Top ten most frequently stolen books

For the Guardian, Alison Flood compiled a list of the top 10 most frequently stolen books.

One book on the chart:

JK Rowling: Harry Potter

Rowling's reluctance to grant interviews as well as her donations to the Labour party has meant that the creator of Harry Potter has become an easy target - so it seems pertinent to remember that a considerable percentage of Rowling's income has helped to support charities such as Comic Relief, One Parent Families and the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Great Britain. Do you bookstealers feel guilty yet?

Read about another title on the list.

Harry Potter is also apparently a favorite of the detainees at Guantanamo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laila Lalami's "Secret Son"

Today's feature at the Page 69 Test: Secret Son by Laila Lalami.

About the book, from the publisher:

Youssef el-Mekki, a young man of nineteen, is living with his mother in the slums of Casablanca when he discovers that the father he believed to be dead is, in fact, alive and eager to befriend and support him. Leaving his mother behind, Youssef assumes a life he could only dream of: a famous and influential father, his own penthouse apartment, and all the luxuries associated with his new status. His future appears assured until an abrupt reversal of fortune sends him back to the streets and his childhood friends, where a fringe Islamic group, known simply as the Party, has set up its headquarters.

In the spirit of The Inheritance of Loss and The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Laila Lalami's powerful first novel explores the struggle for identity, the need for family, and the desperation that overtakes ordinary lives in a country divided by class, politics, and religion.

Read an excerpt from Secret Son, and learn more about the novel and author at Laila Lalami's website and blog.

Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and was short-listed for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2006. Her debut collection of short stories, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, was published in the fall of 2005 and has since been translated into Spanish, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Norwegian.

The Page 69 Test: Secret Son.

--Marshal Zeringue

Etgar Keret’s "Fatso"

From Anna Metcalfe's Q & A with James Lasdun at the Financial Times:

What is the last thing you read that made you laugh out loud?

Etgar Keret’s three-page story “Fatso”, about a guy whose girlfriend turns into a cheerful, chubby man every night. It still makes me laugh when I think of it.

Hilarious, brilliant: read "Fatso" online or in Keret's collection, The Nimrod Flipout.

Read about Etgar Keret's literary top ten.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten best deserts in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best deserts in literature.

One novel on the list:

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

More passion bred by the desert. "Propinquity in the desert. It does that here, he said." The mysterious character of the novel's title is a desert explorer pursuing a personal obsession. "There is, after Herodotus, little interest by the western world towards the desert for hundreds of years." This list would tell us otherwise.

Read about another title on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Paul Gootenberg's "Andean Cocaine"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug by Paul Gootenberg.

About the book, from the publisher:

Illuminating a hidden and fascinating chapter in the history of globalization, Paul Gootenberg chronicles the rise of one of the most spectacular and now illegal Latin American exports: cocaine.

Gootenberg traces cocaine's history from its origins as a medical commodity in the nineteenth century to its repression during the early twentieth century and its dramatic reemergence as an illicit good after World War II. Connecting the story of the drug's transformations is a host of people, products, and processes: Sigmund Freud, Coca-Cola, and Pablo Escobar all make appearances, exemplifying the global influences that have shaped the history of cocaine. But Gootenberg decenters the familiar story to uncover the roles played by hitherto obscure but vital Andean actors as well--for example, the Peruvian pharmacist who developed the techniques for refining cocaine on an industrial scale and the creators of the original drug-smuggling networks that decades later would be taken over by Colombian traffickers.

Andean Cocaine proves indispensable to understanding one of the most vexing social dilemmas of the late twentieth-century Americas: the American cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and, in its wake, the seemingly endless U.S. drug war in the Andes.

Read an excerpt from Andean Cocaine, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Learn more about the author's research at Paul Gootenberg's faculty webpage.

Paul Gootenberg, a former Rhodes Scholar, is a professor of Latin American History at Stony Brook University in New York. He wrote a number of notable academic books on Andean economic history before moving into the emerging and considerably more exciting field of global drug history.

The Page 99 Test: Andean Cocaine.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David Rollins' "A Knife Edge"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: A Knife Edge by David Rollins.

About the book, from the publisher:

In this latest internationally bestselling thriller from David Rollins, author of The Death Trust, a bizarre murder leads an ex–Air Force special investigator into a shadow world of conspiracy, cover-up, and military secrecy where the difference between friend or foe is thin as…

A scientist meets a grisly end when he falls from a military research ship and is attacked by a two-ton white shark off the Japanese coast. By the time Special Investigator Vin Cooper reaches the scene, there’s literally very little left to prove that the death wasn’t an accident. But Cooper’s instincts tell him that he’s looking at murder and that in assigning him to this case someone might just as well have shoved him, too, into shark-infested waters.

What kind of top secret project could the military be engaged in that would require the services of a foremost marine biologist and a genetic researcher? The possibilities are ominous, but not as ominous as the truth. And then the unthinkable tragedy that everyone feared since 9/11 explodes with a terrifying sense of déjà vu—in San Francisco.

Suddenly, with a second scientist presumed dead, an unidentified charred body in the morgue, and the “accidental” parachute death of a friend in a Florida training field, Cooper is following a trail as narrow and as dangerous as a knife-edge—a trail that leads to what we all fear most: a secret “government” within our government whose sworn duty is to kill anyone who opposes them.

Read an excerpt from A Knife Edge and learn more about the book and author at David Rollins' website.

David Rollins is a former advertising creative director who lives in Sydney, Australia.

The Page 69 Test: A Knife Edge.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Joshua Fogel reading?

The current featured contributor at Writer's Read: Joshua Fogel, Canada Research Chair in Chinese history at York University in Toronto. He has taught previously at Harvard University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. His books include Ai Ssu-chi's Contribution to the Development of Chinese Marxism, Nakae Ushikichi in China: The Mourning of Spirit, and the recently published Articulating the Sinosphere: Sino-Japanese Relations in Space and Time.

One paragraph from his entry:

When not reading in my field, I have recently read a spate of novels by Aharon Appelfeld in English translation. I picked up a few of his novellas some years back but found them almost too spare. I think I got the point—they’re almost all about the Holocaust in one way or another—and I attributed the underwriting to the fact that he only began to learn Hebrew after the war in his teenage years. Then, I read his memoir, The Story of a Life, about his life before and during the war in Bukovina and Ukraine and his first decades of adjustment in Israel after the war. It is a masterpiece, and clearly language is not a problem, though it is something he is consumed with.[read on]

Read Joshua Fogel's biography at Sino-Japanese Studies.

The Page 99 Test: Articulating the Sinosphere.

Writer's Read: Joshua Fogel.

--Marshal Zeringue

J.T. Ellison's Taylor Jackson series, the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: the Taylor Jackson series by J.T. Ellison.

The entry begins:

Contrarian that I am, I don’t like to tell people who I see in the roles of my protagonists, homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson and FBI profiler Dr. John Baldwin. So I reached out to my friends and fans, asked their opinion. The responses I received were fascinating. No one saw the characters the same way. I love that. My goal as a writer is to create a world for you, the reader, to escape into. I’ll give enough detail to get you going, but it’s YOUR imagination that fills in the blanks. That’s how I like to read, and that method has colored my writing.

Here are the nominees to play Taylor Jackson – my tall, honey-haired, gray-eyed, tough as nails cop:...[read on]

J.T. Ellison is the bestselling author of the critically acclaimed Taylor Jackson series, including All the Pretty Girls, 14, Judas Kiss and the forthcoming Edge of Black. She was recently named “Best Mystery/Thriller Writer of 2008” by the Nashville Scene.

Learn more about the books and author at J.T. Ellison's website and MySpace page.

The Page 69 Test: All the Pretty Girls.

The Page 99 Test: 14.

The Page 69 Test: 14.

The Page 99 Test: Judas Kiss.

My Book, The Movie: the Taylor Jackson series.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books on language

Michael Quinion, author of Gallimaufry: A Hodgepodge of Our Vanishing Vocabulary, named a five best list of books on language for the Wall Street Journal.

One book on his list:

Language in Danger
by Andrew Dalby
Columbia University, 2003

Languages not only change, they also die: World-wide, a language vanishes on average every two weeks. Andrew Dalby argues that each disappearance diminishes us, because a language encapsulates local knowledge and ways of looking at the human condition that die with the last speaker. Stronger languages squeeze out others: An early example is the language extinction that occurred around the Mediterranean in classical times, through the rise of Latin. Closer to our own time, minority languages -- Irish, Welsh, Native American and Australian tongues -- were banned in school to force minority groups to speak the language of the majority. The mood is now swinging toward encouraging minority languages, and some of those in danger may be saved. Dalby's engrossing account documents endangered languages throughout the world.

Read about Number One on Quinion's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: S.G. Browne's "Breathers: A Zombie's Lament"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Breathers: A Zombie's Lament by S. G. Browne.

About the book, from the publisher:

For fans of Max Brooks’s The Zombie Survival Guide and zombie aficionados everywhere, a hilarious debut novel about life (and love) after death.

Meet Andy Warner, a recently deceased everyman and newly minted zombie. Resented by his parents, abandoned by his friends, and reviled by a society that no longer considers him human, Andy is having a bit of trouble adjusting to his new existence. But all that changes when he goes to an Undead Anonymous meeting and finds kindred souls in Rita, an impossibly sexy recent suicide with a taste for the formaldehyde in cosmetic products, and Jerry, a twenty-one-year-old car-crash victim with an exposed brain and a penchant for Renaissance pornography. When the group meets a rogue zombie who teaches them the joys of human flesh, things start to get messy, and Andy embarks on a journey of self-discovery that will take him from his casket to the SPCA to a media-driven class-action lawsuit on behalf of the rights of zombies everywhere.

Darkly funny, surprisingly touching, and gory enough to satisfy even the most discerning reader, Breathers is a romantic zombie comedy (rom-zom-com, for short) that will leave you laughing, squirming, and clamoring for more.

Read Chapter 1 from Breathers, and learn more about the book and author at the Undead Anonymous website and Scott Browne's LiveJournal and MySpace page.

S.G. Browne worked in Hollywood for several years before moving to Santa Cruz to be a writer. He currently lives and writes in San Francisco.

The Page 69 Test: Breathers: A Zombie's Lament.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jay McInerney's favorite story collections

Jay McInerney is the author of Bright Lights, Big City and other books. His How It Ended, a volume of new and collected short stories, has just been published.

He named his favorite story collections for The Week. One title on the list:

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please by Raymond Carver (Vintage, $15).

Carver’s first collection, with its pared-down, colloquial language and its working-class settings, almost single-handedly revivified realism, and the short story itself, when it appeared in 1976. It remains astonishingly fresh and powerful to this day. Like Hemingway, Carver stripped away the cobwebs and taught us a new way to see and hear the world around us.

Read about another book on McInerney's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Gayle Forman's "If I Stay"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: If I Stay by Gayle Forman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In a single moment, everything changes. Seventeen year-old Mia has no memory of the accident; she can only recall riding along the snow-wet Oregon road with her family. Then, in a blink, she finds herself watching as her own damaged body is taken from the wreck...

A sophisticated, layered, and heartachingly beautiful story about the power of family and friends, the choices we all make—and the ultimate choice Mia commands.

Read an excerpt from If I Stay, and learn more about the book and author at Gayle Forman's website and blog.

Gayle Forman is an award-winning author and journalist whose articles have appeared in numerous publications, including Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, The Nation, and the New York Times Magazine. Her first book is a travel memoir called You Can’t Get There From Here: A Year On the Fringes of a Shrinking World. Her first young-adult novel, Sisters in Sanity, is based on an article she wrote for Seventeen.

The Page 69 Test: If I Stay.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nathaniel Frank's "Unfriendly Fire"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America by Nathaniel Frank.

About the book, from the publisher:

When the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy emerged as a political compromise under Bill Clinton in 1993, it only ended up worsening the destructive gay ban that had been on the books since World War II. Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Nathaniel Frank exposes the military’s policy toward gays and lesbians as damaging and demonstrates that “don’t ask, don’t tell” must be replaced with an outright reversal of the gay ban.

Frank is one of the nation’s leading experts on gays in the military, and in his evenhanded and always scrupulously documented chronicle, he reveals how the ban on open gays and lesbians in the U.S. military has greatly increased discharges, hampered recruitment, and—contrary to the rationale offered by proponents of the ban—led to lower morale and cohesion within military ranks.

Frank does not shy away from tackling controversial issues, and he presents indisputable evidence showing that gays already serve openly without causing problems, and that the policy itself is weakening the military it was supposed to protect. In addition to the moral pitfalls of the gay ban, Frank shows the practical damage it has wrought. Most recently, the discharge of valuable Arabic translators (who happen to be gay) under the current policy has left U.S. forces ill-equipped in the fight against terrorism.

Part history, part exposé, and fully revealing, Unfriendly Fire is poised to become the definitive story of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” This lively and compelling narrative is sure to make the blood boil of any American who cares about national security, the right to speak the truth, or just plain common sense and fairness.

Read an excerpt from Unfriendly Fire, and learn more about the book and author at the Unfriendly Fire website and blog.

Nathaniel Frank is a senior research fellow at the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and teaches history on the adjunct faculty at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. His publications on gays in the military and other topics have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Slate, Los Angeles Times, The Huffington Post, Newsday, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Lingua Franca, and other venues.

The Page 99 Test: Unfriendly Fire.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Janni Lee Simner reading?

The current featured contributor to Writers Read: Janni Lee Simner, author of three books for kids, more than 30 short stories for kids, teens, and adults, and Bones of Faerie, her first novel for teens.

Elizabeth Scott on Bones of Faerie:

Bones of Faerie was not at all what I was expecting. It is about faeries--a very popular topic these days--but it's also about so much more. Liza lives in our world but it's a changed one, one where a war between faerie and mankind have left everyone struggling to survive. After her newborn sister is killed--on suspicion of having magic in her--and her mother disappears, Liza ends up setting off to try and find her mother and ends up discovering that her mother, and others in her village, had their own secrets, and that she too isn't what she seems. Bones of Faerie is a story about family, love, loss, and the journey to become who you truly are. It is truly unique and an outstanding read.

Learn about what Simner has been reading at Writers Read: Janni Lee Simner.

Visit Janni Lee Simner's website and blog/journal.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books: Steven Johnson

At The Week, author Steven Johnson recommended six books about scientific breakthroughs.

One title on the list:

The First Word by Christine Kenneally (Penguin, $16).

Kenneally’s 2007 book is the story of modern linguistics. Its account of Noam Chomsky’s breakthrough work on generative grammar—and the controversy it sparked—is ­riveting intellectual history, as is the explanation of Chomsky’s strange resistance to Darwinian explanations of our “language instinct.”

Read about another title on Johnson's list.

The Page 99 Test: The First Word.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Linda Olsson's "Sonata for Miriam"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Sonata for Miriam by Linda Olsson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A haunting novel of loss, love, and human connection from the author of Astrid & Veronika

Linda Olsson’s first novel, Astrid & Veronika, introduced readers to her gorgeous prose, and her extraordinary understanding of human relationships. With her second novel, she once again charts that terrain in a novel that also explores the significant impact of history on individual lives. In Sonata for Miriam, two events occur that will change composer Adam Anker’s life forever. Embarking on a journey that ranges from New Zealand to Poland, and then Sweden, Anker not only uncovers his parents’ true fate during World War II, but he also finally faces the consequences of an impossible choice he was forced to make twenty years before—a choice that changed the trajectory of his life.

Read an excerpt from Sonata for Miriam, and learn more about the book and author at Linda Olsson's website.

Linda Olsson was born in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2003, she won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition. She has lived in Kenya, Singapore, Britain, and Japan before settling in Auckland, New Zealand, where she lives today. Her debut novel Astrid & Veronika was published in 2007.

The Page 69 Test: Sonata for Miriam.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Seth Shostak's "Confessions of an Alien Hunter"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Confessions of an Alien Hunter: A Scientist's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence by Seth Shostak.

About the book, from the publisher:

Aliens are big in America. Whether they’ve arrived via rocket, flying saucer, or plain old teleportation, they’ve been invading, infiltrating, or inspiring us for decades, and they’ve fascinated moviegoers and television watchers for more than fifty years. About half of us believe that aliens really exist, and millions are convinced they’ve visited Earth.

For twenty-five years, SETI has been looking for the proof, and as the program’s senior astronomer, Seth Shostak explains in this engrossing book, it’s entirely possible that before long conclusive evidence will be found.

His informative, entertaining report offers an insider’s view of what we might realistically expect to discover light-years away among the stars. Neither humanoids nor monsters, says Shostak; in fact, biological intelligence is probably just a precursor to machine beings, enormously advanced artificial sentients whose capabilities and accomplishments may have developed over billions of years and far exceed our own.

As he explores what, if anything, they would tell us and what their existence would portend for humankind and the cosmos, he introduces a colorful cast of characters and provides a vivid, state-of-the-art account of the past, present, and future of our search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Read an excerpt from Confessions of an Alien Hunter and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Seth Shostak is Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute, in California. His day job is to search for sentient life beyond Earth.

The Page 99 Test: Confessions of an Alien Hunter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about brothers

James Runcie is an award-winning documentary film-maker and the author of four novels. East Fortune, his new novel, is available now in the UK and coming soon to North America.

For the Guardian, he named his top ten books about brothers. His introduction:

A long time ago, a friend at a publishing house told me to stop "mucking about" and write about family life. 'It's the only real subject. BIG TIP.'

So I've followed her advice and written East Fortune, a novel about three brothers. I did think I was doing something a bit different until I realised there were hundreds of novels about, ahem, brothers and family life. You can't beat it as a subject: submerged emotions, intense rivalries, unrealistic expectations, differing levels of secrecy, betrayals both major and minor, and the genetic identity we can never escape. And if you then factor in the male ego, and tell a story of brotherly love and resentment then surely you can't go too far wrong?

One title on the list:

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

First published in 1929, Faulkner created his "heart's darling", the beautiful and tragic Caddy Compson, whose story is told through separate monologues by her three brothers: the congenital "idiot" Benjy, the neurotically suicidal Quentin and the monstrous Jason. An intensely passionate novel about loneliness, selfishness, and unreliability, this is, essentially, Virginia Woolf on drugs.

Read about Number One on Runcie's list.

The Sound and the Fury also appears on Mario Batali's list of five great American books.

Visit James Runcie's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Peter Rock's "My Abandonment"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: My Abandonment by Peter Rock.

About the book, from the publisher:

A thirteen-year-old girl and her father live in Forest Park, the enormous nature preserve in Portland, Oregon. There they inhabit an elaborate cave shelter, bathe in a nearby creek, store perishables at the water’s edge, use a makeshift septic system, tend a garden, even keep a library of sorts. Once a week, they go to the city to buy groceries and otherwise merge with the civilized world. But one small mistake allows a backcountry jogger to discover them, which derails their entire existence, ultimately provoking a deeper flight.

Inspired by a true story and told through the startlingly sincere voice of a young narrator, Caroline, Peter Rock's My Abandonment is a riveting journey into life at the margins, and a mesmerizing tale of survival and hope.

Learn more about the author at Peter Rock's website.

Peter Rock is the author of the novels The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, This is the Place, and Carnival Wolves, and a story collection, The Unsettling. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and recipient of a 2000 NEA Fellowship, he lives in Portland, Oregon, and teaches at Reed College.

The Page 69 Test: My Abandonment.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Joshua Gans reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Joshua Gans, an economics professor at the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne, and the author of Parentonomics: An Economist Dad Looks at Parenting.

He received the inaugural young economist award from the Economic Society of Australia, an award given to the best economist working in Australia aged under 40. He is the author of countless academic papers, reports and books. Gans contributes daily to two blogs (Core Economics and Game Theorist).

One book in his entry:

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky is a professor at NYU and writes about the impact of the internet on society and the economy. I picked up this book because of a current interest that I have in what is to become of the newspapers. Clay Shirky's simple answer is that we are in one of those times where there is transformational change and that it may take a decade or more for the shackles of the past to be dropped and some new stability to emerge. In the meantime, that change will be tough on many people. As an example, Shirky points to the the profession of scribe as the printing press diffused. Even when it was inevitable that the whole profession would die, for years there were movements to protect scribes as the supposed learned part of society. The great thing about this book is that it uses many current examples and anecdotes to help us come to terms with what the Internet is doing; something that is mostly for the good. [read on]

See the Table of Contents and sample chapters from Parentonomics, and visit the Parentonomics website.

Learn more about Joshua Gans' work and research at his website.

Writers Read: Joshua Gans.

--Marshal Zeringue