Top 10 Belfast books

Glenn Patterson is the author of several novels and a memoir, Once Upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times. He has written plays for Radio 3 and Radio 4 and is the co-writer of Good Vibrations (BBC Films), based on the life of Belfast punk impresario Terri Hooley, which is due for release in 2012. A collection of his journalism, for among others the Guardian, Sunday Times and Irish Times, was published in 2006 as Lapsed Protestant. His latest novel is The Mill for Grinding Old People Young. Patterson lives in Belfast.

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of Belfast books. One title on the list:

Call My Brother Back by Michael McLaverty

Last year 15 local writers, interviewed for an app called Literary Belfast, were asked to name a writer now dead whose work had influenced them. (Worryingly, for all concerned, one named Van Morrison.) Michael McLaverty topped the list. Set in the Troubles of the 1920s, Call My Brother Back is in many ways a model for novels of the later Troubles, approaching political violence through the experience of one family, the MacNeills. Amid the police raids and gun battles, the passages that linger are of school life, of kickabouts on waste ground and Sunday walks in the mountains above west Belfast.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ted Kosmatka's "The Games," the movie

Now showing at My Book, the Movie: The Games by Ted Kosmatka.

The entry begins:

I'm a huge movie buff so this is the kind of question that I can really sink my teeth into. The movie in my head has evolved somewhat since I first started thinking about my novel in those terms. I've always thought that Terrence Howard would play an awesome Silas because he's so good at playing conflicted characters. (Plus I'm just a huge fan.)

My thinking on Baskov has changed somewhat over time, and now I'm leaning toward John...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Ted Kosmatka's website and blog.

Writers Read: Ted Kosmatka.

The Page 69 Test: The Games.

My Book, the Movie: The Games.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Frank Prochaska's "Eminent Victorians on American Democracy"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Eminent Victorians on American Democracy: The View from Albion by Frank Prochaska.

About the book, from the publisher:

Eminent Victorians on American Democracy surveys a wide range of British opinion on the United States in the nineteenth century and highlights the views of John Stuart Mill, Walter Bagehot, Sir Henry Maine, and James Bryce, who wrote extensively on American government and society. America was significant to them not only because it was the world's most advanced democracy, but also because it was a political experiment that was seen to anticipate the future of Britain.

The Victorians made a memorable contribution to the continuing debate over the character and origins of democracy through their perceptive examination of issues ranging from the US Constitution to its practical application, from the Supreme Court to the party system. Their trenchant commentary punctures several popular American assumptions, not least the idea of 'exceptionalism'. To Victorian commentators, the bonds of kinship, law, and language were of great significance; and while they did not see the United States as having a unique destiny, they rallied to an 'Anglo-American exceptionalism', which reflected their sense of a shared transatlantic history.

What distinguishes the Victorian writers was their willingness to examine the US Constitution dispassionately at a time when Americans treated it as a sacred document. Although the United States has changed dramatically since they wrote, much of their commentary remains remarkably prescient, if only because the American government retains so much of its eighteenth-century character. Today, when rival American priesthoods see the Constitution in the light of their particular altars, it is worth revisiting what leading Victorians had to say about it. It may come as a shock to American readers.

Learn more about the book and author at Frank Prochaska's website.

The Page 99 Test: Frank Prochaska's The Eagle and the Crown.

The Page 99 Test: Eminent Victorians on American Democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Robert J. Sawyer's "Triggers"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Triggers by Robert J. Sawyer.

About the book, from the publisher:

On the eve of a secret military operation, an assassin's bullet strikes President Seth Jerrison. He is rushed to the hospital, where surgeons struggle to save his life.

At the same hospital, researcher Dr. Ranjip Singh is experimenting with a device that can erase traumatic memories.

Then a terrorist bomb detonates. In the operating room, the president suffers cardiac arrest. He has a near-death experience-but the memories that flash through Jerrison's mind are not his memories.

It quickly becomes clear that the electromagnetic pulse generated by the bomb amplified and scrambled Dr. Singh's equipment, allowing a random group of people to access one another's minds.

And now one of those people has access to the president's memories- including classified information regarding the upcoming military mission, which, if revealed, could cost countless lives. But the task of determining who has switched memories with whom is a daunting one- particularly when some of the people involved have reason to lie...

Learn more about the book and author at Robert J. Sawyer's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: WWW: Wake.

The Page 69 Test: WWW: Watch.

The Page 69 Test:: WWW: Wonder.

Writers Read: Robert Sawyer.

The Page 69 Test: Triggers.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Peter Behrens reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Peter Behrens, author of The O'Briens and The Law of Dreams.

His entry begins:

I spend winters in Marfa, Texas and while here have been digging into the history of the West. I'm reading a series of books about Western characters so draped in mythology that the real, historical people have almost disappeared. To Hell on a Fast Horse by Mark Lee Gardner is "the untold story" of Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. It's a good book because Gardner has done his research, knows the West, and places Billy in the context of his geography and his times. Billy is one of those figures who tremble on the cusp of our era: though he possesses undoubted talents (shooting, riding) he's very much a mass-media creation--the New York dailies loved him. He's kind of the Lady Gaga of his day. "Is there a there, there?" to Billy? Born in NYC he grew up in a series of raw one-horse mining and ranching towns in the West. He's illiterate, charming, buck-toothed, and mostly unknown. In his teenage years he's involved in gangstah-style activity in eastern New Mexico---The Lincoln County War---which is all about power, local politics, machismo, and (cattle) business. Billy is basically a gun for hire, a...[read on]

About The O'Briens, from the publisher:

An unforgettable saga of love, loss, and exhilarating change spanning half a century in the lives of a restless family, from the author of the acclaimed novel The Law of Dreams.

The O’Briens is a family story unlike any told before, a tale that pours straight from the heart of a splendid, tragic, ambitious clan. In Joe O’Brien—grandson of a potato-famine emigrant, and a backwoods boy, railroad magnate, patriarch, brooding soul—Peter Behrens gives us a fiercely compelling man who exchanges isolation and poverty in the Canadian wilds for a share in the dazzling riches and consuming sorrows of the twentieth century.

When Joe meets Iseult Wilkins in Venice, California, the story of their courtship—told in Behrens’s gorgeous, honed style—becomes the first movement in a symphony of the generations. Husband and wife, brothers, sisters-in-law, children and grandchildren, the O’Briens engage unselfconsciously with their century, and we experience their times not as historical tableaux but as lives passionately lived. At the heart of this clan—at the heart of the novel—is mystery and madness grounded in the history of Irish sorrow. The O’Briens is the story of a man, a marriage, and a family, told with epic precision and wondrous imagination.

Read more about the novel and author at Peter Behrens' website.

The Page 69 Test: The Law of Dreams.

My Book, The Movie: The Law of Dreams.

Writers Read: Peter Behrens.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Jenny Gardiner & Bridget and Sassy

This weekend's featured trio at Coffee with a Canine: Jenny Gardiner & Bridget and Sassy.

Gardiner, on how Bridget came to be part of the household:

Our first dog had passed away right after we moved into our new home. It was traumatic and we weren't going to get another dog for a long time. The kids were still young and dealing with dog maintenance was not high on the agenda as we had enough other critter maintenance (both pets and kids!) we were dealing with. Back then we still had two cats plus my parrot Graycie. On Friday afternoon, 3 months after Beau had died, we sat on our back deck and the in-laws asked when we were getting another dog and we said in unison: not for a long time!

The next day our son had a soccer match. He was about 9 years old. We had company coming from out of town, but we needed to find a fireplace screen, so we headed north about an hour to this home store that had a huge outlet and a big once-a-year sale going on, hoping we'd find a nice screen for a reasonable price.

So we diverted up there quickly (had to get home for our company!) and as we pulled into the field in which we were directed to park, there was an animal rescue league with a handful of puppies they were trying to pawn off on unsuspecting patrons. But my husband had nothing if not steely determination, and had no intention of kowtowing to peer pressure (or offspring pressure, for that matter). The kids, of course, raced over to the puppies, while my husband and I went to check out fireplace screens. While we did that the kids took turns running back to us to beg for the cutest little puppy in the group: a teeny baby with sapphire blue eyes, a sleepy, peaceful little pup who just slept in your arms like a newborn. No! We told them. We can't deal with the responsibility of a dog right now! Soon...[read on]

Visit Jenny Gardiner's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Sleeping with Ward Cleaver.

Writers Read: Jenny Gardiner.

The Page 99 Test: Winging It.

My Book, The Movie: Winging It.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Jenny Gardiner & Bridget and Sassy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable books on why cities are good for you

Leo Hollis was born in London in 1972, was educated at Stoneyhurst College and studied history at university. He is the author of number books on London including London Rising: The Men Who Made Modern London and the forthcoming Why Cities are Good For You.

With Alec Ash at The Browser, Hollis discussed five top books on why cities are good for you, including:

Together
by Richard Sennett

Tell us about Richard Sennett’s book.

Richard Sennett – a wonderful thinker who has been at the LSE for the last several years – has over a number of decades written very movingly about cities. Together is his latest book, about communities within the city. Cities might well be more creative and efficient, but if there is not that life on the street and community of togetherness, then what is the point? Togetherness, Sennett says, is something we need to learn and practise, not something that is given to us.

I believe in that strongly, that we have to work at being a society and a community. If we all become atomised, then the city isn’t going to work. I do think, however, that because of the potential connections that one has, one is actually less likely to be lonely in the city. That doesn’t mean that people don’t die in their flats and their bodies are not found for many months, and it doesn’t mean that one can’t have an odd sense of existential anomie when standing on the train platform, but we have assumed for too long that cities are places of loneliness. It has become a trope without any actual evidence.

But to challenge the notion of cities as unequivocally good, they are also the setting of such friction and violence. How do we reconcile these aspects of cities, when togetherness goes wrong?

They are undoubtedly places where people rub up against each other, and that is always going to cause problems. It’s inherent. We need to think on that, and design ways in which it is managed. Questions of density or crowding do create a sense of unease. These are things that we need to identify and then come up with solutions to. I don’t think it’s a barrier to the city, and I think it’s something that the city can address itself.

Read about another book Hollis tagged at The Browser.

Also see--Five best books about cities.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Carrie Hamilton's "Sexual Revolutions in Cuba"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Sexual Revolutions in Cuba: Passion, Politics, and Memory by Carrie Hamilton.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Sexual Revolutions in Cuba Carrie Hamilton delves into the relationship between passion and politics in revolutionary Cuba to present a comprehensive history of sexuality on the island from the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 into the twenty-first century. Drawing on an unused body of oral history interviews as well as press accounts, literary works, and other published sources, Hamilton pushes beyond official government rhetoric and explores how the wider changes initiated by the Revolution have affected the sexual lives of Cuban citizens. She foregrounds the memories and emotions of ordinary Cubans and compares these experiences with changing policies and wider social, political, and economic developments to reveal the complex dynamic between sexual desire and repression in revolutionary Cuba.

Showing how revolutionary and prerevolutionary values coexist in a potent and sometimes contradictory mix, Hamilton addresses changing patterns in heterosexual relations, competing views of masculinity and femininity, same-sex relationships and homophobia, AIDS, sexual violence, interracial relationships, and sexual tourism. Hamilton's examination of sexual experiences across generations and social groups demonstrates that sexual politics have been integral to the construction of a new revolutionary Cuban society.

Learn more about Sexual Revolutions in Cuba at the University of North Carolina Press website.

Carrie Hamilton is reader in history at the University of Roehampton, London.

The Page 99 Test: Sexual Revolutions in Cuba.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ted Kosmatka's "The Games"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Games by Ted Kosmatka.

About the book, from the publisher:

This stunning first novel from Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist Ted Kosmatka is a riveting tale of science cut loose from ethics. Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think.

Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas’s boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.

The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer’s cold logic.

Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia João. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and—most disquietingly—intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to a most unexpected emotion: sheer terror.

Learn more about the book and author at Ted Kosmatka's website and blog.

Writers Read: Ted Kosmatka.

The Page 69 Test: The Games.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top collections of Russian short fiction

Rosamund Bartlett's books include Wagner and Russia and the acclaimed Chekhov: Scenes from a Life. An authority on Russian cultural history, she has also achieved renown as a translator of Chekhov.

Her latest book is Tolstoy: A Russian Life.

One collection of Russian short fiction she discussed with Daisy Banks at The Browser:

The Queen of Spades and Other Stories
by Alexander Pushkin

The first short story you recommend is The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin, in the Oxford World’s Classics collection.

Whatever one’s criteria, it is impossible to leave out The Queen of Spades. It’s a story about gambling, and the first undisputed masterpiece in the genre by the writer seen in his homeland as the “Russian Shakespeare”. Pushkin was a protean genius who moulded the cumbersome Russian of the 18th century into the supple and beautiful literary language used today. Although he was primarily a lyric poet, he started moving towards prose fiction at the end of his short life, as you can see in Eugene Onegin, Russia’s first great novel, written in verse.

Apart from being a gripping read, The Queen of Spades is the quintessential St Petersburg tale and an astonishingly modern work. Its author was far more hotheaded than the superbly cool, detached style of the story’s narration suggests. He was sent into exile for his rebellious ideas, and then had to endure submitting his manuscripts to Nicholas I for his personal approval. Pushkin was a gambler himself, of course, and even gambled away his own poetry on occasion. And he went out of his way to fight duels. He was killed in a duel four years after completing The Queen of Spades, at the age of 38.

You say that The Queen of Spades, written in the autumn of 1833, is a modern work – in what way?

First of all, the precision and lucidity of Pushkin’s language make it read like something written yesterday. So many later Russian writers took their cue from him. He also pulls off a spellbinding conjuring trick in managing to exemplify and simultaneously parody a variety of literary genres popular at the time he was writing. His irony and the endless games he plays with his reader make him a kind of post-modern writer avant la lettre.

On one level, the story emulates the “society tale” popular in the 1830s. There are characters drawn from real life such as the formidable countess, who was inspired by the legendary “Princesse Moustache”, Natalya Galitzine. On another level, it is a romantic tale of the supernatural. Pushkin teases us with a whole host of possible ways to interpret the story’s meaning. The Queen of Spades also looks forward to future debates about Russia’s relationship with Western capitalism. In Crime and Punishment, for example, Dostoevsky clearly models his character of [Rodion] Raskolnikov on Pushkin’s “anti-hero” Hermann, who has a German background. They both have to contend with an old woman and a young girl called Liza, and they both have a Napoleon complex and an obsession with money. A lot of people will be familiar with The Queen of Spades from having seen the opera. Tchaikovsky picks up on the phantasmagoric atmosphere of the story, which helped launch a whole St Petersburg mythology, but he departs radically from Pushkin’s plot.

Read about another book that Bartlett discussed at The Browser.

Visit Rosamund Bartlett's website and learn more about Tolstoy: A Russian Life.

Writers Read: Rosamund Bartlett.

My Book, The Movie: Tolstoy: A Russian Life.

The Page 99 Test: Tolstoy: A Russian Life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Aimee Phan's "The Reeducation of Cherry Truong," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan.

The entry begins:

If The Reeducation of Cherry Truong ever became a film, I’d prefer Vietnamese actors to play the central roles. Listening to a fake Vietnamese accent sounds like nails on a chalkboard for me. But given how few Asian American actors, much less Vietnamese, there are in the mainstream media, we need to cast a wider net.

We follow Cherry from ages eight through twenty-one, so we’d probably need at least two actresses to encompass her journey. For the adult Cherry, I could imagine standup comedian Rosie Tran because she is just quirky enough to handle her transformation from awkward, chubby teenager to ambitious, but conflicted premed student.

Cherry’s older brother, the charming, tragic gambling addict Lum, would be a dream role for any young Asian American actor. Perhaps John Cho or...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Aimee Phan's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong.

My Book, The Movie: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John Welshman's "Titanic"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town by John Welshman.

About the book, from the publisher:

In his famous book A Night to Remember, Walter Lord described the sinking of the Titanic as "the last night of a small town." Now, a hundred years after her sinking, historian John Welshman reconstructs the fascinating individual experiences of twelve of the inhabitants of this tragically short-lived floating village.

In Titanic, Welshman offers a minute-by-minute account of the doomed liner's last hours, based on a representative cross-section of those who sailed in her: men and women, old and young, passengers and crew, wealthy and poor. He introduces the reader to a fascinating cast of twelve eye-witnesses, including Arthur H. Rostron, Captain of the Carpathia, the first ship to reach the scene; Charles Lightoller, the Titanic's Second Officer; Archibald Gracie, a wealthy American cotton plantation owner; Elin Hakkarainen, a young migrant from Finland, travelling Third Class; and Edith Brown, a teenager from South Africa. The book also documents the experiences of an Assistant Wireless Operator, a Stewardess, an amateur military historian, a governess, a teacher, and a domestic servant. The survivor accounts allow Welshman to construct a graphic and compelling picture of events on a day-to-day and hour-by-hour basis, providing vivid glimpses of the tragedy as seen from their respective vantage points. In addition, Welshman tells the story of where these twelve people were from and what happened to those who survived in the years afterwards. Finally, the author, a respected social historian, offers many insights into nineteenth-century social class, migration, work, and the broader history of Northern Ireland.

Drawing on published autobiographical accounts, diaries, private papers, archival materials, and a wide array of other sources, Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town offers a unique account of one of the most memorable disasters in modern history.

Learn more about Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town at the Oxford University Press website.

John Welshman is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Lancaster University. He is the author or editor of six books on twentieth-century British social history, including Churchill's Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain.

My Book, The Movie: Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town.

The Page 99 Test: Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Lou Manfredo’s "Rizzo's Daughter"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Rizzo's Daughter by Lou Manfredo.

About the book, from the publisher:

Brooklyn cop Joe Rizzo---“the most authentic cop in contemporary crime fiction” (starred review Kirkus Reviews)---is ready to retire and spend the rest of his days with his wife, doting on their grown-up girls. But when his youngest daughter, Carol, decides to follow her dad onto the force, Joe decides to stay on until she’s settled, calling in favors to get her assigned to the easiest house, the best training officer—anything to protect his baby girl.

While there, of course, he’s still working a few cases, though he never would’ve guessed that one of them would be the most sensational case of his career, the murder of mob boss Louie Quattropa. If mob wars were the worst of his problems, he could handle that, but with a daughter on patrol, Joe knows all too well what dangers await her and what little he can do about them.

With an authentic voice and breathtakingly accurate portrayal of police work, Lou Manfredo’s novels have won wide acclaim, and Rizzo’s Daughter raises the bar to a whole new level.

Learn more about the book and author at Lou Manfredo's website.

The Page 69 Test: Rizzo's War.

Writers Read: Lou Manfredo (April 2011).

My Book, The Movie: Rizzo's Fire.

The Page 69 Test: Rizzo's Daughter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on navigators

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on navigators:

The Worst Journey in the World
by Apsley Cherry-Garrard

For the last century, historians have wrestled with how to understand Robert Falcon Scott's disastrous expedition to the South Pole in 1910-1912. Many argue that the British explorer's lack of preparation and experience doomed the majority of his men to a frigid death. But one of the surviving crew members, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, sought to redeem his captain in this account of their harrowing journey into the frozen wasteland. Scott appears here to be a brave and compassionate man who thought only of his men and the family he would leave fatherless. A gripping true story that lays bare both heroic ambitions and their terrible price.

Read about another book on the list.

Worst Journey in the World is on Ian Marchant's top ten list of books of the night and the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on winter.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Ted Kosmatka reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Ted Kosmatka, author of The Games.

His entry begins:

I recently spent time up at the Rainforest Writer's Retreat where I was lucky enough to snag a signed copy of Jay Lake's Mainspring, so that's the book I've been reading lately. I was familiar with the premise of the book, and I'd been meaning to read it forever because it sounded so interesting. Basically, it's steampunk to the nth power. The world circles the sun on a brass track, like a kind of celestial clockwork, but the big problem is that the world is slowly winding down. The only thing that can stop it is the key perilous, which must be found and used to rewind the world. I'm...[read on]

About The Games, from the publisher:

This stunning first novel from Nebula Award and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist Ted Kosmatka is a riveting tale of science cut loose from ethics. Set in an amoral future where genetically engineered monstrosities fight each other to the death in an Olympic event, The Games envisions a harrowing world that may arrive sooner than you think.

Silas Williams is the brilliant geneticist in charge of preparing the U.S. entry into the Olympic Gladiator competition, an internationally sanctioned bloodsport with only one rule: no human DNA is permitted in the design of the entrants. Silas lives and breathes genetics; his designs have led the United States to the gold in every previous event. But the other countries are catching up. Now, desperate for an edge in the upcoming Games, Silas’s boss engages an experimental supercomputer to design the genetic code for a gladiator that cannot be beaten.

The result is a highly specialized killing machine, its genome never before seen on earth. Not even Silas, with all his genius and experience, can understand the horror he had a hand in making. And no one, he fears, can anticipate the consequences of entrusting the act of creation to a computer’s cold logic.

Now Silas races to understand what the computer has wrought, aided by a beautiful xenobiologist, Vidonia João. Yet as the fast-growing gladiator demonstrates preternatural strength, speed, and—most disquietingly—intelligence, Silas and Vidonia find their scientific curiosity giving way to a most unexpected emotion: sheer terror.

Learn more about the book and author at Ted Kosmatka's website and blog.

Writers Read: Ted Kosmatka.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Mark Pagel's "Wired for Culture"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind by Mark Pagel.

About the book, from the publisher:

A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history.

A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why?

Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.

Learn more about Wired for Culture at the publisher's website.

Mark Pagel is a professor of evolutionary biology at University of Reading. He has published widely on such topics as evolutionary genetics and linguistics, brain size, and human culture.

The Page 99 Test: Wired for Culture.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Aimee Phan's "The Reeducation of Cherry Truong"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong by Aimee Phan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Cherry Truong’s parents have exiled her wayward older brother from their Southern California home, sending him to Vietnam to live with distant relatives. Determined to bring him back, twenty-one-year-old Cherry travels to their homeland and finds herself on a journey to uncover her family’s decades-old secrets—hidden loves, desperate choices, and lives ripped apart by the march of war and currents of history.

The Reeducation of Cherry Truong tells the story of two fierce and unforgettable families, the Truongs and the Vos: their harrowing escape from Vietnam after the war, the betrayal that divided them, and the stubborn memories that continue to bind them years later, even as they come to terms with their hidden sacrifices and bitter mistakes. Kim-Ly, Cherry’s grandmother, once wealthy and powerful in Vietnam, now struggles to survive in Little Saigon, California without English or a driver’s license. Cherry’s other grandmother Hoa, whose domineering husband has developed dementia, discovers a cache of letters from a woman she thought had been left behind. As Cherry pieces their stories together, she uncovers the burden of her family’s love and the consequences of their choices.

Set in Vietnam, France, and the United States, Aimee Phan’s sweeping debut novel reveals a family still yearning for reconciliation, redemption, and a place to call home.

Learn more about the book and author at Aimee Phan's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on the gender trap

Peggy Orenstein's books include the New York Times best-selling memoir, Waiting for Daisy; Flux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World; and the best-selling SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap. Her latest book is Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture.

At The Browser, Orenstein and Eve Gerber discuss how, "from an early age, girls learn to be pretty in pink while boys are marketed a prepackaged masculinity." And Orenstein suggests five books that may help parents "give their children a broader, more imaginative outlook," including:

Pink Brain, Blue Brain
by Lise Eliot

Let’s begin with the raw material with which we’re born. Tell us about Pink Brain, Blue Brain by neuroscientist Lise Eliot.

That book was transformative for me. Lise looked through every study on gender and brain research and broke them down for the general reader. Science was not my forte but the book laid out neuroscience in such a clear way that I found it easy to understand and even entertaining to read.

It makes two key points. First, there are small differences between boys and girls at birth that are real. But, second, if we allow or encourage hyper gender differentiation those small differences become big gaps as kids develop. Those gaps include spatial skills, reading ability, and ways of dealing with people.

This book really changed the way I thought about parenting. It encouraged me to encourage my daughter’s friendships with boys. We want men to be nurturing. We want girls to develop strong spatial skills. Cross-sex socialisation at an early age helps ingrain those attributes.

Eliot doesn’t deny that there are differences between boys and girls, but argues that we overemphasise them and that over time gender differences become more pronounced because of cultural influences and the way brains work. Please brief us on the biology behind neuroplasticity.

As Lise emphasises, because of neuroplasticity nurture becomes nature. Consider language: We’re born able to make any sound but we lose the ability to make the sounds needed to speak other languages. In English-speaking culture, for instance, a lot of adults can’t roll their Rs. We were born with the ability to do so but that drops away. It’s not nature vs nurture – it’s how nurture becomes nature.

When humans cry, fall, learn to walk and learn to talk, we’re strengthening some neurons at the expense of others – the younger the child, the greater the effect. So when we steer our daughters towards pink princess dresses and playing with make-up and away from playing rough and tumble with boys, that has a lasting impact on the brain.

But little girls seem to be drawn to princess and fairy toys, books and clothes, like bees to honey. Is that all because of cultural cues?

When kids are little they don’t understand that, for most of us, gender is permanent. They think that you might inadvertently turn into the other sex if, for instance, you wear pink when you’re a boy or cut your hair short when you’re a girl. That’s why little kids become the chiefs of the gender police and your little girl may cry if you try to put her into trousers. It’s really important for them at an early age to say, “I’m a girl, I’m a girl, I’m a girl.”

So the appearance-oriented girl culture is exploiting a developmental phase, it’s not supporting a developmental phase. Once you understand that you can start thinking about how to help your daughter assert her femininity in a way that doesn’t undermine her long-term psychological health or personal potential. You can consider how to give her a different image of what it means to be feminine that’s stronger and more internal.

Parents seem to delight in and no doubt reinforce the differences between their kids. And sex is the most obvious distinction. Are parents the primary culprits in ingraining gender differences?

I think of the flip side. By controlling what comes into the house, parents can limit the exploitation of girls and broaden the definition of girlhood. For instance, when my daughter was four we were reading about Greek myths so she went trick-or-treating dressed as Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom. It was really feminine – she got to wear a toga and a crown – but it was a different image of femininity than Cinderella.

Read about another book Orenstein discusses at The Browser.

Visit Peggy Orenstein's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Waiting for Daisy.

The Page 99 Test: Cinderella Ate My Daughter.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saladin Ahmed's "Throne of The Crescent Moon," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Throne of The Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.

The entry begins:

Well, there aren't exactly a ton of high-profile Arab or African actors in Hollywood, so casting Throne of The Crescent Moon is pretty tough, and inevitably involves a bit of ethnic drag:

For the fat old ghul hunter Adoulla: Some cloned amalgamation of Tony Shalhoub, Laurence Fishburne, and John Rhys-Davies.

For the conflicted holy warrior Raseed: Since the blog rules allow us to draw on actors who've passed away, I have to go with the late Brandon...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Saladin Ahmed's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Throne of the Crescent Moon.

My Book, The Movie: Throne of The Crescent Moon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elizabeth Brake's "Minimizing Marriage"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Minimizing Marriage: Marriage, Morality, and the Law by Elizabeth Brake.

About the book, from the publisher:

Even in secular and civil contexts, marriage retains sacramental connotations. Yet what moral significance does it have? This book examines its morally salient features - promise, commitment, care, and contract - with surprising results. In Part One, "De-Moralizing Marriage," essays on promise and commitment argue that we cannot promise to love and so wedding vows are (mostly) failed promises, and that marriage may be a poor commitment strategy. The book contends with the most influential philosophical accounts of the moral value of marriage to argue that marriage has no inherent moral significance. Further, the special value accorded marriage sustains amatonormative discrimination - discrimination against non-amorous or non-exclusive caring relationships such as friendships, adult care networks, polyamorous groups, or urban tribes. The discussion raises issues of independent interest for the moral philosopher such as the possibilities and bounds of interpersonal moral obligations and the nature of commitment.

The central argument of Part Two, "Democratizing Marriage," is that liberal reasons for recognizing same-sex marriage also require recognition of groups, polyamorists, polygamists, friends, urban tribes, and adult care networks. Political liberalism requires the disestablishment of monogamous amatonormative marriage. Under the constraints of public reason, a liberal state must refrain from basing law solely on moral or religious doctrines; but only such doctrines could furnish reason for restricting marriage to male-female couples or romantic love dyads. Restrictions on marriage should thus be minimized. But public reason can provide a strong rationale for minimal marriage: care, and social supports for care, are a matter of fundamental justice. Part Two also responds to challenges posed by property division on divorce, polygyny, and supporting parenting, and builds on critiques of marriage drawn from feminism, queer theory, and race theory. It argues, using the example of minimal marriage, for the compatibility of liberalism and feminism.

Learn more about Minimizing Marriage at the Oxford University Press website.

Elizabeth Brake was educated at The Universities of Oxford (B.A.) and St. Andrews (M. Litt., PhD). Since 2000 she has taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Calgary, Canada; in 2011-2012 she is a Visiting Associate Professor at Arizona State University.

The Page 99 Test: Minimizing Marriage.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: David J. Walker's "The Towman's Daughters"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Towman's Daughters by David J. Walker.

About the book, from the publisher:

The brand-new novel in the acclaimed Chicago-set 'Wild Onion Ltd.' Series

Being a hero is definitely not on lawyer Dugan's to-do list when he goes to retrieve his towed car one early morning. But when he comes across a crime in progress, he rescues the beautiful Isobel Cho from an armed abductor, only to find she isn't too happy to be saved. Soon Isobel goes missing, and it's up to Dugan and his PI wife, Kirsten, to find out what's happened. Could Isobel's relationship with a senator's son be at the heart of it? Or are there dirtier tricks afoot?...

Learn more about the book and author at David J. Walker's website.

The Page 69 Test: Too Many Clients.

The Page 69 Test: The Towman's Daughters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best fraternal hatreds in literature

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

One entry on the list:

Adam and Charles Trask

In Steinbeck's East of Eden, we read of Adam Trask's tumultuous childhood on a Connecticut farm and the brutal treatment he endured from his younger but stronger half-brother, Charles. This poisonous brotherhood is replicated in the next generation, as Adam's sons Aron and Caleb become antagonists. Caleb, jealous of his father's love for Aron, goads him to enlist in the army, and he is killed in the first world war.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Cara Black reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Cara Black, author of Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

Her entry begins:

The Patagonian Hare, a memoir by Claude Lanzmann. Claude, in his 80's, is still the editor of the magazine Sartre founded and made the epic documentary the Shoah. I heard him speak the other night at the JCC - feisty, brilliant and such a character. I bought his memoir and he autographed it. Well, it's kind of a memoir, a bit rambling, yet incisive and he captures for the reader what it was like growing up in France between the wars, his crazy intellectual mother who...[read on]

About the book, from the publisher:

Aimée Leduc is happy her long-time business partner René has found a girlfriend. Really, she is. It's not her fault if she can't suppress her doubts about the relationship; René is moving way too fast, and Aimée's instincts tell her Meizi, this supposed love of René's life, isn't trustworthy. Aimée can't kick the feeling that René doesn't know his lady as well as he thinks he does, and is being led on--maybe for a visa. Meizi's very traditional Chinese parents insist on chaperoning every date, and René never gets time alone with her. And now, at her birthday party in a Chinatown restaurant in the Arts et Metier quarter of Paris, he is even giving her a ring!

As it turns out, Aimée's misgivings about Meizi might not be far off the mark. Meizi disappears during dinner to take a phone call and never comes back to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrinkwrapped in an alleyway--with Meizi's photo in his wallet.

Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can't figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi's disappearance--there is no way tiny Meizi could have suffocated and shrinkwrapped the dead man. Aimée is determined to protect René, to find Meizi, and discover the truth. It turns out the dead genius was sitting on something huge--a secret project that has France's secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they're keeping tabs on Aimée. A missing young woman, an illegal immigrant raid in progress, botched affairs fo the heart, dirty policemen, the French secret service, cutting-edge science secrets and a murderer on the loose--what has she gotten herself into? And can she get herself--and her friends--back out of it all alive?

Learn more about the book and author at Cara Black's website.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

My Book, the Movie: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

Writers Read: Cara Black.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Geoffrey Cocks's "The State of Health"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The State of Health: Illness in Nazi Germany by Geoffrey Campbell Cocks.

About the book, from the publisher:

The State of Health: Illness in Nazi Germany explores and analyses the experience of illness in German society under National Socialism. As is well known, the Nazis mobilised medicine for purposes of 'racial' cultivation and extermination. What has been much less understood is that the experience of health and illness in the Third Reich also marked a crucial juncture in the history of the modern self and body in Germany and the West. The secular and material bourgeois self was a product of the industrial and commercial society Germany had become before Hitler. The peculiarly rapid pace of social change in Germany, combined with a series of military, political, and economic disasters after 1914, created an environment of heightened sensitivity and anxiety concerning the relationship between individual and community. This historical environment also aggravated concerns about health and illness of the morbid, mortal, and sexual body and mind in which the modern self was lodged. The racialist policies of the Third Reich worsened popular anxiety over illness and health. And while Nazism exploited popular longings for 'national community,' the modern self of material pleasure, appetite, and desire too would be prop as well as problem for the Hitler regime.

Drawing from the rich historical literature on modern Germany and the Third Reich, as well as on previously unexamined primary sources from over forty archives, The State of Health documents vital continuities and discontinuities in the history of modern Germany and the West, up to and beyond the Nazi years. In exploring the social, medical, and discursive spaces of health and illness in the Third Reich, Geoffrey Cocks illuminates significant and fateful experiences in peace and war with medicine, doctors, and drugs; work; collaboration; constraint and agency; self and other; persecution, enslavement, and extermination; gender and sexuality; pain, injury, madness, and death; and historical memory and amnesia.

Learn more about The State of Health at the Oxford University Press website.

Geoffrey Campbell Cocks is the author of Psychotherapy in the Third Reich (1985, 1997), Treating Mind and Body (1998), and The Wolf at the Door (2004) which was a TLS 'International Book of the Year' in 2004.

The Page 99 Test: The State of Health.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best psychological mysteries

Jane Harris is the author of the award-winning novel The Observations and, more recently, Gillespie and I.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of "tales that invite the reader to puzzle over complex characters," including:

Pale Fire
by Vladimir Nabokov (1962)

'A Jack-in-the-box, a Fabergé gem, a clockwork toy, a chess problem ... an infernal machine ... a cat-and-mouse game." Thus, upon its publication in 1962, one critic described this extraordinary novel. "Pale Fire" is all this and more: both a satire and a mystery; a daunting intellectual challenge but one that has many rewards for Nabokov fans, not least the satisfaction of his gorgeous prose and the way that this book turns us all into detectives. The novel presents a long poem by recently murdered American poet John Shade, with a commentary written by Shade's friend Charles Kinbote, an academic from a country named Zembla. Kinbote claims to have been entrusted with preparing the dead poet's manuscript for publication. But how reliable a narrator is he? Shade's poem reads like elegiac autobiography, yet Kinbote apparently believes it to be an allegorical work about his own country. As the reader shifts between poem and commentary, trying to solve the puzzle of this novel, other possibilities present themselves until we aren't sure who Kinbote might be or who, indeed, has even written this magnificent and melancholic text.

Read about another book on the list.

Pale Fire's John Shade is among John Mullan's ten best fictional poets. The novel appears on Edward Docx's top ten list of deranged characters. It is one of Tracy Kidder's six best books as well as the novel Charles Storch would save for last. It is one of "Six Memorable Books About Writers Writing" yet it disappointed Ha Jin upon rereading.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Saladin Ahmed's "Throne of The Crescent Moon"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed.

About the book, from the publisher:

From Saladin Ahmed, finalist for the Nebula and Campbell Awards, comes one of the year's most anticipated fantasy debuts: THRONE OF THE CRESCENT MOON, a fantasy adventure with all the magic of The Arabian Nights.

The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, home to djenn and ghuls, holy warriors and heretics, are at the boiling point of a power struggle between the iron- fisted Khalif and the mysterious master thief known as the Falcon Prince. In the midst of this brewing rebellion a series of brutal supernatural murders strikes at the heart of the Kingdoms. It is up to a handful of heroes to learn the truth behind these killings.

Doctor Adoulla Makhslood, "the last real ghul hunter in the great city of Dhamsawaat," just wants a quiet cup of tea. Three score and more years old, he has grown weary of hunting monsters and saving lives, and is more than ready to retire from his dangerous and demanding vocation. But when an old flame's family is murdered, Adoulla is drawn back to the hunter's path.

Raseed bas Raseed, Adoulla's young assistant, is a hidebound holy warrior whose prowess is matched only by his piety. But even as Raseed's sword is tested by ghuls and manjackals, his soul is tested when he and Adoulla cross paths with the tribeswoman Zamia.

Zamia Badawi, Protector of the Band, has been gifted with the near- mythical power of the lion-shape, but shunned by her people for daring to take up a man's title. She lives only to avenge her father's death. Until she learns that Adoulla and his allies also hunt her father's killer. Until she meets Raseed.

When they learn that the murders and the Falcon Prince's brewing revolution are connected, the companions must race against time-and struggle against their own misgivings-to save the life of a vicious despot. In so doing they discover a plot for the Throne of the Crescent Moon that threatens to turn Dhamsawaat, and the world itself, into a blood-soaked ruin.

Learn more about the book and author at Saladin Ahmed's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Throne of the Crescent Moon.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Welshman's "Titanic," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town by John Welshman.

The entry begins:

With the help of our teenage son, I had a lot of fun with this. The book focuses on 12 people whose stories are woven into the narrative. They have been chosen to represent, as far as possible, the idea of the Titanic as being like a ‘small town’. So there are passengers and crew members; children as well as adults; women as well as men; rich and poor; and people from Britain, the United States, South Africa; Finland, and the Lebanon. I try to see the disaster through their eyes, and the book is as visual as possible. Here is my cast list:

Adrien Brody would play the part of Lawrence Beesley (35), an English science teacher travelling to visit his brother in Toronto. With the skill of a novelist, but the precision of as scientist, Beesley observes events as they unfold.

Eddie Redmayne (My Week with Marilyn) would take the part of Harold Bride (22), the Assistant Wireless Operator. Young and relatively inexperienced, Bride is totally unaware of what is in store for him.

Abigail...[read on]

Learn more about Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town at the Oxford University Press website.

John Welshman is Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Lancaster University. He is the author or editor of six books on twentieth-century British social history, including Churchill's Children: The Evacuee Experience in Wartime Britain.

My Book, The Movie: Titanic: The Last Night of a Small Town.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top lost-and-found novels

At The Daily Beast, Sarah Stodol tagged ten "novels that were lost to the world, along with the fascinating stories behind their journey back into the light," including:

Suite Française
by Irene Nemirovsky

Another lost novel whose story is laced with tragedy. Just before she was arrested and shipped off to Auschwitz, where she died a month later, Nemirovsky put the manuscript in a suitcase and gave it to her daughter, Denise, for safekeeping. Believing the manuscript to be a personal diary, Denise avoided reading it for three decades. Upon discovering she’d actually been holding onto a novel based on the very months leading up to her mother’s arrest, she still kept it under wraps for another 25 years. Her mother had been a famous writer in the 1930s after the publication of her first novel, David Golder. But as the war started, she was abandoned by friends and the public alike. Suite Française finally brought her back to renown with its publication in France in 2004 and subsequent English translation.

Read about another novel on the list.

Suite Française also appears among Max Hastings's ten best books on war, David Lodge's five best books about social class, and Howard Bloch's five best books about France.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lauren Groff reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia.

Her entry begins:

I'm doing research for my next project, whatever it will end up being, and I am halfway through Bouvard et Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert. Research, for me, involves a lot of reading indirectly around the subject I'm interested in, to try to find a unique way into it, which seems sometimes approximately as useful as staring at the night sky to study the sun. I can't tell you my actual subject--talking too soon about a book is the surest way to kill it--but I can tell you that Bouvard et Pécuchet is not one of Flaubert's best novels. The book is a satirical picaresque, incomplete when it was posthumously published, and it is about a pair of blundering friends who come into some money and do absolutely nothing right with it. If...[read on]

About Arcadia, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton comes a lyrical and gripping story of a great American dream.

In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding what would become a commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this romantic, rollicking, and tragic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and after.

Arcadia’s inhabitants include Handy, a musician and the group’s charismatic leader; Astrid, a midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah’s only child, the book’s protagonist, Bit, who is born soon after the commune is created.

While Arcadia rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and changes. If he remains in love with the peaceful agrarian life in Arcadia and deeply attached to its residents—including Handy and Astrid’s lithe and deeply troubled daughter, Helle—how can Bit become his own man? How will he make his way through life and the world outside of Arcadia where he must eventually live?

With Arcadia, her first novel since her lauded debut, The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff establishes herself not only as one of the most gifted young fiction writers at work today but also as one of our most accomplished literary artists.

Learn more about the book and author at Lauren Groff's website and blog.

The Page 99 Test: The Monsters of Templeton.

The Page 69 Test: Arcadia.

Writers Read: Lauren Groff.

--Marshal Zeringue