Six of the best portrayals of marriage in literature

Lauren Groff is the acclaimed author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia. Her new novel is Fates and Furies. One of her six favorite portrayals of marriage in literature, as shared at The Week magazine:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

I'd argue that Middlemarch is the single greatest English-language book about marriage (a silly thing to argue, I know, as I haven't read every book in the English language). Eliot needs no introduction from me, but in Middlemarch's Dorothea Brooke we have a beautiful vision of the way a young person comes into a marriage with starry-eyed idealism, and then grows and is changed and returned to herself by the institution.

Read about another entry on the list.

Middlemarch also made John Mullan's lists of ten of the best bankers in literature, ten of the best marital rows, ten of the best examples of unrequited love, ten of the best funerals in literature, and ten of the best deathbed scenes in literature. It is among Emrys Westacott's five top books on philosophy & everyday living, Selma Dabbagh's top 10 stories of reluctant revolutionaries, Philip Pullman's six best books, Rebecca Goldstein's five best of novels of ideas, Tina Brown's five best books on reputation, Elizabeth Kostova favorite books, and Miss Manners' favorite novels. John Banville and Nick Hornby have not read it.

The Page 99 Test: The Monsters of Templeton.

The Page 69 Test: Arcadia.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Julianna Baggott reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Julianna Baggott, author of Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders.

Her entry begins:

Clarice Lispector's Complete Stories. I'm not reading these beauties in order. Lispector is hailed as the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century and I hadn't ever heard her name before reading a review of the book by Jeff VanderMeer. I'm enjoying dipping in and out of the book, letting them haunt, circling back for...[read on]

About Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders, from the publisher:

The reclusive Harriet Wolf, revered author and family matriarch, has a final confession-a love story. Years after her death, as her family comes together one last time, the mystery of Harriet's life hangs in the balance. Does the truth lie in the rumored final book of the series that made Harriet a world-famous writer, or will her final confession be lost forever?

Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders tells the moving story of the unforgettable Wolf women in four distinct voices: the mysterious Harriet, who, until now, has never revealed the secrets of her past; her fiery, overprotective daughter, Eleanor; and her two grown granddaughters-Tilton, the fragile yet exuberant younger sister, who's become a housebound hermit, and Ruth, the older sister, who ran away at sixteen and never looked back. When Eleanor is hospitalized, Ruth decides it's time to do right by a pact she made with Tilton long ago: to return home and save her sister. Meanwhile, Harriet whispers her true life story to the reader. It's a story that spans the entire twentieth century and is filled with mobsters, outcasts, a lonesome lion, and a home for wayward women. It's also a tribute to her lifelong love of the boy she met at the Maryland School for Feeble-minded Children.

Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders, Julianna Baggott's most sweeping and mesmerizing novel yet, offers a profound meditation on motherhood and sisterhood, as well as on the central importance of stories. It is a novel that affords its characters that rare chance we all long for-the chance to reimagine the stories of our lives while there's still time.

Learn more about the book and author at Julianna Baggott's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders.

The Page 69 Test: Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders.

Writers Read: Julianna Baggott.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Steven Lubet's "The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The "Colored Hero" of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery by Steven Lubet.

About the book, from the publisher:

On the night of Sunday, October 16, 1859, hoping to bring about the eventual end of slavery, radical abolitionist John Brown launched an armed attack at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Among his troops, there were only five black men, who have largely been treated as little more than “spear carriers” by Brown's many biographers and other historians of the antebellum era. This book brings one such man, John Anthony Copeland, directly to center stage. Copeland played a leading role in the momentous Oberlin slave rescue, and he successfully escorted a fugitive to Canada, making him an ideal recruit for Brown's invasion of Virginia. He fought bravely at Harpers Ferry, only to be captured and charged with murder and treason. With his trademark lively prose and compelling narrative style, Steven Lubet paints a vivid portrait of this young black man who gave his life for freedom.

Learn more about The "Colored Hero" of Harper's Ferry at the Cambridge University Press website.

Steven Lubet is the Williams Memorial Professor of Law and Director, Bartlit Center for Trial Strategy at Northwestern University School of Law. His books include Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial.

The Page 99 Test: Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial.

The Page 99 Test: The "Colored Hero" of Harper's Ferry.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten cross-cultural novels that illuminate our world

At Off the Shelf Tolani Osan tagged ten top books that "illuminate how disparate cultures can reveal the mystery and beauty in each other and make us aware of the hardships, dreams, and hidden scars of those we share space with," including:

We Are Called to Rise
by Laura McBride

Far from the casinos and lights, the Las Vegas suburbs sprawl out into the desert. In this desolate boomtown, three desperate souls—a middle-aged white woman, a Hispanic veteran just returned from Iraq, and a brave Albanian boy—must decide whether to give in to despair, or to find the courage and resilience to rise.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Page 69 Test: We Are Called to Rise.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Polly Shulman's "The Poe Estate"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Poe Estate by Polly Shulman.

About the book, from the publisher:

This is a mind-bending, rousing adventure celebrating classic ghost and horror stories, by the author of The Grimm Legacy and The Wells Bequest.

Sukie’s been lonely since the death of her big sister, Kitty—but Kitty’s ghost is still with her. At first that was comforting, but now Kitty’s terrifying anyone who gets too close. Things get even weirder when Sukie moves into her family’s ancestral home, and an older, less familiar ghost challenges her to find a treasure. Her classmate Cole is also experiencing apparitions. Fortunately, an antique broom’s at hand to fly Sukie and Cole to the New-York Circulating Material Repository’s spooky Poe Annex. As they search for clues and untangle ancient secrets, they discover their histories intertwine and are as full of stories of love, revenge, and pirate hijinks as some of the most famous fiction.

Visit Polly Shulman's website.

Writers Read: Polly Shulman.

The Page 69 Test: The Poe Estate.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Norris's "Mary McGrory: The First Queen of Journalism," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Mary McGrory: The First Queen of Journalism by John Norris.

The entry begins:

The folks over at Word & Film make a strong case for making a Mary McGrory biopic, and I am certainly not one to argue. What’s not to like about the story of a trailblazing woman journalist barnstorming around the country and mixing it up with everyone from JFK to George W. Bush? But perhaps even more than fiction, the casting of the lead is crucial in non-fiction. In Mary’s case, we need someone who is convincingly tough enough to play a woman who made it is an almost exclusively male industry in the 1950s and 60s, but who is also graced with a bit of mischief and flirtation. An actress who can carry off the role of one of the most important liberal voices in the second half of the 20th century, but who was distinctly proper, and sometimes almost Victorian, in her mannerisms. A woman who loved a cigarette and a good stiff drink but who, literally, helped out at the local orphanage on weekends.

There were certainly times when I was writing or interviewing people for the book that a young Katherine Hepburn leapt to my mind, and Mary was every bit as proud, independent and strong-willed as the characters that Hepburn brought so memorably to life. Mary never gave an inch when bantering back and forth with politicians or fellow reporters, and she was as comfortable quoting Yeats from memory as she was debating the merits of candidates with local ward bosses. As Bobby Kennedy once observed, “Mary is so gentle until she gets behind a typewriter.”

But casting someone from the silver age seems almost like cheating, as does every author’s answer that Meryl Streep should play their female lead. So what modern actresses could best fill Mary’s shoes? Kate...[read on]

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

My Book, The Movie: Mary McGrory.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty page-turners every twentysomething woman should read

At Cosmopolitan Meave Gallagher tagged twenty gripping page-turners every twentysomething woman should read, including:

The Fever by Megan Abbott (2014)

Based on a real-life outbreak of unexplained physical ailments in teenage girls, Megan Abbott's The Fever unspools in a fantastical, creepy, frightening way. So many books try to explain the secret lives of teenage girls, and The Fever succeeds at capturing them, at least at a certain angle. Abbott is a master of the unsettling and upsetting, and The Fever grips you in its mania until its final pages.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Fever is among Emily Temple's fifty best novels about madness, Laura Lippman's four favorite reads of 2014, Christopher Shultz's top ten literary chillers where literary fiction and horror converge and Anna Fitzpatrick's four top horror stories set in the real universe of girlhood.

My Book, The Movie: The Fever.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Stephen Lovell's "Russia in the Microphone Age"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Russia in the Microphone Age: A History of Soviet Radio, 1919-1970 by Stephen Lovell.

About the book, from the publisher:

The story of radio begins alongside that of the Soviet state: Russia's first long-range transmission of the human voice occurred in 1919, during the civil war. Sound broadcasting was a medium of exceptional promise for this revolutionary regime. It could bring the Bolsheviks' message to the furthest corners of their enormous country. It had unprecedented impact: the voice of Moscow could now be wired into the very workplaces and living spaces of a population that was still only weakly literate.

The liveness and immediacy of broadcasting also created vivid new ways of communicating 'Sovietness' - whether through May Day parades and elections, the exploits of aviators and explorers, or show trials and public criticism. Yet, in the USSR as elsewhere, broadcasting was a medium in flux: technology, the broadcasting profession, and the listening audience were never static. Soviet radio was quickly earmarked as the mouthpiece of Soviet power, yet its history is also full of unintended consequences. The supreme irony of Soviet 'radiofication' was that its greatest triumph - the expansion of the wireless-listening public in the Cold War era - made possible its greatest failure, by turning a part of the Soviet audience into devotees of Western broadcasting.

Based on substantial original research in Moscow, St Petersburg, and Nizhnii Novgorod, Russia in the Microphone Age is the first full history of Soviet radio in English. In addition to the institutional and technological dimensions of the subject, it explores the development of programme content and broadcasting genres. It also goes in search of the mysterious figure of the Soviet listener. The result is a pioneering treatment of broadcasting as an integral part of Soviet culture from its early days in the 1920s until the dawn of the television age.

Learn more about Russia in the Microphone Age at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Russia in the Microphone Age.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Polly Dugan & Tripp

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Polly Dugan & Tripp.

The author, on how Tripp got his name:

Tripp’s breeder named him because, being an incredibly loyal dog, he follows his people everywhere and is often underfoot. We’ve literally tripped over him more times than I can count. We never tire of joking: “Why isn’t your name Waldo again?” because we always know exactly where he is unlike Waldo, who always has people wondering over his whereabouts.

He has a bunch of aliases: Triple Dog (because he was such a handful when he first came to us, he was like having three dogs), Trippy...[read on]

About Dugan's latest book, The Sweetheart Deal, from the publisher:

The poignant story of what happens when a woman who thinks she's lost everything has the chance to love again.

Leo has long joked that, in the event of his death, he wants his best friend Garrett, a lifelong bachelor, to marry his wife, Audrey. One drunken night, he goes so far as to make Garrett promise to do so. Then, twelve years later, Leo, a veteran firefighter, dies in a skiing accident.

As Audrey navigates her new role as widow and single parent, Garrett quits his job in Boston and buys a one-way ticket out west. Before long, Audrey's feelings for Garrett become more than platonic, and Garrett finds himself falling for Audrey, her boys, and their life together in Portland. When Audrey finds out about the drunken pact from years ago, though, the harmless promise that brought Garrett into her world becomes the obstacle to his remaining in it.

Visit Polly Dugan's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Sweetheart Deal.

Coffee with a Canine: Polly Dugan & Tripp.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Polly Shulman reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Polly Shulman, author of The Poe Estate.

Her entry begins:

My favorite recent novel is Naomi Novik’s Uprooted. I’d been longing for more of her Temeraire fantasy/alternate history series, which follow the fortunes of an English captain during the Napoleonic Wars. He’s not in the navy, but the Aerial Corps—his “ship” is a dragon named Temeraire, a brave, affectionate, rational soldier of a person who also happens to be a gigantic, scaly flying beast and something of a philosopher. Novik’s writing is even better than the premise: funny, touching, fast paced, and subtle. I was disappointed when I learned her new novel had nothing to do with Temeraire, but somewhat to my surprise, I loved Uprooted even more. Uprooted has a fairy-tale premise: Every ten years, the Dragon chooses a girl from the heroine’s village to...[read on]

About The Poe Estate, from the publisher:

This is a mind-bending, rousing adventure celebrating classic ghost and horror stories, by the author of The Grimm Legacy and The Wells Bequest.

Sukie’s been lonely since the death of her big sister, Kitty—but Kitty’s ghost is still with her. At first that was comforting, but now Kitty’s terrifying anyone who gets too close. Things get even weirder when Sukie moves into her family’s ancestral home, and an older, less familiar ghost challenges her to find a treasure. Her classmate Cole is also experiencing apparitions. Fortunately, an antique broom’s at hand to fly Sukie and Cole to the New-York Circulating Material Repository’s spooky Poe Annex. As they search for clues and untangle ancient secrets, they discover their histories intertwine and are as full of stories of love, revenge, and pirate hijinks as some of the most famous fiction.

Visit Polly Shulman's website.

Writers Read: Polly Shulman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Susan Niditch's "The Responsive Self"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Responsive Self: Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods by Susan Niditch.

About the book, from the publisher:

Works created in the period from the Babylonian conquest of Judea through the takeover and rule of Judea and Samaria by imperial Persia reveal a profound interest in the religious responses of individuals and an intimate engagement with the nature of personal experience. Using the rich and varied body of literature preserved in the Hebrew Bible, Susan Niditch examines ways in which followers of Yahweh, participating in long-standing traditions, are shown to privatize and personalize religion. Their experiences remain relevant to many of the questions we still ask today: Why do bad things happen to good people? Does God hear me when I call out in trouble? How do I define myself? Do I have a personal relationship with a divine being? How do I cope with chaos and make sense of my experience? What roles do material objects and private practices play within my religious life? These questions deeply engaged the ancient writers of the Bible, and they continue to intrigue contemporary people who try to find meaning in life and to make sense of the world.

The Responsive Self studies a variety of phenomena, including the use of first-person speech, seemingly autobiographic forms and orientations, the emphasis on individual responsibility for sin, interest in the emotional dimensions of biblical characters, and descriptions of self-imposed ritual. This set of interests lends itself to exciting approaches in the contemporary study of religion, including the concept of “lived religion,” and involves understanding and describing what people actually do and believe in cultures of religion.

Learn more about The Responsive Self at the Yale University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Responsive Self.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Julianna Baggott's "Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders by Julianna Baggott.

About the book, from the publisher:

The reclusive Harriet Wolf, revered author and family matriarch, has a final confession-a love story. Years after her death, as her family comes together one last time, the mystery of Harriet's life hangs in the balance. Does the truth lie in the rumored final book of the series that made Harriet a world-famous writer, or will her final confession be lost forever?

Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders tells the moving story of the unforgettable Wolf women in four distinct voices: the mysterious Harriet, who, until now, has never revealed the secrets of her past; her fiery, overprotective daughter, Eleanor; and her two grown granddaughters-Tilton, the fragile yet exuberant younger sister, who's become a housebound hermit, and Ruth, the older sister, who ran away at sixteen and never looked back. When Eleanor is hospitalized, Ruth decides it's time to do right by a pact she made with Tilton long ago: to return home and save her sister. Meanwhile, Harriet whispers her true life story to the reader. It's a story that spans the entire twentieth century and is filled with mobsters, outcasts, a lonesome lion, and a home for wayward women. It's also a tribute to her lifelong love of the boy she met at the Maryland School for Feeble-minded Children.

Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders, Julianna Baggott's most sweeping and mesmerizing novel yet, offers a profound meditation on motherhood and sisterhood, as well as on the central importance of stories. It is a novel that affords its characters that rare chance we all long for-the chance to reimagine the stories of our lives while there's still time.

Learn more about the book and author at Julianna Baggott's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders.

The Page 69 Test: Harriet Wolf's Seventh Book of Wonders.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about girls disguised as boys

Rae Carson's latest book is Walk on Earth a Stranger. At Tor.com she tagged five books about girls disguised as boys, including:

Eon, by Alison Goodman

Eon has trained for years to be a Dragoneye—an apprentice to one of the twelve great dragons of good fortune. But he has a secret: He’s really Eona, a sixteen-year-old girl, and if she is discovered, it will mean certain and immediate death. This young adult novel is violent, complex, and dark, and it could just as easily be marketed to adult audiences.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Eon: Dragoneye Reborn.

Also see: Ten of the best literary men dressed as women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jonathan Weisman's "No. 4 Imperial Lane," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: No. 4 Imperial Lane: A Novel by Jonathan Weisman.

The entry begins:

I guess like many fiction writers, I have allowed myself to fantasize about No. 4 Imperial Lane getting the big option and ending up on the big screen. It's not outlandish. I figure with a main character being a quadriplegic -- and a fallen aristocrat to boot -- it has "vanity project" written all over it, if not Oscar bait. To that end, I'd have Ralph Fiennes cast as Hans Bromwell, the cynical quadriplegic. I always saw him as the anti-Hollywood cripple-hero. He does not paint with his teeth or tool around campus on a specially designed hospital gurney operated by his breath. He's the quadriplegic who has his electric wheelchair tossed into the street, as he shouts, "Goddamnit, if I am going to break my neck, somebody is going to push me around in an old-fashioned wheelchair."

Logically, Emma Thompson would latch on to the project as Hans Bromwell's alcoholic sister, Elizabeth. She's perfect for the part. The character is supposed to be a bit flighty, a bit disheveled, not...[read on]

Follow Jonathan Weisman on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: No. 4 Imperial Lane.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: George A. Gonzalez's "The Politics of Star Trek"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Politics of Star Trek: Justice, War, and the Future by George A. Gonzalez.

About The Politics of Star Trek, from the publisher:

The Star Trek franchise reflects, conveys, and comments upon the key philosophical tensions of the modern era: pragmatism vs. justice; universalism vs. traditionalism; empire vs. consensual polity; environmentalism vs. modernity. George A. Gonzalez details the manner in which these tensions and controversies are manifested in Star Trek across its iterations, and in so doing argues that Star Trek offers an indispensable intellectual and analytical contribution to our understanding of the politics of the modern era.

Learn more about The Politics of Star Trek at the Palgrave Macmillan website.

Writers Read: George A. Gonzalez.

The Page 99 Test: The Politics of Star Trek.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven works of speculative fiction that don’t feel all that speculative

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. He has published over thirty short stories as well. One of Somers's top seven speculative works for those who think they hate speculative fiction, as shared at the B & N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

The Martian, by Andy Weir

With the film’s promotional campaign in overdrive, everyone’s aware of this used-to-be-a-sleeper hit. The trailers may look sci-fi to you—Mars, spacesuits, that sort of thing—but don’t be fooled. This novel rocks thanks to its fantastic narrative voice in the personage of sarcastic, desperate, a hilarious astronaut Mark Watney, and it’s ideal for people who think they hate science fiction because it’s only SF element is that it’s set on Mars during a near-future manned mission to the planet. Everything else is rooted entirely in real science, and involves one man struggling against nature to survive—the fact that the nature involved isn’t Earth’s is just a detail, really.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Martian is among Somer's five top sci-fi novels with plausible futuristic technology, Ernest Cline’s ten favorite SF novels, and James Mustich's five top books on visiting Mars.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Peter Jones reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Peter Jones, author of Track Two Diplomacy in Theory and Practice.

One book he tagged:

A book I have recently finished reading is Frederik Logevall’s very interesting Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam. This is a very readable and yet also scholarly account of the final years of the French experience in IndoChina, and of how the US came to be sucked into that conflict.

After World War 2, France was keen to re-assert its Great Power status and overcome the legacy of surrender and occupation. Many senior French officials saw a vigorous assertion of Imperial greatness as one means to do this. This view ran smack up against the emerging desire for liberation, which would spawn the de-colonisation movement of the 50s and 60s throughout the developing world. While many of these movements were simply the indigenous expression of a desire to throw off colonialism, it was the misfortune of these movements to be active at just the time the Cold War was settling its grip over international affairs. Though many of them were hardly committed Communists, the language and concepts of the era meant that their struggles would be interpreted through...[read on]

About Track Two Diplomacy in Theory and Practice, from the publisher:

Track Two Diplomacy consists of informal dialogues among actors such as academics, religious leaders, retired senior officials, and NGO officials that can bring new ideas and new relationships to the official process of diplomacy.

Sadly, those involved in official diplomacy often have little understanding of and appreciation for the complex and nuanced role that Track Two can play, or for its limitations. And many Track Two practitioners are often unaware of the realities and pressures of the policy and diplomatic worlds, and not particularly adept at framing their efforts to make them accessible to hard-pressed officials. At the same time, those interested in the academic study of Track Two sometimes fail to understand the realities faced by either set of practitioners.

A need therefore exists for a work to bridge the divides between these constituencies and between the different types of Track Two practice—and this book crosses disciplines and traditions in order to do just that. It explores the various dimensions and guises of Track Two, the theory and practice of how they work, and how both practitioners and academics could more profitably assess Track Two. Overall, it provides a comprehensive picture of the range of activities pursued under this title, to provoke new thinking about how these activities relate to each other, to official diplomacy, and to academe.

Learn more about Track Two Diplomacy at the Stanford University Press website.

Peter Jones is also the author of Open Skies: Transparency, Confidence-Building, and the End of the Cold War.

The Page 99 Test: Open Skies.

The Page 99 Test: Track Two Diplomacy in Theory and Practice.

Writers Read: Peter Jones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Carmiel Banasky's "The Suicide of Claire Bishop"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Suicide of Claire Bishop: A Novel by Carmiel Banasky.

About the book, from the publisher:

Greenwich Village, 1959. Claire Bishop sits for a portrait—a gift from her husband—only to discover that what the artist has actually depicted is Claire’s suicide. Haunted by the painting, Claire is forced to redefine herself within a failing marriage and a family history of madness. Shifting ahead to 2004, we meet West, a young man with schizophrenia who is obsessed with a painting he encounters in a gallery: a mysterious image of a woman’s suicide. Convinced it was painted by his ex-girlfriend, West constructs an elaborate delusion involving time-travel, Hasidism, art-theft, and the terrifying power of representation. When the two characters finally meet, in the present, delusions are shattered and lives are forever changed.

Visit Carmiel Banasky's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Suicide of Claire Bishop.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about Jane Austen

Joanna Trollope's bestselling novels include The Choir, A Village Affair and The Rector's Wife.

One entry on her list of five great books about Jane Austen, as shared at the Telegraph:

Let’s start with Jane herself. Her family, alas, destroyed most of her wonderful letters, but some, luckily, survive, mostly to her elder sister, Cassandra. The best collection is edited by Deirdre Le Faye, for Oxford University Press – Jane Austen’s Letters (2011).

Read about another book on the list.

Also see: The ten best Jane Austen characters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Polly Dugan's "The Sweetheart Deal," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Sweetheart Deal by Polly Dugan.

The entry begins:

I went right to the A-list for casting the movie adaptation of The Sweetheart Deal because holding these actors in my head both informed the writing and helped build the characters into three-dimensional beings. Plus it didn’t hurt that some of my favorite actors are included in this all-star cast.

Kevin Gallagher, a firefighter and 9/11 survivor who also appears in the last story in my first book, is and always has been played by Ed Burns. Ed as an actor, and the majority of characters he plays are precisely who Kevin is: an Irish Catholic native New Yorker. In every piece of dialogue he utters, Kevin’s voice was as authentic as I could make it because I heard Ed saying the words. And, Ed’s narration of The Man in the Red Bandana, the heroic 9/11 story of Welles Crowther was a tremendous influence in casting him. He’d be a natural in Portland Fire and Rescue gear.

Similarly, Leo McGeary has always been played by Mark...[read on]

Visit Polly Dugan's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Sweetheart Deal.

--Marshal Zeringue