Reading list: family dynasties

At the Independent Will Dean compiled a brief reading list on family dynasties, including one book about a media dynasty:

The Man Who Owns The News by Michael Wolff

Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch – written using 50 hours of taped interviews with the News Corp chairman – may be a profile of the main player in the dynasty, but Rupert's rise (and now possible fall) is interwoven with his family. Wolff tells his story from inheriting the family business from father Sir Keith to his continuing (and how!) struggle to anoint an heir.

Read about a novel on the reading list.

Also see Fouad Ajami's five best books about financial dynasties.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ellen Block's "The Definition of Wind," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Definition of Wind by Ellen Block.

The entry begins:

As an author living in LA, I'm no stranger to playing the "who would you cast" game. In fact, I often find myself describing the characters via actors in order to bring them to life for people unfamiliar with my past books. The Hollywood-style pitch for my latest novel goes something like this...

Imagine Sandra Bullock...she's a grieving widow, haunted by the loss of her beloved husband and son in a tragic house fire, so she retreats to a quaintly quirky little island in North Carolina's Outer Banks to become the caretaker of an old lighthouse and recuperate. But she quickly discovers that the lighthouse may be as haunted as she is.

With the summer tourist season ushering in sizzling temperatures along with crowds of tourists, our heroine realizes that the hectic world she fled has landed on her doorstep and she isn't sure she can stand the heat. When visitors and natives alike start buzzing about a sunken treasure located off the coast and clues to it's location supposedly being hidden in the lighthouse, she soon becomes the focus of everybody's attention, including a handsome, seductive bachelor...think Aaron...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Ellen Block's website.

Ellen Block is the award-winning, internationally published author of five books, and she is also the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. Block lives in Los Angeles, where she is currently at work on a new novel.

My Book, The Movie: The Definition of Wind.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Karen Petrone's "The Great War in Russian Memory"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: The Great War in Russian Memory by Karen Petrone.

About the book, from the publisher:

Karen Petrone shatters the notion that World War I was a forgotten war in the Soviet Union. Although never officially commemorated, the Great War was the subject of a lively discourse about religion, heroism, violence, and patriotism during the interwar period. Using memoirs, literature, films, military histories, and archival materials, Petrone reconstructs Soviet ideas regarding the motivations for fighting, the justification for killing, the nature of the enemy, and the qualities of a hero. She reveals how some of these ideas undermined Soviet notions of military honor and patriotism while others reinforced them. As the political culture changed and war with Germany loomed during the Stalinist 1930s, internationalist voices were silenced and a nationalist view of Russian military heroism and patriotism prevailed.

Preview The Great War in Russian Memory, and learn more about the book at the Indiana University Press website.

Karen Petrone is Professor of History at the University of Kentucky. She is author of Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin, editor (with Valerie Kivelson, Michael S. Flier, and Nancy Shields Kollmann) of The New Muscovite Cultural History: A Collection in Honor of Daniel B. Rowland, and co-editor (with Jie-Hyun Lim) of Gender Politics and Mass Dictatorship: Global Perspectives.

The Page 99 Test: The Great War in Russian Memory.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Will Lavender reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Will Lavender, author of Dominance.

His entry begins:

I recently picked up Michael Crichton’s Sphere, a book that was recommended to me as “a good beach read.” I wasn’t expecting the book to do what it did. First, let me say that I love scouring used bookstores; I love the veiny-spined book, the lonely book that has been on the shelves for months and months, the book that was popular two decades ago. I like to sort of assume a different persona when I read these novels, imagine that I am living in a different era, the era when this particular book was hot off the presses. The book as time machine.

Like all great books, Sphere is a book that works on a multitude of different levels. What it is, though, is a page-turner. What it isn’t? Mindless entertainment. This book is the literary equivalent of...[read on]

Among the early praise for Dominance:

"[A] taut second standalone.... Full-bodied characters, an effective gothic atmosphere, and a deliciously creepy, unpredictable finale."
—Publishers Weekly

"The Silence of the Lambs meets And Then There Were None... a terrific premise."
—Booklist

"Lavender takes on another puzzle-within-a-thriller... Twisty and turny, with all kinds of side roads ... [He] manages to maintain the novel's taut, sinister atmosphere from the first page to the last... Readers who loved Lavender's first book will doubtless delight in this one."
—Kirkus Reviews

"Lavender's exciting second literary thriller (after Obedience) pulls readers right into the hunt. Aldiss reminds us of a sexy Hannibal Lecter, and the mystery of the reclusive author Paul Fallows and his connection to the class is riveting. Well-drawn characters, excellent plot, good use of flashbacks, and many red herrings will keep the pages turning to the very end."
—Library Journal

Learn more about the author and his work at Will Lavender's website and blog.

Lavender is a graduate of Centre College with an MFA from Bard College. His debut novel, Obedience, was a New York Times and international bestseller. His novels have been sold in 13 countries.

The Page 69 Test: Obedience.

Writers Read: Will Lavender.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carmela Ciuraru's 6 favorite pseudonymous books

Carmela Ciuraru is the author of Nom de Plume: A Secret History of Pseudonyms.

Carmela Ciuraru is not a pseudonym. Her anthologies include First Loves: Poets Introduce the Essential Poems That Captivated and Inspired Them (Scribner) and Solitude Poems (Alfred A. Knopf/Everyman’s Library). A graduate of Columbia University’s Journalism School, she is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and PEN American Center. She has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, O, The Oprah Magazine, and other publications.

She is a 2011 Fellow in Nonfiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

For The Week magazine, Ciuraru named her favorite pseudonymous books, including:

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree Jr.

Eighteen science-fiction stories compose the only collection by Tiptree that remains in print. Considering that Tiptree was in fact Alice Sheldon, a former Chicago debutante, it’s no wonder that "his" subversive themes explore gender roles and power. Sheldon passed as a successful male writer for more than a decade, but after her identity was exposed, she never recovered. She committed suicide in 1987.

Read about another book on the list.

See Carmela Ciuraru's list of ten great books by pseudonymous authors.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Beth McMullen's "Original Sin"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Original Sin by Beth McMullen.

About the book, from the publisher:

After falling in love and making a quick exit from her nine-year career in the USAWMD (United States Agency for Weapons of Mass Destruction), ex-spy Sally Sin does her best to become Lucy Hamilton, a stay-at-home mom in San Francisco. No one, not even her adoring husband Will, knows about her secret agent escapades—chasing no-good masterminds through perilous jungles, escaping evil assassins, and playing dangerous games of cat and mouse with her old nemesis, Ian Blackford, a notorious and dashing illegal arms dealer.

In her new life as Lucy Hamilton, she squeezes inside forts crafted from couch cushions by her three-year-old son Theo, makes organic applesauce, and frequents the zoo. But sometimes her well-honed spy reflexes refuse to lay low. She can’t help breaking into her own house to check on the babysitter or stop herself from tossing the yoga instructor who gets on her nerves. And when Ian Blackford, who is supposed to be dead, once again starts causing trouble for the USAWMD, the agency becomes desperate to get Sally back on the job.

How can Sally or Lucy or whatever her name is save the planet while at the same time keeping her own family’s world from spinning out of control?

Every bit as much fun as a spy-mom thriller ought to be, Original Sin is a fast-paced adventure story for mothers and spies, and anyone who has ever dreamed about being either.

Learn more about the book and author at Beth McMullen's website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Original Sin.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steven Gould's "7th Sigma," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: 7th Sigma by Steven Gould.

The entry begins:

Having already had a movie made out of one of my books, this one makes me wince. They're were several candidates for the role of Davy in my first novel Jumper, but we ended up with Young Darth Vader.

The character in 7th Sigma, Kimble, starts out at 12 and ends up at eighteen so it would have to be either an actor with incredible range or a couple of actors. However, this would be so far out in the future that really we're talking about actors who aren't on the scene yet or are child actors now. My dream would be a young Justin...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Steven Gould's website.

Gould is the author of Jumper, Wildside, Helm, Blind Waves, Reflex, and Jumper: Griffin’s Story, as well as many short stories. He is the recipient of the Hal Clement Young Adult Award for Science Fiction and has been nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards.

Writers Read: Steven Gould.

The Page 69 Test: 7th Sigma.

My Book, The Movie: 7th Sigma.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sandra Beasley reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Sandra Beasley, author of Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life.

Her entry begins:

Usually, when an old friend says “Oh, I know another writer; I have to introduce you!” I groan inwardly. All writers do not get along, any more than all lawyers or all veterinarians. But I agreed to show up at the Big Hunt—a DC bar where he was scheduled to read—reasoning that the skeeball and $4 drafts were reason enough. And in this case, my high school friend’s sister’s new husband turned out to be not only a compelling writer, but a very cool guy: Joseph Riippi.

The Orange Suitcase is described in terms of “stories,” but many of the sections have the brevity and lyric intensity of prose poems. In a series of snapshots that move back and forth between modern day and a grandparent’s generation, Riippi creates a portrait of young man’s ascent from firing BB guns to exchanging I Dos, interrogating along the way what it means to live and to love in New York. A collage of memories, dreams, and non sequiturs, there is not a boring page in this collection. Even as I write this, I’m thinking...[read on]

Among the early praise for Don't Kill the Birthday Girl:

“Beasley shares surprisingly delightful stories.”
–Prevention

"This information- and anecdote-filled book will be a welcome antidote to the worries and fears endured by families with food allergies."
—Booklist

“Intelligent and witty…enthralling…thoughtful and well-written.”
—Publishers Weekly

"Award winner Beasley (e.g., Barnard Women Poets) offers a cultural study of living the “allergic life.”
—Library Journal

“Fascinating…humane and informative.”
—Kirkus Reviews

"For readers who suffer from allergies, or care for someone who does, for parents who wonder why they can no longer send their child to school with the American staple, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or for anyone curious about how Sandra Beasley handles a lifelong challenge successfully, this book is for you. Winning, wise and humorous, you'll think twice when someone says, ‘Pass the peanuts.’”
—Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of Don't Sing at the Table

“Sandra Beasley's book is both hilarious and moving. It's about what it's like to live in fear of hidden parmesan, but it's also about teenage rebellion, romance and George Washington Carver. Recommended for everyone, no matter what their immune system is like.”
—A.J. Jacobs, author of My Life as an Experiment and The Year of Living Biblically

Learn more about the book and author at Sandra Beasley's website and blog, Chicks Dig Poetry.

Writers Read: Sandra Beasley (Febraury 2008).

Writers Read: Sandra Beasley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Samuel Fleischacker's "Divine Teaching and the Way of the World"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Divine Teaching and the Way of the World: A Defense of Revealed Religion by Samuel Fleischacker.

About the book, from the publisher:

Samuel Fleischacker defends what the Enlightenment called 'revealed religion': religions that regard a certain text or oral teaching as sacred, as wholly authoritative over one's life. At the same time, he maintains that revealed religions stand in danger of corruption or fanaticism unless they are combined with secular scientific practices and a secular morality. The first two parts of Divine Teaching and the Way of the World argue that the cognitive and moral practices of a society should prescind from religious commitments -- they constitute a secular 'way of the world', to adapt a phrase from the Jewish tradition, allowing human beings to work together regardless of their religious differences. But the way of the world breaks down when it comes to the question of what we live for, and it is this that revealed religions can illumine. Fleischacker first suggests that secular conceptions of why life is worth living are often poorly grounded, before going on to explore what revelation is, how it can answer the question of worth better than secular worldviews do, and how the revealed and way-of-the-world elements of a religious tradition can be brought together.

Learn more about Divine Teaching and the Way of the World at the Oxford University Press website.

Samuel Fleischacker is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois-Chicago. His previous work has focused on Enlightenment moral and political thought, especially that of Kant and Adam Smith, and on conceptions of culture, liberalism and distributive justice.

The Page 99 Test: Divine Teaching and the Way of the World.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best spy novels

At the Independent, Samuel Muston complied a list of the ten best spy novels.

One title on the list:

RESTLESS BY WILLIAM BOYD

Forget Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - Boyd's novel has a female spy in the leading role. And as a stomach-churning scene with a pencil shows, she may be quiet but she certainly isn't to be underestimated. A rollicking read.

Read about another novel on the list.

Also see Charles Cumming's five favorite works on espionage, Stella Rimington's six favorite secret agent novels, and Alan Furst's five best spy books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Edie Meidav's "Lola, California"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Lola, California by Edie Meidav.

About the book, from the publisher:

The year is 2008, the place California. Vic Mahler, famous for having inspired cult followers in the seventies, serves time on death row, now facing a countdown of ten days. For years, his daughter, Lana, has been in hiding. Meanwhile, her friend Rose, a lawyer, is determined to bring the two together.

When Rose succeeds in tracking down Lana at a California health spa, the two friends must negotiate land mines of memory in order to find their future. In sharp episodes infused with pathos and wit, Edie Meidav brings her acclaimed insight and poetry to the hope of friendship, parenthood, dystopia, and the legacy of the seventies. Lola, California speaks to our contemporary crisis of faith, asking: Can we survive too much choice?

Learn more about the book and author at Edie Meidav's website, blog, Facebook page and Twitter perch.

Writers Read: Edie Meidav.

The Page 69 Test: Lola, California.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is John Gimlette reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: John Gimlette, author of Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge.

His entry begins:

Unfortunately, I can’t always be reading exactly what I want. Although I spend much of my time travelling and researching my journeys, I also have to keep up the ‘day job’, and – for me – that means working as a barrister, or trial advocate.

So what am I reading right now? Well, if I am honest, it’s a gruesome little book about what all the different parts of our body are worth. It has a dull name, The Judicial Studies Board Guidelines, but, quite literally, it puts a price on all our bits and pieces, from ears and eyes to our private parts. Of course, it’s not a catalogue, and it’s not trying to say what a severed arm is worth. It merely indicates what a judge would award you. In this, English law recognises that you can’t buy back the foot that you left on the railway, or the testicles the doctors accidentally lopped off. But there is a tariff, a sort of ‘going rate’ for not only your appendages but also your wits. Even madness has a price.

It’s a fascinating reflection on how we perceive bodies. Start with an arm. Lose one below the elbow and you get up to £72,000. Lose both and you get up to £197,000 (odd really. Losing both arms is surely ten times worse than only one?). A leg on the other hand is worth £92,000 whereas if you’re pruned of both you’re in for double that at £195,000 (again, a bit odd considering a double amputation will put paid to your chances of walking). This compares to loss of an eye (£43,000), a mouthful of teeth (£7,500), or a hand (£72,000). I can’t help feeling that in parts of the Islamic world a lost hand might...[read on]

Among the praise for Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge:

“Wild Coast is the best kind of travel writing: tough-minded and humorous, but above all thoughtful.”
—Times Literary Supplement (UK)

“Wild Coast is funny, intelligent, revelatory.”
—Joseph O’Neill, author of Netherland

“A completely fascinating book. It opens up a forgotten corner of the world with tremendous flair and shrewd observation.”
—William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart

“A wonderfully entertaining account of a journey through one of the world’s least-known places ... Gimlette, an insatiably curious storyteller, revels in the strange mix of people and traditions ... Amid vivid descriptions of torrential rivers and golden grasslands that are home to some of the planets’ largest ants, otters, and fish, the author recalls encounters with a stunning variety of intriguing characters ... Colorful and immensely readable.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A few pages into his excellent new book, Wild Coast, John Gimlette tries to convey the forbiddingly impenetrable nature of his subject, the Guianas of northeastern South America, a nettlesome tangle of swamp, lowlands, crisscrossing creeks and rivers so resistant to navigation or settlement that the landscape remains one of the wildest, most unknown territories on the globe ... These are words to quicken the pulse of the armchair traveler, for whom no landscape resonates quite like the exotic, the hard to get to, the uncharted ... Between cellphones, Google Earth, and jumbo jets, it seems there’s nowhere in the world left to explore, but [writers like] John Gimlette prove that travel books still have something to tell us.”
—The Daily Beast

Learn more about the book and author at John Gimlette's website.

Writers Read: John Gimlette (April 2008).

Writers Read: John Gimlette.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Ina Lipkowitz's "Words To Eat By"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Words to Eat By: Five Foods and the Culinary History of the English Language by Ina Lipkowitz.

About the book, from the publisher:

English food words tell a remarkable story about the evolution of our language and culinary history, revealing a collision of cultures from the time Caesar first arrived on British shores to the present day. Words to Eat By explores the stories behind five of our most basic food words, words which reveal our powerful associations with certain foods. Using sources that range from Roman histories to Julia Child’s recipes, Ina Lipkowitz shows how saturated with French and Italian names the English culinary vocabulary is. But the words for our most basic foodstuffs—bread, milk, leek, meat, and apple—are still rooted in Old English. Words to Eat By will make readers reconsider the foods they eat and the words they use to describe them. Brimming with information, this book offers an analysis of our culinary and linguistic heritage that is as accessible as it is enlightening.

Learn more about Words To Eat By at the publisher's website.

Ina Lipkowitz is a Lecturer in MIT's Literature Department. Her research brings together her background in comparative literature and biblical studies with her interest in culinary history.

The Page 99 Test: Words to Eat By.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 Iranian books

Kamin Mohammadi is a writer, journalist and broadcaster specializing in Iran. She also writes travel books and is a magazine editor and lifestyle journalist with specialties in Italy, health, beauty, yoga and fashion. Her book, The Cypress Tree, is out this month in the UK from Bloomsbury.

At the Guardian she named her top ten Iranian books, including:

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return by Marjane Satrapi

These graphic stories are splendid – not just in their deceptively simple black and white drawings, but in the way Satrapi manages to tell the story of the revolution in Iran and her subsequent exile and return from the irreverent point of view of the rebellious child that she was. The history of Iran presented in her book is not exactly objective but no matter, these books are funny and moving.

Read about another book on the list.

Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood is one of Caradoc King's top ten childhood memoirs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dawn Tripp's "Game of Secrets," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Game of Secrets by Dawn Tripp.

The entry begins:

Love this question. I am a bookworm, 100 percent geek, and I rarely have a character in my head pinned to a movie star, but oddly enough, as I was writing Game of Secrets, I did.

Game of Secrets is a mystery, a small-town murder played out through a Scrabble game. And from the start, I saw the two women sitting down to that game so clearly: Meryl Streep is Jane—Jane is deeply intuitive, but slightly ajar. She is 60 when she comes to play a last Scrabble game with Ada Varick who, years ago, was Jane's father's lover, and the irresistibly beautiful reason he was killed. I want Helen...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Dawn Tripp's website.

The Page 69 Test: Game of Secrets.

Writers Read: Dawn Tripp.

My Book, The Movie: Game of Secrets.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jonathan Evison reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Jonathan Evison, author of West of Here.

His entry begins:

Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All by Allan Gurganus

Recently, I've been revisiting Allan Gurganus's brilliant Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. Usually when I mention this debut, a lot is made of the splash it created in 1989, spending eight months on the New York Times bestseller list, and selling (I believe) over four million copies. People often recall the dreadful CBS mini-series with Cicely Tyson. Or that their mom read it. What seems to get overlooked twenty-some years later is what a major literary achievement OLCWTA is. I'd number it among the best handful of debuts I ever read, along with one of my favorite southern novels. I'd number it among the best...[read on]

Among the early praise for West of Here:

A "booming, bighearted epic."
--Vanity Fair

"A big novel about the discovery and rediscovery of nature, starting over, and the sometimes piercing reverberations of history, this is a damn fine book."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Evison, author of this audacious historical novel, manages a near-impossible feat: first, he creates an almost absurdly complex narrative structure, bridging more than 100 years of life in Washington State and encompassing multiple points of view, and then he grounds the sublime architechtonic whole in the vividly realized daily lives of characters who exist completely in their individual moments but whose actions reverberate back and forth across time ... [This] is a testament to the books' greatness."
--Booklist (starred review)

Learn more about the book and author at Jonathan Evison's website.

Evison is also the author of All About Lulu, which won the Washington State Book Award. In 2009, he was the recipient of a Richard Buckley Fellowship from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation.

Jonathan Evison's six favorite books.

The Page 99 Test: All About Lulu.

Writers Read: Jonathan Evison.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Kelly's "Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust by Daniel Kelly.

About the book, from the publisher:

People can be disgusted by the concrete and by the abstract--by an object they find physically repellent or by an ideology or value system they find morally abhorrent. Different things will disgust different people, depending on individual sensibilities or cultural backgrounds. In Yuck!, Daniel Kelly investigates the character and evolution of disgust, with an emphasis on understanding the role this emotion has come to play in our social and moral lives.

Disgust has recently been riding a swell of scholarly attention, especially from those in the cognitive sciences and those in the humanities in the midst of the “affective turn.” Kelly surveys the empirical literature and experimental results relevant to disgust and proposes a cognitive model that can accommodate what we now know about it. He offers a new account of the evolution of disgust that builds on the model and argues that expressions of disgust are part of a sophisticated but largely automatic signaling system that humans use to transmit information about what to avoid in the local environment. Drawing on gene culture coevolutionary theory, Kelly argues that disgust was co-opted to play certain roles in our moral psychology. He shows that many of the puzzling features of moral repugnance tinged with disgust are by-products of the imperfect fit between a cognitive system that evolved to protect against poisons and parasites and the social and moral issues on which it has been brought to bear. Kelly’s account of this emotion provides a powerful argument against invoking disgust in the service of moral justification.

Learn more about Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust at the MIT Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on scandals, actual or invented

H.W. Brands's latest book is The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield.

At the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of books on scandals...in truth or just in print.

One title on the list:

Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie (1974)

During Thomas Jefferson's lifetime, enemies circulated rumors that the widower had a long sexual relationship with one of the slave women he owned. Jefferson's defenders denied the rumors as just the sort of trash one would expect of James Callender, the crusading editor and Jefferson enemy who originated the stories. Fawn Brodie, a noted practitioner in the 1970s of the then-fashionable genre of psychohistory, was one of the first academics to take the Callender story seriously. Probing what she imagined to be Jefferson's inner life, Brodie concluded that Sally Hemings, the slave woman in question, had indeed had a long relationship with Jefferson and had borne him children. The book was roundly rejected by the Jefferson fraternity, but it also spurred further investigation, eventually including the DNA tests that convinced even most Jefferson loyalists that Brodie and Callender were right.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Camille Noe Pagán's "The Art of Forgetting"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Art of Forgetting by Camille Noe Pagán.

About the book, from the publisher:

A moving and insightful debut novel of great friendship interrupted. Can the relationship survive when the memories are gone?

Marissa Rogers never wanted to be an alpha; beta suited her just fine. Taking charge without taking credit had always paid off: vaulting her to senior editor at a glossy magazine; keeping the peace with her critical, weight-obsessed mother; and enjoying the benefits of being best friends with gorgeous, charismatic, absolutely alpha Julia Ferrar.

And then Julia gets hit by a cab. She survives with minor obvious injuries, but brain damage steals her memory and alters her personality, possibly forever. Suddenly, Marissa is thrown into the role of alpha friend. As Julia struggles to regain her memory- dredging up issues Marissa would rather forget, including the fact that Julia asked her to abandon the love of her life ten years ago- Marissa's own equilibrium is shaken.

With the help of a dozen girls, she reluctantly agrees to coach in an after-school running program. There, Marissa uncovers her inner confidence and finds the courage to reexamine her past and take control of her future.

The Art of Forgetting is a story about the power of friendship, the memories and myths that hold us back, and the delicate balance between forgiving and forgetting.

Learn more about the book and author at Camille Noe Pagan's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Art of Forgetting.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Edie Meidav reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Edie Meidav, author of Lola, California.

Her entry begins:

Another way to phrase this question might be: why do I always come back to J.M. Coetzee? Because he is so spare and unremitting in his artistic vision. For anyone with maximalist tendencies, the guy serves as a welcome corrective. Right now I'm reading Summertime, which is such a thinly masked roman a clef that a new, metafictionally oriented genre should be created, called clef a roman. Reader's caveat or guide: for those new to Coetzee, begin with Disgrace; if you're hooked, read The Life and Times of Michael K.; possibly detour at Age of Iron; continue to the memoir Boyhood; and then on to Summertime. Do not start with Summertime.

I also just read...[read on]

Among the early praise for Lola, California:

"In this intense and tumultuous tale, Meidav adeptly limns the dark and sinuous obsessions of friendship with penetrating insights."
--Booklist

"Meidav creates a beautiful and true picture of female friendship, but as if that were not enough, she also keeps us guessing about who her characters really are, and how much weight their evaluations of each other actually hold."
--The Daily

"Brilliant ... awesome."
--Publishers Weekly

"Meidav is a rare thing, a less than well known writer who continues to publish big, dense, challenging novels with a major press. Should Meidav be better known? Almost definitely."
--The Millions, Most Anticipated Books of 2011

Learn more about the book and author at Edie Meidav's website, blog, Facebook page and Twitter perch.

Writers Read: Edie Meidav.

--Marshal Zeringue