Monday, November 30, 2015

Bridget Asher's "All of Us and Everything," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: All of Us and Everything by Bridget Asher.

The entry begins:
I see Susan Sarandon and J.K. Simmons are starring in The Meddler and I'm very much looking forward to their chemistry. They'd be wonderful as the eccentric Augusta Rockwell and the sentimental spy she fell in love with.

I'd love to see Uma Thurman or Nicole Kidman or Naomi Watts as the oldest sister, trying to stay in control as her life veers off course; Kate Hudson could play a really messy middle sister, Liv Rockwell -- a shout to her performance in Almost Famous; and Natalie...[read on]
Learn more about the book and author at Bridget Asher's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: All of Us and Everything.

Writers Read: Bridget Asher.

My Book, The Movie: All of Us and Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rick Moody's 6 favorite books that take place in hotels

Rick Moody's new novel is Hotels of North America. One of his six favorite books that take place in hotels, as shared at The Week magazine:
The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt

This 2008 novel about the last days of the inventor Nikola Tesla is set in the Hotel New Yorker, and it has a lot to do with physics, magic, and the sheer beauty of language. Hunt has a new novel, Mr. Splitfoot, coming out in January, and based on past experience I am sure that one will be great, too.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: The Invention of Everything Else.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Lisa J. Edwards & Pinball

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Lisa J. Edwards & Pinball.

The author, on Pinball's best pals:
I am Pinball’s first best pal, then he has a couple doggie friends who set up play dates with him. He loves my son, and Auntie Jill is his second or third favorite human (I can’t know what order we all fall into). Pinball loves to be where my son, Indy is. Initially I had to manage the dogs to keep the newborn safe, but now I have to manage the three-year-old boy to keep the dog safe. I am sure it will balance out shortly.

Pinball’s two doggie housemates passed away last year and he was inconsolable for several months. He is getting used to being the only dog while...[read on]
About Please Don't Bite the Baby, from the publisher:
Please Don't Bite the Baby (and Please Don't Chase the Dogs), chronicles certified professional dog trainer Lisa Edwards’ endearing and entertaining journey to ensure that her household survives and thrives when she introduces her son to her motley pack of animals. As Lisa knows all too well, the dog/child relationship is simultaneously treasured, misunderstood, and sometimes feared. In a twist, Lisa's dog training techniques inevitably seep into how she navigates her first year with baby to mixed but enlightening results.

Lisa includes her best training techniques for the everyday pet owner itemized at the end of each chapter. This book is important for parents, grandparents, and caregivers who have dogs and young children together and want to ensure safety for all.
Visit Lisa J. Edwards's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Lisa Edwards & Boo, Porthos, and Pinball.

Writers Read: Lisa Edwards.

Coffee with a Canine: Lisa J. Edwards & Pinball.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Patricia Appelbaum reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Patricia Appelbaum, author of St. Francis of America: How a Thirteenth-Century Friar Became America's Most Popular Saint.

Her entry begins:
Because someone close to me is working in Haiti right now, I’ve been rereading Karen McCarthy Brown’s Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. It’s very rich. Not only was Brown one of the first to use ethnographic methods to study religion, her book did more than any other to make Haitian Vodou visible and respected. I sometimes assign excerpts to my students to show them that Vodou isn’t just about sticking pins into dolls – which is new information for many of them.

In Brown’s innovative presentation, the chapters alternate between ethnography and storytelling. Each pair of chapters focuses on one of the Vodou spirits, from the peasant Azaka, earthy and local, to Gede, the spirit of death and transformation, who takes on particular importance in the Haitian diaspora. The stories, based in Mama Lola’s family history...[read on]
About St. Francis of America, from the publisher:
How did a thirteenth-century Italian friar become one of the best-loved saints in America? Around the nation today, St. Francis of Assisi is embraced as the patron saint of animals, beneficently presiding over hundreds of Blessing of the Animals services on October 4, St. Francis's Catholic feast day. Not only Catholics, however, but Protestants and other Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and nonreligious Americans commonly name him as one of their favorite spiritual figures. Drawing on a dazzling array of art, music, drama, film, hymns, and prayers, Patricia Appelbaum explains what happened to make St. Francis so familiar and meaningful to so many Americans.

Appelbaum traces popular depictions and interpretations of St. Francis from the time when non-Catholic Americans "discovered" him in the nineteenth century to the present. From poet to activist, 1960s hippie to twenty-first-century messenger to Islam, St. Francis has been envisioned in ways that might have surprised the saint himself. Exploring how each vision of St. Francis has been shaped by its own era, Appelbaum reveals how St. Francis has played a sometimes countercultural but always aspirational role in American culture. St. Francis's American story also displays the zest with which Americans borrow, lend, and share elements of their religious lives in everyday practice.
Learn more about St. Francis of America at the University of North Carolina Press website.

Writers Read: Patricia Appelbaum.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, November 29, 2015

Pg. 69: Joseph Wallace's "Slavemakers"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Slavemakers by Joseph Wallace.

About the book, from the publisher:
The new postapocalyptic thriller from the author of Invasive Species

IT’S THEIR TERRITORY NOW.

Twenty years ago, venomous parasitic wasps known as “thieves” staged a massive, apocalyptic attack on another species—Homo sapiens—putting them on the brink of extinction.

But some humans did survive. The colony called Refugia is home to a population of 281, including scientists, a pilot, and a tough young woman named Kait. In the African wilderness, there’s Aisha Rose, nearly feral, born at the end of the old world. And in the ruins of New York City, there’s a mysterious, powerful boy, a skilled hunter, isolated and living by his wits.

As the survivors journey through the wastelands, they will find that they are not the only humans left on earth. Not by a long shot.

But they may be the only ones left who are not under the thieves’ control…
Visit Joseph Wallace's website.

The Page 69 Test: Slavemakers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Cover story: "Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture"

Bonnie Lander Johnson is Fellow and Lecturer at Selwyn College, Cambridge. Her new book is Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture.

Here she explains the connection of the book's cover to the pages within:
Van Dyke’s family portrait of Charles I places the King, Henrietta Maria, and their children in the foreground of a space adorned with colonnades, billowing silk and a sweeping backdrop of the stormy clouds and London waters over which the family reign. The portrait situates the marital delight and prodigious fertility of the Caroline monarchy in a framework at once epic and domestic. So why is it on the cover of a book about chastity? To those contemporary westerners who do not practice chastity for religious reasons, the virtue is usually interpreted as an archaic or literary form of celibacy or virginity. In fact it is a virtue that governs all stages of a person’s life, is central to Christendom’s understanding of marriage, and was, this book argues, one of the most important conceptual programmes of the early Stuart period. Elizabeth I may be the most famous chaste icon of British royal history but her Stuart successors were far more invested in the virtue and its role in marriage, monarchy, politics, medicine, and the arts. Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture argues that the combined blessings of chastity and fertility were also central to the controversies from which the Civil Wars emerged. It could be said that when he was beheaded, Charles I became a martyr not just to the Royalist cause but also to chastity.

However, it was not only the court and its supporters who celebrated the blessings of chastity: the pro-Parliamentary plain-religionists who eventually deposed the King were also trying to claim the virtue for their cause. Both sides interpreted chastity differently and from their struggle emerged some of the period’s most developed forms of rhetorical posturing. In a new world of public debate, in which mass print enabled the rapid dissemination of fiery sermons and political theory, the court couldn’t just utilise its elaborate spectacles to celebrate and promote its virtue and power. Instead, it needed to use masques, court ceremonials, and public appearances to answer criticisms from dissenters. This book reads the arguments posed by various court spectacles (including the Queen’s birthing rituals) as responses to anti-court claims about the unchastity corrupting the Stuart monarchy and its Church.

Throughout the 1630s the court’s claims to chastity, primarily through the prodigiously fertile body of the Queen and her elaborate masques, were highly successful. But the young John Milton was preparing to enter the debate with his own masque of chastity. Milton’s skilful recoding of the virtue as Protestant spiritual adventure bolstered the moral strength of pro-Parliamentary arguments. Within a decade the family members in Van Dyke’s portrait were all dead or in hiding and the portrait’s depiction of chastity as familial, fertile, and spectacular was replaced with a version of chastity more at home in the written word, more masculine, and more martial: a steely and inviolate virtue fit for revolution.
Learn more about Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture at the Cambridge University Press website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable books with fictitious works of art

Anne Charnock's debut novel A Calculated Life, was a finalist for the 2013 Philip K. Dick and Kitschies Golden Tentacle Awards. Her new novel is Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind. One of her five favorite books with fictitious works of art, as shared at Tor.com:
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel depicts a post-apocalyptic world in which her characters desire more than mere survival. The central character, Kirsten, safeguards her own personal art treasures—two hand-drawn comic books, the hero of which is Dr. Eleven. Mandel’s interweaving and beautifully written narrative flits back and forth in time, connecting Kirsten with characters in the pre-apocalyptic world, including Miranda, the author of the unpublished comics.
Read about another book on the list.

Station Eleven is among the Washington Post's ten best books of 2014.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christian Lange's "Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions by Christian Lange.

About the book, from the publisher:
The Muslim afterworld, with its imagery rich in sensual promises, has shaped Western perceptions of Islam for centuries. However, to date, no single study has done justice to the full spectrum of traditions of thinking about the topic in Islamic history. The Muslim hell, in particular, remains a little studied subject. This book, which is based on a wide array of carefully selected Arabic and Persian texts, covers not only the theological and exegetical but also the philosophical, mystical, topographical, architectural and ritual aspects of the Muslim belief in paradise and hell, in both the Sunni and the Shiʿi world. By examining a broad range of sources related to the afterlife, Christian Lange shows that Muslim religious literature, against transcendentalist assumptions to the contrary, often pictures the boundary between this world and the otherworld as being remarkably thin, or even permeable.
Learn more about Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, November 28, 2015

David Mitchell's top 6 reads

David Mitchell's novels include The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Cloud Atlas, Black Swan Green, and most recently, Slade House. One title from his "life in books," as shared at the Telegraph:
Le Grand Meaulnes (The Lost Domain), by Henri Alain-Fournier

I read this at 18 or 19 and can’t quite capture why it’s so beautiful, but it is. If something’s French and has been in print for over 50 years, then read it.
Read about another book on the list.

Also see: David Mitchell's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Michael Livingston reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Michael Livingston, author of The Shards of Heaven.

His entry begins:
I'm a professor specializing in the cultural history of the Middle Ages while writing a historical fantasy series set during the rise of the Roman Empire … so my reading list at any given moment is, well, diverse.

On the Roman front, I've been reading Philo of Alexandria's De vita contemplativa, the study of a sect of ascetic Jews living near Alexandria. The work has been very useful for one of the major plot elements of the sequel to The Shards of Heaven, but I can't say I'd recommend it for pure pleasure reading.

On the other hand, if pure reading pleasure is your thing, I did just finish one fun novel (John Scalzi's Redshirts) and am preparing to...[read on]
About The Shards of Heaven, from the publisher:
Julius Caesar is dead, assassinated on the senate floor, and the glory that is Rome has been torn in two. Octavian, Caesar's ambitious great-nephew and adopted son, vies with Marc Antony and Cleopatra for control of Caesar's legacy. As civil war rages from Rome to Alexandria, and vast armies and navies battle for supremacy, a secret conflict may shape the course of history.

Juba, Numidian prince and adopted brother of Octavian, has embarked on a ruthless quest for the Shards of Heaven, lost treasures said to possess the very power of the gods-or the one God. Driven by vengeance, Juba has already attained the fabled Trident of Poseidon, which may also be the staff once wielded by Moses. Now he will stop at nothing to obtain the other Shards, even if it means burning the entire world to the ground.

Caught up in these cataclysmic events, and the hunt for the Shards, are a pair of exiled Roman legionnaires, a Greek librarian of uncertain loyalties, assassins, spies, slaves . . . and the ten-year-old daughter of Cleopatra herself.

Michael Livingston's The Shards of Heaven reveals the hidden magic behind the history we know, and commences a war greater than any mere mortal battle.
Visit Michael Livingston's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Shards of Heaven.

The Page 69 Test: The Shards of Heaven.

Writers Read: Michael Livingston.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that changed Samantha Van Leer

Samantha Van Leer is the co-author, with her mother Jodi Picoult, of two young-adult fairy tales. One of four books that changed the writer, as shared at the Sydney Morning Herald:
PHANTOMS IN THE BRAIN
V.S. Ramachandran

Ramachandran is a neuroscientist who studies phantom feelings, such as phantom limbs, phantom pain, phantom pregnancies. He writes hardcore science in an accessible, easy-to-read form. His insight into the mind and the crazy mirages it creates was addicting. As an author and a psychology major, it was cool to see a book that bridged the gap between highly scientific writing and popular non-fiction.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Gini Koch's "Alien in Chief"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Alien in Chief by Gini Koch.

About the book, from the publisher:
Alien in Chief is the latest adventure in Gini Koch’s rollicking and snarky Alien series and the thrilling sequel to Alien Separation.
Learn more about the book and author at Gini Koch's website.

The Page 69 Test: Touched by an Alien.

The Page 69 Test: Alien in Chief.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, November 27, 2015

Five top novels set in a single pressure cooker location

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 five top "bottle novels" where "the writers confine everyone in a single pressure cooker location, set the timer, and see what happens," as shared at B & N Reads:
Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett

Most bottle novels have limited characters to suit their limited settings, but Patchett goes in the other direction, setting her story almost entirely in the large home of the vice president of an unnamed South American country as an entire party of guests is taken hostage and held captive, allowing the author to explore the relationships between them in intense detail as they struggle through a terrible situation. Although the story does leave the house eventually, the main focus is how strangers can come together and form a community in a short time—including the terrorists who instigated the whole affair. The confined setting makes it one of Patchett’s most popular, powerful books.
Read about another entry on the list.

Bel Canto is among Tatjana Soli's six favorite books that conjure exotic locales, Kathryn Williams's six top novels set in just one place, Dell Villa's top eight books to read when you’re in the mood to cry for days, John Mullen's ten best birthday parties in literature, and Joyce Hackett's top ten musical novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Timothy Cheek's "The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History by Timothy Cheek.

About the book, from the publisher:
This vivid narrative history of Chinese intellectuals and public life provides a guide to making sense of China today. Timothy Cheek presents a map and a method for understanding the intellectual in the long twentieth century, from China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese war in 1895 to the 'Prosperous China' since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Cheek surveys the changing terrain of intellectual life over this transformative century in Chinese history to enable readers to understand a particular figure, idea or debate. The map provides coordinates to track different times, different social worlds and key concepts. The historical method focuses on context and communities during six periods to make sense of ideas, institutions and individual thinkers across the century. Together they provide a memorable account of the scenes and protagonists, and arguments and ideas, of intellectuals and public life in modern China.
Learn more about The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History at the Cambridge University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Intellectual in Modern Chinese History.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the most arresting crime novels of 2015

J. Kingston Pierce is both the editor of The Rap Sheet and the senior editor of January Magazine. At Kirkus, he tagged ten of the more memorable crime novels he read this year, including:
The Mulberry Bush, by Charles McCarry

Former journalist and CIA “deep cover” operative Charles McCarry brings us an unnamed young American narrator who, following the downfall of his estranged father—a brilliant but prankish intelligence agent whose persistent unwillingness to play by conventional rules doomed him at “Headquarters” (McCarry’s stand-in for the CIA)—sets out to revenge his parent by taking on a mission that appears to benefit Headquarters, but should ultimately leave it damaged. After contriving his recruitment into the agency, the narrator is first sent to prove himself in the Middle East (where he arranges assassinations), but then infiltrates what remains of a leftist revolutionary group in Argentina with ties to Russia. That circle was once led by a charismatic but complicated idealist named Alejandro Aguilar, and it’s his 29-year-old daughter, the captivating Luz, who McCarry’s protagonist falls in love with and endeavors to employ—along with her influential but enigmatic foster father, and a crafty Russian embassy official—in carrying out his retribution plot. This is a slow-burning yarn, and some of its players (notably Luz) are given billboard billing without having much to do. However, McCarry redeems himself through his dexterous juxtaposition of the high-minded ideals and oft-ridiculous reality of modern spycraft.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Elizabeth Lee's "Nuts and Buried," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Nuts and Buried by Elizabeth Lee.

The entry begins:
Let me see . . . Amy Schumer as Lindy Blanchard—because she’d know how to capture Lindy’s sassiness and getting-even techniques.

As Meemaw, Lindy’s grandmother, I’d cast...[read on]
Learn more about the author and her work at Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Nuts and Buried.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Lee.

My Book, The Movie: Nuts and Buried.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Five of your great-grandma’s best dirty books

Amy Stewart's latest book is the novel, Girl Waits with Gun. One of her top five lurid novels about innocent girls led astray from early in the last century, as shared at The Daily Beast:
Little Lost Sister by Virginia Brooks (1914)

“A Serpent Whispers and a Woman Listens,” warns the title of Chapter V. Poor Elsie is promised a life on the stage, only to be led to ruin.

“‘Cabarets?’ The girl’s interest was aroused. ‘What’s a cabaret?’

“‘A cabaret,’ said Druce, ‘is a restaurant where ladies and gentlemen dine. A fine great hall, polished floors, rugs, palms, a lot of little tables, colored lights, flowers, silver, cut glass, perfumes, a grand orchestra—get that in your mind—and then the orchestra strikes up and you come down the aisle, right through the crowd, and sing to them.’

“‘Oh, I’d love to do that,’ said the girl.”
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Ali Brandon's "Plot Boiler"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Plot Boiler by Ali Brandon.

About the book, from the publisher:
The New York Times bestselling author of Literally Murder returns to Pettistone’s Fine Books, where the silence of Hamlet the cat speaks volumes about two mysterious deaths…

It’s almost Fourth of July, and to boost customer traffic in their Brooklyn neighborhood, bookseller Darla Pettistone decides to throw a block party. All the local shop owners are thrilled—except the proprietor of Perky’s Coffee Shop, who thinks Darla is trying to poach his customers by selling her own caffeinated brew in her new bookshop café.

But when Hamlet comes upon the owner’s not-so-perky wife, it’s clear a killer has crashed the party. And when a second local business owner shuffles off this mortal coil—as Hamlet’s namesake would say—Darla and her curious cat must perform some fancy footwork to shine a spotlight on a secret worth killing for…
Learn more about the book and author at the official Ali Brandon--AKA Diane A.S. Stuckart--website.

Coffee with a Canine: Diane Stuckart & Ranger, Delta, Oliver and Paprika.

My Book, The Movie: Double Booked for Death.

The Page 69 Test: Words with Fiends.

The Page 69 Test: Plot Boiler.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top historical YA novels about wayward women

At the BN Teen Blog Nicole Hill tagged five top historical YA novels about adventurous and independent-minded women, including:
A Madness So Discreet, by Mindy McGinnis

Things are going even worse for Grace in McGinnis’s haunting tale of false imprisonment and the power of secrets. Grace is far from insane, but her father packs her away to an asylum to hide a traumatic family history and the child in her belly. Grace is sane, but she’s surrounded by madness. Then, at her lowest moment, she’s plucked from this hell by a young doctor, who sees a clever young woman perfect to serve as his assistant at crime scenes. But Grace may be entering a world even more mad than the one she left.
Read about another entry on the list.

Visit Mindy McGinnis's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Not a Drop to Drink.

The Page 69 Test: In a Handful of Dust.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Bridget Asher reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Bridget Asher, author of All of Us and Everything.

Her entry begins:
I'm reading a lot of literary science fiction and fantasy. I just dipped into The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi. I'm bouncing around in Best American Fantasy, edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer. I'm also reading a novel that will come out next year The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson and...[read on]
About All of Us and Everything, from the publisher:
For fans of Eleanor Brown’s The Weird Sisters and Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret comes a smart, wry, and poignant novel about reconciliation between fathers and daughters, between spouses; the deep ties between sisters; and the kind of forgiveness that can change a person’s life in unexpected and extraordinary ways.

The Rockwell women are nothing if not . . . Well, it’s complicated. When the sisters—Esme, Liv, and Ru—were young, their eccentric mother, Augusta, silenced all talk of their absent father with the wild story that he was an international spy, always away on top-secret missions. But the consequences of such an unconventional upbringing are neither small nor subtle: Esme is navigating a failing marriage while trying to keep her precocious fifteen-year-old daughter from live-tweeting every detail. Liv finds herself in between relationships and rehabs, and Ru has run away from enough people and problems to earn her frequent flier miles. So when a hurricane hits the family home on the Jersey Shore, the Rockwells reunite to assess the damage—only to discover that the storm has unearthed a long-buried box. In a candid moment, Augusta reveals a startling secret that will blow the sisters’ concept of family to smithereens—and send them on an adventure to reconnect with a lost past ... and one another.
Learn more about the book and author at Bridget Asher's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: All of Us and Everything.

Writers Read: Bridget Asher.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Pg. 99: Ginger Strand's "The Brothers Vonnegut"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Brothers Vonnegut: Science and Fiction in the House of Magic by Ginger Strand.

About the book, from the publisher:
Worlds collide in this true story of weather control in the Cold War era and the making of Kurt Vonnegut

In the mid-1950s, Kurt Vonnegut takes a job in the PR department at General Electric in Schenectady, where his older brother, Bernard, is a leading scientist in its research lab—or "House of Magic." Kurt has ambitions as a novelist, and Bernard is working on a series of cutting-edge weather-control experiments meant to make deserts bloom and farmers flourish.
While Kurt writes zippy press releases, Bernard builds silver-iodide generators and attacks clouds with dry ice. His experiments attract the attention of the government; weather proved a decisive factor in World War II, and if the military can control the clouds, fog, and snow, they can fly more bombing missions. Maybe weather will even be—as a headline in American Magazine calls it—"The New Super Weapon." But when the army takes charge of his cloudseeding project (dubbed Project Cirrus), Bernard begins to have misgivings about the use of his inventions for harm, not to mention the evidence that they are causing alarming changes in the atmosphere.

In a fascinating cultural history, Ginger Strand chronicles the intersection of these brothers' lives at a time when the possibilities of science seemed infinite. As the Cold War looms, Bernard's struggle for integrity plays out in Kurt's evolving writing style. The Brothers Vonnegut reveals how science's ability to influence the natural world also influenced one of our most inventive novelists.
Learn more about the book and author at Ginger Strand's website.

The Page 99 Test: Killer on the Road.

The Page 99 Test: The Brothers Vonnegut.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the worst fictional characters to invite to Thanksgiving

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Jill Boyd tagged five of the worst fictional characters to invite to Thanksgiving. One entry on the list:
The Gladneys (White Noise)

OK, maybe it’s unfair to peg the Gladneys as unpleasant holiday guests. Professor Gladney is, after all, a learned scholar, and Babette is quite the conversationalist. Really, other than the fact that he studies Hitler for a living, they both speak obsessively of death, she’s a drug addict, and he attempted to kill the man with whom she was having an affair, they’re really quite lovely company.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tony Peak's "Inherit the Stars," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Inherit the Stars by Tony Peak.

The entry begins:
If my book were made into a film? My first choice for director would be Ridley Scott, since he puts so much detail into his movies. His visual style from Alien and Blade Runner still inspire me. But now that I really think about it, Joss Whedon would probably be a better choice, since this a space opera, and he has an excellent handle on action, characterization, and dialogue.

For composer, I’d want Hans Zimmer to create a soaring orchestral score accompanied by electronic elements; his soundtrack for Interstellar would be a good fit.

As far as actors, I could see...[read on]
Visit Tony Peak's website.

Writers Read: Tony Peak.

The Page 69 Test: Inherit the Stars.

My Book, The Movie: Inherit the Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top genre-bending books

Lincoln Michel's new story collection is Upright Beasts.

One of his ten favorite genre-bending books, as shared at Publishers Weekly:
The Wilds by Julia Elliott

Elliott’s 2014 debut, The Wilds, offers up a wild serving of feral dogs, romantic robots, and grotesque spa treatments. In the vein of Kelly Link or George Saunders, the stories here are simultaneously “literary” and “genre,” mixing gorgeous prose and complex characters with inventive takes on SF, fantasy, and horror tropes. What ties the collection together are the through-lines of Southern Gothic prose and social satire. If you’ve ever wondered what the gene-splicing of William Faulkner and Ursula K. Le Guin would produce, check out The Wilds.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

What is Sylvia Spruck Wrigley reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, author of Domnall and the Borrowed Child.

Her entry begins:
At the moment, I'm reading four books. This is problematic because I'm not really much for juggling. My reading pattern is usually serial monogamy but somehow I've ended up in a mess.

The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
This is the first in the Laundry Files series and considered a novella although it seems to have the heft of a novel to me. The Laundry Files are a series of Lovecraftian spy thrillers told from the view point of a computer expert working for a secret department in the British intelligence organisation.

My son has devoured every book in the Laundry Files and has been recommending them to me for some time. We agreed on a recommendation trade: if he read Andy Weir's The Martian then I would read the first book in the series. He's done his bit (and gone to watch the film too) but I was only...[read on]
About Domnall and the Borrowed Child, from the publisher:
The best and bravest faeries fell in the war against the Sluagh, and now the Council is packed with idiots and cowards. Domnall is old, aching, and as cranky as they come, but as much as he'd like to retire, he's the best scout the Sithein court has left.

When a fae child falls deathly ill, Domnall knows he's the only one who can get her the medicine she needs: Mother's milk. The old scout will face cunning humans, hungry wolves, and uncooperative sheep, to say nothing of his fellow fae!
Visit Sylvia Spruck Wrigley's website and Twitter perch.

Writers Read: Sylvia Spruck Wrigley.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books to get you in the mood to eat

At B & N Reads Jenny Shank tagged five fabulous food-focused works, including:
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Who wouldn’t want to live—and eat—in Paris of the 1920s? The closest we can get now is through Hemingway’s dashing account of this time and place in A Moveable Feast. He’s not writing just about food, but about the sustenance a vibrant atmosphere gives: “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” Still, there’s plenty of good eating in this book. “As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away,” Hemingway writes, “leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.”
Read about another entry on the list.

A Moveable Feast made Olivia Laing's ten best list of books and stories on drinking and booze, Katherine Monasterio's top five list of incredible tales of Paris’s past and present, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on Americans in Paris, Neil Pearson's six best books list, Diana Souhami's top ten list of "books about Paris and London lesbians in the early 20th century", Laura Landro's five best list of books about travel; it is a book to which Russell Banks always returns.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Terry Williams & Trevor B. Milton's "The Con Men"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Con Men: Hustling in New York City by Terry Williams and Trevor B. Milton.

About the book, from the publisher:
This vivid account of hustling in New York City explores the sociological reasons why con artists play their game and the psychological tricks they use to win it. Terry Williams and Trevor B. Milton, two prominent sociologists and ethnographers, spent years with New York con artists to uncover their secrets. The result is an unprecedented view into how con games operate, whether in back alleys and side streets or in police precincts and Wall Street boiler rooms. Whether it's selling bootleg goods, playing the numbers, squatting rent-free, scamming tourists with bogus stories, selling knockoffs on Canal Street, or crafting Ponzi schemes, con artists use verbal persuasion, physical misdirection, and sheer charm to convince others to do what they want. Williams and Milton examine this act of performance art and find meaning in its methods to exact bounty from unsuspecting tourists and ordinary New Yorkers alike. Through their sophisticated exploration of the personal experiences and influences that create a successful hustler, they build a portrait of unusual emotional and psychological depth. Their work also offers a new take on structure and opportunity, showing how the city's unique urban and social architecture lends itself to the perfect con.
Learn more about The Con Men at the Columbia University Press website.

My Book, The Movie: The Con Men.

The Page 99 Test: The Con Men: Hustling in New York City.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Michael Livingston's "The Shards of Heaven"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston.

About the book, from the publisher:
Julius Caesar is dead, assassinated on the senate floor, and the glory that is Rome has been torn in two. Octavian, Caesar's ambitious great-nephew and adopted son, vies with Marc Antony and Cleopatra for control of Caesar's legacy. As civil war rages from Rome to Alexandria, and vast armies and navies battle for supremacy, a secret conflict may shape the course of history.

Juba, Numidian prince and adopted brother of Octavian, has embarked on a ruthless quest for the Shards of Heaven, lost treasures said to possess the very power of the gods-or the one God. Driven by vengeance, Juba has already attained the fabled Trident of Poseidon, which may also be the staff once wielded by Moses. Now he will stop at nothing to obtain the other Shards, even if it means burning the entire world to the ground.

Caught up in these cataclysmic events, and the hunt for the Shards, are a pair of exiled Roman legionnaires, a Greek librarian of uncertain loyalties, assassins, spies, slaves . . . and the ten-year-old daughter of Cleopatra herself.

Michael Livingston's The Shards of Heaven reveals the hidden magic behind the history we know, and commences a war greater than any mere mortal battle.
Visit Michael Livingston's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Shards of Heaven.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, November 23, 2015

Nose in a book: Steph Cha


Who: Steph Cha

What: Hounded by David Rosenfelt

When: November 2015

Where: Steph Cha's house

Photo credit: Steph Cha's husband

Visit Steph Cha's website and Twitter perch.

Coffee with a Canine: Steph Cha and Duke.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kevin Barry's 6 favorite books

Kevin Barry is the author of the highly acclaimed novel, City of Bohane, and two short-story collections, Dark Lies the Island and There Are Little Kingdoms. His new novel is Beatlebone.

One of Barry's six favorite books, as shared with The Week magazine:
2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Just when we thought the novel had no place left to go, here came this splintered masterpiece, a paranoid odyssey told in 900 writhing pages filled with a new, rich, glamorous prose. Bolaño, who died a year before the book's 2004 publication, was a great, maverick, maniacal talent. We'll be considering his influence for generations.
Read about another entry on the list.

2666 appears on Alex Clark's top ten list of long reads and Gillian Orr's reading list of top unfinished novels; it was #1 in one tabulation of the critics' consensus book of the year for 2008.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Elizabeth Lee reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Elizabeth Lee, author of Nuts and Buried.

Her entry begins:
What am I reading? Well, mostly my own work since I’m under a couple of deadline constraints. But ... when my brain’s worn out and I can’t write another word I’m turning to M Train by Patti Smith. The book is like watching Seinfeld—about nothing, but what...[read on]
About Nuts and Buried, from the publisher:
Lindy Blanchard has enough on her hands at her family’s Texas nut farm with her new strain of pecan trees dying. Trouble is, people are dying too. In a nutshell, it’s murder—from the author of Snoop to Nuts…

The Blanchards are invited to the gala event of the season. Lindy’s wealthy friend Eugene Wheatley—who’s just nuts about his new bride—is throwing a party to introduce his wife Jeannie to Riverville, Texas, society. The celebration is in full swing when Eugene is found shot dead.

Jeannie and her unscrupulous kin are the prime suspects, but the Blanchards aren’t convinced. Lindy and her meemaw Miss Amelia have heard just about enough from the local gossips gathering at the Nut House family store to realize that Jeannie needs their help. And when somebody shoots at Lindy during the investigation, things get real personal. Lindy and Miss Amelia are determined to unmask the killer party crasher and shell out some Texas-style justice…
Learn more about the author and her work at Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Nuts and Buried.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Lee.

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Livingston's "The Shards of Heaven," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Shards of Heaven by Michael Livingston.

The entry begins:
First things first, I have to say that the Powers That Be in Hollywood shouldn't take my suggestions here as a reason not to buy the film rights to The Shards of Heaven. Because I'd really like for you to buy them. Just for the record.

That said, I really want to go ahead and cast two of the roles for you: the Roman legionnaires Titus Pullo and Lucius Vorenus.

These two men are real historical characters, who feature in Julius Caesar's account (in his Commentaries on the Gallic War) of a battle against the Nervii in Gaul in 54 BCE. They have been featured in a number of fictional accounts, so when I needed a pair of legionnaires to help tell my tale, I, too, chose to use them.

Later, after I'd written much of Shards, I learned that HBO's series Rome incorporated the same two characters, with Kevin McKidd playing Lucius Vorenus and Ray Stevenson playing Titus Pullo. A student of mine...[read on]
Visit Michael Livingston's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Shards of Heaven.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Pg. 99: Douglas Rogers's "The Depths of Russia"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Depths of Russia: Oil, Power, and Culture after Socialism by Douglas Rogers.

About the book, from the publisher:
Russia is among the world's leading oil producers, sitting atop the planet's eighth largest reserves. Like other oil-producing nations, it has been profoundly transformed by the oil industry. In The Depths of Russia, Douglas Rogers offers a nuanced and multifaceted analysis of oil's place in Soviet and Russian life, based on ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in the Perm region of the Urals. Moving beyond models of oil calibrated to capitalist centers and postcolonial "petrostates," Rogers traces the distinctive contours of the socialist—and then postsocialist—oil complex, showing how oil has figured in the making and remaking of space and time, state and corporation, exchange and money, and past and present. He pays special attention to the material properties and transformations of oil (from depth in subsoil deposits to toxicity in refining) and to the ways oil has echoed through a range of cultural registers.

The Depths of Russia challenges the common focus on high politics and Kremlin intrigue by considering the role of oil in barter exchanges and surrogate currencies, industry-sponsored social and cultural development initiatives, and the city of Perm's campaign to become a European Capital of Culture. Rogers also situates Soviet and post-Soviet oil in global contexts, showing that many of the forms of state and corporate power that emerged in Russia after socialism are not outliers but very much part of a global family of state-corporate alliances gathered at the intersection of corporate social responsibility, cultural sponsorship, and the energy and extractive industries.
Learn more about The Depths of Russia at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Depths of Russia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten fictional wilderness adventures

Alexander Yates was born in Haiti and grew up in Mexico, Bolivia, and the Phillipines. He is the author of the critically acclaimed adult novel Moondogs and his debut YA novel, The Winter Place. He lives with his wife in Hanoi, Vietnam. One of the author's top ten wilderness adventures, as shared at the Guardian:
The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K Le Guin

...Le Guin gives us a massive wilderness in the form of a forested planet. Her novel opens on Athshe, called “New Tahiti” by the Terrans (earthlings) who are colonising it. More then just oppressing the indigenous people - green-furred humanoids who live in symbiosis with their forest home - the Terrans are intent on taming the very planet itself. Their eventual overthrow is both well deserved and exciting, but what really captivates me about Le Guin’s novel is the active role that the forest plays. It is at once a living thing, an ecosystem, and a civilization. Only an outsider could truly see it as a wilderness. Which is true of all wild spaces, isn’t it? That’s part of what draws us to them, and also what repels us. The wilderness can get on just fine without us.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Word for World is Forest is among Emily Stamm and Charlie Jane Anders's ten best science fiction stories where humans are the villains.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Bridget Asher's "All of Us and Everything"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: All of Us and Everything by Bridget Asher.

About the book, from the publisher:
For fans of Eleanor Brown’s The Weird Sisters and Liane Moriarty’s The Husband’s Secret comes a smart, wry, and poignant novel about reconciliation between fathers and daughters, between spouses; the deep ties between sisters; and the kind of forgiveness that can change a person’s life in unexpected and extraordinary ways.

The Rockwell women are nothing if not . . . Well, it’s complicated. When the sisters—Esme, Liv, and Ru—were young, their eccentric mother, Augusta, silenced all talk of their absent father with the wild story that he was an international spy, always away on top-secret missions. But the consequences of such an unconventional upbringing are neither small nor subtle: Esme is navigating a failing marriage while trying to keep her precocious fifteen-year-old daughter from live-tweeting every detail. Liv finds herself in between relationships and rehabs, and Ru has run away from enough people and problems to earn her frequent flier miles. So when a hurricane hits the family home on the Jersey Shore, the Rockwells reunite to assess the damage—only to discover that the storm has unearthed a long-buried box. In a candid moment, Augusta reveals a startling secret that will blow the sisters’ concept of family to smithereens—and send them on an adventure to reconnect with a lost past . . . and one another.
Learn more about the book and author at Bridget Asher's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: All of Us and Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Five top Nordic noir titles

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 five top Nordic noir titles, as shared at B & N Reads:
Headhunters, by Jo Nesbø

Nesbø is a prolific and incredibly successful Norwegian author who has been getting better with each novel. While he’s best known for his Harry Hole books, Headhunters is an incredible standalone novel and a great display of Nesbø’s skill. With the story of Roger Brown, a high-powered corporate recruiter who uses information gleaned from his wealthy prospects to plan art heists from their homes, replacing them with expert fakes, Nesbø paints a dazzling picture of a cunning man who is the master of his own small world. When Brown bungles a heist from Clas Greve, a dangerous figure with a mysterious past, things go sharply left for the clever, urbane thief, and the story becomes a battle of wits that quickly turns violent and surprising.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lisa J. Edwards reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Lisa Edwards, author of Please Don't Bite the Baby (and Please Don't Chase the Dogs): Keeping Our Kids and Our Dogs Safe and Happy Together.

Her entry begins:
As the mother of a three-year-old staunchly entrenched in the tyrannical threes, I spend the majority of my reading time reading Indy’s books to him. I have spent many hours reading One Little Blueberry, by Tammi Salzano because Indy loves counting. We have spent another chunk of time reading all the books by Mo Willems that we can find in the “Pigeon” series like, Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog!, or Don’t let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!, or The Pigeon Needs a Bath! But, my favorite of all of Indy’s books has to be...[read on]
About Please Don't Bite the Baby, from the publisher:
Please Don't Bite the Baby (and Please Don't Chase the Dogs), chronicles certified professional dog trainer Lisa Edwards’ endearing and entertaining journey to ensure that her household survives and thrives when she introduces her son to her motley pack of animals. As Lisa knows all too well, the dog/child relationship is simultaneously treasured, misunderstood, and sometimes feared. In a twist, Lisa's dog training techniques inevitably seep into how she navigates her first year with baby to mixed but enlightening results.

Lisa includes her best training techniques for the everyday pet owner itemized at the end of each chapter. This book is important for parents, grandparents, and caregivers who have dogs and young children together and want to ensure safety for all.
Visit Lisa J. Edwards's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Lisa Edwards & Boo, Porthos, and Pinball.

Writers Read: Lisa Edwards.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Michael J. Lansing's "Insurgent Democracy"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics by Michael J. Lansing.

About the book, from the publisher:
In 1915, western farmers mounted one of the most significant challenges to party politics America has seen: the Nonpartisan League, which sought to empower citizens and restrain corporate influence. Before its collapse in the 1920s, the League counted over 250,000 paying members, spread to thirteen states and two Canadian provinces, controlled North Dakota’s state government, and birthed new farmer-labor alliances. Yet today it is all but forgotten, neglected even by scholars.

Michael J. Lansing aims to change that. Insurgent Democracy offers a new look at the Nonpartisan League and a new way to understand its rise and fall in the United States and Canada. Lansing argues that, rather than a spasm of populist rage that inevitably burned itself out, the story of the League is in fact an instructive example of how popular movements can create lasting change. Depicting the League as a transnational response to economic inequity, Lansing not only resurrects its story of citizen activism, but also allows us to see its potential to inform contemporary movements.
Learn more about Insurgent Democracy at the book's website.

The Page 99 Test: Insurgent Democracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, November 20, 2015

The 10 best Vladimir Nabokov books

Brian Boyd, University Distinguished Professor of English, University of Auckland, wrote an MA thesis that Vladimir Nabokov called “brilliant” and a PhD thesis that Véra Nabokov thought the best thing written about her husband to date. His biography of Nabokov won awards on four continents; his criticism has been translated into eighteen languages. He has edited Nabokov's English-language novels, autobiography, butterfly writings, and translations from Russian poetry. Boyd is the editor of Letters to Véra.

One entry on his list of the ten best Vladimir Nabokov books, as shared at Publishers Weekly:
Lolita (1955)

Nabokov’s most accessible masterpiece, told by one of literature’s most seductive monsters—and another novel often rated the greatest of the century. A handsome 38-year-old pedophile hunts and traps the 12-year-old love of his life. Perhaps the only scandalous work to shock later readers even more than its initial audience, it assaults our imaginations as it mingles memory and desire, passion and playfulness, tenderness and cruelty, love and its contraries: lust, self-love, hatred. Endless variations on the hunter hunted offer surprises and ironies that deepen as we reread. For all its accessibility Lolita may still elude us more than even the mirage world of Pale Fire or the opulent antiworld of Ada.
Read about another entry on the list.

Lolita appears on Billy Collins' six favorite books list, Charlotte Runcie's list of the ten best bad mothers in literature, Kathryn Williams's list of fifteen notable works on lust, Boris Kachka's six favorite books list, Fiona Maazel's list of the ten worst fathers in books, Jennifer Gilmore's list of the ten worst mothers in books, Steven Amsterdam's list of five top books that have anxiety at their heart, John Banville's five best list of books on early love and infatuation, Kathryn Harrison's list of favorite books with parentless protagonists, Emily Temple's list of ten of the greatest kisses in literature, John Mullan's list of ten of the best lakes in literature, Dan Vyleta's top ten list of books in second languages, Rowan Somerville's top ten list of books of good sex in fiction, Henry Sutton's top ten list of unreliable narrators, Adam Leith Gollner's top ten list of fruit scenes in literature, Laura Hird's literary top ten list, Monica Ali's ten favorite books list, Laura Lippman's 5 most important books list, Mohsin Hamid's 10 favorite books list, and Dani Shapiro's 10 favorite books list. It is Lena Dunham's favorite book.

--Marshal Zeringue