Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Coffee with a canine: Kate O’Shaughnessy & Mo

Featured at Coffee with a Canine: Kate O’Shaughnessy & Mo.

The author, on how she and Mo were united:
We first spotted Mo’s profile on the website of a local rescue, and were immediately taken by her incredible smile. When we reached out to see if we could meet her, we were told that she was actually a part of their international program—and was located in Taiwan! At first we didn’t feel comfortable adopting a dog without meeting them first, but the rescue continued to send us videos of Mo and we fell increasingly in love with her. Finally, we decided to go for it—and picked her up at the San Francisco airport! It was a rough adjustment—she had a ton of trauma in her past, including abuse, abandonment, and the loss of her puppies—but with a lot of love and patience she’s completely bloomed...[read on]
About O’Shaughnessy's new novel The Lonely Heart of Maybelle Lane, from the publisher:
Maybelle Lane is looking for her father, but on the road to Nashville she finds so much more: courage, brains, heart–and true friends.

Eleven-year-old Maybelle Lane collects sounds. She records the Louisiana crickets chirping, Momma strumming her guitar, their broken trailer door squeaking. But the crown jewel of her collection is a sound she didn’t collect herself: an old recording of her daddy’s warm-sunshine laugh, saved on an old phone’s voicemail. It’s the only thing she has of his, and the only thing she knows about him.

Until the day she hears that laugh–his laugh–pouring out of the car radio. Going against Momma’s wishes, Maybelle starts listening to her radio DJ daddy’s new show, drinking in every word like a plant leaning toward the sun. When he announces he’ll be the judge of a singing contest in Nashville, she signs up. What better way to meet than to stand before him and sing with all her heart?

But the road to Nashville is bumpy. Her starch-stiff neighbor Mrs. Boggs offers to drive her in her RV. And a bully of a boy from the trailer park hitches a ride, too. These are not the people May would have chosen to help her, but it turns out they’re searching for things as well. And the journey will mold them into the best kind of family–the kind you choose for yourself.
Visit Kate O’Shaughnessy's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Kate O’Shaughnessy & Mo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Katy Simpson Smith's "The Everlasting," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Everlasting by Katy Simpson Smith.

The entry begins:
Ah, the fantasy of seeing words come to life! I don't have strong images of my characters when I write, but let's assume that a director comes calling (one who really gets women; Céline Sciamma, otherwise divine, might be a bit too stark, and Sofia Coppola might be too ethereal, so maybe Greta Gerwig for her sense of humor):

Tom, a biologist, mild-mannered and indecisive and overly vulnerable to romance: Ben Whishaw, Domhnall Gleeson, Tom Hiddleston; is there something about meek nerdiness that only British actors can pull off? All the Americans I know are...[read on]
Visit Katy Simpson Smith's website.

Writers Read: Katy Simpson Smith.

My Book, The Movie: The Everlasting.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: John M. Marzluff's "In Search of Meadowlarks"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: In Search of Meadowlarks: Birds, Farms, and Food in Harmony with the Land by John M. Marzluff.

About the book, from the publisher:
An ornithologist’s personal look at farming practices that finds practical solutions for sustainable food production compatible with bird and wildlife conservation

With predictions of a human population of more than nine billion by the middle of this century and eleven billion by 2100, we stand at a crossroads in our agricultural evolution. In this clear and engaging yet scientifically rigorous book, wildlife biologist John M. Marzluff takes a personal approach to sustainable agriculture.

He travels to farms and ranches across North and Central America, including a Nebraska corn and soybean farm, California vineyards, cattle ranches in Montana, and small sustainable farms in Costa Rica, to understand the unique challenges and solutions to sustainable food production. Agriculture and wildlife can coexist, he argues, if farmers are justly rewarded for conservation; if future technological advancements increase food production and reduce food waste; and if consumers cut back on meat consumption. Beginning with a look backwards at our evolutionary history and concluding with practical solutions for change that will benefit farmers and ranchers, Marzluff provides an accessible and insightful study for the ecologically minded citizen, farmer, rancher, or conservationist.
Learn more about In Search of Meadowlarks at the Yale University Press website.

See: Coffee with a Canine: Colleen and John Marzluff & Reese, Digit and Bellatrix.

The Page 99 Test: Dog Days, Raven Nights.

The Page 99 Test: In the Company of Crows and Ravens.

The Page 99 Test: Gifts of the Crow.

The Page 99 Test: In Search of Meadowlarks.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top novels where things disappear

Lincoln Michel is the author of Uiepright Beasts and the co-editor of the forthcoming crime anthology Tiny Crimes.

"The missing person is a classic mystery trope for a good reason," he writes at CrimeReads.
It immediately sets a story in motion while providing for a variety of plot paths. Is the person dead? Kidnapped? Running away? Hiding in plain sight? But people aren’t the only things that disappear in literature. Sometimes it is a vanishing cat or a disappearing novel that gets the story rolling.
One of "eight fantastic and strange novels that each have a unique spin on mysterious disappearances," according to Michel:
Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey

A literary mystery of a different sort, Novey’s first novel, Ways to Disappear, follows a Portuguese translator who flies from Pittsburgh to Brazil to track down a missing author named Beatriz Yagoda. (Novey is an acclaimed translator of several languages.) The fast-paced mystery is mixed with thoughts on writing and translation. It’s a witty and thoughtful book that never loses track of the plot.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Ways to Disappear.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, March 30, 2020

What is Patricia Marcantonio reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Patricia Marcantonio, author of Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace.

Her entry begins:
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

I'm a fan of Margaret Atwood and The Handmaid's Tale so I had to continue the story in The Testaments. Atwood's writing instantly takes you into this brutal world of Gilead. Her female characters are amazing and...[read on]
About Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace, from the publisher:
Heiress and amateur detective Felicity Carrol makes a perilous journey to apprehend a notorious murderer who has terrorized England–and now continues his vicious killing spree across the pond.

Felicity Carrol would rather be doing just about anything other than attending balls or seeking a husband. What she really wants to do is continue her work using the latest forensic methods and her photographic memory to help London police bring murderers to justice, so when her friend, Scotland Yard Inspector Jackson Davies, weak from injury, discovers a murder in a wild mining town in Montana that echoes the terrible crimes in England, Felicity decides to go herself.

In Placer, Montana, her first obstacle is handsome lawman Thomas Pike, who uses his intuition as much as his Colt in keeping law and order in this unruly town. When the murderer strikes again, Felicity begins to suspect Davies is correct: Jack the Ripper has come to America. Felicity sets out to find the killer in a town chock full of secrets, shadows, and suspects, but as the body count rises, this intrepid sleuth faces her most dangerous adversary yet–and discovers that not all killers are as they seem.
Visit Patricia Marcantonio's website.

The Page 69 Test: Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace.

Writers Read: Patricia Marcantonio.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Taylor Brown's "Pride of Eden"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Pride of Eden: A Novel by Taylor Brown.

About the book, from the publisher:
The enthralling new novel from the acclaimed author of Fallen Land, The River of Kings, and Gods of Howl Mountain

Retired racehorse jockey and Vietnam veteran Anse Caulfield rescues exotic big cats, elephants, and other creatures for Little Eden, a wildlife sanctuary near the abandoned ruins of a failed development on the Georgia coast. But when Anse’s prized lion escapes, he becomes obsessed with replacing her—even if the means of rescue aren’t exactly legal.

Anse is joined by Malaya, a former soldier who hunted rhino and elephant poachers in Africa; Lope, whose training in falconry taught him to pilot surveillance drones; and Tyler, a veterinarian who has found a place in Anse’s obsessive world.

From the rhino wars of Africa to the battle for the Baghdad Zoo, from the edges of the Okefenokee Swamp to a remote private island off the Georgia coast, Anse and his team battle an underworld of smugglers, gamblers, breeders, trophy hunters, and others who exploit exotic game.

Pride of Eden is Taylor Brown's brilliant fever dream of a novel: set on the eroding edge of civilization, rooted in dramatic events linked not only with each character’s past, but to the prehistory of America, where great creatures roamed the continent and continue to inhabit our collective imagination.
Visit Taylor Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: The River of Kings.

The Page 69 Test: The River of Kings.

Writers Read: Taylor Brown.

My Book, The Movie: Pride of Eden.

The Page 69 Test: Pride of Eden.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elizabeth Kadetsky's "The Memory Eaters"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Memory Eaters by Elizabeth Kadetsky.

About the book, from the publisher:
On autopsy, the brain of an Alzheimer’s patient can weigh as little as 30 percent of a healthy brain. The tissue grows porous. It is a sieve through which the past slips.

As her mother loses her grasp on their shared history, Elizabeth Kadetsky sifts through boxes of the snapshots, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and notebooks that remain, hoping to uncover the memories that her mother is actively losing as her dementia progresses. These remnants offer the false yet beguiling suggestion that the past is easy to reconstruct—easy to hold.

At turns lyrical, poignant, and alluring, The Memory Eaters tells the story of a family’s cyclical and intergenerational incidents of trauma, secret-keeping, and forgetting in the context of 1970s and 1980s New York City. Moving from her parents’ divorce to her mother’s career as a Seventh Avenue fashion model and from her sister’s addiction and homelessness to her own experiences with therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, Kadetsky takes readers on a spiraling trip through memory, consciousness fractured by addiction and dementia, and a compulsion for the past salved by nostalgia.
Learn more about the book and author at Elizabeth Kadetsky's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

My Book, The Movie: The Poison that Purifies You.

The Page 99 Test: The Memory Eaters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about time

Samantha Harvey is the author of four novels, The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind, and of a memoir, The Shapeless Unease. She lives in Bath, UK, and is a Reader in creative writing at Bath Spa University.

At the Guardian, Harvey shared her favorite "books that play with present, past and future," including:
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway. I read it around the same time I read Kant, and it seemed to me a lucid, bright playing out of that subjectivity of time he describes – the way it sticks here and slips there, the way the present is saturated in past and future, the way it contracts and expands. The two protagonists’ experience of a single day is an experience of moments that seem to occupy centuries, and decades that collapse with a single thought. All the while, Big Ben strikes the hour, a metronome that holds all this flux in balance.
Read about another entry on the list.

Mrs. Dalloway also appears on Charlotte Mendelson's list of the best books to help with coming out, Alex Clark's list of the best books set over twenty-hours, Mary Gordon's ten favorite books list, Andrew O'Hagan's six favorite books list, Elizabeth Strout's six favorite books list, Juan Gabriel Vásquez's six favorite books list, Becky Ferreira's list of seven of the best fictional depictions of female friendship, Rebecca Jane Stokes's list of seven favorite fictional shopaholics, Suzette Field's top 10 list of literary party hosts, Jennie Rooney's top ten list of women travelers in fiction, John Mullan's list of ten of the best prime ministers in fiction, and among Michael Cunningham's 5 most important books, Dani Shapiro's ten favorite books, and Kate Walbert's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Taylor Brown's "Pride of Eden," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Pride of Eden: A Novel by Taylor Brown.

The entry begins:
For Malaya, the army vet and former anti-poaching ranger who comes to work at Little Eden, the book's exotic animal sanctuary, actors like Michelle Rodriguez, Toni Trucks, and Noomi Rapace come to mind, bringing the requisite attitude, intensity, and all-around "badass-ness" to their roles. However, Malaya is of Filipino descent, so an actor like Vanessa Lachey would be awesome, too!

For Anse Caulfield, the eccentric former racehorse jockey and soldier of fortune who owns Little Eden, I can think of no one better than...[read on]
Visit Taylor Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: The River of Kings.

The Page 69 Test: The River of Kings.

Writers Read: Taylor Brown.

My Book, The Movie: Pride of Eden.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Paul Cairney & Emily St Denny's "Why Isn’t Government Policy More Preventive?"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Why Isn't Government Policy More Preventive? by Paul Cairney and Emily St Denny.

About the book, from the publisher:
If 'prevention is better than cure', why isn't policy more preventive? Policymakers only have the ability to pay attention to, and influence, a tiny proportion of their responsibilities, and they engage in a policymaking environment of which they have limited understanding and even less control. This simple insight helps explain the gap between stated policymaker expectations and actual policy outcomes. Why Isn't Government Policy more Preventive? uses these insights to produce new empirical studies of 'wicked' problems with practical lessons. The authors find that the UK and Scottish governments both use a simple idiom - prevention is better than cure - to sell a package of profound changes to policy and policymaking. Taken at face value, this focus on 'prevention' policy seems like an idea 'whose time has come'. Yet, 'prevention' is too ambiguous until governments give it meaning. No government has found a way to turn this vague aim into a set of detailed, consistent, and defendable policies. This book examines what happens when governments make commitments without knowing how to deliver them. It compares their policymaking contexts, roles and responsibilities, policy styles, language, commitments, and outcomes in several cross-cutting policy areas (including health, families, justice, and employability) to make sense of their experiences. The book uses multiple insights from policy theory to help research and analyse the results. The results help policymakers reflect on how to avoid a cycle of optimism and despair when trying to solve problems that their predecessors did not.
Learn more about Why Isn't Government Policy More Preventive? at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Why Isn't Government Policy More Preventive?.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty-eight Irish writers' favorite funny books

An author and arts journalist, Declan Burke has previously published crime novels, including Slaughter’s Hound and the award-winning Absolute Zero Cool.

His latest book, The Lammisters, is a comic novel. Although set in Prohibition-era Hollywood, it is influenced by Irish comic novelists such as Laurence Sterne and Flann O’Brien.

Burke's favorite funny novel, as shared with The Irish Times:
“There was nothing more the world stood so much in need of as knights-errant,” claims the ludicrously deluded Don Quixote as he girds his loins to set out on his quest, the better to prove himself worthy of the favours of the local farmgirl that his febrile imagination has anointed the imperishable Dulcinea del Toboso. Donning a rusty suit of armour, and mounting his faithful mount Rocinante, the Knight of the Doleful Countenance rides out into immortality, aided and abetted by the wily menial Sancho Panza.

Quixote is infamous for tilting at windmills, of course, believing them to be giants, and novel is laugh-out-loud funny as the deluded Don’s adventures are recounted in a deadpan tone that cruelly parodies the excesses of the epic mediaeval romances. And yet, as Quixote and Sancho trek across Spain battling a variety of imaginary villains, the Don cuts an ever-more poignant figure, and his fantasy -–that he alone can save the world from itself – something to be cherished and celebrated.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is the great comic novel, the fons et origo of every kind of literary humour - slapstick and farce, parody, social satire and surrealism - since it was first published in 1605. Do your funny bone a favour and embark on the greatest of all quests with the self-styled “never-deservedly-enough-extolled knight-errant, Don Quixote de la Mancha.”
Read about another Irish writer's favorite funny novels.

Don Quixote was the second most popular book among prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay. It is on Jeff Tweedy's list of six favorite books, Ben Okri's six best books list, Bruce Wagner's six favorite books list, Panayiota Kuvetakis's top ten list of fictional best friends we'd like to have as nonfictional best friends, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best literary women dressed as men and ten of the best books written in prison.

Paul Auster always returns to Don Quixote; Claire Messud hasn't read it.

--Marshal Zeringue

Saturday, March 28, 2020

What is Katy Simpson Smith reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Katy Simpson Smith, author of The Everlasting.

Her entry begins:
I've been on Jean Giono kick recently -- I first read his strange environmental-mystery novel Hill in January, and was so struck by the voluptuous, uncanny sentences that I went on to read A King Alone, which also features unaccountable deaths and a larger-than-life landscape. The books, written eighteen years apart, share an experimentalism that is both bizarre and totally readable, and that moves nature to the foreground of human dramas. It's been almost a century since...[read on]
About The Everlasting, from the publisher:
From a supremely talented author comes this brilliant and inventive novel, set in Rome in four different centuries, that explores love in all its various incarnations and ponders elemental questions of good and evil, obedience and free will that connect four unforgettable lives.

Spanning two thousand years, The Everlasting follows four characters whose struggles resonate across the centuries: an early Christian child martyr; a medieval monk on crypt duty in a church; a Medici princess of Moorish descent; and a contemporary field biologist conducting an illicit affair.

Outsiders to a city layered and dense with history, this quartet separated by time grapple with the physicality of bodies, the necessity for sacrifice, and the power of love to sustain and challenge faith. Their small rebellions are witnessed and provoked by an omniscient, time-traveling Satan who, though incorporeal, nonetheless suffers from a heart in search of repair.

As their dramas unfold amid the brick, marble, and ghosts of Rome, they each must decide what it means to be good. Twelve-year old Prisca defiles the scrolls of her father’s library. Felix, a holy man, watches his friend’s body decay and is reminded of the first boy he loved passionately. Giulia de’ Medici, a beauty with dark skin and limitless wealth, wants to deliver herself from her unborn child. Tom, an American biologist studying the lives of the smallest creatures, cannot pinpoint when his own marriage began to die. As each of these conflicted people struggles with forces they cannot control, their circumstances raise a profound and timeless question at the heart of faith: What is our duty to each other, and what will God forgive?
Visit Katy Simpson Smith's website.

Writers Read: Katy Simpson Smith.

--Marshal Zeringue

Daisy Pearce's "The Silence," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Silence by Daisy Pearce.

The entry begins:
When I visualise the opening credits of The Silence I see a dark screen, a lightbulb and a moth, butting into it over and over again. Sometimes we’re irresistibly drawn to things that hurt us, unable to pull ourselves away even when it burns. That’s how Stella begins her story in The Silence, a moth drawn toward a bright, painful light. As the...[read on]
Follow Daisy Pearce on Twitter.

The Page 69 Test: The Silence.

Writers Read: Daisy Pearce.

My Book, The Movie: The Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best Seattle crime novels

J. Kingston Pierce is a longtime journalist in Seattle, Washington, and editor of The Rap Sheet, which has won the Spinetingler Award and been nominated twice for Anthony Awards. In addition, he writes the book-design blog Killer Covers, serves as the senior editor of January Magazine and as a contributing editor to CrimeReads, and is a columnist for Down & Out: The Magazine.

At CrimeReads Pierce tagged ten titles highlighting "Seattle’s potential as an ideal milieu for crime fiction," including:
A Spark of Death by Bernadette Pajer (2011)

Pajer has thus far delivered four assiduously researched historical mysteries starring Benjamin Bradshaw, a UW electrical engineering professor. The first, A Spark of Death, takes place in 1901, at a time when Seattle was fast outgrowing its frontier roots, thanks to successive gold rushes in the Canadian Klondike and Alaska. It imagines Bradshaw having to clear himself of suspicion in a homicide. Fellow educator Wesley Oglethorpe has been electrocuted in convoluted fashion, and Bradshaw not only disliked that gent, but knew how to make such a fatal frying appear unintentional. As part of his defense, the inordinately perspicacious prof must ascertain who else had a motive—his wife, perhaps, or his abused students?—and whether this crime is linked to President William McKinley’s upcoming swing through the Pacific Northwest.
Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: A Spark of Death.

My Book, The Movie: A Spark of Death.

--Marshal Zeringue

Friday, March 27, 2020

The best books to help us through a crisis

Joe Moran is professor of English and cultural history at Liverpool John Moores University. His books include Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness and Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the Television.

At the Guardian, Moran tagged a few "books on how to keep calm in times of adversity - and take joy where we find it." One title on the list:
The coronavirus has put life on hold. In this time of fractured human contact and fear of the unknown, we need to read authors who will embolden us for the hard season ahead, while also offering a calming sense of perspective.

Eula Biss’s book-length essay On Immunity does the trick. She begins with the story of Achilles, whose mother dipped him in the river Styx only to leave the vulnerable spot on his heel where she held him. The story’s moral, in Biss’s words, is that “immunity is a myth … and no mortal can ever be made invulnerable”. And yet she admits that she found this message hard to accept after the birth of her son in 2009 – especially when, shortly afterwards, the swine flu epidemic began. Biss explores how hard it is for even the most clear-eyed of us not to succumb to panic and dread.

Gradually, though, she drags herself into the knowledge that we are stronger when we face our vulnerabilities collectively. She concludes that “immunity is a shared space – a garden we tend together”. On Immunity reminds us that we are precarious, mortal, dependent beings who need to look after each other. And this will always be true, whether we are facing a public health emergency or not.
Read about another entry on the list.

On Immunity is among Gavin Francis's top ten books on sickness.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Edwin Battistella's "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President, from Washington to Trump by Edwin L. Battistella.

About the book, from the publisher:
Insulting the president is an American tradition. From Washington to Trump, presidents have been called "lazy," "feeble," "pusillanimous," and more. Our leaders have been derided as "ignoramuses," "idiots," "morons," and "fatheads," and have been compared to all manner of animals--worms and whales and hyenas, sad jellyfish, strutting crows, lap dogs, reptiles, and monkeys.

Political insults tell us what we value in our leaders by showing how we devalue them. In Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels, linguist Edwin Battistella collects over five hundred insults aimed at American presidents. Covering the broad sweep of American history, he puts insults in their place-the political and cultural context of their times. Along the way, Battistella illustrates the recurring themes of political insults: too little intellect or too much, inconsistency or obstinacy, worthlessness, weakness, dishonesty, sexual impropriety, appearance, and more. The kinds of insults we use suggest what our culture finds most hurtful, and reveal society's changing prejudices as well as its most enduring ones. How we insult presidents and how they react tells us about the presidents, but it also tells us about our nation's politics.

Readers discover how the style of insults evolves in different historical periods: gone are "apostate," "mountebank," "flathead," and "doughface." Say hello to "moron," "jerk," "asshole," and "flip-flopper." Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels covers the broad sweep of American history, from the founder's debates over the nature of government to world wars and culture wars and social media.

Whatever your politics, you'll find Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels an invaluable source of invigorating invective-and a healthy perspective on today's political climate.
Visit Edwin L. Battistella's website.

The Page 99 Test: Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Patricia Marcantonio's "Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace: A Felicity Carrol Mystery by Patricia Marcantonio.

About the book, from the publisher:
Heiress and amateur detective Felicity Carrol makes a perilous journey to apprehend a notorious murderer who has terrorized England–and now continues his vicious killing spree across the pond.

Felicity Carrol would rather be doing just about anything other than attending balls or seeking a husband. What she really wants to do is continue her work using the latest forensic methods and her photographic memory to help London police bring murderers to justice, so when her friend, Scotland Yard Inspector Jackson Davies, weak from injury, discovers a murder in a wild mining town in Montana that echoes the terrible crimes in England, Felicity decides to go herself.

In Placer, Montana, her first obstacle is handsome lawman Thomas Pike, who uses his intuition as much as his Colt in keeping law and order in this unruly town. When the murderer strikes again, Felicity begins to suspect Davies is correct: Jack the Ripper has come to America. Felicity sets out to find the killer in a town chock full of secrets, shadows, and suspects, but as the body count rises, this intrepid sleuth faces her most dangerous adversary yet–and discovers that not all killers are as they seem.
Visit Patricia Marcantonio's website.

The Page 69 Test: Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thursday, March 26, 2020

Fourteen long-ass crime books for the long days ahead

Molly Odintz is the Associate Editor for CrimeReads. She grew up in Austin and worked as a bookseller at BookPeople for years before her recent move up to New York City for a life in crime. She likes cats, crime novels, and coffee.

At CrimeReads she tagged fourteen enormous crime books, including:
L.A. Confidential, James Ellroy
Page Count: 512

It’s amazing that this one ever made it into a logical film adaptation. They had to cut SO MUCH guys. The novel itself gets a bit convoluted in parts, but everything comes together in the end, for an epic tale of crime and corruption in 1950s Los Angeles full of some of the most memorable characters to ever appear in a novel. Oh, and for anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, L.A. Confidential follows several members of the LAPD, some more corrupt than others, as they hobnob with Hollywood stars and try to figure out who’s really running the city.
L.A. Confidential is among Wayne Holloway's top ten books about Hollywood.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Daisy Pearce reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Daisy Pearce, author of The Silence.

Her entry begins:
I’ve just finished reading This House Is Haunted by Guy Lyon Playfair in it’s original hardback form with the sinister cover. It’s a record of his time investigating the Enfield poltergeist in the late seventies. I’ve always been fascinated by the Enfield poltergeist story, and remember getting chills hearing the young girl’s voice suddenly deepen and sink into that of a gruff, bitter old man. This book is methodical, not telling a tale but recounting events - and here and there the cracks are visible where the girls’ story starts to fall apart. It’s illuminating in that...[read on]
About The Silence, from the publisher:
She’s broken. She’s vulnerable. She’s just what Marco was looking for.

Stella Wiseman was a child TV star, but there’s nothing glamorous about her life now. Alone in her thirties, she’s lost her parents and her friends and she’s stuck in a dead-end job. But just as she hits rock bottom she meets Marco, a charismatic older man who offers to get her back on her feet. He seems too good to be true.

Is he?

She appreciates the money he lavishes on her. And the pills. But are the pills just helping her sleep, or helping her avoid her problems?

With Stella’s life still in freefall, Marco whisks her away to a secluded cottage where she is isolated from everyone except him. But the closer he pulls her, the worse she gets. He tells her it’s all in her head, and she just needs time away from the world.

No longer sure what’s real and what’s not, Stella begins to question whether she was wrong to trust Marco. Was she wrong to trust herself? Is the one person she thought was fighting for her survival actually her biggest threat?
Follow Daisy Pearce on Twitter.

The Page 69 Test: The Silence.

Writers Read: Daisy Pearce.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jeremy Arnold's "Across the Great Divide"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Across the Great Divide: Between Analytic and Continental Political Theory by Jeremy Arnold.

About the book, from the publisher:
The division between analytic and continental political theory remains as sharp as it is wide, rendering basic problems seemingly intractable. Across the Great Divide offers an accessible and compelling account of how this split has shaped the field of political philosophy and suggests means of addressing it. Rather than advocating a synthesis of these philosophical modes, author Jeremy Arnold argues for aporetic cross-tradition theorizing: bringing together both traditions in order to show how each is at once necessary and limited.

Across the Great Divide engages with a range of fundamental political concepts and theorists—from state legitimacy and violence in the work of Stanley Cavell, to personal freedom and its civic institutionalization in Philip Pettit and Hannah Arendt, and justice in John Rawls and Jacques Derrida—not only illustrating the shortcomings of theoretical synthesis but also demonstrating a productive alternative. By outlining the failings of "political realism" as a synthetic cross-tradition approach to political theory and by modeling an aporetic mode of engagement, Arnold shows how we can better understand and address the pressing political issues of civil freedom and state justice today.
Learn more about Across the Great Divide at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Across the Great Divide.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten novels & stories about shame

Christos Tsiolkas is the author of six novels, including Loaded, which was made into the feature film Head-On, The Jesus Man and Dead Europe, which won the 2006 Age Fiction Prize and the 2006 Melbourne Best Writing Award, as well as being made into a feature film.

His latest novel is Damascus.

At the Guardian, Tsiolkas tagged ten novels and stories about shame, including:
The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll

In the mid-1970s, West Germany was rocked by a series of terrorist attacks. Böll uses that backdrop to examine what happens to a woman who is inadvertently caught up in the ruthlessness and paranoia of the state. Katharina Blum is at first pursued by government agents and then by the media, who relish destroying the sexual and moral reputation of an innocent woman. This novel is a powerful and compassionate howl against the tyranny of those who confuse morality with politics, all those ideologues, of the left as much as the right, who believe that the end justifies the means.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Pg. 69: J. Albert Mann's "The Degenerates"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Degenerates by J. Albert Mann.

About The Degenerates, from the publisher:
In the tradition of Girl, Interrupted, this fiery historical novel follows four young women in the early 20th century whose lives intersect when they are locked up by a world that took the poor, the disabled, the marginalized—and institutionalized them for life.

The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded is not a happy place. The young women who are already there certainly don’t think so. Not Maxine, who is doing everything she can to protect her younger sister Rose in an institution where vicious attendants and bullying older girls treat them as the morons, imbeciles, and idiots the doctors have deemed them to be. Not Alice, either, who was left there when her brother couldn’t bring himself to support a sister with a club foot. And not London, who has just been dragged there from the best foster situation she’s ever had, thanks to one unexpected, life altering moment. Each girl is determined to change her fate, no matter what it takes.
Visit J. Albert Mann's website.

The Page 69 Test: What Every Girl Should Know.

Writers Read: J. Albert Mann.

The Page 69 Test: The Degenerates.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top red herrings in contemporary crime fiction

Karen Dietrich is the author of The Girl Factory: A Memoir (2013) and several poetry chapbooks. She also plays drums in the indie rock band Essential Machine. Dietrich received a BA in English from University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in poetry from New England College. She has worked as a college professor and high school English teacher.

Her new psychological thriller is Girl at the Edge.

At CrimeReads, Dietrich tagged eight contemporary "books [that] play with the reader’s mind in wonderfully twisted ways, using red herrings masterfully and keeping the reader guessing. And second-guessing." One title on the list:
Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

While not a mystery in the conventional sense, Cha’s novel is the gripping crime thriller about a shooting in Los Angeles that tears a community apart. The narrative, unfolding in various timelines, is uncovered slowly, and the main crux revolves around a main character, Grace, who must come to terms with her family’s involvement in the murder. Cha, who is also the author of the excellent Juniper Song mysteries, reveals details on a need to know basis, her own art of distraction, and eventually lets the simmering tension roll to a full boil.
Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Eric Nusbaum's "Stealing Home"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between by Eric Nusbaum.

About the book, from the publisher:
A story about baseball, family, the American Dream, and the fight to turn Los Angeles into a big league city.

Dodger Stadium is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball. The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant Mexican American communities. In the early 1950s, those communities were condemned to make way for a utopian public housing project. Then, in a remarkable turn, public housing in the city was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy.

Instead of getting their homes back, the remaining residents saw the city sell their land to Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now LA would be getting a different sort of utopian fantasy — a glittering, ultra-modern stadium.

But before Dodger Stadium could be built, the city would have to face down the neighborhood's families — including one, the Aréchigas, who refused to yield their home. The ensuing confrontation captivated the nation - and the divisive outcome still echoes through Los Angeles today.
Visit Eric Nusbaum's website.

The Page 99 Test: Stealing Home.

--Marshal Zeringue

The best books about our space future

Christopher Wanjek is the author of Bad Medicine and Food at Work. He has written more than 500 articles for the Washington Post, Sky & Telescope, Astronomy, Mercury, and Live Science. From 1998 to 2006, he was a senior writer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, covering the structure and evolution of the universe.

Wanjek's new book is Spacefarers: How Humans Will Settle the Moon, Mars, and Beyond.

At the Guardian he tagged the best books about our future in space, including:
Women may require fewer calories, reducing kilograms and cost for any mission launching from Earth, but governments have proved unwilling to let them take the lead. Martha Ackmann’s The Mercury 13 tells the story of the women Nasa trained as part of the Mercury programme in the 1960s, and how the US president Lyndon Johnson denied them the opportunity to fly. It wasn’t until 1983 that Sally Ride became the first US female astronaut in space, and the sexist culture at Nasa is the backdrop for To Space and Back, a book for younger readers that is as informative as it is aspirational. She explains what it’s like to eat, sleep, bathe or use the toilet in zero gravity – subjects that Mary Roach expands on in her lighthearted study of living in space, Packing for Mars. Sex, in particular, is fraught with difficulties in zero gravity, where Newton’s third law can make action and reaction a messy affair.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

What is Taylor Brown reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Taylor Brown, author of Pride of Eden: A Novel.

His entry begins:
Lately, I've been a small tear reading nonfiction work that seems relevant to my new book, Pride of Eden -- at least philosophically. I think it started with James William Gibson's Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America, which was related to another project I'm currently working on. I found the book absolutely fascinating, even prophetic of our current times. I was hungry for more of his work, so I picked up his newest book, A Reenchanted World: The Quest for a New Kinship with Nature, which really resonated with me -- one of those books that makes you...[read on]
About Pride of Eden, from the publisher:
The enthralling new novel from the acclaimed author of Fallen Land, The River of Kings, and Gods of Howl Mountain

Retired racehorse jockey and Vietnam veteran Anse Caulfield rescues exotic big cats, elephants, and other creatures for Little Eden, a wildlife sanctuary near the abandoned ruins of a failed development on the Georgia coast. But when Anse’s prized lion escapes, he becomes obsessed with replacing her—even if the means of rescue aren’t exactly legal.

Anse is joined by Malaya, a former soldier who hunted rhino and elephant poachers in Africa; Lope, whose training in falconry taught him to pilot surveillance drones; and Tyler, a veterinarian who has found a place in Anse’s obsessive world.

From the rhino wars of Africa to the battle for the Baghdad Zoo, from the edges of the Okefenokee Swamp to a remote private island off the Georgia coast, Anse and his team battle an underworld of smugglers, gamblers, breeders, trophy hunters, and others who exploit exotic game.

Pride of Eden is Taylor Brown's brilliant fever dream of a novel: set on the eroding edge of civilization, rooted in dramatic events linked not only with each character’s past, but to the prehistory of America, where great creatures roamed the continent and continue to inhabit our collective imagination.
Visit Taylor Brown's website.

My Book, The Movie: The River of Kings.

The Page 69 Test: The River of Kings.

Writers Read: Taylor Brown.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight novels about male protagonists by female authors

Scarlett Harris is an Australian culture critic, with a focus on professional wrestling and television. She’s writing a book about women’s wrestling, A Diva Was a Female Version of a Wrestler, forthcoming in 2021.

At CrimeReads, Harris tagged eight classic and contemporary novels, written by women, that offer insight into damaged male psyches, including:
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones worked on An American Marriage, her 2018 bestseller, Women’s Prize for fiction winner and Barack Obama summer reading list recipient, for years before incorporating the perspectives of Roy and Andre, the two men vying for third protagonist Celestial’s love.

Roy’s chapters are written in the form of prison love letters—he was wrongly convicted for rape within a year of marrying Celestial, who has since found success in her doll-making business, while also reconnecting with her childhood best friend, the boy-next-door Andre.

“You don’t know how demoralizing it is to be a man with nothing to offer a woman,” Jones writes from Roy’s perspective. In order to get the tone of his letters right Jones, a life-long letter writer herself, studied letters from incarcerated men during a fellowship at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute in 2011.

An American Marriage grapples with wrongful imprisonment, mass incarceration, the expectations of black women to “stand by their man” and, just as interestingly, black masculinity.
Read about another entry on the list.

An American Marriage is among Tochi Onyebuchi's seven books about surviving political & environmental disasters, Ruth Reichl's six novels she enjoyed listening to while cooking, Brad Parks's top eight books set in prisons, Sara Shepard's six top stories of deception,and Julia Dahl's ten top books about miscarriages of justice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kari Weil's "Precarious Partners"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Precarious Partners: Horses and Their Humans in Nineteenth-Century France by Kari Weil.

About the book, from the publisher:
From the recent spate of equine deaths on racetracks to protests demanding the removal of mounted Confederate soldier statues to the success and appeal of War Horse, there is no question that horses still play a role in our lives—though fewer and fewer of us actually interact with them. In Precarious Partners, Kari Weil takes readers back to a time in France when horses were an inescapable part of daily life. This was a time when horse ownership became an attainable dream not just for soldiers but also for middle-class children; when natural historians argued about animal intelligence; when the prevalence of horse beatings led to the first animal protection laws; and when the combined magnificence and abuse of these animals inspired artists, writers, and riders alike.

Weil traces the evolving partnerships established between French citizens and their horses through this era. She considers the newly designed “races” of workhorses who carried men from the battlefield to the hippodrome, lugged heavy loads through the boulevards, or paraded women riders, amazones, in the parks or circus halls—as well as those unfortunate horses who found their fate on a dinner plate. Moving between literature, painting, natural philosophy, popular cartoons, sports manuals, and tracts of public hygiene, Precarious Partners traces the changing social, political, and emotional relations with these charismatic creatures who straddled conceptions of pet and livestock in nineteenth-century France.
Learn more about Precarious Partners at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Precarious Partners.

--Marshal Zeringue

Phillip Margolin's "A Reasonable Doubt," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: A Reasonable Doubt (Robin Lockwood Series #3) by Phillip Margolin.

The entry begins:
I don't think about who would play a character in one of my books if it was made into a movie. Two of my books have made it to the screen and actors I would not have cast in the lead roles did terrific jobs, so I have decided that I do not have what it takes to cast a movie.

That being said, I think Chloë Grace Moretz would be perfect as Robin Lockwood. She...[read on]
Visit Phillip Margolin's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: Woman with a Gun.

The Page 69 Test: Woman with a Gun.

The Page 69 Test: Violent Crimes.

My Book, The Movie: Violent Crimes.

My Book, The Movie: The Third Victim.

The Page 69 Test: The Third Victim.

The Page 69 Test: The Perfect Alibi.

The Page 69 Test: A Reasonable Doubt.

My Book, The Movie: A Reasonable Doubt.

--Marshal Zeringue

Monday, March 23, 2020

Fifteen top books for our age of social isolation

At the New York Post Mackenzie Dawson tagged the fifteen best books to read in our age of social isolation. One title on the list:
The Blaze by Chad Dundas

Army veteran Matthew Rose has been called back home to settle his father’s affairs after his death. He doesn’t remember much about his past; a traumatic brain injury sustained in Iraq wiped out much of his memory. On his first night back in town, he witnesses a house fire, and it turns out a young man was inside. The incident brings back memories of a different fire — and an important part of his past.
Read about another entry on the list.

My Book, The Movie: The Blaze.

The Page 69 Test: The Blaze.

Writers Read: Chad Dundas (January 2020).

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Daisy Pearce's "The Silence"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Silence by Daisy Pearce.

About the book, from the publisher:
She’s broken. She’s vulnerable. She’s just what Marco was looking for.

Stella Wiseman was a child TV star, but there’s nothing glamorous about her life now. Alone in her thirties, she’s lost her parents and her friends and she’s stuck in a dead-end job. But just as she hits rock bottom she meets Marco, a charismatic older man who offers to get her back on her feet. He seems too good to be true.

Is he?

She appreciates the money he lavishes on her. And the pills. But are the pills just helping her sleep, or helping her avoid her problems?

With Stella’s life still in freefall, Marco whisks her away to a secluded cottage where she is isolated from everyone except him. But the closer he pulls her, the worse she gets. He tells her it’s all in her head, and she just needs time away from the world.

No longer sure what’s real and what’s not, Stella begins to question whether she was wrong to trust Marco. Was she wrong to trust herself? Is the one person she thought was fighting for her survival actually her biggest threat?
Follow Daisy Pearce on Twitter.

The Page 69 Test: The Silence.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Christopher Houston's "Istanbul, City of the Fearless"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup d'Etat, and Memory in Turkey by Christopher Houston.

About the book, from the publisher:
Based on extensive field research in Turkey, Istanbul, City of the Fearless explores social movements and the broader practices of civil society in Istanbul in the critical years before and after the 1980 military coup, the defining event in the neoliberal reengineering of the city. Bringing together developments in anthropology, urban studies, cultural geography, and social theory, Christopher Houston offers new insights into the meaning and study of urban violence, military rule, activism and spatial tactics, relations between political factions and ideologies, and political memory and commemoration. This book is both a social history and an anthropological study, investigating how activist practices and the coup not only contributed to the globalization of Istanbul beginning in the 1980s but also exerted their force and influence into the future.
Learn more about Istanbul, City of the Fearless at the University of California Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Istanbul, City of the Fearless.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the most morally bankrupt narrators in fiction

Samantha Downing currently lives in New Orleans.

My Lovely Wife is her first novel. (See: The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.)

Her new novel, He Started It, is coming soon.

At CrimeReads, Downing tagged ten of fiction's most morally bankrupt narrators, including:
Best Day Ever by Kaira Rouda

What’s better than getting away to the lake for a while? A long drive, fresh air, beautiful scenery, a psychopathic husband… Yes, that’s right. Kaira Rouda takes “marital strife” to new heights in this book, and you get to experience everything in Paul’s head. Twisted, fascinating, and brilliant.
Read about another entry on the list.

Best Day Ever is among Vincent Zandri's top ten affairs that went terribly wrong in true noir fashion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sunday, March 22, 2020

What is J. Albert Mann reading?

Featured at Writers Read: J. Albert Mann, author of The Degenerates.

Her entry begins:
Six Angry Girls by Adrienne Kisner

Millie, Veronica, Grace, Nakita, and Izzy are not living their best lives and the blame lies mostly with the Patriarchy. Dumped, cheated, overlooked, underestimated, ignored, and omitted these six girls fight back. The results are both heart-breaking and hilarious. This...[read on]
About The Degenerates, from the publisher:
In the tradition of Girl, Interrupted, this fiery historical novel follows four young women in the early 20th century whose lives intersect when they are locked up by a world that took the poor, the disabled, the marginalized—and institutionalized them for life.

The Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded is not a happy place. The young women who are already there certainly don’t think so. Not Maxine, who is doing everything she can to protect her younger sister Rose in an institution where vicious attendants and bullying older girls treat them as the morons, imbeciles, and idiots the doctors have deemed them to be. Not Alice, either, who was left there when her brother couldn’t bring himself to support a sister with a club foot. And not London, who has just been dragged there from the best foster situation she’s ever had, thanks to one unexpected, life altering moment. Each girl is determined to change her fate, no matter what it takes.
Visit J. Albert Mann's website.

The Page 69 Test: What Every Girl Should Know.

Writers Read: J. Albert Mann.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Erin Hatton's "Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment by Erin Hatton.

About the book, from the publisher:
What do prisoner laborers, graduate students, welfare workers, and college athletes have in common? According to sociologist Erin Hatton, they are all part of a growing workforce of coerced laborers.

Coerced explores this world of coerced labor through an unexpected and compelling comparison of these four groups of workers, for whom a different definition of "employment" reigns supreme—one where workplace protections do not apply and employers wield expansive punitive power, far beyond the ability to hire and fire. Because such arrangements are common across the economy, Hatton argues that coercion—as well as precarity—is a defining feature of work in America today.

Theoretically forceful yet vivid and gripping to read, Coerced compels the reader to reevaluate contemporary dynamics of work, pushing beyond concepts like "career" and "gig work." Through this bold analysis, Hatton offers a trenchant window into this world of work from the perspective of those who toil within it—and who are developing the tools needed to push back against it.
Visit Erin Hatton's website.

The Page 99 Test: Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment.

--Marshal Zeringue