Pg. 69: Gayle Forman's "Where She Went"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Where She Went by Gayle Forman.

About the book, from the publisher:

It's been three years since the devastating accident ... three years since Mia walked out of Adam's life forever.

Now living on opposite coasts, Mia is Juilliard's rising star and Adam is LA tabloid fodder, thanks to his new rock star status and celebrity girlfriend. When Adam gets stuck in New York by himself, chance brings the couple together again, for one last night. As they explore the city that has become Mia's home, Adam and Mia revisit the past and open their hearts to the future-and each other.

Told from Adam's point of view in the spare, lyrical prose that defined If I Stay, Where She Went explores the devastation of grief, the promise of new hope, and the flame of rekindled romance.

Learn more about the book and author at Gayle Forman's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: If I Stay.

The Page 69 Test: Where She Went.

--Marshal Zeringue

Trilby Kent's "Stones for my Father," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Stones for my Father by Trilby Kent.

Her entry begins:

I think it would have to be an unknown actor to play Corlie Roux. A native Afrikaner, preferably (because the accent is so tricky to get right), with a realistic ‘look’ and a spark of raw talent. Ditto Corlie’s younger brother, Gert – perhaps someone like little Guy Witcher in The Power of One? – and her best friend, Sipho.

You’d need a really formidable actress to play Corlie’s mother. She’s a deeply flawed, cruel woman, but it would be pointless simply to depict her as...[read on]

Read more about Stones for My Father at the publisher's website, and visit Trilby Kent's Red Room Writer Profile.

The Page 69 Test: Stones for My Father.

Writers Read: Trilby Kent.

My Book, The Movie: Stones for my Father.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Lou Manfredo reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Lou Manfredo, author of Rizzo's Fire and Rizzo's War.

His entry begins:

For the last few years, I have avoided reading fiction for fear of external influences impacting my own works. The most recent book I’ve read was Mary Tudor by Anna Whitelock, preceded by a variety of historical works and biographies.

Currently, after a conversation with Otto Penzler at his Mysterious Bookshop, I am reading...[read on]

Among the early praise for Rizzo's Fire:

"In Manhattan, the murder of an acclaimed playwright will make some NYPD detective a media darling. But in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Detective Joe Rizzo has the usual fare: a mugger who preys on the elderly, a serial flasher, and the loser in a fistfight, who drunkenly seeks revenge with a hunting rifle. But then Bensonhurst has its own murder, the 62nd Precinct's first in two years. The victim is an unemployed shoe salesman, and Rizzo and his new partner get the case. Their investigation soon produces a link between the two murders, and Rizzo gets caught up in the possibility of beating Manhattan to an arrest. Rizzo's life and work are so compelling that readers will be surprised that the book's linchpin, the shoe salesman's murder, occurs almost halfway through it. Authenticity is the cornerstone of Manfredo's work (Rizzo's War, 2009), whether in his portrait of Brooklyn or his depiction of the murky and morally ambivalent world of the NYPD, which Rizzo desperately wants to keep his youngest daughter from joining. Fans of gritty procedurals will love this one."
--Thomas Gaughan, Booklist

Read more about Rizzo's Fire and Rizzo's War.

The Page 69 Test: Rizzo's War.

Writers Read: Lou Manfredo.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 11 best books on the Civil War

Malcolm Jones writes about books, music, and photography for The Daily Beast and Newsweek. He is the author of a memoir, Little Boy Blues, and collaborated with the songwriter and composer Van Dyke Parks and the illustrator Barry Moser on Jump!, a retelling of Brer Rabbit stories.

For The Daily Beast, he named the eleven best books on the Civil War, including:

This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
by Drew Gilpin Faust

The Civil War remade many attitudes but none so much as the thinking on death. Carnage and slaughter on a grand scale ground down prevailing notions of the good death and undercut belief in divine providence. Many new ways of thinking about death came out of the war, but none more sweeping than the new expectations of the military—its responsibility to identify, preserve, and honor the dead. This is one of those groundbreaking histories that clarifies a crucial piece of the past previously ignored.

Read about another book on the list.

Also see: Ten best novels about the American Civil War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Tracey Jackson's "Between a Rock and a Hot Place"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Between a Rock and a Hot Place by Tracey Jackson.

About the book, from the publisher:

A funny, fearless, no-holds-barred look at aging—hormone replacement therapy, online dating, eye lifts, and all

As she approached her fiftieth birthday, Tracey Jackson found herself bombarded—at the gym, at parties, in conversations with friends—by a catchphrase on everyone's lips. "Fifty is the new thirty" and the endless magazine articles, photos, and T-shirts proclaiming the new aphorism had apparently bloomed out of a collective sense of denial, masking the true fears of a generation unwilling to relinquish their youth.

With a comedy writer's training and a screenwriter's eye for detail, Jackson skewers the myth in Between a Rock and a Hot Place, a hilarious, bare-knuckled, and ultimately practical appraisal of what middle age really means today. Willing not only to face the elephant in the room, but to put him under a (large) microscope, Jackson confronts the truth about death, work, and sex in what the French call the "third age," using poignant, laugh-out-loud stories from her life. Jackson examines the changing roles of motherhood and wifehood; the necessity of planning a "career after your career"; the unvarnished reality of our aging bodies; and the generational shift in our perception of age ("Tight abs was not a phrase my grandmother had ever heard. And even if she had, her response would likely have been, Who needs that when you have a girdle?").

Turning fifty is a wake-up call—but one that can be greeted with a plan. Recounting the changes she went through, the things she learned (and things she didn't) en route to fifty, Between a Rock and a Hot Place navigates, with unsparing honesty and unerring wit, the confusion and uncertainty of the most significant uncharted transition in our lives.

Learn more about Between A Rock and a Hot Place and its author at Tracey Jackson's website.

A screenwriter for seventeen years, Tracey Jackson has written and sold films to all the major studios. Her most recent writing credits include Confessions of a Shopaholic and Lucky Ducks, a feature-length documentary that she also produced and directed.

The Page 99 Test: Between a Rock and a Hot Place.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Stewart O'Nan reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Stewart O'Nan, author of Emily, Alone.

His entry begins:

Elegies for the Brokenhearted, by Christie Hodgen

Smart, tough, funny, sad, with such a natural yet surprising voice, this novel follows a young girl's rocky coming of age as she pays homage to five strange and difficult who changed her life. Brilliant and moving work. I'd put this up for the Pulitzer, and up with...[read on]

Among the early praise for Emily, Alone:

"[A] bracingly unsentimental, ruefully humorous, and unsparingly candid novel about the emotional and physical travails of old age."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[A] warmhearted, clear-eyed portrait of a woman in her dotage who understands that life is both awfully long and woefully short, much of it passed in waiting and regret, but never, heaven forbid, about just the past, since 'every day was another chance.'"
--Barnes & Noble Review

"[Emily, Alone] quietly shuffles in where few authors have dared to go. And it's so humane and so finely executed that I hope it finds those sensitive readers who will appreciate it… Through short, crisp chapters we follow Emily's well-ordered, dignified life, frequently challenged by calamities and disappointments large and small, all gently captured in O'Nan's precise, unadorned prose… Emily, Alone makes the perfect demonstration of O'Nan's humanizing vision."
--Ron Charles, Washington Post

"…O'Nan's best novel yet…"
--Joanna Smith Rakoff, New York Times

"Stewart O’Nan['s ...] winning combination of pathos, intelligence, curiosity and heroic range, make the dude a national treasure."
--Three Guys One Book

Learn more about the author and his work at Stewart O'Nan's website.

The Page 69 Test: Songs for the Missing.

Writers Read: Stewart O'Nan.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bettany Hughes's six best books

Bettany Hughes is an author, historian and chair of judges for the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her new book is The Hemlock Cup.

One of her six best books, as told to the Scottish Sunday Express:

Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë

How could this be missed off anyone’s list? It has everything – windswept romance, the horrors of prejudice, the terrible power of secrets. And the character of Jane is so finely drawn I almost expect to bump into her at airport terminals or our library.

Read about another book on the list.

Jane Eyre also made the Guardian's top 10 lists of "outsider books" and "romantic fiction;" it appears on Lorraine Kelly's six best books list, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, and Jessica Duchen's top ten list of literary Gypsies, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best weddings in literature, ten of the best locked rooms in literature, ten of the best pianos in literature, ten of the best breakfasts in literature, ten of the best smokes in fiction, and ten of the best cases of blindness in literature. It is one of Kate Kellaway's ten best love stories in fiction.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Eyre.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Louis Bayard's "The School of Night"

This weekend's feature at the Page 69 Test: The School of Night by Louis Bayard.

About the book, from the publisher:

An ancient mystery, a lost letter, and a timeless love unleash a long-buried web of intrigue that spans four centuries

In the late sixteenth century, five brilliant scholars gather under the cloak of darkness to discuss God, politics, astronomy, and the black arts. Known as the School of Night, they meet in secret to avoid the wrath of Queen Elizabeth. But one of the men, Thomas Harriot, has secrets of his own, secrets he shares with one person only: the servant woman he loves.

In modern-day Washington, D.C., disgraced Elizabethan scholar Henry Cavendish has been hired by the ruthless antiquities collector Bernard Styles to find a missing letter. The letter dates from the 1600s and was stolen by Henry's close friend, Alonzo Wax. Now Wax is dead and Styles wants the letter back.

But the letter is an object of interest to others, too. It may be the clue to a hidden treasure; it may contain the long-sought formula for alchemy; it most certainly will prove the existence of the group of men whom Shakespeare dubbed the School of Night but about whom little is known. Joining Henry in his search for the letter is Clarissa Dale, a mysterious woman who suffers from visions that only Henry can understand. In short order, Henry finds himself stumbling through a secretive world of ancient perils, caught up in a deadly plot, and ensnared in the tragic legacy of a forgotten genius.

Learn more about the book and author at Louis Bayard's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Black Tower.

The Page 69 Test: The Pale Blue Eye.

The Page 69 Test: The School of Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rosalind Brackenbury's "Becoming George Sand," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Becoming George Sand by Rosalind Brackenbury.

The entry begins:

Well, I'd choose Juliette Binoche to play George Sand and Naomi Watts to play Maria; possibly...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Rosalind Brackenbury's website.

Brackenbury is the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories, and five books of poetry.

The Page 69 Test: Becoming George Sand.

Writers Read: Rosalind Brackenbury.

My Book, The Movie: Becoming George Sand.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Nina Eliasoph reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Nina Eliasoph, author of Making Volunteers: Civic Life after Welfare's End.

Her entry begins:

I picked up The Long Goodbye at a yard sale a few years ago, but didn’t open it till last week. It is, of course, a detective novel from the 1950’s, by Raymond Chandler. It later became a movie. I really hate suspense. Whenever I encounter any suspense in a book, I have to read the last few pages first, before I can enjoy the rest. But in this one, the suspense is quiet and sneaky, and it’s not what makes you lap up each page. It’s the prose--the narrator’s fine powers observation and his breathtakingly perfect selection of words. This narrator is a very precise observer of a seedy and sinister Los Angeles of his era, but he's probably not entirely reliable. Could I, a social scientist, write like that? Social scientists, alas, are not supposed to construct unreliable narrators to tell their tales. I think in my next book, I will.

I’m also reading...[read on]

Among the early praise for Making Volunteers:

"This book is a pleasure to read--smart, insightful, tragic, ironic, and funny. Eliasoph brings to life the complicated relationships and dilemmas that surface in youth programs, and the twists and turns of the author's analysis are extremely compelling. This book is a must-read for those participating in NGOs, those trumpeting the virtues of volunteer work, and those social scientists interested in questions of government, community building, and civic culture."
--Lynne Haney, New York University

"This clear and engaging book shows how community organizations really work. Nina Eliasoph tackles tensions that run through well-meaning organizations and lives, and she illustrates how people struggle with inequality, differences, having to be nice, and wanting to promote community but accomplishing much less than they desire or realize."
--Robert Wuthnow, Princeton University

Learn more about Making Volunteers at the Princeton University Press website.

Nina Eliasoph is associate professor of sociology at the University of Southern California. She is also the author of Avoiding Politics.

Writers Read: Nina Eliasoph.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Sophia Rosenfeld's "Common Sense: A Political History"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Common Sense: A Political History by Sophia Rosenfeld.

About the book, from the publisher:

Common sense has always been a cornerstone of American politics. In 1776, Tom Paine’s vital pamphlet with that title sparked the American Revolution. And today, common sense—the wisdom of ordinary people, knowledge so self-evident that it is beyond debate—remains a powerful political ideal, utilized alike by George W. Bush’s aw-shucks articulations and Barack Obama’s down-to-earth reasonableness. But far from self-evident is where our faith in common sense comes from and how its populist logic has shaped modern democracy. Common Sense: A Political History is the first book to explore this essential political phenomenon.

The story begins in the aftermath of England’s Glorious Revolution, when common sense first became a political ideal worth struggling over. Sophia Rosenfeld’s accessible and insightful account then wends its way across two continents and multiple centuries, revealing the remarkable individuals who appropriated the old, seemingly universal idea of common sense and the new strategic uses they made of it. Paine may have boasted that common sense is always on the side of the people and opposed to the rule of kings, but Rosenfeld demonstrates that common sense has been used to foster demagoguery and exclusivity as well as popular sovereignty. She provides a new account of the transatlantic Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions, and offers a fresh reading on what the eighteenth century bequeathed to the political ferment of our own time. Far from commonsensical, the history of common sense turns out to be rife with paradox and surprise.

Learn more about Common Sense: A Political History at the Harvard University Press website.

Sophia Rosenfeld is an Associate Professor in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia.

The Page 99 Test: Common Sense: A Political History.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten "unsuitable" books for teenagers

Patrick Ness has written two books for adults, (the novel The Crash of Hennington and a short story collection titled Topics About Which I Know Nothing). He published The Knife of Never Letting Go, his first young adult book, in 2008. It won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Booktrust Teenage Prize. The sequel, The Ask and the Answer, won the Costa children's fiction prize, and was followed by the final book in the trilogy, Monsters of Men. His new novel, A Monster Calls, will be published next month in Britain.

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of "unsuitable" books--that is, books best read when people tell you you're too young for them--for teenagers, including:

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

One of those literary, award-winning adult novels that I secretly think was written for teens all along (see To Kill A Mockingbird). No, it won't encourage suicide, but it will encourage an appreciation for elegant writing and ring true for how isolating the teenage years can feel. Plus, it's in third person plural! What's not to love?

Read about another book on the list.

The Virgin Suicides is one of Cathy Cassidy's top ten stories about sisters.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Robin Fox reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Robin Fox, author of The Tribal Imagination.

His entry begins:

It is always delightful to discover a new author (like a new composer – I found Alberto Ginestera for example) and I lighted on Barbara Kingsolver through a friend who loaned me her The Lacuna when I was sick. I followed up with The Poisonwood Bible – a sustained piece of virtuoso writing about Africa in three voices. I did Pigs in Clover and am now on Animal Dreams: about the Southwest, which I love, including Pueblo Indians of the tribes I studied. She is an unbelievably good writer with humor and metaphor and a gripping story. You don’t have to be a liberal activist to enjoy her, but...[read on]

Among the early praise for The Tribal Imagination:

“In The Tribal Imagination, Robin Fox brings to bear stunning insights from his wide knowledge of human societies and the philosophers, poets, and thinkers who have tried to understand them. He casts brilliant light not just on the human historical experience, but on contemporary issues from Iraq to human rights as well.”
—Francis Fukuyama, author of The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

“One of our most prolific and brilliant anthropologists has done it again. Marriage rules of simple societies, the rise of civilization, modern international politics, and literary examples ranging from the Bible and Greek mythology to Shakespeare and children’s rhymes are all grist for Robin Fox’s mill, which grinds out a fine understanding of how human groups function, given the Darwinian imperatives operating in history, the dynamics of family relationships, and the possibilities and limitations of the human brain.”
—Melvin Konner, author of The Evolution of Childhood

“The Tribal Imagination is an elegant demonstration that human nature is omnipresent in the symbolic realm and that knowing about this is the best way to make sense not only of humankind’s unity but of its diversity as well.”
—Bernard Chapais, author of Primeval Kinship: How Pair Bonding Gave Birth to Human Society

Learn more about the book and author at Robin Fox's website.

Robin Fox, anthropologist, poet, and essayist, is University Professor of Social Theory at Rutgers University and author of Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective and The Red Lamp of Incest: An Enquiry into the Origins of Mind and Society.

The Page 99 Test: The Tribal Imagination.

Writers Read: Robin Fox.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten best novels about the American Civil War

The staff of the Christian Science Monitor came up with a list of the ten best novels of the U.S. Civil War.

One title on the list:

Gone with the Wind

You can't make a list of Civil War novels without including Margaret Mitchell's 1936 classic. Her story of a ravaged South – interwoven with the romance of plucky Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara and the roguish Rhett Butler – won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize and went on to become one of the bestselling books of all time. The 1939 movie version starring Clark Gable and Vivian Leigh is perhaps equally beloved.

Read about another novel on the list.

Gone With the Wind was a book that made a difference to Pat Conroy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: David Fisher's "Morality and War"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Morality and War: Can War be Just in the Twenty-First Century? by David Fisher.

About the book, from the publisher:

With the ending of the strategic certainties of the Cold War, the need for moral clarity over when, where and how to start, conduct, and conclude war has never been greater. There has been a recent revival of interest in the just war tradition. But can a medieval theory help us answer twenty-first century security concerns?

David Fisher explores how just war thinking can and should be developed to provide such guidance. Morality and War examines philosophical challenges to just war thinking, including those posed by moral scepticism and relativism. It explores the nature and grounds of moral reasoning, the relation between public and private morality, and how just war teaching needs to be refashioned to provide practical guidance not just to politicians and generals but to ordinary service people.

The complexity and difficulty of moral decision-making requires a new ethical approach--here characterized as virtuous consequentialism--that recognizes the importance of both the internal quality and external effects of agency; and of the moral principles and virtues needed to enact them. Having reinforced the key tenets of just war thinking, Fisher uses these to address contemporary security issues, including the changing nature of war, military pre-emption and torture, the morality of the Iraq war, and humanitarian intervention. He concludes that the just war tradition provides not only a robust but an indispensable guide to resolve the security challenges of the twenty-first century.

Learn more about Morality and War at the Oxford University Press website.

David Fisher is a Visiting Senior Fellow at Kings College, London where he has recently completed a Ph.D. in War Studies. He has served in senior positions in the Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office and Cabinet Office, including defence adviser to the Prime Minister in the Cabinet Office and the UK Defence Counsellor to NATO, and is co-Chairman of the Council on Christian Approaches to Defence and Disarmament. He regularly contributes to books and journals on defence and ethical issues, and is the author of Morality and the Bomb and co-editor of Just War on Terror?

The Page 99 Test: Morality and War.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Brett Battles's "Little Girl Gone"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Little Girl Gone by Brett Battles.

About the novel:

Little Girl Gone is the first book in a new series. It features Logan Harper, a man not looking for redemption, just some peace and a chance to forget his troubled past. But one morning his quiet life is upended when he interrupts the attempted murder of his father’s best friend Tooney. The next thing Logan knows, he’s on his way to Los Angeles, searching for Tooney’s missing granddaughter and uncovering a sinister plot connected not only to Tooney’s Burmese past, but also to the boardrooms of corporate America. As the odds stack up against him, Logan must fall back on old skills from the life he'd rather forget. He’s made a promise, and the only way to fulfill it is to bring the girl home alive.

Learn more about the book and author at Brett Battles' website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Little Girl Gone.

--Marshal Zeringue

Barbara Fradkin’s "Beautiful Lie the Dead," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: Beautiful Lie the Dead by Barbara Fradkin.

The entry begins:

Since there are eight novels in the series, I picture it more as a TV series than as a single movie. However, each book does stand on its own, so I’ll take whatever film deal I can get. I do visualize my scenes as I write them, including the look, sound and feel of that snowstorm, and I do have a clear image of the main characters, but they are not based on any real people.

But what author has not secretly dreamed of that phone call from Hollywood? Which of us has not pictured one of the cinematic greats in the lead role? Who can resist the thought of Paul Newman repeating your lines and staring down the killer in your story? Never mind that my Inspector Green is a long way from handsome and has hazel eyes. Paul Newman is perfect, right?

But even dreams have limits - the laws of physical nature among them. So I will confine my wishlist to the possible. I have divided loyalties here. If the movie was being made by Hollywood, I used to picture...[read on]

Read an excerpt from Beautiful Lie the Dead, and learn more about the book and author at Barbara Fradkin’s website.

My Book, The Movie: Beautiful Lie the Dead.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books with teens behaving badly

At the Guardian, Cat Clarke, author of the YA novel Entangled, named a top ten list of books with teens behaving badly.

One title on the list:

Wasted by Nicola Morgan

An unsettling book about fate, chance and how leaving the house five minutes earlier or five minutes later could change your life forever. Jack makes his decisions on the toss of a coin, an idea I find strangely appealing. The reader even gets to join in by flipping a coin to choose the book's ending (oh, the power!).

Read about another book on the list.

Writers Read: Nicola Morgan.

Read Coffee with a Canine: Nicola Morgan & Amber.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Dennis J. Frost reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Dennis J. Frost, author of Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan.

His entry begins:

During the school year much of what I read is related to the courses I happen to be teaching, and among those books, one of my all time favorites is John Dower’s Embracing Defeat, which I recently read for the fifth or sixth time. This wonderfully accessible study of Japan during the Allied Occupation is a masterpiece of historical research and writing that has inspired a new generation of scholars to examine the history of Japan in the wake of World War II. From constitutional politics to military prostitution, Embracing Defeat addresses the occupation in ways that...[read on]

About Seeing Stars, from the publisher:

In Seeing Stars, Dennis J. Frost traces the emergence and evolution of sports celebrity in Japan from the seventeenth through the twenty-first centuries. Frost explores how various constituencies have repeatedly molded and deployed representations of individual athletes, revealing that sports stars are socially constructed phenomena, the products of both particular historical moments and broader discourses of celebrity.

Drawing from media coverage, biographies, literary works, athletes’ memoirs, bureaucratic memoranda, interviews, and films, Frost argues that the largely unquestioned mass of information about sports stars not only reflects, but also shapes society and body culture. He examines the lives and times of star athletes—including sumo grand champion Hitachiyama, female Olympic medalist Hitomi Kinue, legendary pitcher Sawamura Eiji, and world champion boxer Gushiken Yokoō--demonstrating how representations of such sports stars mediated Japan’s emergence into the putatively universal realm of sports, unsettled orthodox notions of gender, facilitated wartime mobilization of physically fit men and women, and masked lingering inequalities in postwar Japanese society.

As the first critical examination of the history of sports celebrity outside a Euro-American context, this book also sheds new light on the transnational forces at play in the production and impact of celebrity images and dispels misconceptions that sports stars in the non-West are mere imitations of their Western counterparts.

Learn more about Seeing Stars at the Harvard University Press website.

Dennis J. Frost is Wen Chao Chen Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Kalamazoo College.

The Page 99 Test: Seeing Stars.

Writers Read: Dennis J. Frost.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jason Brennan's "The Ethics of Voting"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The Ethics of Voting by Jason Brennan.

About the book, from the publisher:

Nothing is more integral to democracy than voting. Most people believe that every citizen has the civic duty or moral obligation to vote, that any sincere vote is morally acceptable, and that buying, selling, or trading votes is inherently wrong. In this provocative book, Jason Brennan challenges our fundamental assumptions about voting, revealing why it is not a duty for most citizens--in fact, he argues, many people owe it to the rest of us not to vote.

Bad choices at the polls can result in unjust laws, needless wars, and calamitous economic policies. Brennan shows why voters have duties to make informed decisions in the voting booth, to base their decisions on sound evidence for what will create the best possible policies, and to promote the common good rather than their own self-interest. They must vote well--or not vote at all. Brennan explains why voting is not necessarily the best way for citizens to exercise their civic duty, and why some citizens need to stay away from the polls to protect the democratic process from their uninformed, irrational, or immoral votes.

In a democracy, every citizen has the right to vote. This book reveals why sometimes it's best if they don't.

Read an excerpt from The Ethics of Voting, and learn more about the book at the Princeton University Press website.

Visit Jason Brennan's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Ethics of Voting.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Scott Mariani's "The Mozart Conspiracy"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Mozart Conspiracy by Scott Mariani.

About the book, from the publisher:

A centuries-old mystery. An "accidental" death. A conspiracy that may end in murder. Former British Special Air Service officer Ben Hope is running for his life. Enlisted by Leigh Llewellyn—the beautiful, world-famous opera star and Ben's first love—to investigate her brother, Oliver's, mysterious death, Ben finds himself caught up in a puzzle dating back to the 1700s.

At the time of his death, Oliver was working on a new book about Mozart. Though the official report states that Oliver died in a tragic accident, the facts don't add up. But as Ben and Leigh dig deeper, they find that Oliver's research reveals that Mozart, a notable Freemason, may have been killed by a shadowy and powerful splinter group of the organization. The only proof lies in a missing letter, believed to have been written by Mozart himself. When Leigh and Ben receive a video documenting a ritual sacrifice performed by hooded men, they realize that the sect is still in existence today and will stop at nothing to keep its secrets.

From the dreaming spires of Oxford and Venice's labyrinthine canals to the majes­tic architecture of Vienna, Ben and Leigh must race across Europe to uncover the truth behind the Mozart conspiracy before they become its next victims. In the tradition of Robert Ludlum and Dan Brown, Scott Mariani's The Mozart Conspiracy is an electrify­ing thriller and the start of an exciting new series.

Learn more about the book and author at the official The Mozart Conspiracy website.

The Page 69 Test: The Mozart Conspiracy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Reading list: unfinished novels

At the Independent, Gillian Orr came up with a brief reading list of unfinished novels, with one title each for the categories postmodernism, crime, modernism, autobiographical, and satire.

The satirical novel on the list:

Bouvard et Pécuchet by Gustave Flaubert

A year after his 1880 death, the unfinished Bouvard et Pécuchet was published. Flaubert intended it to be his masterpiece, surpassing all his other work, including, Madame Bovary. Although he was never able to complete it, fans of Flaubert have enjoyed his scathing view of the bourgeoisie.

Read about another novel on the list.

Bouvard and Pécuchet also appears on Michael Foley's top ten list of absurd classics, John Mullan's list of ten of the best unfinished literary works, and John Sutherland's list of the best books about listing.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jesse Bullington reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Jesse Bullington, author of The Enterprise of Death.

His entry begins:

The three books that have made the biggest impression on me lately are all from smaller presses, but one thing they all have in common is that they’re gorgeous editions. Stephen Graham Jones’s The Ones That Got Away, from Prime, is a stellar collection of short stories—some of the most literary, intelligent horror I’ve come across, and the pieces veer from the mundane to the allegorical to the wildly fantastical, so there’s something for everyone. Where else will you find a story that puts a knot in your throat at the power of a parent’s love for his child sharing space with a piece that pits a werewolf against...[read on]

Among the early praise for The Enterprise of Death:

"Bullington rolls out a vibrant, richly realized cast of original characters, including soldiers, eunuchs, and prostitutes. .... Bullington puts the theology and politics of the early Renaissance into perspective and probes them mercilessly. It’s never from an academic point of view, though Bullington clearly knows his history; rather, his penchant for dark fantasy comes alive (so to speak) in the fresh deployment of zombie-like undead, sentient hyenas, and even a clever re-imagining of the vampire mythos. Beautifully balancing putridity, profanity, and poignancy, Bullington renders The Enterprise Of Death resonant and achingly human—even as it brims with the unhuman."
--Jason Heller, the Onion AV Club

"This is the kind of book that beats you over the head, robs you of your expectations, and then forces you to watch as it tears those expectations to shreds, stomps upon them, and gleefully urinates upon the mess . . . all while you nod delightedly and ask to do it all again.... Quite possibly the strangest book I’ve read in a very long time, it’s also one I find myself thinking about reading once again (something I rarely do).
--Sally Sapphire, Bibrary Bookslut

"Jesse Bullington is one of those authors that’s like Forest Gump’s Box of Chocs. You’re never quite sure what you’re going to get but the odds are it’ll be something gooey, delicious and with the authors sense of humour probably with a wicked twist of something like Chilli. Presenting you with something that’s so good but just so mind-blowing at the same time. What unfurls in this his latest title is a story that the reader will love, he knows how to twist your point of view and he also knows how to do it so well that it’s a revelation each time he changes direction. Add to this a great understanding of pace, a masterful building of characters and a whole host of the weird and wonderful makes you wonder if he’s not Terry Gilliam’s Love Child."
--Falcata Times

Read an excerpt from The Enterprise of Death, and learn more about the book and author at Jesse Bullington's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart.

The Page 69 Test: The Enterprise of Death.

Writers Read: Jesse Bullington.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Jennifer Graber's "The Furnace of Affliction"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America by Jennifer Graber.

About the book, from the publisher:

Focusing on the intersection of Christianity and politics in the American penitentiary system, Jennifer Graber explores evangelical Protestants' efforts to make religion central to emerging practices and philosophies of prison discipline from the 1790s through the 1850s.

Initially, state and prison officials welcomed Protestant reformers' and ministers' recommendations, particularly their ideas about inmate suffering and redemption. Over time, however, officials proved less receptive to the reformers' activities, and inmates also opposed them. Ensuing debates between reformers, officials, and inmates revealed deep disagreements over religion's place in prisons and in the wider public sphere as the separation of church and state took hold and the nation's religious environment became more diverse and competitive. Examining the innovative New York prison system, Graber shows how Protestant reformers failed to realize their dreams of large-scale inmate conversion or of prisons that reflected their values. To keep a foothold in prisons, reformers were forced to relinquish their Protestant terminology and practices and instead to adopt secular ideas about American morals, virtues, and citizenship. Graber argues that, by revising their original understanding of prisoner suffering and redemption, reformers learned to see inmates' afflictions not as a necessary prelude to a sinner's experience of grace but as the required punishment for breaking the new nation's laws.

Learn more about The Furnace of Affliction at the University of North Carolina Press website.

Jennifer Graber is assistant professor of religious studies at the College of Wooster.

The Page 99 Test: The Furnace of Affliction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Larry D. Sweazy's "The Badger’s Revenge," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Badger’s Revenge by Larry D. Sweazy.

The entry begins:

The Badger’s Revenge is third novel in the Josiah Wolfe, Texas Ranger series. The book finds Josiah captured by two Comanche bounty hunters, far from home, and he must escape if he is ever to see his young son, again. Through luck, and fortitude, he does escape, and makes his way home, back to Austin, where he has to confront not only his past, but matters of the heart; whether he can allow himself to ever love again. Pearl Fikes is a widow, and a woman of privilege, while Josiah sees himself as a common man, with enough tragedy in his past to keep from ever risking love again. They two of them are worlds apart, but drawn passionately to each other. When Josiah makes his decision, it sets off a series of events that leaves him face to face with a scorned suitor, Pete Feders. Feders is the captain of Josiah’s Ranger company, and holds Josiah’s fate, and ultimately his life, in his hands.

Long before he was the host of the Academy Awards, and cut off his arm in 127 Hours, I thought that James Franco would be the best modern male actor to play Josiah Wolfe. Franco is shorter than I originally imagined Josiah, and his hair color and complexion is all wrong, but what is right, I think, is Franco’s ability to express internal emotions without saying a word. Josiah is a Civil War veteran, and has suffered the unimaginable loss of his three daughters and his wife, all the while, left to care for an infant son in 1874 Texas. Josiah’s struggle to find some sense of a normal life as he moves forward, being a Texas Ranger as well as a single father, is an emotional challenge, as well as a physical one that demands an actor who can grasp the entirety of Josiah’s life, and the deep core of his character. Franco offers an edgy style that would present Josiah to the world as far more than a cardboard Western hero.

Josiah’s sidekick, Robert Earl “Scrap” Elliot, is a polar opposite of him. Scrap is...[read on]

Watch the trailer for The Badger’s Revenge, and learn more about the book and author at Larry D. Sweazy's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The Badger’s Revenge.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Larry D. Sweazy and Brodi and Sunny.

Writers Read: Larry D. Sweazy.

My Book, The Movie: The Badger’s Revenge.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 deranged characters

Edward Docx is the author of The Calligrapher, Self Help, and The Devil's Garden.

For the Guardian, he named a list of literature's top ten deranged characters, including:

Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth

"Stop it! Stop it, please, being a maniac!" So begs the lover of our hero, Mickey Sabbath, on page 21. Epic, vital, savage, relentless, insane, existentially incandescent, horrifying, excruciating, not funny, very funny, this is the great tragicomic howl of a madman at full Shakespearean tilt. One of the greatest novels written in my lifetime.

Read about another novel on the list.

Sabbath's Theater is one of Howard Jacobson's five best novels on failure.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: Laurel Corona's "Finding Emilie"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: Finding Emilie by Laurel Corona.

About the book, from the publisher:

Woman is born free, and everywhere she is in corsets....

Lili du ChÂtelet yearns to know more about her mother, the brilliant French mathematician Emilie. But the shrouded details of Emilie's unconventional life—and her sudden death—are elusive. Caught between the confines of a convent upbringing and the intrigues of the Versailles court, Lili blossoms under the care of a Parisian salonniÈre as she absorbs the excitement of the Enlightenment, even as the scandalous shadow of her mother's past haunts her and puts her on her own path of self-discovery.

Laurel Corona's breathtaking new novel, set on the eve of the French Revolution, vividly illuminates the tensions of the times, and the dangerous dance between the need to conform and the desire to chart one's own destiny and journey of the heart.

Learn more about the book and author at Laurel Corona's website and diary.

Laurel Corona's books include The Four Seasons: A Novel Of Vivaldi’s Venice and Penelope’s Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: The Four Seasons.

My Book, The Movie: The Four Seasons.

The Page 69 Test: Penelope's Daughter.

The Page 69 Test: Finding Emilie.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Trilby Kent reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Trilby Kent, author of Stones for My Father.

Her entry begins:

I’m a huge Nadine Gordimer fan – I have been ever since we read ‘Once Upon a Time’ in school – so I was thrilled when the trade magazine that I write for sent me an early copy of her Life Times: Stories 1952-2007. It’s a great doorstop of a book, but I’m still...[read on]

About the book, from the publisher:

Corlie Roux’s farm life in South Africa is not easy: the Transvaal is beautiful, but it is also a harsh place where the heat can be so intense that the very raindrops sizzle. When her beloved father dies, she is left with a mother who is as devoted to her sons as she is cruel to her daughter. Despite this, Corlie finds solace in her friend, Sipho, and in Africa itself and in the stories she conjures for her brothers.

But Corlie’s world is about to vanish: the British are invading and driving Boer families like hers from their farms. Some escape into the bush to fight the enemy. The unlucky ones are rounded up and sent to internment camps.

Will Corlie’s resilience and devotion to her country sustain her through the suffering and squalor she finds in the camp at Kroonstad? That may depend on a soldier from faraway Canada and on inner resources Corlie never dreamed she had….

Read more about Stones for My Father at the publisher's website, and visit Trilby Kent's Red Room Writer Profile.

Kent studied History at Oxford University and Social Anthropology at the LSE. She has written for the Canadian and British national press and in 2010 was shortlisted in the Guardian's International Development Journalism Competition. She is the author of two novels for children (published in Canada and the U.S.) and one for adults (published in the U.K.) and is working on a PhD. She lives in London, England.

The Page 69 Test: Stones for My Father.

Writers Read: Trilby Kent.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Richard Pells's "Modernist America"

Today's feature at the Page 99 Test: Modernist America: Art, Music, Movies, and the Globalization of American Culture by Richard Pells.

About the book, from the publisher:

America's global cultural impact is largely seen as one-sided, with critics claiming that it has undermined other countries' languages and traditions. But contrary to popular belief, the cultural relationship between the United States and the world has been reciprocal, says Richard Pells. The United States not only plays a large role in shaping international entertainment and tastes, it is also a consumer of foreign intellectual and artistic influences.

Pells reveals how the American artists, novelists, composers, jazz musicians, and filmmakers who were part of the Modernist movement were greatly influenced by outside ideas and techniques. People across the globe found familiarities in American entertainment, resulting in a universal culture that has dominated the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and fulfilled the aim of the Modernist movement—to make the modern world seem more intelligible.

Modernist America brilliantly explains why George Gershwin's music, Cole Porter's lyrics, Jackson Pollock's paintings, Bob Fosse's choreography, Marlon Brando's acting, and Orson Welles's storytelling were so influential, and why these and other artists and entertainers simultaneously represent both an American and a modern global culture.

Learn more about Modernist America at the Yale University Press website.

Richard Pells is Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since 1945, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s, and Radical Visions and American Dreams: Culture and Social Thought in the Depression Years. He has been a visiting professor in many European countries, as well as in Brazil, Australia, and Indonesia.

The Page 99 Test: Modernist America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best journalists in literature

For the Guardian, John Mullan tagged a list of ten of the best journalists in literature.

One entry on the list:

Rita Skeeter

Rita guiltlessly fabricates stories for the Daily Prophet. When Harry Potter first meets her she shows him her Quick Quotes Quill in action; it writes: "Attractive blonde Rita Skeeter, forty-three, whose savage quill has punctured many savage reputations". Rita is a witch who uses her ability to transform into a beetle in order to eavesdrop on conversations.

Read about another journalist on the list.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone also appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best scars in fiction and ten of the best motorbikes in literature, Justin Scroggie's top ten list of books with secret signs. It is one of 15 classic science fiction and fantasy novels that publishers rejected. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is on John Mullan's list of ten of the best graveyard scenes in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Martin Kihn reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: Martin Kihn, author of the comic memoir Bad Dog (A Love Story).

His entry begins:

Like most writers, I'm always reading -- but rarely what people expect. No modern fiction or biographies. And although I've been known to write them, I don't read business books, which studies have shown are written at the eighth grade level (on average). I like to have three genres going at once, and these days I'm pretty consistently reading at least one in each of the following:

(1) Mysteries featuring dogs or cats -- This, oddly, is a thriving sub-genre of cozy mysteries. The gold standards are the first five entries in Lilian Jackson Braun's "The Cat Who ..." series, which are better than you think, and Susan Conant's Dog Lovers Mysteries. Right now I'm reading Curiosity Thrilled the Cat, first in a new series by Minnesota author Sofie Kelly. She gives the cats magical powers, which is a courageous way of solving the perennial genre problem: How can a...[read on]

Among the early praise for Bad Dog:

"This wry memoir of the human-dog bond is one that eschews the usual treacly sentimentality in favor of a raw, deeply sincere, and self-aware homage to this powerful bond."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Hola, surprise, surprise, grows enormous, while also growing out of control, ignoring commands, sprawling, immovable, across the bed. Add to this rowdy mix the fact that Kihn drinks way too much and that his wife, Gloria, is on the verge of leaving him, and you have a recipe for a surefire heartbreaking bestseller along the lines of Marley and Me."
—Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“This tale of a man who forgot he was a man and the dog who ultimately reminded him is the most touching, original buddy story I’ve come across in ages. Sit. Stay. Read.”
—Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air

“A modern masterpiece that captures the dark side of K9 love.”
—Julia Szabo, Dogster.com

Learn more about Bad Dog: A Love Story at Martin Kihn's website and the Bad Dog Facebook page.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Martin Kihn and Hola.

The Page 99 Test: Bad Dog.

Writers Read: Martin Kihn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Dennis J. Frost's "Seeing Stars"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Seeing Stars: Sports Celebrity, Identity, and Body Culture in Modern Japan by Dennis J. Frost.

About the book, from the publisher:

In Seeing Stars, Dennis J. Frost traces the emergence and evolution of sports celebrity in Japan from the seventeenth through the twenty-first centuries. Frost explores how various constituencies have repeatedly molded and deployed representations of individual athletes, revealing that sports stars are socially constructed phenomena, the products of both particular historical moments and broader discourses of celebrity.

Drawing from media coverage, biographies, literary works, athletes’ memoirs, bureaucratic memoranda, interviews, and films, Frost argues that the largely unquestioned mass of information about sports stars not only reflects, but also shapes society and body culture. He examines the lives and times of star athletes—including sumo grand champion Hitachiyama, female Olympic medalist Hitomi Kinue, legendary pitcher Sawamura Eiji, and world champion boxer Gushiken Yokoō--demonstrating how representations of such sports stars mediated Japan’s emergence into the putatively universal realm of sports, unsettled orthodox notions of gender, facilitated wartime mobilization of physically fit men and women, and masked lingering inequalities in postwar Japanese society.

As the first critical examination of the history of sports celebrity outside a Euro-American context, this book also sheds new light on the transnational forces at play in the production and impact of celebrity images and dispels misconceptions that sports stars in the non-West are mere imitations of their Western counterparts.

Learn more about Seeing Stars at the Harvard University Press website.

Dennis J. Frost is Wen Chao Chen Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies at Kalamazoo College.

The Page 99 Test: Seeing Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Paul McEuen's 6 favorite books

Paul McEuen is a professor of physics at Cornell University and author of the debut sci-fi thriller, Spiral. He named his six favorite books for The Week magazine.

One book on the list:

A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

How does a writer of humorous travelogues pen one of the best books about science ever written? Answer: He focuses on the antics of the scientists as much as their science. The stories of J.B.S. Haldane and his exploding dental fillings are unforgettable. Trust me: Read this book.

Read about another book on McEuen's list.

A Short History of Nearly Everything is on Linda Greenlaw's list of favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue