Joanna Goodman's "The Inheritance," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: The Inheritance: A Novel by Joanna Goodman.

The entry begins:

If When they make The Inheritance into a film, I would love to see Brie Larson in the lead role of Arden. I always envisioned Arden as being beautiful in an understated, unfussy way, and yet with the quality of not knowing how beautiful she is. Brie Larson as an actress brings that same sense of humility and vulnerability. She is certainly beautiful, but she’s also comes across as “real." In other words, her beauty is muted and restrained, without any pretension whatsoever. Having seen Brie in Room, I know she can play a mother. She brought so much strength to her character in that role, and given how much Arden has suffered - a traumatic upbringing, the loss of her husband - I’m confident Brie Larson would bring that fierce protectiveness to the character in an authentic way. There’s a certain fragility about Arden at face value, and yet beneath the surface, she is courageous and full of grit. By the end of the novel, Arden becomes empowered and independent, and we know Brie Larson has the star power to play a superhero. I think that best encapsulates why I see Brie Larson in the lead role; it’s the combination of vulnerability, intensity, and authenticity that she brings to her characters, which is exactly how I’ve always seen Arden.

In the role of the male protagonist, Joshua, there is only one choice:...[read on]

Visit Joanna Goodman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Inheritance.

My Book, The Movie: The Inheritance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez's "How Sanctions Work"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare by Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, and Ali Vaez.

About the book, from the publisher:

Sanctions have enormous consequences. Especially when imposed by a country with the economic influence of the United States, sanctions induce clear shockwaves in both the economy and political culture of the targeted state, and in the everyday lives of citizens. But do economic sanctions induce the behavioral changes intended? Do sanctions work in the way they should? To answer these questions, the authors of How Sanctions Work highlight Iran, the most sanctioned country in the world. Comprehensive sanctions are meant to induce uprisings or pressures to change the behavior of the ruling establishment, or to weaken its hold on power. But, after four decades, the case of Iran shows the opposite to be true: sanctions strengthened the Iranian state, impoverished its population, increased state repression, and escalated Iran's military posture toward the U.S. and its allies in the region. Instead of offering an 'alternative to war,' sanctions have become a cause of war. Consequently, How Sanctions Work reveals how necessary it is to understand how sanctions really work.

Learn more about How Sanctions Work at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: How Sanctions Work.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten book recommendations inspired by Taylor Swift songs

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville shared ten Taylor Swift song-to-book recommendations, including:

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

From Taylor’s self-titled album, “Teardrops On My Guitar” is one of her very first hits. From the album that gave us “Our Song” and “Tim McGraw,” this song established Taylor as a songwriter to watch. Similarly, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s characters Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne write about — and give each other a fair helping — of heartache and loss set to the strum of an acoustic guitar.

Read about another entry on the list.

Daisy Jones and the Six is among Julia Fine's seven novels inspired by other art forms, Elvin James Mensah's seven top novels that celebrate pop music, Glenn Dixon's ten best novels about fictional bands, and Benjamin Myers's top ten mentors in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Ron Corbett

From my Q&A with Ron Corbett, author of Cape Rage (A Danny Barrett Novel):

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

This is an interesting question because Cape Rage was not the working title for this book. It had a longer, more literary title, and I’m not going to tell you what it was. I’ll see if you can guess it. I believe you can. There are enough clues in the book. It’s a line from a Bob Dylan song – from "Brownsville Girl" – and the line is right in the book. I thought it was a powerful line, what a person will do in the name of revenge, and the book started with that title, the very first thing, that freaking title, so when my publisher said, Ron, uh umm, don’t know how to say this, but, we, how do we say this politely, -- we hate it – I was shocked. Who was it that gave that writing advice -- the first thing you need to do is kill your babies? I thought I understood that expression, but I really didn’t. Not until the debate over the title of this book. In the end, I came to understand the only people that would truly understand the original title would be me, and people who had finished reading the book. But that’s not the purpose of a title. A good title should tell you something about what you’re going to read. And Cape Rage does a much better job of that. It tells you that...[read on]

Visit Ron Corbett's website.

Q&A with Ron Corbett.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Emily Conroy-Krutz's "Missionary Diplomacy"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations by Emily Conroy-Krutz.

About the book, from the publisher:

Missionary Diplomacy illuminates the crucial place of religion in nineteenth-century American diplomacy. From the 1810s through the 1920s, Protestant missionaries positioned themselves as key experts in the development of American relations in Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and the Middle East. Missionaries served as consuls, translators, and occasional trouble-makers who forced the State Department to take actions it otherwise would have avoided. Yet as decades passed, more Americans began to question the propriety of missionaries' power. Were missionaries serving the interests of American diplomacy? Or were they creating unnecessary problems?

As Emily Conroy-Krutz demonstrates, they were doing both. Across the century, missionaries forced the government to articulate new conceptions of the rights of US citizens abroad and of the role of the US as an engine of humanitarianism and religious freedom. By the time the US entered the first world war, missionary diplomacy had for nearly a century created the conditions for some Americans to embrace a vision of their country as an internationally engaged world power. Missionary Diplomacy exposes the longstanding influence of evangelical missions on the shape of American foreign relations.

Visit Emily Conroy-Krutz's website.

The Page 99 Test: Christian Imperialism.

The Page 99 Test: Missionary Diplomacy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top novels about divorce

Rowan Beaird is a fiction writer whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and The Common, among others. She is the recipient of the Ploughshares Emerging Writer Award, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart. She has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and StoryStudio, and she currently works at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Her first novel, The Divorcées, is out this month from Flatiron Books.

At Lit Hub Beaird tagged "eight books that explore the ends of marriages and the new beginnings that follow." One title on the list:

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Tolstoy’s classic revolves around the refusal of one party to allow a divorce. Anna desperately wants to separate from her husband so she can begin a new life with her new love, Vronsky, but her husband will not allow it. Anna Karenina is, among many other things, an examination of female desire, and though most people already know its famous ending, arriving there always feels like fresh heartbreak.

Read about another entry on the list.

Anna Karenina also appears on Zhanna Slor's list of three dangerous affairs in literature, Anna Orhanen's list of eleven of the very best literary evocations of winter, Cathy Rentzenbrink's top ten list of bookworms in fiction, Amanda Craig's list of ten of the best-dressed characters in fiction, Ceri Radford's list often of the finest literary romances ever told, Tessa Hadley's list of six favorite examinations of art in fiction, Kathryn Harrison's list of six favorite epic novels, Jane Corry's list of five of literature's more fearsome families, Neel Mukherjee's six favorite books list, Viv Groskop's top ten list of life lessons from Russian literature, Elizabeth Day's top ten list of parties in fiction, Grant Ginder's top ten list of the more loathsome people in literature, Louis De Berniéres's six best books list, Martin Seay's ten best long books list, Jeffrey Lent's top ten list of books about justice and redemption, Bethan Roberts's top ten list of novels about childbirth, Hannah Jane Parkinson's list of the ten worst couples in literature, Hanna McGrath's top fifteen list of epigraphs, Amelia Schonbek's list of three classic novels that pass the Bechdel test, Rachel Thompson's top ten list of the greatest deaths in fiction, Melissa Albert's recommended reading list for eight villains, Alison MacLeod's top ten list of stories about infidelity, David Denby's six favorite books list, Howard Jacobson's list of his five favorite literary heroines, Eleanor Birne's top ten list of books on motherhood, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, Chika Unigwe's six favorite books list, Elizabeth Kostova's list of favorite books, James Gray's list of best books, Marie Arana's list of the best books about love, Ha Jin's most important books list, Tom Perrotta's ten favorite books list, Claire Messud's list of her five most important books, Alexander McCall Smith's list of his five most important books, Mohsin Hamid's list of his ten favorite books, Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers, and among the top ten works of literature according to Peter Carey and Norman Mailer. John Mullan put it on his lists of ten of the best erotic dreams in literature, ten of the best coups de foudre in literature, ten of the best births in literature, ten of the best ice-skating episodes in literature, and ten of the best balls in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Joanna Goodman's "The Inheritance"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Inheritance: A Novel by Joanna Goodman.

About the book, from the publisher:

From the bestselling author of The Home for Unwanted Girls and The Forgotten Daughter comes a compulsively readable mother-daughter story in which two women who share a difficult past must come to together to claim the future they deserve.

Arden Moore enjoyed an affluent life thanks to her husband’s high-paying job. But a year after his death, the 36-year-old is a grieving single mother deeply in debt and living paycheck to paycheck with her three children. Then an unexpected call from a well-known estate lawyer in New York offers a glimmer of hope. It is the beginning of a complex legal journey that could mean the difference between a life of abject poverty and unthinkable wealth thanks to her father, deceased billionaire Wallace Barclay.

Thirty years before, Arden’s mother Virginia Bunt, a flirtatious love addict with a string of failed affairs, met Wallace, an encounter that transformed her life. When he died unexpectedly without a will, Virginia fought to secure a comfortable future for her and the secret unborn daughter she shared with Wallace. Yet despite her best efforts, society and the legal system prevented her from receiving the money that should rightfully have been hers. Now, though, with changes in the legal system and science, her daughter Arden may finally succeed in claiming the inheritance that has been long denied.

Told from both Arden and Virginia’s viewpoints, straddling past and present, and moving from Toronto to New York City, The Inheritance is a poignant portrait of familial bonds, haunting pasts, the collateral damage of life choices, and the promise of hopeful futures as two venerable women fight for the life they deserve.

Visit Joanna Goodman's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Inheritance.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Elizabeth Pearson's "Extreme Britain"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Extreme Britain: Gender, Masculinity and Radicalization by Elizabeth Pearson.

About the book, from the publisher:

Misogyny and ‘toxic masculinity’ are increasingly implicated in radicalisation. From the men’s incel (‘involuntary celibate’) movement online, to jihadist groups like Islamic State, to far right ‘Anti Islam’ protests —radicalisation spans ideologies. Women’s rights are increasingly challenged by extremist groups, and anti-feminism is a key feature of extreme rhetoric, which has also ‘gone mainstream’. Though an often-used term, the process of radicalisation is not well understood, and the role of gender and masculinities has often been ignored. This book uses primary research to explore extremism in the British context, with a study of banned Islamist group al-Muhajiroun, and those networked to it; and the anti-Islam radical right. The book reveals radicalisation as a masculinity project, particular forms of male power its goal.

Through interviews with leaders with transnational influence, including Anjem Choudary and Tommy Robinson, as well as the men and women who follow them, Extreme Britain explores the emergence of extreme misogyny and masculinities. Pearson situates extreme identities in wider social norms, showing how masculinities are mobilised into action. Understanding the men and women involved in extreme movements will better equip us to counter them. This fascinating case study offers invaluable insights into a transnational trend.

Learn more about Extreme Britain at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Extreme Britain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven novels about women on a journey to figure out who they are

Phoebe McIntosh is an actress and playwright from London. She wrote and performed in a sell-out run of her first play, The Tea Diaries, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, followed by her solo show, Dominoes, which toured the South East and London. She completed the Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab program, and her most recent full-length play, The Soon Life, was shortlisted and highly commended for the Tony Craze Award as well as being longlisted for the Alfred Fagon Award. McIntosh won a place on the inaugural Tamasha x Hachette creative writing program and was selected for Penguin’s WriteNow program.

Dominoes is her debut novel.

At Electric Lit McIntosh tagged seven novels "about women who, at any one time, have had their doubts about who they are and who they present themselves to the world as." One title on the list:

Assembly by Natasha Brown

There’s a lot to be said for the slimline novel, and this one, with its meticulously crafted prose should be your first port of call if you’re seeking to learn more about the continued effect of colonialism on the modern world and, in particular on the lives of people of color. A nameless Black woman who seems to have it all — the cushy career, the big bonuses, a serious relationship with man from an old-money white family — tells us through a sequence of vignettes why a life blighted by racism at every turn is not much of a life at all. In fact, it is impossible not to feel her utter exhaustion at simply having to exist in such a world. The poignancy with which she reflects on her experiences and the conclusions she draws on her future given all that she has already suffered, makes the choice she is faced with about her health all the more hard hitting and, sadly, justifiable. A breathless, read in one-sitting corker of a debut.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Chris Nickson reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Chris Nickson, author of The Scream of Sins.

His entry begins:

At the moment, a variety of things seems to be the answer, and it's all re-reading. A few favourite Georgette Heyer titles: The Grand Sophy (even with its moment of outmoded anti-Semitism) and Veneita. I love that she has strong heroines, and the dialogue between her female and male lead characters is like watching masters fencing, a masterclass in how to do it. I came later to her, but for the most part I'm very much a convert.

Right now, however, I'm on The Investigator by John Sandford, the first in a series featuring Letty Davenport, the daughter of Lucas, the lead in many of Sandford's books. It's...[read on]

About The Scream of Sins, from the publisher:

Thief-taker Simon Westow uncovers an evil lurking in the underbelly of Leeds in this page-turning historical mystery, perfect for fans of Anne Perry and Charles Finch.

Leeds, October 1824. Thief-taker Simon Westow's job seems straightforward. Captain Holcomb's maid, Sophie, has stolen important papers that could ruin the family's reputation, and he's desperate for their return. But the case very quickly takes a murderous turn, and it becomes clear the papers are hiding a host of sins...

During the search, Simon's assistant, Jane, hears a horrific tale: men are snatching young girls from small towns for use by the rich. Those who are unwanted are tossed on to the streets of Leeds to survive among the homeless. With the help of an unlikely, deadly new companion, Jane will do everything to discover who's responsible and make them pay.

Can Simon and Jane recover Holcomb's letters and get justice for the stolen girls? It becomes a battle that might result in them losing everything . . . including their lives.

Visit Chris Nickson's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Constant Lovers.

The Page 69 Test: The Iron Water.

The Page 69 Test: The Hanging Psalm.

Q&A with Chris Nickson.

The Page 69 Test: The Molten City.

My Book, The Movie: Molten City.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (August 2021).

The Page 69 Test: Brass Lives.

The Page 69 Test: The Blood Covenant.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Will Rise.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (March 2023).

The Page 69 Test: Rusted Souls.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson (September 2023).

The Page 69 Test: The Scream of Sins.

Writers Read: Chris Nickson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six spooky & fantastical missing-persons stories

Melissa Albert is the New York Times and indie bestselling author of the Hazel Wood series (The Hazel Wood, The Night Country, Tales from the Hinterland) and Our Crooked Hearts, and a former bookseller and YA lit blogger. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages and included in the New York Times list of Notable Children’s Books. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Albert's new novel is The Bad Ones.

At CrimeReads she tagged six "supernatural and horror-inflected stories in which vanishings drive the plot." One title on the list:

Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson

Twenty years ago college girl Etain left a party in the middle of the night, driving alone into the wilds of rural Ireland. She was found days later, forever changed by the nightmare she survived. What happened to her colors her entire future and that of her husband and daughters—one who vanished in childhood, the other, Ashling, marked by her toxic relationship with an alcoholic mother who can hardly bear to look at her since her other child vanished. But Ashling knows what no one will ever believe: her sister’s disappearance has everything to do with a local children’s television show and a box on set that must never be opened, containing the wicked entity that took her sister away. This is a family horror story threaded through with cult activity and terrifying Celtic mythology, its mysteries revealed with tantalizing precision.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Kristin M. Girten's "Sensitive Witnesses"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Sensitive Witnesses: Feminist Materialism in the British Enlightenment by Kristin M. Girten.

About the book, from the publisher:

Kristin M. Girten tells a new story of feminist knowledge-making in the Enlightenment era by exploring the British female philosophers who asserted their authority through the celebration of profoundly embodied observations, experiences, and experiments. This book explores the feminist materialist practice of sensitive witnessing, establishing an alternate history of the emergence of the scientific method in the eighteenth century. Francis Bacon and other male natural philosophers regularly downplayed the embodied nature of their observations. They presented themselves as modest witnesses, detached from their environment and entitled to the domination and exploitation of it. In contrast, the author-philosophers that Girten takes up asserted themselves as intimately entangled with matter—boldly embracing their perceived close association with the material world as women. Girten shows how Lucy Hutchinson, Margaret Cavendish, Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Charlotte Smith took inspiration from materialist principles to challenge widely accepted "modest" conventions for practicing and communicating philosophy. Forerunners of the feminist materialism of today, these thinkers recognized the kinship of human and nonhuman nature and suggested a more accessible, inclusive version of science. Girten persuasively argues that our understanding of Enlightenment thought must take into account these sensitive witnesses' visions of an alternative scientific method informed by profound closeness with the natural world.

Learn more about Sensitive Witnesses at the Stanford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Sensitive Witnesses.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Sydney Leigh

From my Q&A with Sydney Leigh, author of Peril in Pink:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

The title of my book, Peril in Pink lets the reader know two key things. First, that something bad is going to happen. It’s a murder mystery, so that’s a plus. Second, that the book has a fun vibe. This is a story about Jess, a woman who quits her job and partners with her best friend, Kat, to open a Bed & Breakfast. Jess and Kat paint all of the doors of the B & B pink to help establish their brand (and the title of the book!). Of course, when someone is murdered during the opening weekend, Jess feels compelled to get involved and becomes an amateur sleuth in the process.

No one is going to read the title and think this is an angst-fueled spy novel or a literary thriller (two genres I love to read but cannot write). Like the story, the title is light and playful.

My working title as I wrote the book was...[read on]

Visit Sydney Leigh's website.

Q&A with Sydney Leigh.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books for St. Patrick’s Day

The Zoomer Book Club's Nathalie Atkinson tagged eight notable new reads in the Irish literary wave, including:

WHERE THEY LIE by Claire Coughlan

Celebrated Irish author John Banville, who writes the popular Quirke crime series set in mid-century Ireland, praises journalist Coughlan’s 1968-set historical literary thriller. The murder mystery follows Nicoletta, an ambitious young reporter, as new evidence in a long-forgotten murder is uncovered; it’s related to an underground feminist abortion service, making the novel as much about Irish women’s long quest for reproductive autonomy as a whodunnit.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Where They Lie.

Q&A with Claire Coughlan.

My Book, The Movie: Where They Lie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rachel Lyon's "Fruit of the Dead," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: Fruit of the Dead: A Novel by Rachel Lyon.

The entry begins:

There are many young actresses who could play a version of Cory really well. She is described as tall and beautiful, but she also sees herself as awkward and gawky, with a big nose. In my opinion, Maya Hawke would be ideal.

And if Maya Hawke were playing Cory—and I had all the power in the world—I'd obviously have to cast...[read on]

Visit Rachel Lyon's website.

The Page 69 Test: Self-Portrait with Boy.

My Book, The Movie: Self-Portrait with Boy.

The Page 69 Test: Fruit of the Dead.

My Book, The Movie: Fruit of the Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top Irish-themed books

The Amazon Book Review editors tagged five of their favorite Irish reads, including:

The First Kennedys: The Humble Roots of an American Dynasty by Neal Thompson

America’s fascination with the Kennedy family has been undimmed for over six decades now. The store of cold, hard facts about their lives and deaths have long ago been exhausted and have given way to reams of speculation. And then, just when it seems there are no fresh angles on Camelot, along comes Neal Thompson’s The First Kennedys. The first American Kennedys, that is: Patrick and Bridget Kennedy, driven—as over a million and a half Irish people were—by the Famine to seek refuge in a country that didn’t exactly put out the welcome mat. In penetrating prose studded with information and insight, Thompson vividly describes how, as a young widow, Bridget Kennedy went from maid to businesswoman, outmaneuvering relentless discrimination to steer her family out of the jaws of poverty. Through her story, Thompson shows us the seeds of one of the great American stories.
—Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: The First Kennedys.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David L. Kirchman's "Microbes"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Microbes: The Unseen Agents of Climate Change by David L. Kirchman.

About the book, from the publisher:

For billions of years, microbes have produced and consumed greenhouse gases that regulate global temperature and in turn other aspects of our climate. The balance of these gases maintains Earth's habitability. Methane, a greenhouse gas produced only by microbes, may have kept Earth out of a deep freeze billions of years ago. Likewise, variations in carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas released by microbes and other organisms, help to explain the comings and goings of ice ages over the last million years.

Now we face a human-made climate crisis with drastic consequences. The complete story behind greenhouse gases, however, involves microbes and their role in natural ecosystems. Microscopic organisms are also part of the solution, producing biofuels and other forms of green energy which keep fossil fuels in the ground. Other microbes can be harnessed to reduce the release of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture, and geoengineering solutions that depend on microbes could pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

In this book, David L. Kirchman introduces a unique and timely contribution to the climate change conversation and the part microbes play in our past, present, and future. He takes readers into the unseen world behind the most important environmental problem facing society today and encourages us to embrace microbial solutions that are essential to mitigating climate change.

Learn more about Microbes: The Unseen Agents of Climate Change at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Microbes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laura McNeal's "The Swan's Nest"

Featured at the Page 69 Test: The Swan's Nest: A Novel by Laura McNeal.

About the book, from the publisher:

A tender and engrossing historical novel about the unlikely love affair between two great 19th-century poets, Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett.

On a bleak January day in 1845, a poet who had been confined to her room for four years by recurrent illness received a letter from a writer she secretly idolized but had never seen. “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,” Robert Browning wrote, “and I love you too.”

Elizabeth Barrett was ecstatic. She was famous for her poetry but completely cut off from the kind of international travel that Browning used to fuel his obscure, unsuccessful, innovative poems, one of which was written from a murderer’s point of view. They began an affectionate correspondence, but Elizabeth kept delaying a visit. What would happen when he saw her in person? What was Robert really like? Could she persuade her father and brothers that he was honorable, even though she had never met his family? And what would happen if she gave in to Robert’s wild proposal that they go to Italy and see if the sun could cure her?

McNeal brilliantly tells the story of how Robert and Elizabeth fell in love with each other’s words and shocked her conservative, close-knit family and the literary world. Sensitively and lyrically written, as rich as the lovers' own poetry, The Swan's Nest will sweep up readers in the triumphant story of two people forced to choose between a safe, stable life and the love they felt for each other.

Visit Laura McNeal's website.

Coffee with a Canine: Laura McNeal & Link.

The Page 69 Test: The Incident on the Bridge.

Writers Read: Laura McNeal (May 2016).

My Book, The Movie: The Incident on the Bridge.

My Book, The Movie: The Swan's Nest.

The Page 69 Test: The Swan's Nest.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books inspired by classic novels

Sophie Ratcliffe is professor of literature and creative criticism at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall. In addition to her scholarly books, including On Sympathy, she has published commentary pieces and book reviews for the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other outlets, and has served a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize.

Ratcliffe's forthcoming book is Loss, A Love Story: Imagined Histories and Brief Encounters.

At the Guardian she tagged five top books inspired by classic novels, including:

Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes

Retired doctor, Geoffrey Braithwaite, is obsessed with works of Gustave Flaubert. But gradually, his diligent accretion of details about Flaubert’s fiction reveal themselves as a carapace – and a way of avoiding his own reality. The layers of this brilliant love story lift painfully, with the ghost of Flaubert’s most famous heroine, Madame Bovary, drifting beneath the surface. Flaubert’s Parrot doubles back on itself so many times it feels like a corridor of mirrors. But you’re left, in the end, not with emptiness, but with a feeling of generous, sorrowful yearning. “Books”, Braithwaite bleakly reflects, “make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own.”

Read about another entry on the list.

Flaubert’s Parrot is among Antoine Laurain's top ten books about books and Álvaro Enrigue's ten notable books based on other books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Donna J. Nicol's "Black Woman on Board"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action by Donna J. Nicol.

About the book, from the publisher:

Offers a rare view inside the university boardroom, uncovering the vital role Black women educational leaders have played in ensuring access and equity for all.

Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action examines the leadership strategies that Black women educators have employed as influential power brokers in predominantly white colleges and universities in the United States. Author Donna J. Nicol tells the extraordinary story of Dr. Claudia H. Hampton, the California State University(CSU) system's first Black woman trustee, who later became the board's first woman chair, and her twenty-year fight (1974–94) to increase access within the CSU for historically marginalized and underrepresented groups. Amid a growing white backlash against changes brought on by the 1960s Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, Nicol argues that Hampton enacted "sly civility" to persuade fellow trustees, CSU system officials, and state lawmakers to enforce federal and state affirmative action mandates.

Black Woman on Board explores how Hampton methodically "played the game of boardsmanship," using the soft power she cultivated amongst her peers to remove barriers that might have impeded the implementation and expansion of affirmative action policies and programs. In illuminating the ways that Hampton transformed the CSU as the "affirmative action trustee," this remarkable book makes an important contribution to the history of higher education and to the historiography of Black women's educational leadership in the post-Civil Rights era.

Visit Donna J. Nicol's website.

The Page 99 Test: Black Woman on Board.

--Marshal Zeringue