Pg. 99: Ivan Gaskell's “Mindprints: Thoreau’s Material Worlds”

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Mindprints: Thoreau's Material Worlds by Ivan Gaskell.

About the book, from the publisher:

A rediscovery of Thoreau’s interactions with everyday objects and how they shaped his thought.

Though we may associate Henry David Thoreau with ascetic renunciation, he accumulated a variety of tools, art, and natural specimens throughout his life as a homebuilder, surveyor, and collector. In some of these objects, particularly Indigenous artifacts, Thoreau perceived the presence of their original makers, and he called such objects “mindprints.” Thoreau believed that these collections could teach him how his experience, his world, fit into the wider, more diverse (even incoherent) assemblage of other worlds created and re-created by other beings every day. In this book, Ivan Gaskell explores how a profound environmental aesthetics developed from this insight and shaped Thoreau’s broader thought.

Learn more about Mindprints at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Mindprints.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Midge Raymond

From my Q&A with Midge Raymond, author of Floreana: A Novel:

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

I hope it pulls readers right in! This was a tough book to title because Floreana has two narrators—women who, a century apart, struggle with love, family, and buried secrets—and it’s set in two eras on one island that has changed remarkably in the past hundred years. It was challenging to find a title that would incorporate a real-life, unsolved murder mystery, penguin conservation, and two women who seem very different but whose struggles are very similar despite the years between them. In the end, my hope is that the title Floreana offers a sense of place and of...[read on]

Learn more about the author and her work at Midge Raymond's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Last Continent.

Writers Read: Midge Raymond (June 2016).

The Page 69 Test: Floreana.

Q&A with Midge Raymond.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steve Donoghue's ten best mystery books of 2024

Steve Donoghue is a writer and critic who shares his opinions and insights on books of various genres and topics.

One of his top ten mysteries of the year:

The Phantom Patrol by James Benn

Benn's series detailing the adventures of former Boston copy Billy Boyle during the Second World War is an unfailing source of reading pleasure, and this latest installment, dealing with the ever-fruitful world of Nazi art pillaging and set during the Battle of the Bulge.

Read about another mystery on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Phantom Patrol.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Matthew H. Kramer's "Rights and Right-Holding"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Rights and Right-Holding: A Philosophical Investigation by Matthew H. Kramer.

About the book, from the publisher:

Building on many years of scholarship, Matthew H. Kramer sets out his definitive philosophical investigation of rights and rights-holding with this monograph, as he sometimes revisits and modifies his previous positions. Beginning with the analytical schema propounded by the American legal theorist Wesley Hohfeld, the book provides a defence of the proposition that every claim-right with a certain content is correlative to at least one duty with the same content and that every duty with a certain content is correlative to at least one claim-right with the same content. The volume then addresses the longstanding debates over the nature of right-holding, with a sustained defense of the Interest Theory and with some innovative critiques of the Will Theory. Finally, it considers the ethical and analytical questions involved in determining who can hold claim-rights at all. It argues that the beings capable of holding claim-rights include not only human adults of sound mind but also all other living human beings, many dead people, and all future generations of people, along with most non-human animals.

Addressing some major topics within moral, legal, and political philosophy, Rights and Right-Holding: A Philosophical Investigation will be a key work for philosophers and academic lawyers alike.

Learn more about Rights and Right-Holding at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Rights and Right-Holding.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top thrillers with couples who don’t get (or deserve) a happy ending

Darby Kane is the pseudonym for a former divorce lawyer and #1 international bestselling author of domestic suspense. Her books have been optioned for television and featured in numerous venues, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Cosmopolitan.

Kane's new novel is What the Wife Knew.

At CrimeReads the author tagged seven thrillers with dysfunctional couples who lose control. One title on the list:

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing – This is a few years old. If you haven’t read it, buy it then go in blind. I’ll keep it brief: A lovely couple. Cute kids. Very together. Also, serial killers.

Read about another entry on the list.

My Lovely Wife is among Misha Popp's eight titles featuring truly fatal femmes fatales, Sarah Bonner's thirteen psychological thrillers with gobsmacking twists, Kaira Rouda's thirteen books highlighting the wives in domestic suspense, Alice Feeney's eight top novels featuring odd couples & unexpected partnerships, Pip Drysdale's seven top revenge thrillers featuring women who have had enough, Christina McDonald's seven top thrillers with flawed characters, C.J. Tudor's seven crime novels where murder is a group activity, Lisa Levy's top seven psychological thrillers with manipulative male narrators, Kaira Rouda's top seven literary couples whose relationships are deeply disturbing in the most fascinating ways possible, and Margot Hunt's top five villains who have had about enough of domestic life.

The Page 69 Test: My Lovely Wife.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Kate MacIntosh

From my Q&A with Kate MacIntosh, author of The Champagne Letters: A Novel:

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

Over twenty years ago, I was lucky enough to be traveling in France and I visited the Champagne region. In between tours of different wineries and copious amounts of free samples, I heard the story of Barbe-Nicole Clicquot, the founder of Veuve Clicquot. How do you not find a woman fascinating who runs a business, develops new innovations, works with smugglers to get her champagne out of the country during the Napoleonic war, and was a widow raising a daughter? I scribbled in my travel journal that I thought she would make a great character. That’s when I learned widows founded many of the great champagne houses. At the time, the only way a woman could own a business was if they were a widow. The present-day character is divorced, but she often thinks it would be easier if she were a widow, if her husband died instead of that he chose to leave her. That gave me the initial title for the story: The Champagne Widows.

When I had a publishing deal, the editor and I discussed the title. There was already a book with the title The Champagne Widows. Although there are many books with the same title, we decided to change it to avoid confusion. There were endless lists of options. Contenders included: Champagne Secrets, The Women of Champagne, The Widow’s Guide, The Champagne Gamble. In the end we went with The Champagne Letters, which, when we stumbled upon it, seemed the perfect fit.

The book goes back and forth between the 1800s where the Barbe-Nicole Clicquot is writing letters to her great-granddaughter to tell her about her life, and the present day when Natalie has fled her divorce and run away to Paris for vacation. Natalie finds...[read on]

Visit Kate MacIntosh's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Champagne Letters.

My Book The Movie: The Champagne Letters.

Q&A with Kate MacIntosh.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Daniel Light's "The White Ladder"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The White Ladder: Triumph and Tragedy at the Dawn of Mountaineering by Daniel Light.

About the book, from the publisher:

A sweeping history of mountaineering before Everest, and the epic human quest to reach the highest places on Earth.

Whether in the name of conquest, science, or the divine, humans across the centuries have had myriad reasons to climb mountains. From the smoking volcanoes of South America to the great snowy ranges of the Himalaya, The White Ladder follows a cast of extraordinary characters―conquistadors and captains, scientists and surveyors, alpinists and adventurers―up the slopes of the world’s highest peaks.

A masterpiece of edge-of-your-seat narrative history, The White Ladder describes the epic rise of mountaineering’s world altitude record, a story of ever higher climbs by figures great and small of mountaineering during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Daniel Light describes how climbers used revolutionary techniques to launch themselves into the most forbidding conditions. The expeditions illustrate evolutionary changes in climbing style, the advancement of high-altitude science, and the development of mountain climbing as an industry.

Throughout, Light pays special attention to Incan climbers, Gurkha guides, Sherpa mountaineers, and many others who are often overlooked. He offers nuanced new perspectives on familiar characters, for example, calling out the famed female pioneer Fanny Bullock Workman for racism and for abusing her porters. He presents a complex new portrait of notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, who was at once a ruthless expedition leader, but also an innovative strategist who could read mountains and would risk everything trying to climb them. Light also makes bold new arguments about classic debates, for example, arguing that the much-maligned Jewish climber Oscar Eckenstein shaped mountaineering as we know it today.

A story of innovation, invention, and determination, The White Ladder immerses readers in a fascinating historical period. With their breathtaking exploits, these climbers laid the groundwork for the historic ascents of K2 and Everest that came after―and heightened the spectacle of their dangerous sport.

Visit Daniel Light's website.

The Page 99 Test: The White Ladder.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine novels that capture the complexity of sisters

Lilli Sutton writes contemporary adult fiction. She holds a BA in English from Shepherd University. From Maryland, she now lives in Colorado. She draws inspiration for her writing from the natural world and the intricacies of human relationships.

When she's not writing, she's usually cooking, hiking, or trying to keep up with her ever-growing TBR list.

Sutton's new novel is Running Out of Air.

[Q&A with Lilli Sutton]

At Electric Lit Sutton tagged "nine books [that] ask their own questions about sisterhood, depict the many kinds of conflict that arise between siblings, and reflect the compassion extended by family, even in extreme circumstances." One title on the list:

One Two Three by Laurie Frankel

Laurie Frankel’s fourth novel features two of my favorite things: sister stories and environmentalism. One Two Three is set in the town of Bourne, where contaminated water has left an aftermath of health issues and developmental disorders throughout the population. Though the threat of future chemical pollution unites triplet sisters Mab, Monday, and Mirabel, they have different ambitions and ways of navigating the world—not to mention that they’re sixteen, an age rife for disagreements. Told through all three sisters’ points of view, this novel tackles themes from environmental justice to disability representation to first crushes, with the intricate nature of sisterhood at its very center.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Page 69 Test: One Two Three.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Katie Tallo reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Katie Tallo, author of Buried Road: A Novel.

Her entry begins:

Wayne Ng’s Johnny Delivers. I'm absolutely loving this rollercoaster of a mystery. Can’t wait to get back to it every time I have to put it down. It’s wonderful, charming, funny and fast-paced. Dripping with 70s nostalgia, it’s as much an action-packed thrill ride as it is a poignant, funny, nuanced story about a Chinese teenager coming-of-age amidst complicated family dynamics. Equal parts naïve and wise, scared and brave, Johnny...[read on]

About Buried Road, from the publisher:

When the love of her life disappeared on a camping trip, Gus Monet was devastated. Her daughter was only nine at the time, but young Bly still remembers the heartbreak vividly. Howard had been like a father to her. He was a journalist working on a story that took a dark and dangerous turn. The last time they saw him, he was going to meet a source he believed could blow the story wide open.

Three years later, shocked to see Howard’s obituary in the paper, Gus and Bly are drawn back to Prince Edward County where he was last seen and where the camper Howard was driving has been found. Sneaking into the camper, mother and daughter find what investigators missed. Hidden behind a secret panel are Howard’s notebook, cell phone, and a video message recorded right before he vanished, evidence that turns the cold case red hot. Searching for answers, Gus and Bly vow to follow the story Howard was pursuing and to expose whoever went to deadly lengths to stop him from revealing the truth.

Told in the compelling, thoughtful voice of young Bly, this edge-of-your-seat thriller ratchets up the tension, culminating in a heart-pounding, soul crushing, shocking finale. Infused with vivid summer imagery, set among eerie abandoned places, and steeped with sinister small-town secrets, Buried Road is the story of a young girl and a mother whose reckless resolve leads them ever closer to lethal danger—but ultimately might be what ensures their survival.

Visit Katie Tallo's website.

The Page 69 Test: Dark August.

Q&A with Katie Tallo.

Writers Read: Katie Tallo (June 2022).

The Page 69 Test: Buried Road.

Writers Read: Katie Tallo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Lauren E. Oakes's "Treekeepers"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Treekeepers: The Race for a Forested Future by Lauren E. Oakes.

About the book, from the publisher:

“A frank, probing, but ultimately hopeful book” (Elizabeth Kolbert) that shows how the path from climate change to a habitable future winds through the world’s forests

In recent years, planting a tree has become a catchall to represent “doing something good for the planet.” Many companies commit to planting a tree with every purchase. But who plants those trees and where? Will they flourish and offer the benefits that people expect? Can all the individual efforts around the world help remedy the ever-looming climate crisis?

In Treekeepers, Lauren E. Oakes takes us on a poetic and practical journey from the Scottish Highlands to the Panamanian jungle to meet the scientists, innovators, and local citizens who each offer part of the answer. Their work isn’t just about planting lots of trees, but also about understanding what it takes to grow or regrow a forest and to protect what remains. Throughout, Oakes shows the complex roles of forests in the fight against climate change, and of the people who are giving trees a chance with hope for our mutual survival.

Timely, meticulously reported, and ultimately optimistic, Treekeepers teaches us how to live with a sense of urgency in our warming world, to find beauty in the present for ourselves and our children, and to take action big or small.

Visit Lauren E. Oakes's website.

The Page 99 Test: In Search of the Canary Tree.

The Page 99 Test: Treekeepers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top novels featuring women and art

At B&N Reads Isabelle McConville tagged six "novels chronicling the lives of college students, visual artists, painters, performance artists and more," tales that supply a "peek into the creative mind." One title on the list:

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

Blurring the boundaries between art and life, Claire Messud’s The Woman Upstairs is a stunning tale of a flawed heroine, life’s broken promises, and the lengths we’d go to for fulfillment. When Nora meets her new neighbors, an enigmatic, artistic couple and their adorable son, she falls headfirst for their glamorous way of life — and loses herself in the process. If you’ve ever wondered how the other half lives, The Woman Upstairs is a sharp, illuminating story.

Read about another novel on the list.

The Woman Upstairs is among Jenny Shank's five terrific novels about art and artists, Joyce Maynard's six favorite books, and Alex Hourston’s top ten unlikely friendships in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Kate MacIntosh's "The Champagne Letters," the movie

Featured at My Book The Movie: The Champagne Letters: A Novel by Kate MacIntosh.

About the book, from the publisher:

There are few things I enjoy more than a sweeping period piece so I would adore if they made my novel into a film (or a lovely Netflix series- I’m open!) One of my dreams would be to run wild in the costume department trying on various outfits. Not to mention I would insist on being present during filming in France, because who doesn’t need a nice long trip to France? Paris! Rolling vineyard hills and musty cellars! Art museums! Bakeries and wine! Sign me up.

When it comes to casting this is where I admit having a huge crush on Ryan Reynolds and would cast him for this reason alone. He could play any part he wanted if it meant I got to hang out with him on set.

Once I get past my desire to run away with Ryan, I would cast Reese Witherspoon as Barbe-Nicole. She’s the...[read on]

Visit Kate MacIntosh's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Champagne Letters.

My Book The Movie: The Champagne Letters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Gerald Roche's "The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet by Gerald Roche.

About the book, from the publisher:

In The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet, Gerald Roche sheds light on a global crisis of linguistic diversity that will see at least half of the world's languages disappear this century.

Roche explores the erosion of linguistic diversity through a study of a community on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau in the People's Republic of China. Manegacha is but one of the sixty minority languages in Tibet and is spoken by about 8,000 people who are otherwise mostly indistinguishable from the Tibetan communities surrounding them. Recently, many in these communities have switched to speaking Tibetan, and Manegacha faces an uncertain future.

The author uses the Manegacha case to show how linguistic diversity across Tibet is collapsing under assimilatory state policies. He looks at how global advocacy networks inadequately acknowledge this issue, highlighting the complex politics of language in an inter-connected world. The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet broadens our understanding of Tibet and China, the crisis of global linguistic diversity, and the radical changes needed to address this crisis.

Learn more about The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet at the Cornell University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Politics of Language Oppression in Tibet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top horse girl books for adults

Katy James writes contemporary romance books that get to the heart of falling in love while finding one’s place in today’s world. When not writing, she works as an archivist and rare book librarian. Her free time is spent being a single mom, wrangling an ever-fluctuating number of pets, fixing up her old house, reading, knitting, cooking, gardening and generally making all kinds of stuff.

James's new novel is The Grump Whisperer.

At The Nerd Daily she tagged five favorite books that feature "an immersive equestrian experience" the way horse girl children’s books do, but "include adult characters, themes, romance, and perspectives." One title on her list:

Pony Confidential by Christina Lynch

Listen. Sometimes you read a book and you just know that it will stay with you forever. Pony Confidential is not a romance. No, it’s a murder mystery told in dual POV. The POVs in question being that of a woman accused of murder, and… her childhood pony. And not just any pony, but a pony so furious about the way he’s been treated that he only wants one thing: revenge. This book is both a love letter to former horse girls and their beloved ponies, and a clear-eyed, heart-wrenching examination of animal—and human—welfare. I cried at least twice, and laughed out loud more times than I can count. You’re welcome.

Read about another book on the list.

The Page 69 Test: Pony Confidential.

My Book, The Movie: Pony Confidential.

--Marshal Zeringue

Q&A with Yvonne Battle-Felton

From my Q&A with Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Curdle Creek: A Novel:

photo credit: Marat Battle

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

I think the title captures the essence of the book really well. The title of the book is the name of the town and so much of the book is about the way the town operates, the cost of living there, the secrets it keeps. It’s not an entirely bad place or at least, there’s a rationale for how it came to be the way that it is so for a while, I flirted with the title: A Good Place for Bad Things. But the idea of the town came to me maybe seven years ago. I grew up in a rural town called Sweetwater. It was a town where nothing much seemed to happen. In many ways, Curdle Creek is the opposite of that. So, seven years ago I wrote a short story about characters about to experience their first Moving On ceremony. The town was Curdle Creek then and when I revisited it in my imagination...[read on]

Visit Yvonne Battle-Felton's website.

The Page 69 Test: Curdle Creek.

My Book, The Movie: Curdle Creek.

Q&A with Yvonne Battle-Felton.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Caroline Ashcroft's "Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought by Caroline Ashcroft.

About the book, from the publisher:

Explores a Cold War concept of technology as a catastrophic influence on modern politics

• Explores the intellectual history of a ‘catastrophic’ concept of technology in the work of some of the twentieth century’s most important political thinkers
• Reveals the centrality of this narrative in the work of what is otherwise generally considered to be an ideologically and philosophically diverse group of theorists
• Contextualises this concept of technology in the Cold War period to reveal the fundamentally political character of the critique as a rejection of liberalism
• Studies both ‘technology’ as an overarching concept as well as particular realisations of technology in these theorists’ work: technologies of war, production, media and biotechnology
• Reveals the way in which this concept of technology produces a specific critique of the relationship between humans, world and nature in modernity, which brings the critics of technology into discourse with early environmentalism

In the mid-twentieth century, a certain idea of technology emerged in the work of many influential political theorists: a critical, catastrophic concept of technology, entangled with the apocalyptic fears fuelled by two all-consuming world wars and the looming nuclear threat. Drawing on the work of theorists such as Hannah Arendt, Jacques Ellul, Martin Heidegger and Herbert Marcuse, Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought explores the critical idea of technology as both a response to a dramatically changing world, and a radical political critique of Cold War liberalism.

Learn more about Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought at the Edinburgh University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Catastrophic Technology in Cold War Political Thought.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen essential L.A. books of mystery or crime

The L.A. Times asked writers with deep ties to the city to name their favorite Los Angeles books. One of their top titles of mystery or crime:

These Women by Ivy Pochoda, 2020

Loosely based on the case of the Grim Sleeper, the serial killer so named for taking a 14-year “nap” between killing sprees, Pochoda turns the focus entirely on the women — survivors, witnesses and, in her most compelling character, a petite, street-savvy detective, Essie. “Pochoda’s serial killer novel flips the paradigm,” says Tod Goldberg, “focusing on the victims of terrible crimes instead of the perpetrators, and the result is a novel that does an anthropological dig of Los Angeles’ streets and subcultures. Reading it is like putting together a 1,000-piece puzzle, but the result is high art.”

Read about another entry on the list.

These Women is among Erin Young’s six books that elevate the serial killer thriller, Adele Parks's four best novels with nuanced portrayals of sex workers, Alex Kenna's five top modern LA noir books by women writers, Meg Gardiner's six favorite crime fiction books, Eliza Jane Brazier's ten top thrilling stories of Los Angeles, Stephen Miller's favorite crime titles of 2020 and Smith Henderson and Jon Marc Smith's ten American masterpieces that are actually crime fiction.

The Page 69 Test: These Women.

--Marshal Zeringue

Third reading: D.W. Buffa on Flaubert’s "Madame Bovary"

D.W. Buffa's newest novel to be released is Evangeline, a courtroom drama about the murder trial of captain who is one of the few to survive the sinking of his ship.

Buffa is also the author of ten legal thrillers involving the defense attorney Joseph Antonelli. He has also published a series that attempts to trace the movement of western thought from ancient Athens, in Helen; the end of the Roman Empire, in Julian's Laughter; the Renaissance, in The Autobiography of Niccolo Machiavelli; and America in the twentieth century, in Neumann's Last Concert.

Buffa's latest take in his "Third Reading" series is on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. It begins:

In 1986, Gore Vidal, as only he could, made a lethal distinction between what Flaubert tried to do in what he wrote and what, more than a century later, American writers of fiction considered adequate: “To the end of a long life, he kept on making the only thing he thought worth making: sense, a quality almost entirely lacking in American literature where stupidity - if sufficiently sincere and authentic - is deeply revered and easily achieved.” Vidal then added: “In our post-literary time, it is hard to believe that once upon a time a life could be devoted to the perfection of an art form, and of all the art forms the novel was the most - exigent, to use a modest word. Today the novel is either a commodity that anyone can put together, or it is an artifact, which means nothing or anything or everything, depending on one’s literary theory.”

If this seems to prove the accuracy of Nietzsche’s prediction that when everyone learned to read, no one would know how to write, and the prescience of Schopenhauer’s remark that with the advent of mass publications, “everyone can now read themselves stupid,” a hundred years before Gore Vidal made his complaint about the state of American literature, Henry James made his own complaint, not about American fiction, but about Gustave Flaubert.

“M. Flaubert and his contemporaries have pushed so far the education of the senses and the cultivation of the grotesque in literature and the arts that it has left them morally stranded and hopeless.” James describes Flaubert as “Sedentary, cloistered, passionate, cynical, tormented in his life of magnificent expression…..” But, as James understood, it was only this “sedentary, cloistered, passionate” life that allowed Flaubert to write Madame Bovary, the novel about which James is unstinting in his praise. “The perfection of Madame Bovary is one of the commonplaces of criticism.” And it is only because of Flaubert’s obsession with perfection that James can call Flaubert the “novelists’ novelist.”

Which is not to say that Henry James liked it. The story is “too small an affair,” and the characters “abject human beings,” and Emma Bovary “not the least little bit complicated.’’ And...[read on]

Visit D.W. Buffa's website.

Third reading: The Great Gatsby. 

Third reading: Brave New World.

Third reading: Lord Jim.

Third reading: Death in the Afternoon.

Third Reading: Parade's End.

Third Reading: The Idiot.

Third Reading: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Third Reading: The Scarlet Letter.

Third Reading: Justine.

Third Reading: Patriotic Gore.

Third reading: Anna Karenina.

Third reading: The Charterhouse of Parma.

Third Reading: Emile.

Third Reading: War and Peace.

Third Reading: The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Third Reading: Bread and Wine.

Third Reading: “The Crisis of the Mind” and A Man Without Qualities.

Third reading: Eugene Onegin.

Third Reading: The Collected Works of Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Third Reading: The Europeans.

Third Reading: The House of Mirth and The Writing of Fiction.

Third Reading: Doctor Faustus.

Third Reading: the reading list of John F. Kennedy.

Third Reading: Jorge Luis Borges.

Third Reading: History of the Peloponnesian War.

Third Reading: Mansfield Park.

Third Reading: To Each His Own.

Third Reading: A Passage To India.

Third Reading: Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

Third Reading: The Letters of T.E. Lawrence.

Third Reading: All The King’s Men.

Third Reading: The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus.

Third Reading: Naguib Mahfouz’s novels of ancient Egypt.

Third Reading: Main Street.

Third Reading: Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part I.

Third Reading: Theodore H. White's The Making of the President series, part II.

Third Reading: Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Third Reading: Fiction's Failure.

Third Reading: Hermann Hesse's Demian.

Third Reading: Frederick Douglass, Slavery, and The Fourth of July.

Third Reading: Caesar’s Ghost.

Third reading: The American Constitution.

Third Reading: A Tale of Two Cities.

Third Reading: The Leopard.

Third Reading: Madame Bovary.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Shane Bobrycki's "The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages"

Featured at the Page 99 Test: The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages by Shane Bobrycki.

About the book, from the publisher:

The importance of collective behavior in early medieval Europe

By the fifth and sixth centuries, the bread and circuses and triumphal processions of the Roman Empire had given way to a quieter world. And yet, as Shane Bobrycki argues, the influence and importance of the crowd did not disappear in early medieval Europe. In The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages, Bobrycki shows that although demographic change may have dispersed the urban multitudes of Greco-Roman civilization, collective behavior retained its social importance even when crowds were scarce.

Most historians have seen early medieval Europe as a world without crowds. In fact, Bobrycki argues, early medieval European sources are full of crowds—although perhaps not the sort historians have trained themselves to look for. Harvests, markets, festivals, religious rites, and political assemblies were among the gatherings used to regulate resources and demonstrate legitimacy. Indeed, the refusal to assemble and other forms of “slantwise” assembly became a weapon of the powerless. Bobrycki investigates what happened when demographic realities shifted, but culture, religion, and politics remained bound by the past. The history of crowds during the five hundred years between the age of circuses and the age of crusades, Bobrycki shows, tells an important story—one of systemic and scalar change in economic and social life and of reorganization in the world of ideas and norms.

Learn more aboutThe Crowd in the Early Middle Ages at Princeton University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Vulture" — top ten comedy books of 2024

At Vulture Brian Boone tagged "the ten best, most delightful, thought-provoking, and just all in all funny comedy books of 2024." One title on the list:

So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We’re Still So Obsessed With It), by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong

Mean Girls is 20 years old now, and they’ve already remade it, so I guess it does warrant an investigation. So Fetch, with its collection of interviews, is really more about the cultural impact of the movie and its unique and savage take on calling out high-school social-sexual politics. It was no small feat to make a teen movie with substance and a message at the height of superficial 2000s trash culture, and out of a nonfiction self-help book at that. This is all about how an idea can become something much bigger than itself.

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 99 Test: So Fetch.

--Marshal Zeringue