Seven top books for sports fans

Claire Zulkey is a writer who lives in Chicago.  Her books include the novel An Off Year. She also edits the aptly named website, Zulkey.com.

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Zulkey tagged seven books for sports fans, including:

Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile, by Nate Jackson

Football took a major hit this year (get it?) with the Frontline investigation on the tragic results that can come from too many tackle-related concussions, and the NFL’s Big Tobacco–like denial of any knowledge of such problems. On the other hand, this story was a bit like a pebble thrown at Goliath, considering the recent NPR story discussing the fact that Monday Night Football is such a huge ratings event, even a game between the two worst players in the league would out-earn viewers on any other show. While Jackson may not go down in the record books as a player, he’s received praise for this plainspoken look at the grind of life in professional football.

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nomy Arpaly & Timothy Schroeder's "In Praise of Desire"

This weekend's feature at the Page 99 Test: In Praise of Desire by Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder.

About the book, from the publisher:

Joining the ancient debate over the roles of reason and appetite in the moral mind, In Praise of Desire takes the side of appetite. Acting for moral reasons, acting in a praiseworthy manner, and acting out of virtue amount to nothing more than acting out of intrinsic desires for the right or the good, correctly conceived.

Reason, understood as the power to deliberate about what to think and do, is shown not to be the basis for our ability to act for reasons. Reason is rather the ability to perform certain mental actions which help us to become settled about what to think or do, and these actions are in turn motivated by desire. Thus reason is, if not a slave of the passions, then at least a useful tool deployed by desiring agents.

If desire were merely an impulse to act, then a moral psychology built on intrinsic desires might be unpromising. But intrinsic desire is much more than an impulse to act. Intrinsic desires are a natural kind, states of the brain which contingently but commonly cause impulses to act, as well as causing a rich array of feelings and cognitive effects (on attention, learning, and more). Understood in this way, intrinsic desires are more central to agency, good will, and virtue than any mere impulse could be.

In Praise of Desire shows that a desire-centered moral psychology can be richer than philosophers commonly think, accommodating the full complexity of moral life.

Learn more about In Praise of Desire at the Oxford University Press website.

The Page 99 Test: In Praise of Desire.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top music histories

Bob Stanley has worked as a music journalist, a DJ, and a record label owner and is the cofounder and keyboard player for the band Saint Etienne. He lives in London. His new book is Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Modern Pop Music. One of his top ten music histories, as shared with the Guardian:

The Heart of Rock and Soul by Dave Marsh

Marsh celebrates the 7-inch single, listing what he considers to be the 1,001 greatest 45s in order (I won't spoil it by telling you what's number one). I love the intriguing, unlikely connections he makes to show how the story of pop can be seen as a whole: Nolan Chance's eerie doo-wop hit The Wind is described as "a prophecy of Michael Jackson 20 years before he came along … if it had arrived in a meteorite shower it couldn't have been any spookier". The only thing wrong with the book is its clunky title, but then it was written in the mid-80s when pop was a dirty word.

Read about another book on the list.

Also see: Greil Marcus's five top books on rock music, Nile Rodgers's top ten music books, Samuel Muston's ten best music memoirs, and Kitty Empire's ten best rock autobiographies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ruth Dugdall's "The Sacrificial Man," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Sacrificial Man by Ruth Dugdall.

The entry begins:

To see one of my novels on the big screen is one of my favourite daydreams. For many writers, especially crime writers like myself, a movie deal is the Holy Grail.

But then the crunch question – who has the icy demeanour to play my uber-controlling, beautiful but brutalised Alice?

Alice is the central character in The Sacrificial Man, and she has agreed to kill a man, and eat him. She does not see herself as a criminal, but as a romantic heroine; she believes she is in a love story, that in helping her lover to die she was performing an act of devotion. Imagine Julie Christie, as she was in Doctor Zhivago, but with a knife.

Julie Christie being a bit too mature now, I think...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Ruth Dugdall's website.

My Book, The Movie: The Sacrificial Man.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Debbie Levy & Toby

This weekend's featured duo at Coffee with a Canine: Debbie Levy and Toby.

The author, on Toby's connection to the forthcoming picture book, Dozer’s Run:

I have a picture book coming out in the summer of 2014 about a Goldendoodle named Dozer who broke through his fence to join a charity half-marathon, ended up lost and then found, and raised more money for cancer research than any of the human runners in the race. It’s a true story, so while I can’t say that Dozer, a real dog, was inspired by Toby, I can say that my love for my own dog and my sense of her as a sentient being inspired my approach to presenting Dozer’s story in Dozer’s Run....[read on]

About Levy's recent novel, Imperfect Spiral, from the publisher:

Danielle Snyder's summer of babysitting turns into one of overwhelming guilt and sadness when Humphrey, her five-year-old charge is killed suddenly. Danielle gets caught up in the machinery of tragedy: police investigations, neighborhood squabbling, and, when the driver of the car that struck Humphrey turns out to be an undocumented alien, a politically charged immigration debate. Wanting only to mourn the sweet little boy she grew to love, Danielle tries to avoid the world around her, until a new and unexpected friendship with Justin, a boy she meets at the park, helps her find a way to preserve Humphrey's memory, stand up for what she believes in, and find her own path to forgiveness. Readers will be swept away by this heart-wrenching, but uplifting story.

Learn more about the book and author at Debbie Levy's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: Imperfect Spiral.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Debbie Levy and Toby.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: C.C. Humphreys's "The Blooding of Jack Absolute"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Blooding of Jack Absolute by C.C. Humphreys.

About the book, from the publisher:

Before he can become a man, he must first learn to kill...

London: 1759: Life is easy for Jack Absolute, a young raconteur loved by the ladies and envied by his schoolmates. With a place secured at university and a baronetcy at hand, his future seems bright—if he can just stay out of trouble. But when Jack is caught read-handed with a powerful lord's mistress, his good fortune is destroyed, forcing him to seek a new fate in the dangerous New World during the brutal Frecn and Indian Wars.

There, marooned amid hostile Indians and fierce colonial rivalries, the bawdy schoolboy disappears and a man emerges. Jack's survival depends on winning the friendship and help of the natives, but those come at a high price. In order to become the man they could eventually trust, Jack Absolute must first be blooded. And in order to be blooded, he must do the unfathomable. He must learn to kill.

The gripping prequel in C.C. Humphrey's riveting historical series, The Blooding of Jack Absolute sweeps readers into the ruthless wilds of North America and tracks the stunning transformation of a young dreamer into a daring, larger-than-life hero.

Learn more about the book and author at C.C. Humphreys's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Blooding of Jack Absolute.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "Somewhere in France"

William Morrow and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of Somewhere in France: A Novel by Jennifer Robson.

HOW TO ENTER: (1) send an email to this address:

(2) In the subject line, type Somewhere in France.

(3) Include your name (or alias or whatever you wish to be called if I email you to tell you you've won the book) in the body of the email.

[I will not sell or share your email address; nor will I be in touch with you unless it is to tell you you have won the book.  I promise.]

Contest closes on Monday, January 7th.

Only one entry per person, please.

Winner must have a US mailing address.

Read more about Somewhere in France and visit Jennifer Robson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen top biographies of 2013

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Joel Cunningham tagged fifteen of the best biographies of 2013 including:

Jim Henson: The Biography, by Brian Jay Jones:

The biggest surprise you’ll find in this 700-page examination of the life of the man who created the Muppets? He was actually a really nice guy, and none of the dozens of people interviewed have much dirt to spill about him (even his ex-wife!). Come to think of it, what else would you expect from the man who gave voice and life to Kermit?

Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Free book: "The House on the Cliff"

Bourbon Street Books and the Campaign for the American Reader are giving away a copy of The House on the Cliff: A Novel by Charlotte Williams.

HOW TO ENTER: (1) send an email to this address:

(2) In the subject line, type House on the Cliff.

(3) Include your name (or alias or whatever you wish to be called if I email you to tell you you've won the book) in the body of the email.

[I will not sell or share your email address; nor will I be in touch with you unless it is to tell you you have won the book.  I promise.]

Contest closes on Monday, January 7th.

Only one entry per person, please.

Winner must have a US mailing address.

Read more about The House on the Cliff and visit Charlotte Williams's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

What is Jonathan Miles reading?

Today's featured contributor at Writers Read: Jonathan Miles, author of Want Not.

His entry begins:

Keeper of the Moon: A Southern Boyhood by Tim McLaurin

I plucked this memoir from the shelf of a friend at whose house I was bunking while on book tour last month, thinking I’d revisit it. (Book tours, I’ve found, are usually best for re-reading, not reading; all that travel renders my brain too jangly & vulnerable for any additional new sensation.) But this, as I realized by the second page, was a trick of the mind. I interviewed Tim McLaurin (1953-2002) almost twenty years ago, about his novel Cured by Fire, and because we shared mutual friends, for whom trading outrageous Tim stories was a common pastime, I must’ve absorbed enough McLaurin lore to trick me, when I saw this book’s spine on the shelf,...[read on]

About Want Not, from the publisher:

A compulsively readable, deeply human novel that examines our most basic and unquenchable emotion: want.

With his critically acclaimed first novel, Jonathan Miles was widely praised as a comic genius “after something bigger” (David Ulin, Los Angeles Times) whose fiction was “not just philosophically but emotionally rewarding” (Richard Russo, New York Times Book Review, front cover).

Now, in his much anticipated second novel, Want Not, Miles takes a giant leap forward with this highly inventive and corrosively funny story of our times, a three-pronged tale of human excess that sifts through the detritus of several disparate lives—lost loves, blown chances, countless words and deeds misdirected or misunderstood—all conjoined in their come-hell-or-high-water search for fulfillment.

As the novel opens on Thanksgiving Day, readers are telescoped into three different worlds in various states of disrepair—a young freegan couple living off the grid in New York City; a once-prominent linguist, sacked at midlife by the dissolution of his marriage and his father’s losing battle with Alzheimer’s; and a self-made debt-collecting magnate, whose brute talent for squeezing money out of unlikely places has yielded him a royal existence, trophy wife included.

Want and desire propel these characters forward toward something, anything, more, until their worlds collide, briefly, randomly, yet irrevocably, in a shattering ending that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.

With a satirist’s eye and a romantic’s heart, Miles captures the morass and comedy of contemporary life in all its excess. Bold, unblinking, unforgettable in its irony and pathos, Want Not is a wicked, bighearted literary novel that confirms the arrival of a major voice in American fiction.

Read more about Want Not at Jonathan Miles's website.

Miles's first novel, Dear American Airlines, was named a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal.

The Page 69 Test: Dear American Airlines.

Writers Read: Jonathan Miles.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine of 2013’s top books about pets and animals

At Brain Pickings, Maria Popova tagged nine of 2013’s best books about pets and animals, including:

Most people who have observed animals even briefly wouldn’t question their emotional lives and their thriving inner worlds. While anthropomorphic animal tales have populated storytelling for as long as humanity has existed, in Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures — part of my collaboration with The New York Public Library — science writer Virginia Morell takes us on an unprecedented tour of laboratories around the world and explores the work of pioneering animal cognition researchers to reveal the scientific basis for our basic intuition about what goes on in the hearts and minds of our fellow beings, from the laughter of rats to the intellectual curiosity of dolphins.

Observing her puppy Quincy invent a game, Morell contextualizes how far the study of animal sentience has come in the last half-century:

Why was I surprised when our pup invented a game? I think because at that time, in the late 1980s— not so very long ago—scientists were still stuck on the question “Do animals have minds?” A cautious search was under way for the answer, and the researchers’ caution had spilled over to society at large. In those days, if you suggested that dogs had imaginations or that rats laughed or had some degree of empathy for another’s pain, certain other people (and not just scientists) were likely to sneer at you and accuse you of being sentimental and of anthropomorphizing — interpreting an animal’s behavior as if the creature were a human dressed up in furs or feathers.

She goes on to explore how modern science has illuminated such marvels as how birds think, how an elephant’s memory works, how ants learn, and what goes on in the imagination of dolphins.

Read about another book on the list.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Virginia Morell and Buckaroo.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Pippa Holloway's "Living in Infamy"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship by Pippa Holloway.

About the book, from the publisher:

Living in Infamy: Felon Disfranchisement and the History of American Citizenship examines the history of disfranchisement for criminal conviction in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the post-war South, white southern Democrats expanded the usage of laws disfranchising for crimes of infamy in order to deny African Americans the suffrage rights due them as citizens, employing historical similarities between the legal statuses of slaves and convicts as justification. At the same time, our nation's criminal code changed. The inhumane treatment of prisoners, the expansion of the prison system, the public nature of punishment by forced labor, and the abandonment of the idea of reform and rehabilitation of prisoners all contributed to a national consensus that certain categories of criminals should be permanently disfranchised.

As racial barriers to suffrage were challenged and fell, rights remained restricted for persons targeted by such infamy laws. Criminal convictions-in place of race-continued the disparity in legal status between whites and African Americans. Decades later, after race-based disfranchisement has officially ended, legislation steeped in a legacy of racial discrimination continues to perpetuate a dichotomy of suffrage and citizenship that is still effecting our election outcomes today.

Learn more about Living in Infamy at the Oxford University Press website.

Pippa Holloway is Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University.

The Page 99 Test: Living in Infamy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven notable (non-cookbook) books for foodies

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Kathryn Williams came up with seven notable (non-cookbook) books for foodies. One book she tagged for the food historian:

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste, by Luke Barr

All hail the trinity of modern cuisine. Fisher’s grandnephew draws from his great-aunt’s journals and letters to reconstruct the serendipitous 1970 get-together of the time’s greatest culinary innovators, a meeting that would incontrovertibly change the course of American cooking. Like eavesdropping on a salon where palate finally shook pretentiousness.

Read about another book on the list.

Learn more about Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nancy Bartley's "The Boy Who Shot the Sheriff," the movie

Now showing at My Book, The Movie: The Boy Who Shot the Sheriff – the Redemption of Herbert Niccolls Jr. by Nancy Bartley.

Her entry begins:

Since the lead would require a very strong child actor who move from 12 to 21, it's a big challenge. Asa Butterfield, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, would be my pick. He can move an audience to tears without over playing the part. The Niccolls role calls for someone who can be vulnerable and willing to please, yet at the same time has a side quite capable to lying, cheating and even killing.

The wonderful Tom...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Nancy Bartley's website, and follow her on Twitter.

My Book, The Movie: The Boy Who Shot the Sheriff.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best African fiction books of 2013

One title from the Guardian's list of the best African fiction of 2013:

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Noviolet Bulawayo was the 2011 Caine prize winner for her story Hitting Budapest, which was published in the Boston Review. Her new novel focuses on Darling, one of a ragtag band of children from the short story. Having realised the collective dream and made it to America she learns that paradise is never quite what is promised. We Need New Names was named on the 2013 Man Booker Prize shortlist, making her the first black African woman and the first Zimbabwean to be shortlisted for the prize.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Coffee with a canine: Tammar Stein & Scout

Today's featured duo at Coffee with a Canine: Tammar Stein and Scout.

The author, on how she and Scout were united:

My husband and I were stationed in Germany when we adopted Scout. The Germans have a dog-loving culture. Scout went everywhere with me. Restaurants, department stores, the bank, other than grocery stores where the food is out on the shelves, dogs are welcome everywhere. Strangers would stop to give her treats. Stores would offer her a bowl of water if she looked thirsty. It was a small shock when we returned after three years and couldn't even...[read on]

About Tammar Stein's new novel, Spoils:

When Leni's family hit the lottery, life got ... well, strange. Leni's parents built a mansion fit for royalty; they enrolled their daughter in the fanciest, most expensive private school in Florida; and they even bought Leni a dolphin for her 12th birthday (she made them take it back). But all of that extravagant living has caught up with them and the lottery money is about to run out—except for the large trust fund Leni will inherit on her 18th birthday, now only a week away. Leni is prepared to give her parents the money until her sister, Natasha, confesses a shocking secret—one that threatens to destroy their entire family. Leni has been ordered to fix it, but how?

Visit Tammar Stein's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Tammar Stein and Scout.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 69: John Burley's "The Absence of Mercy"

The current feature at the Page 69 Test: The Absence of Mercy by John Burley.

About the book, from the publisher:

A doctor in small-town Ohio must weigh the need to catch a killer against his fears for his family's safety in this extraordinary debut suspense novel

Just west of the Ohio River lies the peaceful town of Wintersville. It's a place where neighbors feel like family, the chief of police knows the residents by name, and the sound of children's laughter echoes along the streets.

But when a teenager is discovered brutally murdered in the woods, Dr. Ben Stevenson—the town's medical examiner—becomes entangled in an investigation that will force him to uncover the dark secrets of his seemingly quiet community and ultimately to confront a truth that will haunt him forever.

With its nerve-fraying plot twists and eerie portrait of suburban life, The Absence of Mercy is psychological suspense at its best—a remarkable debut that challenges as much as it thrills.

Visit John Burley's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: John Burley and Sterling.

The Page 69 Test: The Absence of Mercy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jung Chang's 6 favorite books

Jung Chang is the best-selling author of Mao: The Unknown Story and the memoir Wild Swans. Her latest book is Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China.

One of Chang's six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Written in the simplest language and with not a wasted word, this sublime book moved me to an almost unbearable degree when I first read it. The old man, his friend the boy, his fish (with whom he has such a complex relationship), and the great sea — I care about them all, and they are indelibly etched into my brain.

Read about another book on the list.

The Old Man and the Sea is among Kathryn Williams's thirteen best stories about pride, Scott Greenstone's twenty best books with fewer than 200 pages, Michael Palin's six favorite books, Robson Green's six best books, and Dave Boling's five best examples of how to structure a novel. N.M. Kelby has suggested that The Old Man and the Sea may be The Great Florida Novel.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pg. 99: Nicholas Agar's "Truly Human Enhancement"

The current feature at the Page 99 Test: Truly Human Enhancement: A Philosophical Defense of Limits by Nicholas Agar.

About the book, from the publisher:

The transformative potential of genetic and cybernetic technologies to enhance human capabilities is most often either rejected on moral and prudential grounds or hailed as the future salvation of humanity. In this book, Nicholas Agar offers a more nuanced view, making a case for moderate human enhancement—improvements to attributes and abilities that do not significantly exceed what is currently possible for human beings. He argues against radical human enhancement, or improvements that greatly exceeds current human capabilities.

Agar explores notions of transformative change and motives for human enhancement; distinguishes between the instrumental and intrinsic value of enhancements; argues that too much enhancement undermines human identity; considers the possibility of cognitively enhanced scientists; and argues against radical life extension. Making the case for moderate enhancement, Agar argues that many objections to enhancement are better understood as directed at the degree of enhancement rather than enhancement itself. Moderate human enhancement meets the requirement of truly human enhancement. By radically enhancing human cognitive capabilities, by contrast, we may inadvertently create beings (“post-persons") with moral status higher than that of persons. If we create beings more entitled to benefits and protections against harms than persons, Agar writes, this will be bad news for the unenhanced. Moderate human enhancement offers a more appealing vision of the future and of our relationship to technology.

Learn more about Truly Human Enhancement at Nicholas Agar's website and the MIT Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Truly Human Enhancement.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten funny books for kids

Jim Smith is the author of the Barry Loser series and winner of this year's Roald Dahl funny prize.

At the Guardian he shared his top ten funny books for kids, including:

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend

Still one of the funniest books I've ever read. The cover on my copy was the original coloured pencil illustration of the Noddy toothbrush in a glass next to a shaving brush and razor. I have lots of visual memories from it - his red socks and Noddy wallpaper, painted over with black.

Read about another book on the list.

Learn about Sue Townsend's six best books.

--Marshal Zeringue