Ten songs inspired by notable books

At Publisher Weekly's PWxyz blog, Gabe Habash compiled a list of ten songs inspired by books, including:

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon inspired “Whip It” by Devo

In case you weren’t spending your spare time searching the internet for the meaning behind the words of Devo’s most famous song, we’ll tell you: Devo member Jerry Casale wrote the lyrics to “Whip It” in one night, imitating Pynchon’s parodies in Gravity’s Rainbow. Said Casale: ”[Pynchon] had parodied limericks and poems of kind of all-American, obsessive, cult of personality ideas like Horatio Alger and ‘You’re #1, there’s nobody else like you’ kind of poems that were very funny and very clever. I thought, ‘I’d like to do one like Thomas Pynchon.’”

Read about another entry on the list.

Gravity’s Rainbow is a book Chuck Klosterman would have parents read to their children.

Also see: Ten best songs based on books.

Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Chris Ewan's "Safe House"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Safe House: A Thriller by Chris Ewan.

About the book, from the publisher:

A brilliant thriller from the author of the acclaimed Good Thief's Guide series asks, how can a beautiful woman simply vanish?

When Rob Hale wakes up in a hospital after a motorcycle crash, his first thought is for the gorgeous blonde, Lena, who was on the back of his bike. The doctors and police, however, insist that he was alone at the scene. The shock of the accident must have made him imagine Lena, especially since his description of her resembles his late sister, Laura.

Convinced that Lena is as real as he is, Rob teams up with Rebecca Lewis, a London-based PI who has a mysterious connection to Laura—and learns that even a close-knit community like the Isle of Man can hide dangerous secrets that will not stay safe forever.

Learn more about the author and his work at Chris Ewan's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Thief's Guide to Paris.

Writers Read: Chris Ewan.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas.

The Page 69 Test: The Good Thief's Guide to Venice.

The Page 69 Test: Safe House.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Joseph F. Kett's "Merit"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Merit: The History of a Founding Ideal from the American Revolution to the Twenty-First Century by Joseph F. Kett.

About the book, from the publisher:

The idea that citizens' advancement should depend exclusively on merit, on qualities that deserve reward rather than on bloodlines or wire-pulling, was among the Founding ideals of the American republic, Joseph F. Kett argues in this provocative and engaging book. Merit’s history, he contends, is best understood within the context of its often conflicting interaction with the other ideals of the Founding, equal rights and government by consent. Merit implies difference; equality suggests sameness. By sanctioning selection of those lower down by those higher up, merit potentially conflicts with the republican ideal that citizens consent to the decisions that affect their lives.

In Merit, which traces the history of its subject over three centuries, Kett asserts that Americans have reconciled merit with other principles of the Founding in ways that have shaped their distinctive approach to the grading of public schools, report cards, the forging of workplace hierarchies, employee rating forms, merit systems in government, the selection of officers for the armed forces, and standardized testing for intelligence, character, and vocational interests. Today, the concept of merit is most commonly associated with measures by which it is quantified.

Viewing their merit as an element of their selfhood—essential merit—members of the Founding generation showed no interest in quantitative measurements. Rather, they equated merit with an inner quality that accounted for their achievements and that was best measured by their reputations among their peers. In a republic based on equal rights and consent of the people, however, it became important to establish that merit-based rewards were within the grasp of ordinary Americans. In response, Americans embraced institutional merit in the form of procedures focused on drawing small distinctions among average people. They also developed a penchant for increasing the number of winners in competitions—what Kett calls "selection in" rather than “selection out”—in order to satisfy popular aspirations. Kett argues that values rooted in the Founding of the republic continue to influence Americans’ approach to controversies, including those surrounding affirmative action, which involve the ideal of merit.

Learn more about Merit at the Cornell University Press website.

Joseph F. Kett is James Madison Professor of History at the University of Virginia. His books include The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750–1990 and (as coauthor) of The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy.

The Page 99 Test: Merit.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Mary Jane Clark reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Mary Jane Clark, author of Footprints in the Sand.

Her entry begins:

You might not think that someone who constantly murders people in her own stories would be a big fan of the forever-running-somewhere television show Little House on the Prairie, but I am. For years and years I have loved watching the Ingalls family members and the trials and tribulations they faced, always triumphing because of their keen work ethic, strong values and abiding love for one another. I still watch it often in re-runs and I always feel better after I do.

So when I spotted Prairie Tale by Melissa Gilbert on the book shelf, I picked it up. Gilbert, you’ll remember, played Laura Ingalls. In this memoir, she recounts not only what it was like to work on the show but her experiences growing up and surviving in Hollywood. She is...[read on]

About the book, from the publisher:

It's the dead of winter and struggling actress and wedding-cake decorator Piper Donovan is thrilled to be in warm and romantic Sarasota, Florida, enjoying the powdery white beaches, soothing seas, and golden sunsets over the Gulf of Mexico. She and her family are there to celebrate her beloved cousin's wedding. Not only is Piper creating the sugar-sand-dollar-festooned wedding cake, she's also the maid of honor.

But a cloud seems to be hovering over the whole affair. Shortly after a bridesmaid mysteriously disappears, a kindly neighbor's car is run off the road and a prospective witness, an innocent Amish teenager, is threatened to keep silent. Then a body is found on the beach where the wedding will take place. With the nuptials threatened, it falls to Piper to unmask a killer. Could it be the wedding planner with something to hide? A doctor and his wife who collect unusual Japanese figurines? The best man, an ex–drug dealer with lecherous eyes and roving hands? What about her cousin's future stepfather—or even the bridegroom himself?

As Piper gets close to figuring out who's been covering his guilty footprints in the sand, the cunning killer has already set his sights on Piper as his next victim!

Learn more about Footprints in the Sand at Mary Jane Clark's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: Footprints in the Sand.

Writers Read: Mary Jane Clark.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on spies, lies & foreign correspondents

Richard Beeston began his long and distinguished career as a foreign correspondent working for a clandestine Arabic radio station run by MI6 during the Suez War. From 1961 to 1986 he was the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent for Beirut, Nairobi, Moscow and Washington and in the late ‘80s the Daily Mail’s Washington correspondent. He has covered many significant world events, including the collapse of the Belgian Congo, East Africa’s post-independence upheavals, Middle East revolutions, the Vietnam War, Watergate and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Since 1990 he has worked as a freelance writer for The Times, Daily Telegraph and Saga Magazine.

In 2010 he discussed five top books on spies, lies and foreign correspondents with Alex Forsyth for The Browser, including:

The Balkan Trilogy
by Olivia Manning

Your fourth choice is a trilogy of books by Olivia Manning.

I think she was one of the very best novelists of the 20th century. These books, The Balkan Trilogy – and The Levant Trilogy – were her best pieces. What I found fascinating was all the drama of the Second World War in rather peripheral places. But the drama and the feeling of the war was written against a background of a young couple who had just got married and who were very different in their outlook on life, and the problems of their marriage.

It’s been described as a tragicomedy.

Yes, she manages somehow to create what the wartime situation was. The British Council are portrayed as awful self-interested characters, hardly interested in the war itself. The couple are always picking up these helpless characters too, these stray cats of people and helping them along.

How is the business of war reportage portrayed here?

She gets various jobs, putting out British information. There are a lot of reporters that pass through, rather like the reporters in Scoop. She takes a rather critical view of most people though; she’s not very kind, very objective. From time to time she’s emotionally involved with people, whereas Guy Pringle, the husband, is a hopeless bundle of love and left-wing sympathies.

Read about another book Beeston tagged at The Browser.

Also see William Stevenson's five best list of books about secret agents.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sam Thomas's "The Midwife’s Tale," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Midwife’s Tale by Sam Thomas.

His entry begins:

Ah, when you ask who I’d cast in The Midwife’s Tale, you’ve stirred up a marital hornet’s nest worthy of Gone Girl, as my wife and I have gone eleven rounds over this with no agreement.

My main character is Bridget Hodgson, an English midwife practicing her trade (and solving murders) in the midst of the English Civil War. (Puritans, Oliver Cromwell, chopping off the king’s head and all that good stuff.) My wife is convinced we need Kate Winslet for the role, but I just don’t see it. Yes, she’s beautiful enough, but she just doesn’t project the power that my protagonist has. As a result, I’m going with...[read on]

View the trailer for The Midwife’s Tale, and learn more about the book and author at Sam Thomas's website, blog, and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: The Midwife’s Tale.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette's "Science on American Television"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Science on American Television: A History by Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette.

About the book, from the publisher:

As television emerged as a major cultural and economic force, many imagined that the medium would enhance civic education for topics like science. And, indeed, television soon offered a breathtaking banquet of scientific images and ideas—both factual and fictional. Mr. Wizard performed experiments with milk bottles. Viewers watched live coverage of solar eclipses and atomic bomb blasts. Television cameras followed astronauts to the moon, Carl Sagan through the Cosmos, and Jane Goodall into the jungle. Via electrons and embryos, blood testing and blasting caps, fictional Frankensteins and chatty Nobel laureates, television opened windows onto the world of science.

But what promised to be a wonderful way of presenting science to huge audiences turned out to be a disappointment, argues historian Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette in Science on American Television. LaFollette narrates the history of science on television, from the 1940s to the turn of the twenty-first century, to demonstrate how disagreements between scientists and television executives inhibited the medium’s potential to engage in meaningful science education. In addition to examining the content of shows, she also explores audience and advertiser responses, the role of news in engaging the public in science, and the making of scientific celebrities.

Lively and provocative, Science on American Television establishes a new approach to grappling with the popularization of science in the television age, when the medium’s ubiquity and influence shaped how science was presented and the scientific community had increasingly less control over what appeared on the air.

Learn more about Science on American Television at the University of Chicago Press website.

Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette is an independent historian based in Washington, DC.

Writers Read: Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette.

The Page 99 Test: Science on American Television.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Elizabeth J. Duncan reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Elizabeth J. Duncan, author of A Small Hill to Die On.

Her entry begins:

I’ve just finished reading Until the Night by Giles Blunt, whom I consider Canada’s best crime writer. He’s certainly my favourite. The sixth in the John Cardinal series, Until the Night might be the best of the lot. It’s complex, surprising, and above all, superbly well written. It’s literary crime fiction.

In this novel Blunt does the nearly impossible – he pulls together two strands of distinct narrative in a way that stuns the reader. The two narratives involve different points of view, different times, different characters and yet everything makes perfect sense when all the elements collide at the end in an unforgettable climax. Blunt has years of experience writing for television and it shows; his story telling is visual and visceral.

His characters are crisp, sharply defined, flawed and human. They make mistakes; they...[read on]

About A Small Hill to Die On, from the publisher:

The North Wales market town of Llanelen is abuzz when a Vietnamese family moves into Ty Brith Hall. It isn’t long before the family’s business dealings have the townsfolk wondering what’s really going on up at the big house on the hill.

Things take a sinister turn when Penny Brannigan, spending a midwinter afternoon sketching the magnificent views that surround the town, discovers the body of the new family’s teenage daughter. Many secrets lie buried in the shallow grave, along with the girl, who Penny identifies by the snakeskin manicure she received at Penny’s salon. When an elderly woman returns to Llanelen to care for her ailing brother, Penny discovers the truth about another death at Ty Brith Hall, one that hits very close to home. Though Penny's romantic interest, Detective Chief Inspector Gareth Davies, warns her to stay away, Penny can't resist getting involved, and her urge to help will ultimately put her in danger.

Elizabeth J. Duncan's latest offering in this engaging series is filled with memorable characters, great escapes, explosive plot twists, and plenty of Welsh charm.

Visit Elizabeth J. Duncan's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Cold Light of Mourning.

The Page 69 Test: A Brush with Death.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Elizabeth J. Duncan and Dolly.

Writers Read: Elizabeth J. Duncan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on the dark side of small towns

Stefan Kiesbye has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan. His stories and poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and his first book, Next Door Lived a Girl, won the Low Fidelity Press Novella Award.

For the Wall Street Journal, Kiesbye named a list of five top books on the dark side of small towns, including:

The Murder Farm
by Andrea Maria Schenkel (2008)

This novel, based on a real-life crime, had Germany abuzz and marked the arrival of a powerful writer. Andrea Maria Schenkel's book is set in 1950s Bavaria; on a farm on the outskirts of the town of Tannöd, a family and its new maidservant are brutally killed. The old farmer and his wife were misers and much despised, but why were the children slaughtered? A journalist, who years earlier had spent a summer in the town, returns to discover that his fond memories of the place were deceptive. In the novel's personal accounts of the Danner family, chapters from within the killer's mind, and stories from within the close-knit community, a different picture emerges. As though the townspeople are preparing for a reckoning, narrative passages are interspersed with verses from the "Litany for the Comfort of Poor Souls," taken from a 1922 spiritual guide. Fragment by fragment, the reader pieces together what happened on the Murder Farm and who killed the Danners. Schenkel's writing is as harsh as the conditions under which her subjects lived. The prose can be choppy, even truncated, the style impersonal—all qualities that allow a reader to absorb the details of horrendous crimes.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Dean Crawford's " Immortal"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Immortal by Dean Crawford.

About the book, from the publisher:

WOULD YOU KILL TO LIVE FOREVER?

When the body of a gunshot victim rolls into the Santa Fe morgue, it should be a day like any other for medical investigator Lillian Cruz. Yet upon examination, the corpse appears to be over a hundred years old with smallpox scars, and an odd wound protrudes from the victim’s leg. Lodged in the femur, under decrepit scar tissue, is a bullet shaped like a musket ball. The bullet looks like it was fired during the Civil War and had remained in the victim’s leg ever since.

Rattled by the discovery, Cruz instructs her assistant to take specimens to the state authorities immediately and not to tell a soul about it. Minutes after the assistant leaves, the lights go dark in the morgue and Cruz is kidnapped.

The Defense Intelligence Agency calls in former war correspondent Ethan Warner and his partner, Nicola Lopez, to discreetly investigate the disappearance. And very quickly, a relatively simple case turns into something much more sinister. With each new lead they uncover, Warner and Lopez are inadvertently bringing a warped and dangerous individual closer to achieving a catastrophic goal: immortality. In the spine-chilling tradition of Michael Crichton and James Rollins, Immortal is an action-packed blockbuster that combines science, suspense, and ingenious speculation.

Learn more about the book and author at Dean Crawford's website and blog.

Writers Read: Dean Crawford.

My Book, The Movie: Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: Immortal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Publishers Weekly's 7 top SF/fantasy/horror titles of 2012

Publishers Weekly named its top science fiction/fantasy/horror titles of 2012.

One title on the list:

At the Mouth of the River of Bees
Kij Johnson (Small Beer)

Johnson's long-awaited first collection is full of thought-provoking and often emotionally wrenching stories that traverse the spectrum of speculative fiction.

Read about another title on the list.

Visit Kij Johnson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Walter Greatshell's "Terminal Island," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Terminal Island by Walter Greatshell.

The entry begins:

Hmm, if my book Terminal Island were to be made into a movie, there would be several important roles to fill:

First, the main character, Henry Cadmus, would require two actors, one representing him as a ten-year-old boy visiting the island for the first time with his enigmatic mother, and the other as a 40-year-old man returning there to track her down. The perfect actor to play the boy would have been Haley Joel Osment at the age he was when he made The Sixth Sense. Of course, Osment is too old now, but any boy cast for the role would have to achieve that same quality of alienation and wounded innocence.

The middle-aged Henry is a war veteran and devoted husband and father, who has repressed the traumas of his past and resents having to revisit them by returning to Catalina Island. The ideal actor for this role would be someone like...[read on]

View the video trailer for Terminal Island, and visit Walter Greatshell's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Xombies: Apocalypse Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Xombies: Apocalypticon.

Writers Read: Walter Greatshell.

The Page 69 Test: Mad Skills.

My Book, The Movie: Mad Skills.

The Page 69 Test: Terminal Island.

My Book, The Movie: Terminal Island.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 best Jane Austen characters

Paula Byrne's most recent book, published in January 2013 to mark the bicentenary of the first publication of Pride and Prejudice, is an innovative biography called The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things.

She named a list of the ten best Jane Austen characters for the Observer, including:

Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion

Fathers often come off badly in Austen’s novels. Sir Walter Elliot, father of Anne, the heroine of Persuasion, is a selfish, heartless man, absorbed by himself and his title. He’s almost a caricature of the dim-witted upper classes. He is vain to the point of absurdity. His house is lined with mirrors. Obsessed by keeping up appearances, he will only be seen in public with attractive or well-born people. He dislikes sailors because of their orange tan and supposed lack of breeding. He’s so vain he probably thinks this feature’s about him.

Read about another Austen character Byrne tagged.

Persuasion is among Marjorie Kehe's list of ten perfect books for Valentine's Day gifts, Howard Jacobson's 5 favorite literary heroines and top ten novels of sexual jealousy, Elizabeth Buchan's top ten books guaranteed to give comfort during the ending of a relationship, and appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best concerts in literature.

The Page 99 Test: Persuasion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Victoria Emma Pagán's "Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature by Victoria Emma Pagán.

About the book, from the publisher:

Conspiracy theory as a theoretical framework has emerged only in the last twenty years; commentators are finding it a productive way to explain the actions and thoughts of individuals and societies. In this compelling exploration of Latin literature, Pagán uses conspiracy theory to illuminate the ways that elite Romans invoked conspiracy as they navigated the hierarchies, divisions, and inequalities in their society. By seeming to uncover conspiracy everywhere, Romans could find the need to crush slave revolts, punish rivals with death or exile, dismiss women, denigrate foreigners, or view their emperors with deep suspicion. Expanding on her earlier Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History, Pagán here interprets the works of poets, satirists, historians, and orators—Juvenal, Tacitus, Suetonius, Terence, and Cicero, among others—to reveal how each writer gave voice to fictional or real actors who were engaged in intrigue and motivated by a calculating worldview.

Delving into multiple genres, Pagán offers a powerful critique of how conspiracy and conspiracy theory can take hold and thrive when rumor, fear, and secrecy become routine methods of interpreting (and often distorting) past and current events. In Roman society, where knowledge about others was often lacking and stereotypes dominated, conspiracy theory explained how the world worked. The persistence of conspiracy theory, from antiquity to the present day, attests to its potency as a mechanism for confronting the frailties of the human condition.

Learn more about Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature at the University of Texas Press website.

Victoria Emma Pagán is Professor of Classics at the University of Florida. Her books include A Sallust Reader, Rome and the Literature of Gardens, and Conspiracy Narratives in Roman History. She also edited the Companion to Tacitus.

Writers Read: Victoria Emma Pagán.

The Page 99 Test: Conspiracy Theory in Latin Literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable memoirs

Calvin Trillin's books include Deciding the Next Decider, A Heckuva Job, Obliviously on He Sails, About Alice, and Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin.

One of his favorite memoirs, as told to Sophie Roell at The Browser:

Growing Up
by Russell Baker

Your next choice is by the long-time New York Times columnist Russell Baker.

Yes, I thought Growing Up was a model memoir. I know he was sort of stuck on it for a while, and then he found these letters that his mother had exchanged during the Depression. And there was a lot of reporting in that book. I think if you take somebody like Baker, who has spent his life mainly as a reporter, he has a different approach to memoir, than someone who has spent her life, say, as a poet. In the first place, he is much more concerned with, “Hey, did that really happen or am I just making it happen?”

Also, it’s establishing place that I often find the most satisfying part of any book. Good mysteries, for instance, I don’t find interesting because of the puzzle of “Who did it?” Really good mystery writers establish a sense of place and Mary Karr did that with The Liars’ Club. And, in the same way, Russell Baker did that with the era he’s writing about in Growing Up. You really felt a time in America from reading that book.

That time being the Great Depression?

Yes, and the years after it. He really gave a sense of the era that you couldn’t get from just a history book. I thought it was a marvellous book.

Read about another memoir Trillin tagged at The Browser.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ashley Ream reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Ashley Ream, author of Losing Clementine.

Her entry begins:

We’re alike, you and I. Yep, you there on the other side of the screen. We read a lot. Nearly everything. Not quite everything because neither of us is going in for fifty shades of anything, but we’re down for nearly anything else. That does make it hard when you’re asked to write about what you read because you can’t just type “damn near everything” and walk away. It makes people testy. So here are a few books I’ve enjoyed recently, one from each category of reading I do. (That’s right. Category. I put thought into this, dammit.)

The Oh-My-God-I-Will-Never-Be-This-Good Book

Arcadia by Lauren Groff

Some writers just knock my socks off. They knock them off and pick them up and slap me about the face with them. Groff is one of those, and Arcadia is her best book, which is saying something. The story follows Bit Stone, the first child born to Arcadia, a hippie commune in rural New York state, from the 1960s into a quasi-dystopian near future. Whether her character is a small child, a teenager or a grown man, Groff still gets the voice just exactly right. The setting is vivid, and the plot is powerful. It’s the sort of book that...[read on]

About Losing Clementine, from the publisher:

In thirty days Clementine Pritchard will be finished with her last painting and her life.

World-renowned artist and sharp-tongued wit Clementine Pritchard has decided that she's done. After flushing away a medicine cabinet full of prescriptions, she gives herself thirty days to tie up loose ends—finish one last painting, make nice with her ex-husband, and find a home for her cat. Clementine plans to spend the month she has left in a swirl of art-world parties, manic work sessions, and outrageous acts—but what she doesn't expect is to uncover secrets surrounding the tragedy that befell her mother and sister. In an ending no one sees coming, will we lose Clementine or will we find her?

A bold debut from an exciting new voice, Losing Clementine is a wonderfully entertaining and poignant novel about unanticipated self-discovery that features one of the most irresistible, if deeply flawed, characters to grace contemporary fiction in years.

Learn more about the book and author at Ashley Ream's website.

Writers Read: Ashley Ream.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Walter Greatshell's "Terminal Island"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Terminal Island by Walter Greatshell.

About the book, from the publisher:

Henry Cadmus grew up on Catalina Island, a scenic vacationland off the Southern California coast. But Henry’s experiences were far from idyllic. Today, even though Henry has seen firsthand the horrors of war, the ghastly images that haunt his dreams are ones he associates with his childhood… and the island: a snarling pig-man holding a cleaver; a jackal-headed woman on a high balcony, dripping blood; strange occult rituals… and worse. If it was up to Henry, he would avoid the island entirely.

But Henry is returning to Catalina Island. At his wife Ruby’s insistence, Henry, Ruby, and their infant daughter are coming to Avalon, so that Henry can face his fears, exorcise his demons, and reconcile with the one he fears most… his mother.

From Walter Greatshell, author of Xombies comes Terminal Island, a novel of cosmic horror.

View the video trailer for Terminal Island, and visit Walter Greatshell's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Xombies: Apocalypse Blues.

The Page 69 Test: Xombies: Apocalypticon.

Writers Read: Walter Greatshell.

The Page 69 Test: Mad Skills.

My Book, The Movie: Mad Skills.

The Page 69 Test: Terminal Island.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Deborah R. Coen's "The Earthquake Observers"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Earthquake Observers: Disaster Science from Lisbon to Richter by Deborah R. Coen.

About the book, from the publisher:

Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet’s hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This knowledge rests not only on the recordings of seismographs, but also on the observations of eyewitnesses to destruction. During the nineteenth century, a scientific description of an earthquake was built of stories—stories from as many people in as many situations as possible. Sometimes their stories told of fear and devastation, sometimes of wonder and excitement.

In The Earthquake Observers, Deborah R. Coen acquaints readers not only with the century’s most eloquent seismic commentators, including Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Karl Kraus, Ernst Mach, John Muir, and William James, but also with countless other citizen-observers, many of whom were women. Coen explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences. Seismology abandoned this project of citizen science with the introduction of the Richter Scale in the 1930s, only to revive it in the twenty-first century in the face of new hazards and uncertainties. The Earthquake Observers tells the history of this interrupted dialogue between scientists and citizens about living with environmental risk.

Learn more about The Earthquake Observers at the University of Chicago Press website.

Deborah R. Coen is assistant professor of history at Barnard College, Columbia University.

The Page 99 Test: The Earthquake Observers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christine Wade's "Seven Locks," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Seven Locks by Christine Wade.

The entry begins:

Seven Locks is set in the Catskill Mountains on the Great Hudson River in the latter part of the 18th Century, so the grand and magical landscape would definitely be part of the cinematic interpretation. The stars in the film would be actors who loved that landscape. Vera Famiga would play the main character. She already lives on a goat farm in the Catskills; she cards and spins; and she is tough enough and sweet enough to embody my character----an unapologetic farm wife who does whatever is needed whenever. Mark Ruffalo would play the French trapper, who discourses on the virtues of the indigenous tribes and the great romance of the landscape and its people, and who may or may not be a rake. Judith, the daughter, needs to be portrayed by...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Christine Wade's website.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Locks.

My Book, The Movie: Seven Locks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 villainesses in literature

Emerald Fennell is a young British actor who recently appeared in Any Human Heart, the adaptation of William Boyd's bestselling novel. She plays Princess Merkalova alongside Keira Knightley and Jude Law in the film version of Anna Karenina. Shiverton Hall, her debut novel, began life as a television script.

Fennell named her top ten villainesses for the Guardian, including:

Annie Wilkes from Misery by Stephen King

If you're going to get rescued from a car crash, you had better hope it's not by your Number One Fan, Annie Wilkes. And you'd better not be carrying the manuscript of the book which kills off her favourite character. A baby-talking, comfort-eating, serial-killing nurse, Annie Wilkes is terrifying and brilliant combination of cheery prudishness and irrational, murderous rage.

Read about another villainess on the list.

Misery is one of Lesley Glaister’s top 10 books about incarceration.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Paul Bracken reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Paul Bracken, author of The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics.

His entry begins:

I just read Colin Wilson's Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs (1964). It offers a fantastic view of the inner workings of elites in the Russia of Nicholas and Alexandra , and just how crazy the mix of people and institutions can get. More deeply, Wilson argues that Rasputin illustrates the interaction of big historical mega trends with individuals who literally alter the direction of these trends. Had Rasputin been assassinated in 1910, rather than 1916, Russia might never have got into World War I, and almost surely would have developed into a constitutional monarchy. No Lenin, no Stalin. Maybe no Hitler. No...[read on]

About The Second Nuclear Age, from the publisher:

A leading international security strategist offers a compelling new way to "think about the unthinkable."

The cold war ended more than two decades ago, and with its end came a reduction in the threat of nuclear weapons—a luxury that we can no longer indulge. It’s not just the threat of Iran getting the bomb or North Korea doing something rash; the whole complexion of global power politics is changing because of the reemergence of nuclear weapons as a vital element of statecraft and power politics. In short, we have entered the second nuclear age.

In this provocative and agenda-setting book, Paul Bracken of Yale University argues that we need to pay renewed attention to nuclear weapons and how their presence will transform the way crises develop and escalate. He draws on his years of experience analyzing defense strategy to make the case that the United States needs to start thinking seriously about these issues once again, especially as new countries acquire nuclear capabilities. He walks us through war-game scenarios that are all too realistic, to show how nuclear weapons are changing the calculus of power politics, and he offers an incisive tour of the Middle East, South Asia, and East Asia to underscore how the United States must not allow itself to be unprepared for managing such crises.

Frank in its tone and farsighted in its analysis, The Second Nuclear Age is the essential guide to the new rules of international politics.

Learn more about The Second Nuclear Age at the Times Books website.

Paul Bracken is the author of Fire in the East and The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces. He is a professor of management and political science at Yale University.

Writers Read: Paul Bracken.

--Marshal Zeringue

Publishers Weekly's top children's fiction of 2012

Publishers Weekly named its top children's fiction of 2012.

One title on the list:

Son
Lois Lowry

Lowry's Newbery Medal–winning The Giver is, by all accounts, a landmark piece of literature. Three books and almost 20 years later, Jonas's tale comes full circle in a deeply meaningful and satisfying way. Watching the pieces fall into place is thrilling—this is how you bring a story to a close.

Read about another book on the list.

Visit Lois Lowry's website.

Writers Read: Lois Lowry.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Lois Lowry & Alfie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Peter Temin's "The Roman Market Economy"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: The Roman Market Economy by Peter Temin.

About the book, from the publisher:

The quality of life for ordinary Roman citizens at the height of the Roman Empire probably was better than that of any other large group of people living before the Industrial Revolution. The Roman Market Economy uses the tools of modern economics to show how trade, markets, and the Pax Romana were critical to ancient Rome's prosperity.

Peter Temin, one of the world's foremost economic historians, argues that markets dominated the Roman economy. He traces how the Pax Romana encouraged trade around the Mediterranean, and how Roman law promoted commerce and banking. Temin shows that a reasonably vibrant market for wheat extended throughout the empire, and suggests that the Antonine Plague may have been responsible for turning the stable prices of the early empire into the persistent inflation of the late. He vividly describes how various markets operated in Roman times, from commodities and slaves to the buying and selling of land. Applying modern methods for evaluating economic growth to data culled from historical sources, Temin argues that Roman Italy in the second century was as prosperous as the Dutch Republic in its golden age of the seventeenth century.

The Roman Market Economy reveals how economics can help us understand how the Roman Empire could have ruled seventy million people and endured for centuries.

Learn more about The Roman Market Economy at the Princeton University Press website.

Peter Temin is the Gray Professor Emeritus of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His books include The World Economy between the World Wars.

The Page 99 Test: The Roman Market Economy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great darknesses in literature

Stuart Kelly is the literary editor of Scotland on Sunday and a freelance critic and writer. He is the author of The Book of Lost Books and Scott-Land.

One of five great darknesses in literature he identified for the Guardian:

Milton

"No light, but rather darkness visible": in 10 syllables Milton conjures the paradox of Hell. What makes these lines so moving is not just the intellectual sprezzatura (his Inferno is not geographical, like Dante, but metaphysical and impossible), but our knowledge that he was probably already blind when he dictated the line. In his ineffably moving sonnet "On His Blindness", Milton does not talk of his own sightlessness; rather, he turns an inner eye on "this dark world and wide". But it is his final work, Samson Agonistes, which confirms Milton as the poet of insight in sightlessness. As Samson says: "O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon / Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse". He – Milton or Samson – is not describing blindness here. He is describing depression and alienation and every single thing the existentialists worried about over their absinthes. "The sun to me is dark / And silent as the moon". The world is turned upside down, and the ideas have to be, in response. When the Devil is trounced in Paradise Regained, "Darkness now rose / As daylight sunk, and brought in louring Night / Her shadowy offspring, unsubstantial both, / Privation mere of light and absent day". For the blind Milton, there is no real darkness.

Read about another darkness Kelly identified.

Satan from Paradise Lost is among the 50 greatest villains in literature according to the (London) Telegraph and appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best devils in literature.

Paradise Lost also appears on Mullan's lists of ten of the best snakes in literature, ten of the best pieces of fruit in literature, ten of the best visions of hell in literature, ten of the best angels in literature, ten of the best visions of heaven in literature, ten of the best walled gardens in literature, and ten of the best coups de foudre in literature. It is also on Diane Purkiss' critic's chart of the best books on the English Civil War and Peter Stanford's list of the ten best devils in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Jennifer McMahon's "The One I Left Behind"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The One I Left Behind by Jennifer McMahon.

About the book, from the publisher:

The summer of 1985 changes Reggie’s life. An awkward thirteen-year-old, she finds herself mixed up with the school outcasts. That same summer, a serial killer called Neptune begins kidnapping women. He leaves their severed hands on the police department steps and, five days later, displays their bodies around town. Just when Reggie needs her mother, Vera, the most, Vera’s hand is found on the steps. But after five days, there’s no body and Neptune disappears.

Now, twenty-five years later, Reggie is a successful architect who has left her hometown and the horrific memories of that summer behind. But when she gets a call revealing that her mother has been found alive, Reggie must confront the ghosts of her past and find Neptune before he kills again.

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

The Page 69 Test: Promise Not to Tell.

The Page 69 Test: Island of Lost Girls.

The Page 69 Test: Dismantled.

The Page 69 Test: The One I Left Behind.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "Part Wild"

Scribner and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of Part Wild: One Woman's Journey with a Creature Caught Between the Worlds of Wolves and Dogs by Ceiridwen Terrill.

HOW TO ENTER: Visit the Campaign for the American Reader Facebook page, scroll down, and "like" the post for Part Wild.

Contest closes on Monday, January 14th. Winner must have a US mailing address. Good luck!

Visit Ceiridwen Terrill's website.

Read more about Part Wild: One Woman's Journey with a Creature Caught Between the Worlds of Wolves and Dogs.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Ceiridwen Terrill and Argos.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Sofka Zinovieff reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Sofka Zinovieff, author of The House on Paradise Street.

Her entry begins:

The last book I read was Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal – a beautiful, hilarious and distressing look back at the childhood that was made famous by her first book Oranges are Not the Only Fruit. Adopted and brought up in an unhappy, Pentecostal, working-class household in northern England, Winterson brings shame to her adopted mother by admitting she is gay. The response is what gave the book’s title. What Winterson also reveals is how hard it was to leave behind her painful past, even after huge success as a writer. Although it is often dark, the story is one of brutal honesty and...[read on]

About The House on Paradise Street, from the publisher:

In 2008 Antigone Perifanis returns to her old family home in Athens after 60 years in exile. She has come to attend the funeral of her only son, Nikitas, who was born in prison, and whom she has not seen since she left him as a baby.

At the same time, Nikitas’s English widow Maud – disturbed by her husband’s strange behaviour in the days before his death – starts to investigate his complicated past. She soon finds herself reigniting a bitter family feud, and discovers a heartbreaking story of a young mother caught up in the political tides of the Greek Civil War, forced to make a terrible decision that will blight not only her life but that of future generations...

Learn more about the book and author at Sofka Zinovieff's website.

The Page 69 Test: The House on Paradise Street.

Writers Read: Sofka Zinovieff.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa O'Donnell's "The Death of Bees," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell.

Her entry begins:

I would love to see The Death of Bees as a movie. It’s dramatic, vivid, rich in action and heartbreaking, while at the same time comedic. My dream director would be Jim Sheridan who directed In America, My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father. He has an amazing voice and I love his work. He also has a gift for weeding out talent. You could trust him with anything.

I would like to see two unknown young actresses given an opportunity to play Marnie and Nelly. I have very fixed ideas in how they should look and I would know them immediately if I saw them in front of me in a casting situation. Marnie is pretty and vulnerable. She’s hard, but gentle. Nelly is beautiful, but weird.

I would love to see John...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Lisa O'Donnell's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Death of Bees.

Writers Read: Lisa O'Donnell.

My Book, The Movie: The Death of Bees.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eighteen predictions for 2013 from science fiction

At io9 Lauren Davis looked at what science fiction books, television, comics, and movies say will happen in year 2013, including:

Neuroscientists will develop an accurate test for sociopathy in men (A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr).

In the 2013 of Kerr's novel, a neuroscientist has discovered that an abnormality in men's brains is an incredibly reliable indicator of violent sociopathy. In the UK, the nature of criminal punishment has changed by this year, with punitive comas replacing imprisonment and capital punishment.

Read about another prediction from the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Hilary Hallett's "Go West, Young Women!"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Go West, Young Women!: The Rise of Early Hollywood by Hilary Hallett.

About the book, from the publisher:

In 1920, Los Angeles became the only western city where women outnumbered men. In Go West, Young Women, Hilary A. Hallett explores the relatively unknown New Woman of the West and her role in the development of Los Angeles and the nascent film industry. Hallett explains how women on both sides of the screen pioneered the transformation of the fledgling film industry from a marginal, decentralized business controlled by wealthy Anglo-Americans into the dominant, cosmopolitan industry of early Hollywood centered in Los Angeles. As early publicity stories about female celebrities focused on their independence, resourcefulness, and traversal of Los Angeles’s increasingly bohemian terrain, Hollywood came to represent a different kind of frontier, one that spoke to a country torn between Victorian rectitude and individual emancipation, dreams of upward mobility and fears of moral dissolution. From Mary Pickford’s rise to become perhaps the most powerful woman of her age, to the racist moral panics of the anti-war years and the aftermath of Hollywood’s first sex scandal, Hallett describes how the path through early Hollywood presaged the struggles over modern gender roles that animated the century to come.

Learn more about Go West, Young Women! at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Go West, Young Women!.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable novellas of unconsummated loves

André Aciman is the author of the novels Call Me by Your Name and Eight White Nights, the memoir Out of Egypt, and two books of essays.

He named his five favorite novellas of unconsummated loves for The Daily Beast. One title on the list:

Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome is the story of a docile husband who lives with his sickly wife and his wife’s impoverished niece, who has nowhere to turn except to work as a housemaid for her aunt. The wife is an embittered, odious, and vigilant presence in the house. But one evening, while the wife is away in another town for treatment, the two sit face to face and during a tremulous moment when both are about to avow their love, the cats break a pickle bowl to which the wife was attached. The wife suddenly returns and the couple is never even able to speak their love. They make a suicide pact, but this, too, like everything else in their brief love, fails.

Read about another novella on the list.

Ethan Frome is among John Mullan's ten best women writing as men in literature and Lynda Resnick's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jesse Bullington reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Jesse Bullington, author of The Folly of the World.

His entry begins:

I’ve been up to my eyebrows in research reading for most of the autumn, which doesn’t always make for the most thrilling recommendations, but now that I’ve wrapped up a few projects I’ve been able to pick up some more entertaining titles. Most of what I’ve currently got on-deck are short story anthologies or collections, as I find those are more agreeable to being set aside for extended periods as I’ve juggled pleasure reading with research. That said, there is one novel I’ve been very much enjoying, too…

It’s funny, because the previous time I penned one of these columns I was reading a Stephen Graham Jones title, and I’m once again under his literary thrall. This time it’s The Last Final Girl, a sort-of post-modern send-up of slasher movies. As with Demon Theory, an earlier novel of his, he’s written it as a highly stylized screenplay of sorts, though I think here he has improved upon the structure, as it’s more prose and less script, if that makes sense. The book really...[read on]

About The Folly of the World, from the publisher:

On a stormy night in 1421, the North Sea delivers a devastating blow to Holland: the Saint Elizabeth Flood, a deluge of biblical proportions that drowns hundreds of towns, thousands of people, and forever alters the geography of the Low Countries. Where the factions of the noble Hooks and the merchant Cods waged a literal class war but weeks before, there is now only a nigh-endless expanse of grey water, a desolate inland sea with moldering church spires jutting up like sunken tombstones. For a land already beleaguered by generations of civil war, a worse disaster could scarce be imagined.

Yet even disaster can be profitable, for the right sort of individual, and into this flooded realm sail three conspirators: a deranged thug at the edge of madness, a ruthless conman on the cusp of fortune, and a half-feral girl balanced between them. If they work together they may find reward beyond reckoning, but such promise is no guarantee against betrayals born of greed, rage, and lust.

In a topsy-turvey world where peasants feast while noblemen starve, these three uneasy confederates will learn that theft, fraud, and even murder are simply part of politics as usual in the island-city of Dordrecht, and even if their scheme succeeds they may not live long enough to enjoy it...

Learn more about the book and author at Jesse Bullington's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart.

The Page 69 Test: The Enterprise of Death.

Writers Read: Jesse Bullington.

My Book, The Movie: The Enterprise of Death.

The Page 69 Test: The Folly of the World.

Writers Read: Jesse Bullington.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen best zombie fiction releases of 2012

Paul Goat Allen named the 13 best zombie fiction releases of 2012 for Barnes & Noble. One book on the list:

Zombie, Illinois by Scott Kenemore

About the book: The sequel to the bestselling Zombie, Ohio, this explosive supernatural thriller from Scott Kenemore tells the story of three Chicagoans who have been thrown together by a bizarre, interconnected series of events during the first twenty-four hours of a zombie outbreak in the Midwest's largest city. A partnership is crafted between a pastor from Chicago's rough South Side, an intrepid newspaper reporter, and a young female musician, all of whom are fighting for survival as they struggle to protect themselves and their communities in a city overrun with the walking dead. Between the barricaded neighborhoods and violent zombie hunters, the trio encounters many mysterious occurrences that leave them shaken and disturbed. When the mayor of Chicago is eaten by zombies on live television, and a group of shady aldermen attempt to seize power in the vacuum, these unlikely friends realize that they have stumbled upon a conspiracy to overthrow the city ... and that they alone may be qualified to combine their talents to stop it.

Zombie, Illinois will delight devoted zombie fans and put readers in mind of some of the best recent works of supernatural horror. You will be left shocked, horrified, and craving brains! This novel will grab you from the first page and not let go until the riveting finale.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Christine Wade's "Seven Locks"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Seven Locks by Christine Wade.

About the book, from the publisher:

The Hudson River Valley, 1769: A man mysteriously disappears without a trace, abandoning his wife and children on their farm at the foot of the Catskill Mountains. At first many believe that his wife, who has the reputation of being a scold, has driven her husband away, but as the strange circumstances of his disappearance circulate, a darker story unfolds. And as the lines between myth and reality fade in the wilderness, and an American nation struggles to emerge, the lost man’s wife embarks on a desperate journey to find the means to ensure her family’s survival...

Learn more about the book and author at Christine Wade's website.

The Page 69 Test: Seven Locks.

--Marshal Zeringue