about his own life and hardly meteoric rise to best-selling superstardom. He also offers notes on the writer’s “toolbox,” but the real takeaway is the persistence, the delight, and the dedication that it takes to be Stephen King. Quote: “For me, not working is the real work.”

Read about another book on the list.

On Writing is among Andrew Cowan's top five books to help aspiring writers.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jennifer Michael Hecht reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It.

Her entry begins:

I’m reading The Great Enigma: new collected poems by Tomas Tranströmer, translated by Robin Fulton. Tranströmer won the 2011 Nobel in literature, though he’s still not that well known in the US. I teach a course in the graduate program at the New School called “Poets and Philosophy” and this year it centers on psychology. Tranströmer’s poetry is deeply concerned with the hidden workings of the mind, and he himself worked as a psychologist, so he was perfect for our reading list. Now rereading the poems on this cold blue-skied day I’m moved not only by his insight but by his patience. He’s...[read on]

About Stay, from the publisher:

Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness. From the Stoics and the Bible to Dante, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, and such twentieth-century writers as John Berryman, Hecht recasts the narrative of our “secular age” in new terms. She shows how religious prohibitions against self-killing were replaced by the Enlightenment’s insistence on the rights of the individual, even when those rights had troubling applications. This transition, she movingly argues, resulted in a profound cultural and moral loss: the loss of shared, secular, logical arguments against suicide. By examining how people in other times have found powerful reasons to stay alive when suicide seems a tempting choice, she makes a persuasive intellectual and moral case against suicide.

Learn more about the book and author at Jennifer Michael Hecht's website.

The Page 99 Test: Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It.

Writers Read: Jennifer Michael Hecht.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top foodie novels from around the world

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Alexandra Silverman tagged six choice examples of foodie fiction, including:

Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel

A tour of the world’s food fiction would be incomplete without a stop in Mexico, at the de la Garza’s ranch. The full title of Esquivel’s brilliant first novel is Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies, but it also includes regret, revolution, magic, and the most emotionally gripping cooking scenes I’ve ever read. If you’ve yet to sample the book’s literary and culinary delights, go forth—learn in Nacha’s kitchen, burn with Gertrudis, simmer (ache, roast, and bake) with Tita, and beware of Rosaura’s gas and Mama Elena’s ghost.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Andy Marino's "Uncrashable Dakota"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Uncrashable Dakota by Andy Marino.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1862, Union army infantryman Samuel Dakota changed history when he spilled a bottle of pilfered moonshine in the Virginia dirt and stumbled upon the biochemical secret of flight. Not only did the Civil War come to a much quicker close, but Dakota Aeronautics was born.

Now, in Andy Marino's Uncrashable Dakota, it is 1912, and the titanic Dakota flagship embarks on its maiden flight. But shortly after the journey begins, the airship is hijacked. Fighting to save the ship, the young heir of the Dakota empire, Hollis, along with his brilliant friend Delia and his stepbrother, Rob, are plunged into the midst of a long-simmering family feud. Maybe Samuel’s final secret wasn’t just the tinkering of a madman after all....

What sinister betrayals and strange discoveries await Hollis and his friends in the gilded corridors and opulent staterooms? Who can be trusted to keep the most magnificent airship the world has ever known from falling out of the sky?

Learn more about the book and author at Andy Marino's website.

The Page 69 Test: Uncrashable Dakota.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five perfect mysteries

Ian Rankin's latest novel is Saints of the Shadow Bible.

For Chatelaine magazine, he tagged his five perfect mysteries, including:

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler.

This was the elegant Chandler’s first novel. Classically educated, Chandler knew he was creating a tarnished knight in private detective Philip Marlowe. Here, Marlowe is charged with rescuing a damsel in distress not from a dragon but from gangsters who are blackmailing her. The novel’s opening sentences beguile, and Chandler prepared the way for almost every American crime writer who came after him. He is also the master of the one-liner, and Marlowe is a man you’d like to know, even though being his friend could get you killed.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Big Sleep also appears on Kathryn Williams's reading list on greed, Gigi Levangie Grazer's list of six favorite books that became movies, Megan Wasson's list of five top books on Los Angeles, Greil Marcus's six recommended books list, Barry Forshaw's critic's chart of six American noir masters, David Nicholls' list of favorite film adaptations, and the Guardian's list of ten of the best smokes in literature.

Learn about Ian Rankin's best books and the best selling book Rankin wishes he'd written.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Hugh Wilford's "America's Great Game"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East by Hugh Wilford.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the 9/11 attacks to waterboarding to drone strikes, relations between the United States and the Middle East seem caught in a downward spiral. And all too often, the Central Intelligence Agency has made the situation worse. But this crisis was not a historical inevitability — far from it. Indeed, the earliest generation of CIA operatives was actually the region's staunchest western ally.

In America's Great Game, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA's pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency's three most influential — and colorful — officers in the Middle East. Kermit Kim Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the first head of CIA covert action in the region; his cousin, Archie Roosevelt, was a Middle East scholar and chief of the Beirut station. The two Roosevelts joined combined forces with Miles Copeland, a maverick covert operations specialist who had joined the American intelligence establishment during World War II. With their deep knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs, the three men were heirs to an American missionary tradition that engaged Arabs and Muslims with respect and empathy. Yet they were also fascinated by imperial intrigue, and were eager to play a modern rematch of the Great Game, the nineteenth-century struggle between Britain and Russia for control over central Asia. Despite their good intentions, these Arabists propped up authoritarian regimes, attempted secretly to sway public opinion in America against support for the new state of Israel, and staged coups that irrevocably destabilized the nations with which they empathized. Their efforts, and ultimate failure, would shape the course of U.S. Middle Eastern relations for decades to come.

Based on a vast array of declassified government records, private papers, and personal interviews, America's Great Game tells the riveting story of the merry band of CIA officers whose spy games forever changed U.S. foreign policy.

Learn more about America's Great Game at the publisher's website.

The Page 99 Test: America's Great Game.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten stories of survival and bravery

Bear Grylls is the host of the summer 2013 NBC reality series Get Out Alive. Previously he starred for seven seasons in the adventure series Man vs. Wild. Educated at Eton, Grylls served in the elite UK Special Forces unit 21 SAS and was made an honorary lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy. He climbed Mt. Everest in 1998 at the age of twenty-three—just eighteen months after breaking his back in a parachuting accident in Africa. His latest book, Strike of the Shark, is the sixth in his Mission Survival series.

He named his top ten adventure stories for the Guardian, including:

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1719)

The original survival hero! After being shipwrecked on an island, Crusoe shows real grit as he works out how to build a shelter, hunt for food and even grow crops and raise goats. He manages to live for many years on the island and, most importantly, he never gives up hope. Most of the books on this list owe a debt to this thrilling tale.

Read about another entry on the list.

Robinson Crusoe is one of ten great books about hurricanes.

The Page 99 Test: Robinson Crusoe.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ian Tregillis reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Ian Tregillis, author of Something More Than Night.

His entry begins:

I frequently have several books going at any one time, because I always have a book to read on the bus (my commute to and from work is about 2 hours/day), a book to read for fun at home, and often I'll also be reading something related to my current writing project.

My commute reading right now is Snuff by Terry Pratchett. I have been a devoted fan of the Discworld novels since I stumbled upon #2, The Light Fantastic, in a bookstore in the late 1980s. It was the funniest thing I had ever read at the time; I remember reading excerpts from it to anybody who would listen. It was amazing stuff that seemed to have come out of nowhere. From then on I grabbed each new Discworld book as soon as I could, and I've been doing that for 25 years; Snuff is #39 in the series. Nowadays, I'm a little wiser than I was back then, and so I always...[read on]

About Something More Than Night, from the publisher:

Ian Tregillis's Something More Than Night is a Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler inspired murder mystery set in Thomas Aquinas’s vision of Heaven. It’s a noir detective story starring fallen angels, the heavenly choir, nightclub stigmatics, a priest with a dirty secret, a femme fatale, and the Voice of God.

Somebody has murdered the angel Gabriel. Worse, the Jericho Trumpet has gone missing, putting Heaven on the brink of a truly cosmic crisis. But the twisty plot that unfolds from the murder investigation leads to something much bigger: a con job one billion years in the making.

Because this is no mere murder. A small band of angels has decided to break out of heaven, but they need a human patsy to make their plan work.

Much of the story is told from the point of view of Bayliss, a cynical fallen angel who has modeled himself on Philip Marlowe. The yarn he spins follows the progression of a Marlowe novel—the mysterious dame who needs his help, getting grilled by the bulls, finding a stiff, getting slipped a mickey.

Angels and gunsels, dames with eyes like fire, and a grand maguffin, Something More Than Night is a murder mystery for the cosmos.

Learn more about the book and author at Ian Tregillis's website.

Writers Read: Ian Tregillis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven of the best YA novels for adult readers

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Kathryn Williams came up with eleven top Young Adult books for readers of all ages. One book she tagged:

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Absolutely heartbreaking and lyrical in its prose, The Book Thief appears on YA lists thanks to its publisher (Random House Children’s Books) and the age of its protagonist (10 when the book starts), but it competes with any work of literature written for any age. Liesel is on the brink of adolescence. The book’s narrator, however—Death—is ageless. Geoffrey Rush stars in the upcoming film adaptation, though I can’t imagine any filmmaker doing justice to the power of the written words.

Read about another title on the list.

The Book Thief also appears among Nicole Hill's top seven books with Death as a character, Lenore Appelhans's top ten teen books featuring flashbacks, and Kathryn Erskine's top 10 first person narratives.

--Marshal Zeringue

Billy G. Smith's "Ship of Death," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Ship of Death: A Voyage That Changed the Atlantic World by Billy G. Smith.

The entry begins:

The Hankey, a relatively large oceangoing wooden vessel, with square sails on foremast, mainmast and mizzenmast at the back, became the Ship of Death when it spread yellow fever around the Atlantic world in 1793. A replica ship might have a leading role in the film as was portrayed in Master and Commander (2003).

I would cast Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) as Philip Beaver, the British naval officer and idealist who was one of the organizers of the short-lived attempt to found a West-African colony on land purchased from Africans and using hired rather than enslaved African labor. As conditions worsened at the colony, he took control of the venture and was the last person to abandon the colony. Cranston would be able to perform both aspects of Beaver’s personality, the visionary, self-righteous abolitionist and the...[read on]

Learn more about Ship of Death at the Yale University Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Ship of Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 18 best fictional versions of Alan Turing

Charlie Jane Anders, editor at io9, came up with a list of eighteen fictional versions of Alan Turing, the Father of Computer Science.

One entry on the list:

Enigma by Robert Harris

This novel, adapted into a movie script by Tom Stoppard, follows Turing's cryptographic team as they race against time to break the toughest Nazi cipher — although the main character is another cryptographer, Tom Jericho. As Imitation Game writer Graham Moore explains here, "Though clearly inspired by Turing, Jericho is straight, and in fact the love triangle in which he finds himself ends up changing the course of the war. In a sense, we find here an imagined version of Turing's real-life relationship with his fellow codebreaker Joan Clarke, to whom Turing was briefly engaged in 1941."

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: William Conescu's "Kara Was Here"

This weekend's feature at the Page 69 Test: Kara Was Here by William Conescu.

About the book, from the publisher:

Brad Mitchell’s life is falling apart. His marriage is in limbo. The woman he thought he would marry, Kara, died from an overdose. An old friend keeps trying to convince him that Kara was actually murdered. And he has started to see double. Literally. When Kara—or, rather, her ghost—returns to Brad, his past and present blur into a fog.

Kara Was Here tells the story of a failed actress whose life and sudden death are only partially understood; her teenage sister, Gwen, who starts taking dangerous steps into Kara’s secret world; Kara’s college friend, Margot, who went from being the football team’s sexy secret weapon to the solitary proprietress of a baked goods business; and Kara’s one-time lover, Brad, who stands with one foot in the past and one foot in an increasingly uncertain future.

In the spirit of Clare Messud's The Emperor's Children or Hannah Pittard's The Fates Will Find Their Way, Conescu’s novel is at once a mystery about the dangers of aging into adulthood, an exploration of truth and perception, and a story about the ways we keep those we love with us—the people we’ve lost, the people we no longer see, and the people we used to be.

Learn more about the book and author at William Conescu's website.

William Conescu was born in New York and raised in New Orleans. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned an MFA in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. His short stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, New Letters, Green Mountains Review, and other publications. Being Written is his first novel.

The Page 99 Test: Being Written.

The Page 69 Test: Kara Was Here.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fourteen of the best stories on wrath

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Alexandra Silverman tagged fourteen entries on her reading list of wrathful stories, including:

Thunderball, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and You Only Live Twice, by Ian Fleming

How high’s your Bond IQ? Any genius-level fan’ll tell you that supervillain SPECTRE leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld (featured in three Bond novels and six films) is one wrathful guy—and arguably the most diabolical of all of Bond’s nemeses.

Read about another entry on the list.

Blofeld appears on Eoin Colfer's top ten list villains in fiction, John Mullan's list of ten of the best secret societies in literature, and Marcus Sedgwick's top 10 list of tales from cold climes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jennifer Michael Hecht's "Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It by Jennifer Michael Hecht.

About the book, from the publisher:

Worldwide, more people die by suicide than by murder, and many more are left behind to grieve. Despite distressing statistics that show suicide rates rising, the subject, long a taboo, is infrequently talked about. In this sweeping intellectual and cultural history, poet and historian Jennifer Michael Hecht channels her grief for two friends lost to suicide into a search for history’s most persuasive arguments against the irretrievable act, arguments she hopes to bring back into public consciousness. From the Stoics and the Bible to Dante, Shakespeare, Wittgenstein, and such twentieth-century writers as John Berryman, Hecht recasts the narrative of our “secular age” in new terms. She shows how religious prohibitions against self-killing were replaced by the Enlightenment’s insistence on the rights of the individual, even when those rights had troubling applications. This transition, she movingly argues, resulted in a profound cultural and moral loss: the loss of shared, secular, logical arguments against suicide. By examining how people in other times have found powerful reasons to stay alive when suicide seems a tempting choice, she makes a persuasive intellectual and moral case against suicide.

Learn more about the book and author at Jennifer Michael Hecht's website.

The Page 99 Test: Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top family-themed picture books

Jessica Ahlberg, daughter of the acclaimed author/illustrator team, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, studied fine art at Winchester College and has gone on to illustrate several books for children, including Goldilocks and Half A Pig.

She shared her top ten family-themed picture books with the Guardian. One title on the list:

Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

A wild book. Max is mean to his dog and his mother and is sent to bed without anything to eat. He escapes from home and family to the wild things, but after his adventure he thinks of home, his mother and his supper. When he returns, he finds his mother was thinking of him too, as she has left him some supper. The words are wonderful and the pictures incredible.

Read about another entry on the list.

Where the Wild Things Are is among Edward Carey's top ten writer/illustrators, Sara Maitland's top ten books of the forest, and Anthony Browne's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jody Casella's "Thin Space"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Thin Space by Jody Casella.

About the book, from the publisher:

There’s a fine line between the living and the dead, and Marshall is determined to cross it in this gut-wrenching debut novel.

Ever since the car accident that killed his identical twin brother, Marshall Windsor has been consumed with guilt and crippled by the secrets of that fateful night. He has only one chance to make amends and set things right. He must find a thin space—a mythical point where the barrier between this world and the next is thin enough for a person to step through to the other side.

But when a new girl moves into the neighborhood, into the exact same house Marsh is sure holds a thin space, she may be the key—or the unraveling of all his secrets.

As they get closer to finding a thin space—and closer to each other—March must decide once and for all how far he’s willing to go to right the wrongs of the living…and the dead.

Learn more about the book and author at Jody Casella's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Jody Casella and Zooey.

The Page 69 Test: Thin Space.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Gerry Bartlett reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Gerry Bartlett, author of Real Vampires Know Size Matters.

Her entry begins:

I’ve been reading some great Young Adult series lately but I’m also still a fan of mysteries. John Sandford is my go-to favorite mystery author. He never disappoints me and his latest Virgil Flowers novel was no exception. I loved Storm Front. The added element of a relationship for Virgil with fascinating female character Ma made me laugh out loud. The mystery of a stolen artifact from the Middle East gave the book a...[read on]

About Real Vampires Know Size Matters, from the publisher:

In the latest novel from national bestselling author Gerry Bartlett, curvaceous vampire Glory St. Clair has to figure how to compete with the wiles of a witchy woman...

Just when Glory has her life semi–on track, a woman from her longtime lover Jeremiah Campbell’s past steamrolls into town on a mission to win him back. Normally Glory wouldn’t feel threatened by a mortal with amorous intentions, but Jerry’s ex just happens to be a beautiful voodoo priestess with evil spirits at her beck and call—and a serious lack of conscience when it comes to getting what she wants.

And then there’s Glory’s family. After a lifetime of being MIA, Glory’s mom wants to go on a mother-daughter bonding trip to Olympus, home of the gods. And though Glory doesn’t trust her, her mother is offering to help with her pesky voodoo-woman problem. But with no guarantee of a return trip, can Glory dare leave Jerry alone while she visits a place where her less-than-perfect figure won’t be appreciated and time has no meaning? But size and the bonds of time are the least of her worries when love is on the line…

Learn more about the book and author at Gerry Bartlett's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Real Vampires Have More to Love.

My Book, The Movie: Real Vampires Have More to Love.

Coffee with a Canine: Gerry Bartlett and Jet (September 2011).

The Page 69 Test: Real Vampires Hate Skinny Jeans.

The Page 69 Test: Real Vampires Know Hips Happen.

The Page 69 Test: Real Vampires Know Size Matters.

Writers Read: Gerry Bartlett.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books that began as magazine serials

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Allegra Frazier tagged five top books that started out as magazine serials, including:

In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote

That Capote’s groundbreaking investigation into a senseless murder’s effect on its perpetrators and collateral victims was initially published as a four-part serial in The New Yorker is not entirely surprising: as a work of investigative journalism, a periodical seems the most reasonable place for it. More remarkable is the inverse, or the piece’s commercial and critical success as a complete book. Though not the first example of the true crime genre, the novelistic style of In Cold Blood’s complete text set it apart, and has been an inspiration to both novelists and investigative journalists ever since.

Read about another entry on the list.

In Cold Blood also appears on Claire Zulkey's list of six nonfiction books that will give you nightmares, Lauren Passell's top 20 list of peanut butter & jelly reads, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, Sarah Weinman's list of best true crime books, Catherine Crier's five top crime books list, Ann Rule's five best list of true-crime books, and Bryan Burrough's six best books list. Kansas' first poet laureate Jonathan Holden's chose In Cold Blood for The Great Kansas novel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stephen V. Ash's "A Massacre in Memphis," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: A Massacre in Memphis: The Race Riot That Shook the Nation One Year After the Civil War by Stephen V. Ash.

The entry begins:

A lot of actors would no doubt welcome a movie version of A Massacre in Memphis, for it features a large cast of interesting characters---black and white, male and female, old and young---and many dramatic episodes and gripping action sequences.

The setting is interesting, too: a Southern city one year after the Civil War, crowded with black people reveling in their new-found freedom, former Rebels resentful of defeat and emancipation, Irish immigrants struggling to survive and be accepted in America, and Yankee newcomers endeavoring to assert federal authority, help the freed people, or just make a buck.

In May 1866, long-simmering racial tensions in Memphis boiled over, resulting in a three-day race riot in which white mobs rampaged through black neighborhoods, shooting, beating, robbing, raping, and burning. Forty-six black people were murdered and every black church and school in the city was destroyed, along with many black homes.

One of the victims was fourteen-year-old Rachel Hatcher, a talented student in one of the freed people’s schools who dreamed of becoming a teacher. During the last hours of the riot, as she was trying to rescue a neighbor from his burning house, a white man put a bullet through her head. Her mother found her body moments later, but was unable to retrieve it before flames consumed it. A good choice to portray Rachel might be Quvenzhané Wallis.

One of the most colorful characters in the book is the city’s affable, alcoholic, Irish-American mayor, John Park. Quite drunk throughout the riot, he made a great show of trying to stop the violence while secretly sympathizing with the rioters. I can see...[read on]

Learn more about A Massacre in Memphis at the publisher's website.

Stephen V. Ash is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Tennessee. He is the author of Firebrand of Liberty, A Year in the South, and other books on the Civil War era.

The Page 99 Test: Firebrand of Liberty.

Writers Read: Stephen V. Ash.

The Page 99 Test: A Massacre in Memphis.

My Book, The Movie: A Massacre in Memphis.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great short yet deep books

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Joel Cunningham tagged "five great books short enough to polish off in an afternoon, but deep enough to keep you thinking long into the night," including:

Fight Club, by Chuck Palahniuk (49,962 words):

You can probably breeze through this book in less time than it takes to do a deep dive on the latest Ikea catalogue, but that didn’t stop it from launching Palahniuk’s career as his generation’s most beloved wunderkind of the grotesque. Plus it made for a pretty great movie.

Read about another entry on the list.

Fight Club is among Kathryn Williams's eight craziest unreliable narrators in fiction, Jessica Soffer's ten best book endings, Sebastian Beaumont's top ten books about psychological journeys, and Pauline Melville's top ten revolutionary tales.

Also see: Twenty of the best books under 200 pages.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Stefan Bachmann's "The Whatnot"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Whatnot by Stefan Bachmann.

About the book, from the publisher:

Oh, the Sly King, the Sly King, in his towers of ash and wind.

Pikey Thomas doesn't know how or why he can see the changeling girl. But there she is. Not in the cold, muddy London neighborhood where Pikey lives. Instead, she's walking through the trees and snow of the enchanted Old Country or, later, racing through an opulent hall. She's pale and small, and she has branches growing out of her head. Her name is Henrietta Kettle.

Pikey's vision, it turns out, is worth something. Worth something to Hettie's brother—a brave adventurer named Bartholomew Kettle. Worth something to the nobleman who protects him. And Pikey is not above bartering—Pikey will do almost anything to escape his past; he'll do almost anything for a life worth living.

The faeries—save for a mysterious sylph and a mischievous cobble faery or two— have been chased out of London. They've all gone north. The army is heading north, too. So Pikey and Bartholomew follow, collecting information, piecing together clues, searching for the doorway that will lead them to Hettie.

The Whatnot is the enthralling, surprising, and unforgettable companion to Stefan Bachmann's internationally bestselling debut novel The Peculiar.

Learn more about the book and author at Stefan Bachmann's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: The Peculiar.

The Page 69 Test: The Peculiar.

Writers Read: Stefan Bachmann.

The Page 69 Test: The Whatnot.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Camille Minichino reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Camille Minichino, author (writing as Ada Madison) of The Quotient of Murder.

Her entry begins:

I usually read only dark, unless a book club, class presentation, or the threat of a lost friendship requires me to read light. Dexter (the Jeff Lindsay books) is my friend. Send me to bed with a serial killer or a hit man and I'm in reading heaven.

Imagine my surprise that a light book, The California Roll, by John Vorhaus, has captured my attention. The endorsements alone should have turned me off...[read on]

About The Quotient of Murder, from the publisher:

Dr. Sophie Knowles loves using puzzles to make math fun for students. But when winter seizes Henley College, she must thaw out a cold case to track down a killer—her most difficult puzzle yet...

Winter Intersession is in full swing, and campus is buzzing over the concert celebrating the bell tower’s reopening. The building has been shuttered for twenty-five years, and Sophie’s shocked to learn why—a student leapt from it to her death. But she’s even more troubled by the secrecy surrounding the case. After Sophie performs some quick calculations, she’s left with a nagging question: Was it really suicide?

When one of Sophie’s favorite students, a performer in the concert, is brutally beaten and left in a coma, Sophie’s mind kicks into overdrive. The horrific incidents seem too coincidental to be unrelated, but can Sophie put together the pieces from a twenty-five-year-old murder before any other students get hurt?

Visit Camille Minichino's website.

Writers Read: Camille Minichino.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books given in books

W.B. Gooderham is the author of Dedicated to...: The Forgotten Friendships, Hidden Stories and Lost Loves found in Second-hand Books, a book made up entirely of notes people have written in other books.

For the Guardian he tagged his ten favorite examples of book-giving in fiction, including:

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. From Money by Martin Amis

John Self senses that his life of sex and drugs and booze is not all it's cracked up to be. He longs to "burst out of the world of money and into … the world of fascination. How do I get there? Tell me, please. I'll never make it by myself." By reading books, seems to be the answer suggested by his friend, Martina Twain, who buys John 1984. Noticing parallels in Nineteen Eighty-Four to his own life, John concedes that "Perhaps there are other bits of my life that would take on content, take on shadow, if only I read a bit more and thought less about money."

Read about the other entries on the list.

Money is among Justin Cartwright's top ten state of the nation novels and Chris Power's top six books on the 1980s.

Nineteen Eighty-four is on Katharine Trendacosta and Amanda Yesilbas's list of ten paranoid science fiction stories that could help you survive, Na'ima B. Robert's top ten list of Romeo and Juliet stories, Gabe Habash's list of ten songs inspired by books and a list of the 100 best last lines from novels. The book made Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten science fiction novels we pretend to have read, Juan E. Méndez's list of five books on torture, P. J. O’Rourke's list of the five best political satires, Daniel Johnson's five best list of books about Cold War culture, Robert Collins' top ten list of dystopian novels, Gemma Malley's top 10 list of dystopian novels for teenagers, is one of Norman Tebbit's six best books and one of the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King. It made a difference to Isla Fisher, and appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best Aprils in literature, ten of the best rats in literature, and ten of the best horrid children in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Charlotte Biltekoff's "Eating Right in America"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health by Charlotte Biltekoff.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eating Right in America is a powerful critique of dietary reform in the United States from the late nineteenth-century emergence of nutritional science through the contemporary alternative food movement and campaign against obesity. Charlotte Biltekoff analyzes the discourses of dietary reform, including the writings of reformers, as well as the materials they created to bring their messages to the public. She shows that while the primary aim may be to improve health, the process of teaching people to "eat right" in the U.S. inevitably involves shaping certain kinds of subjects and citizens, and shoring up the identity and social boundaries of the ever-threatened American middle class. Without discounting the pleasures of food or the value of wellness, Biltekoff advocates a critical reappraisal of our obsession with diet as a proxy for health. Based on her understanding of the history of dietary reform, she argues that talk about "eating right" in America too often obscures structural and environmental stresses and constraints, while naturalizing the dubious redefinition of health as an individual responsibility and imperative.

Learn more about Eating Right in America at the Duke University Press website.

Charlotte Biltekoff is Assistant Professor of American Studies & Food Science and Technology at the University of California, Davis. Previously, she was a chef at Greens, a well-known vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco.

The Page 99 Test: Eating Right in America.

--Marshal Zeringue