Ten top Colombian stories

Michael Jacobs, author of The Robber of Memories: A River Journey Through Colombia, named a top ten list of Colombian stories for the Guardian, including:

Delirium by Laura Restrepo

Restrepo is a Colombian novelist whose fiction reflects her work both as a left-wing activist and as an investigative journalist covering issues of human rights and social inequality. Delirium, which takes place during the Colombia of the turbulent 1990s, is a work of mesmerising power whose starting point is a man's discovery that his beautiful young wife has gone suddenly mad. His attempt to uncover the cause of her madness forces him to delve ever deeper into the past of her well-connected family, uncovering in the process the roots of the collective delirium into which Colombia has fallen. An acutely observed rendering of contemporary Colombia alternates with an almost magical portrayal of the Eden-like country that had so bewitched the wife's immigrant family on arrival from Germany.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Pallavi Aiyar reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Pallavi Aiyar, author of Chinese Whiskers.

Her entry begins:

I’ve just finished reading the most mesmerizing book called the Sly Company of People Who Care, by a cricket journalist, Rahul Bhattacharya. It's set in Guyana, a country I knew absolutely nothing about, and it's made me want to pack a bag and get the first ticket out there I can. The lilting, sassy, seductive, creolese used throughout the book was a particular draw for me.

I’ve also recently devoured (in a day)...[read on]

About Chinese Whiskers, from the publisher:

Chinese Whiskers by Pallavi Aiyar is a charming fable set against the landscape of contemporary Beijing, seen through the eyes of two cats.

Soyabean is a middle class cat looked after by a grandmother who embodies traditional Chinese morality. Tofu is born to a stray cat mother in a backyard dustbin. They are brought together when they are adopted by foreigners, who live in a traditional style courtyard house in Beijing’s traditional hutong neighborhoods. Then Soyabean is offered a job as a model for a new brand of cat food while at the same time a mysterious virus is sickening people across the city. Cats are blamed for it and are being rounded up, and Soyabean and Tofu's idyllic lives as pampered pets come to an abrupt end.

Interweaving real episodes in recent Chinese history such as the Olympic Games, the SARS virus, and tainted pet-food scandals with a richly imagined world, this heartwarming story of cats and humans does what W. Bruce Cameron's A Dog's Purpose did for canines. It will make you laugh and tear up, while showing the battles fought between the corruption of modern living and the ideals of traditional life.

Learn more about the book and author at Pallavi Aiyar's website.

Writers Read: Pallavi Aiyar.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Hillary Bell Locke's "Jail Coach"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Jail Coach by Hillary Bell Locke.

About the book, from the publisher:

Jay Davidovich is a 6-4/225-pound blond-haired Jewish insurance apparatchik with Ukrainian parents and an American attitude. He is a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan not because of patriotic fervor but because he joined the National Guard in the late ‘nineties so that the taxpayers could put him through college. Nine-eleven took him by surprise – “sort of like Bush,” as Jay puts it. His job at Trans/Oxana is to prevent losses that Trans/Oxana has insured against – especially losses that unpleasant people want to happen. After Hollywood pretty boy Kent Trowbridge plays late-night bumper-car in his Ferrari with two palm trees and a median in New Paradigm Studios, which bought an eight-figure Trans/Oxana policy insuring performance of Trowbridge’s Major Performing Artist Contract. In San Gabriel, unlike LA County, second offence DUI is not “boys will be boys.” Jay quickly realizes that Trowbrigde is going to do some county time. Because there won’t be any director yelling “CUT!” when things get dicey on the inside, Jay figures that Trowbridge won’t be in shape to perform anything once he gets out unless Jay finds him a Jail Coach.

Enter Katrina Thomspon whose past includes jail, the Marines, a daughter, and a hustler named Stan Chaladian. The first will help Jay, the second will impress him, the third will charm him, and the fourth with almost kill him – that’s life in the Loss Prevention business.

Learn more about Jail Coach at the Poisoned Pen Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Jail Coach.

The Page 69 Test: Jail Coach.

--Marshal Zeringue

Teresa Rhyne's "The Dog Lived (and So Will I)," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Dog Lived (and So Will I) by Teresa Rhyne.

The entry begins:

Since my book is a memoir, my friends and family have great fun casting the imaginary movie (everybody loves to cast themselves). Suggestions for who would play me have pretty much been every tall blonde in Hollywood (e.g. Charlize Theron, Gwyneth Paltrow), plus Diane Lane (because she’s been in Under the Tuscan Sun and Must Love Dogs? Or simply because my boyfriend Chris would love to see his character star with Diane Lane). I’m flattered of course by all of these picks. My personal choice though is Lisa...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Teresa Rhyne's website and The Dog Lived (and so Will I) blog.

See--Coffee with a Canine: Teresa Rhyne & Seamus.

Writers Read: Teresa Rhyne.

My Book, The Movie: The Dog Lived (and So Will I).

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Laleh Khalili's "Time in the Shadows"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies by Laleh Khalili.

About the book, from the publisher:

Detention and confinement—of both combatants and large groups of civilians—have become fixtures of asymmetric wars over the course of the last century. Counterinsurgency theoreticians and practitioners explain this dizzying rise of detention camps, internment centers, and enclavisation by arguing that such actions "protect" populations. In this book, Laleh Khalili counters these arguments, telling the story of how this proliferation of concentration camps, strategic hamlets, "security walls," and offshore prisons has come to be.

Time in the Shadows investigates the two major liberal counterinsurgencies of our day: Israeli occupation of Palestine and the U.S. War on Terror. In rich detail, the book investigates Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, CIA black sites, the Khiam Prison, and Gaza, among others, and links them to a history of colonial counterinsurgencies from the Boer War and the U.S. Indian wars, to Vietnam, the British small wars in Malaya, Kenya, Aden and Cyprus, and the French pacification of Indochina and Algeria.

Khalili deftly demonstrates that whatever the form of incarceration—visible or invisible, offshore or inland, containing combatants or civilians—liberal states have consistently acted illiberally in their counterinsurgency confinements. As our tactics of war have shifted beyond slaughter to elaborate systems of detention, liberal states have warmed to the pursuit of asymmetric wars. Ultimately, Khalili confirms that as tactics of counterinsurgency have been rendered more "humane," they have also increasingly encouraged policymakers to willingly choose to wage wars.

Learn more about Time in the Shadows at the Stanford University Press website.

Laleh Khalili is a Reader in Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), and the author of Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration.

The Page 99 Test: Time in the Shadows.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Eileen Cook reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Eileen Cook, author of The Almost Truth.

Her entry begins:

One thing you can count on is that you'll always find me reading something. I get anxious when I don't have a stack of books waiting to be read. I just finished re-reading John Green's The Fault in Our Stars. It was one of my favorite books of this past year. I wanted to re-read it with a writer's eye, versus when I read it the first time and cried all the way through.

I am currently reading...[read on]

About The Almost Truth, from the publisher:

From the author of Unraveling Isobel and The Education of Hailey Kendrick, a smart, romantic novel about a teenage con artist who might be in over her head.

Sadie can’t wait to get away from her backwards small town, her delusional mom, her jailbird dad, and the tiny trailer where she was raised…even though leaving those things behind also means leaving Brendan. Sadie wants a better life, and she has been working steadily toward it, one con at a time.

But when Sadie’s mother wipes out Sadie’s savings, her escape plan is suddenly gone. She needs to come up with a lot of cash—and fast—or she’ll be stuck in this town forever.

With Brendan’s help, she devises a plan—the ultimate con—to get the money. But the more lies Sadie spins, the more she starts falling for her own hoax…and perhaps for the wrong boy. Sadie wanted to change her life, but she wasn't prepared to have it flipped upside down by her own deception. With her future at stake and her heart on the line, suddenly it seems like she has a lot more than just money to lose....

Learn more about the author and her books at Eileen Cook’s website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood.

My Book, The Movie: The Education of Hailey Kendrick.

Writers Read: Eileen Cook.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Weston Ochse & Goblin, Ghost, and Ghoulie

The current featured quartet at Coffee with a Canine: Weston Ochse & Goblin, Ghost, and Ghoulie.

The author, on what his Great Danes have in common with the Belgian Malinois in his new novel, SEAL Team 666:

They do in that both the Danes and the Malinois are excellent athletes.

Great Danes were raised for a singular purpose, to hunt down wild boar in a pack. They spent most of their lives laying on the castle floor, soaking in the heat from the fire, and eating scraps off the table. Then during one ferocious weekend they’d hunt and run and howl.

Malinois are very much like this except they do it every waking hour. Where a Great Dane is like a middle distance runner, a Malinois...[read on]

Visit Weston Ochse's blog and Facebook page.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Weston Ochse & Goblin, Ghost, and Ghoulie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books about nature

James P. Sterba has been a foreign correspondent, war correspondent and national correspondent for more than four decades, first for the New York Times and then for the Wall Street Journal. His new book is Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds.

One of Sterba's six favorite books about nature, as told to The Week magazine:

Reel Nature by Gregg Mitman

As 20th-century Americans withdrew from nature, film changed their perceptions of wildlife. Movies and TV delivered wild animals edited and anthropomorphized. Mitman tells in fascinating detail how filmmakers, including Walt Disney, made wild creatures behave like people in loving families and turned man into an intrusive bad guy.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Judith S. Weis's "Walking Sideways"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Walking Sideways: The Remarkable World of Crabs by Judith S. Weis.

About the book, from the publisher:

The world's nearly 7,000 species of crabs are immediately recognizable by their claws, sideways movement, stalked eyes, and thick outer shells. These common crustaceans are found internationally, thriving in various habitats from the edge of the sea to the depths of the ocean, in fresh water or on land. Despite having the same basic body type as decapod crustaceans—true crabs have heavy exoskeletons and ten limbs with front pincer claws—crabs come in an enormous variety of shapes and sizes, from the near microscopic to the giant Japanese spider crab.

In Walking Sideways, Judith S. Weis provides an engaging and informative tour of the remarkable world of crabs, highlighting their unique biology and natural history. She introduces us to recently discovered crabs such as the Yeti crab found in deep sea vents, explains what scientists are learning about blue and hermit crabs commonly found at the shore, and gives us insight into the lifecycles of the king and Dungeness crabs typically seen only on dinner plates. Among the topics Weis covers are the evolution and classification of crabs, their habitats, unique adaptations to water and land, reproduction and development, behavior, ecology, and threats, including up-to-date research.

Crabs are of special interest to biologists for their communication behaviors, sexual dimorphism, and use of chemical stimuli and touch receptors, and Weis explains the importance of new scientific discoveries. In addition to the traditional ten-legged crabs, the book also treats those that appear eight-legged, including hermit crabs, king crabs, and sand crabs. Sidebars address topics of special interest, such as the relationship of lobsters to crabs and medical uses of compounds derived from horseshoe crabs (which aren't really crabs).

While Weis emphasizes conservation and the threats that crabs face, she also addresses the use of crabs as food (detailing how crabs are caught and cooked) and their commercial value from fisheries and aquaculture. She highlights other interactions between crabs and people, including keeping hermit crabs as pets or studying marine species in the laboratory and field. Reminding us of characters such as The Little Mermaid’s Sebastian and Sherman Lagoon’s Hawthorne, she also surveys the role of crabs in literature (for both children and adults), film, and television, as well in mythology and astrology. With illustrations that offer delightful visual evidence of crab diversity and their unique behaviors, Walking Sideways will appeal to anyone who has encountered these fascinating animals on the beach, at an aquarium, or in the kitchen.

Learn more about Walking Sideways at the Cornell University Press website.

Judith S. Weis is Professor of Biology at Rutgers-Newark. She is the author of Do Fish Sleep? and coauthor of Salt Marshes: A Natural and Unnatural History.

The Page 99 Test: Walking Sideways.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven not-to-be-missed books from 2012

Newsweek and The Daily Beast came up with eleven 2012 books you may have missed but should now catch up with, including:

Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy by Douglas Smith

It may seem strange in the midst of economic turmoil to urge readers to spend time with the last Russian aristocrats as they watched their palaces sacked and their family members hunted down by Stalin. But Smith tells a mesmerizing tale 
of how glamorous toffs figured out how to survive.

Read about another book on the list.

Watch the trailer for Former People, and learn more about the book and author at Douglas Smith's website.

The Page 99 Test: Former People.

Writers Read: Douglas Smith.

--Marshal Zeringue

Hillary Bell Locke's "Jail Coach," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Jail Coach by Hillary Bell Locke.

The entry begins:

Matthew McConaughey would be perfect for Jay Davidovich, the 6'4" blond-haired/blue-eyed Jewish Loss Prevention Specialist. I would have no trouble believing McConaughey putting a thug to sleep by stuffing a condom with quarters and using it as an improvised blackjack; and then, when the condom breaks, not saying, "Keep the change" on his way out...[read on]

Learn more about Jail Coach at the Poisoned Pen Press website.

My Book, The Movie: Jail Coach.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives"

Princeton University Press and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives by Amy J. Binder and Kate Wood.

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

Contest closes on Monday, December 24th. Winner must have a US mailing address. Good luck!

Learn more about Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives at the Princeton University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Felix Gilman's "The Rise Of Ransom City"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman.

About the book, from the publisher:

This is the story Harry Ransom. If you know his name it’s most likely as the inventor of the Ransom Process, a stroke of genius that changed the world.

Or you may have read about how he lost the battle of Jasper City, or won it, depending on where you stand in matters of politics.

Friends called him Hal or Harry, or by one of a half-dozen aliases, of which he had more than any honest man should. He often went by Professor Harry Ransom, and though he never had anything you might call a formal education, he definitely earned it.

If you’re reading this in the future, Ransom City must be a great and glittering metropolis by now, with a big bronze statue of Harry Ransom in a park somewhere. You might be standing on its sidewalk and not wonder in the least of how it grew to its current glory. Well, here is its story, full of adventure and intrigue. And it all starts with the day that old Harry Ransom crossed paths with Liv Alverhyusen and John Creedmoor, two fugitives running from the Line, amidst a war with no end.

Learn more about the book and author at Felix Gilman's website and Twitter perch.

Writers Read: Feliz Gilman.

The Page 69 Test: The Rise of Ransom City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "How America Eats"

Rowman & Littlefield and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of How America Eats: A Social History of U.S. Food and Culture by Jennifer Jensen Wallach.

HOW TO ENTER: Visit the Campaign for the American Reader Facebook page, scroll down, and "like" the post for  How America Eats: A Social History of U.S. Food and Culture.

Contest closes on Monday, December 24th. Winner must have a US mailing address. Good luck!

Learn more about How America Eats at the Rowman & Littlefield website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Melanie Challenger's "On Extinction"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature by Melanie Challenger.

About the book, from the publisher:

Realizing the link between her own estrangement from nature and the cultural shifts that led to a dramatic rise in extinctions, award-winning writer Melanie Challenger travels in search of the stories behind these losses. From an exploration of an abandoned mine in England to an Antarctic sea voyage to South Georgia's old whaling stations, from a sojourn in South America to a stay among an Inuit community in Canada, she uncovers species, cultures, and industries touched by extinction. Accompanying her on this journey are the thoughts of anthropologists, biologists, and philosophers who have come before her. Drawing on their words as well as firsthand witness and ancestral memory, Challenger traces the mindset that led to our destructiveness and proposes a path of redemption rooted in our emotional responses. This sobering yet illuminating book looks beyond natural devastation to examine “why” and “what's next.”

Learn more about On Extinction at the Counterpoint website.

The Page 99 Test: On Extinction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Giveaway: "Why Jazz Happened"

The University of California Press and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of Why Jazz Happened by Marc Myers.

HOW TO ENTER: Visit the Campaign for the American Reader Facebook page, scroll down, and "like" the post for Why Jazz Happened. Contest closes on Monday, December 24th. Winner must have a US mailing address. Good luck!

Learn more about Why Jazz Happened at the University of California Press website and Marc Myers's JazzWax website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best historical novels for young readers

Lydia Syson is the author of A World Between Us, an historical adventure for teens set during the Spanish Civil War.

At the Guardian she named her ten favorite historical novels for young readers. One book on the list:

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

This is the most recently written of my top 10, but I have a feeling it too will haunt me for decades, offering surprises with every re-read. Tricky and sharp and atmospheric, it celebrates the love between two women pilots and the incredible bravery of the secret Special Operations Executive (SOE) who worked with the Resistance in occupied France and elsewhere. A thoroughly researched and thoroughly invigorating anatomy of loyalty.

Read about another entry on the list.

Learn more about Code Name Verity at Elizabeth Wein's website and blog.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Wein (January 2008).

Writers Read: Elizabeth Wein (July 2012).

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Philip Sington reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Philip Sington, author of The Valley of Unknowing.

The entry begins:

With two small children working an effective pincer movement on my free time, the reading I do at the moment is almost all of relevance to what I’m writing or plan to write. Right now that means books about the First World War. Navigating through the vast wealth of literature on this subject has been a study in itself, but two books in particular have stood out so far.

Among fictionalised accounts, Frederic Manning’s The Middle Parts of Fortune (1929) is almost unique in recording faithfully the ordinary private soldier’s experience at the front, and often in his own (distinctly foul) language. Ernest Hemingway called it ‘the finest and noblest book of men in war that I have ever read’, and yet for most of the last century it languished in obscurity. This was thanks firstly to its emasculation at the hands of editors alarmed at the obscenities – for which, in those days, they could be prosecuted. An unexpurgated version...[read on]

About The Valley of Unknowing, from the publisher:

In the twilight years of Communist East Germany, Bruno Krug, author of a single world-famous novel written twenty years earlier, falls for Theresa Aden, a music student from the West. But Theresa has also caught the eye of a cocky young scriptwriter who delights in satirizing Krug’s work.

Asked to appraise a mysterious manuscript, Bruno is disturbed to find that the author is none other than his rival. Disconcertingly, the book is good—very good. But there is hope for the older man: the unwelcome masterpiece is dangerously political. Krug decides that if his affair with Theresa is to prove more than a fling, he must employ a small deception. But in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, knowing the deceiver from the deceived, the betrayer from the betrayed, isn’t just difficult: it is a matter of life and death. Now the celebrated author and secret Stasi informer is ready to confess…

The Valley of Unknowing is both a moving and entertaining love story and a seductive thriller, one that pits the past against the future, commerce against creativity, and art against life.

Learn more about the book and author at Philip Sington's website.

Writers Read: Philip Sington.

--Marshal Zeringue

Marjorie Senechal's "I Died for Beauty," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie:  I Died for Beauty: Dorothy Wrinch and the Cultures of Science by Marjorie Senechal.

The entry begins:

A movie, or an opera? One thick thread in this complicated story -- Dorothy Wrinch's epic battle with Linus Pauling, the famous chemist -- demands the stage. "Two brilliant, arrogant, competitive antagonists with a flair for publicity and a touch of the devious! And what a plot!"(See Chapter 16 for a synopsis.) But I'd opt for the movie if Emma Thompson plays Dorothy. Emma, please say yes! Dorothy was beautiful, brilliant, charming, courageous, dismissive, imperious, infuriating, vivacious, witty, and fatefully stubborn, all in a British accent. This could be the role of your career.

That settled, let's try to cast the other 75-plus colorful characters in Dorothy's fascinating life. I'll suggest a few. Hugh...[read on]

Learn more about I Died for Beauty at the Oxford University Press website.

Marjorie Senechal is the Louise Wolff Kahn Professor Emerita in Mathematics and History of Science and Technology, Smith College, and Co-Editor of The Mathematical Intelligencer.

My Book, The Movie:  I Died for Beauty.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Brycchan Carey's "From Peace to Freedom"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657-1761 by Brycchan Carey.

About the book, from the publisher:

In the first book to investigate in detail the origins of antislavery thought and rhetoric within the Society of Friends, Brycchan Carey shows how the Quakers turned against slavery in the first half of the eighteenth century and became the first organization to take a stand against the slave trade.

Through meticulous examination of the earliest writings of the Friends, including journals and letters, Carey reveals the society’s gradual transition from expressing doubt about slavery to adamant opposition. He shows that while progression toward this stance was ongoing, it was slow and uneven and that it was vigorous internal debate and discussion that ultimately led to a call for abolition. His book will be a major contribution to the history of the rhetoric of antislavery and the development of antislavery thought as explicated in early Quaker writing.

Learn more about the book and author at Brycchan Carey's website.

The Page 99 Test: From Peace to Freedom.

--Marshal Zeringue