Features archive | BookPage

by Martin Brady

What is it about movies? Well, just about everything. They are popular entertainment, a universal vehicle for storytelling, a reflection of society, a window into the past, a source of iconic imagery and, finally, lastingly accessible documents of our times. Books about movies and movie stars only extend and inform our fascination, and just in time for Oscar season, a new crop offers both challenging and lighter reading guaranteed to engage film fans.

Star power
Originally published in Great Britain, the Faber & Faber Great Stars series presents mini-biographies of some of Hollywood’s greatest stars. Noted film historian and lexicographer David Thomson is the author of the first four entries in the series. Each paperback is named for its subject—Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis and Ingrid Bergman. Each is priced at $14, with the compact coverage tapping out at 130 pages. In this case, brevity might be the soul of wit, presuming that Thomson’s somewhat affected insider’s tone and penchant for titillating sidebars—Davis’ abortions, the size of Cooper’s manhood, Bergman’s affairs and failures as a mother, Bogart’s harridan of a third wife—don’t distract the reader too much from the coverage of his subjects’ early lives, career development and greatest on-screen efforts. As to the latter, Thomson is solid in his assessments, and each key film is well placed into its unavoidably gossipy but often very eventful production context. Each volume features the star’s filmography, plus a smattering of black-and-white archival photos researched by Lucy Gray.

The director’s chair
Actors and actresses may draw the public’s obsessive attention, but the great guiding genius in filmmaking is the director, and two new coffee-table books offer riveting rundowns—in both bounteous pictures and incisive text—of the lives and careers of essential masters. Federico Fellini: The Films offers a keenly detailed narrative by Italian film critic, screenwriter, playwright, actor and Fellini biographer Tullio Kezich. With its rich selection of photos, mainly from the archives of the Fondazione Federico Fellini, this volume soars in its analysis of the man, his movies (often autobiographical in inspiration, focused on societal extremes and, in his later period, politically aware) and the vibrancy of his personalized filmmaking culture.

Coincidentally—or maybe not so—Fellini shared many traits with legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa: Both fortuitously avoided service in World War II, both were accomplished graphic artists (a skill that factored directly into their cinematic visions), both worked extensively and very consciously with a veritable family of performers and technical talents, and both, quite ironically, spent their later years making TV commercials. Furthermore, and perhaps most amazingly, both stayed married to one woman their entire adult lives. Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema shares with its sister volume the same reverent regard for its subject: his dogged devotion to his craft, his unique position as an important postwar commentator and his huge influence on later filmmakers. Film historian Peter Cowie’s thorough, erudite coverage accompanies some 200 photographs, mostly black-and-white (Kurosawa’s predominant milieu), though striking color shots from the auteur’s later films are well represented. Introductory essays by Martin Scorsese and Kurosawa expert Donald Richie help set the stage for the book’s pictorial and verbal one-two punch, exposing and explaining the director’s thematic approach to the human condition, Japanese society in particular and the traditions of the ancient samurai that infuse his best-known works. Both books argue forcefully for the rediscovery by younger generations of the vast scope and power of these artists’ great achievements.

Up in lights
Finally, for the more determined movie fan, we have Ira M. Resnick’s Starstruck: Vintage Movie Posters from Classic Hollywood. Long an aficionado of movie posters and other ephemera, Resnick followed up a Tinseltown stint as a photographer by founding the Motion Picture Arts Gallery in Manhattan and launching his more lasting career as a collector and dealer. This volume features nearly 300 glorious examples of promotional movie artwork and stills from Resnick’s impressive personal collection, with the items spanning from 1912 to 1962. Resnick’s text incorporates his personal story along with profiles of marquee film stars, important directors and history-making movies. The ubiquitous Scorsese, who many years before was Resnick’s instructor at NYU’s film school, contributes the introduction.

Character study

Feature by Tom Robinson

by Tom Robinson

In this feature exclusive to BookPage.com, each month, four authors are asked a question about the craft of writing to give readers an insight into how their favorite writers think and work. For February's author forum, BookPage brought together Ken Bruen, John Hart, Lisa Patton and Hank Phillippi Ryan to ask: What literary character do you find most memorable, and why?

KEN BRUEN
Tom Piccirilli’s The Fever Kill has my favourite character in mystery today. Crease has been beaten, jailed and thrown out of the wonderful named town of Hangtree. His father was the sheriff, ending his career in disgrace.

Crease has gone undercover and been under the radar for so long, he’s not sure if he’s a cop or mobbed up guy. This leads to some amazing pieces of writing as he struggles with the conflict. And Crease doesn’t have to go looking for trouble. He’s no sooner back in town than he impregnates his wild psychos boss’s girlfriend.

Crease is a continually fascinating character, his search for the killer of a little girl, who might well be his own father, his having to stay one step ahead of the insane boss and just about every inhabitant of the town who seem to want him dead. I’ve never quite read a character who literally burns with the fever that Crease does.

Piccirilli has a wicked sense of humour and the absurd and Crease reflects it at every turn. That the novel is beautifully written makes you yearn for more of Crease.

Ken Bruen’s hard-boiled crime fiction has made him well known among mystery novelists and a favorite of our Whodunit columnist Bruce Tierney, who has reviewed many of Bruen’s books. Find out more on his website.

JOHN HART
I can't possibly answer that question as it regards all books I've ever read, but in recent novels, I'm going to go with Ignatius Perrish, the protagonist in Joe Hill's new novel, Horns. Ignatius, "Ig" as he is known, wakes one day to find that he can't remember what happened the night before, only that whatever it was, it was bad. To complicate matters, he seems to have sprouted horns while he slept, horns and the ability to hear people's deepest, darkest secrets. I love conflicted characters, and how Ig chooses to use his new power makes him one of the most intriguing people I've ever met. Will he run from his new reality or embrace it? What happened the night before, and just what has he become? Trust me, the devil is in the details.

Since his debut in 2006, John Hart has become known for his compelling legal thrillers. Find out more on his website or read BookPage reviews of Hart’s work. Don't miss our Meet the Author feature with Joe Hill, coming in March.

LISA PATTON
I’m not sure that’s she’s the most intriguing but Lily Owens, the protagonist from The Secret Life of Bees, certainly comes close. She’s feisty. She’s strong-willed and above all determined. With a dauntlessness remarkable for a 14-year-old, Lily resolves to escape her abusive father. Tracking down any link at all about her deceased mother is Lily’s motivation to leave her hostile home life behind. Lily gains strength by watching Rosaleen, her black nanny, confront a group of racist white men. After landing in jail, Rosaleen escapes with the help of young Lily! I loved Lily from the first chapter when we learn that she can’t bring herself to call her opprobrious father “daddy” and instead calls him by his first name, T. Ray. With sheer determination to take care of herself, and at such a young age, Lily Owens has my fondest admiration.

Lisa Patton’s debut, Whistlin’ Dixie in a Nor’easter, hit shelves in September. Read the BookPage review here. For more information, see her website.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN
Most intriguing character? Well. I’ll confess. In college, while other girls were mooning over rock stars, I was in love with Henry V. I met him in Shakespeare’s Henry IV pt 1, and followed him, swooning, through his own play. Thinking back on that—turns out he had all of the characteristics of the classic compelling hero: Flawed at the beginning, dashing and impetuous. But brilliant, and clearly destined for gory. Romantic? Sensitive? Oh yes, remember the scene where he first meets Katherine of Aragon—the King of England is almost shy. And when the time came for him to prove his mettle in the glorious battle to save his nation—outnumbered five to one!–who doesn’t still well up at bit at the depth and soul and of his St. Crispin’s Day speech?

Thriller writer and award-winning investigative reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan is on the air at Boston's NBC affiliate. Along with her 26 EMMYs, she has won dozens of other journalism honors. She's been a radio reporter, a legislative aide in the United States Senate and an editorial assistant at Rolling Stone Magazine working with Hunter S. Thompson. Visit her website.

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Tom Robinson is an author publicist and media consultant working with authors across the country. Visit his website.

Fiction

Fiction

Rhyme and reason

Feature by Diann Blakely

by Diann Blakely

Why do so many inveterate readers shy away from poetry? If you count yourself as a member of this group, here’s your chance to break away from the book-club clusters whose participants have their noses buried in the latest novel or memoir—for it’s National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate a different genre.

Works in progress
This year we’re lucky enough to have an entirely fresh and fearless exemplar, the largely unknown Pearl London, who made poetry—or, to be more specific, poets—accessible to her students at the New School in Greenwich Village over the course of 25 years. The invited poets were required to bring not completed works but unfinished drafts, even jottings on envelopes, scribbled phrases or anything else that contributed to “works in progress as process.” The astonishing humility of poets who accepted the increasingly coveted summons included Nobel and U.S. poets laureate, as well as National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winners. Equally astonishing is the genesis of Poetry in Person: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with America’s Poets: some 100 cassette tapes, a complete catalog and, as editor and transcriber Alexander Neubauer tells us, “file upon file stuffed with copies of the [poets’] manuscripts and drafts” were found in a closet of London’s home after her death in 2003. Winnowing the tapes and papers of 100 poets to the 23 represented in this book was only the beginning of Neubauer’s task; each chapter also includes an introduction that locates the poets’ visits at a specific point in time: “who they were when they arrived at London’s doorstep, what they had written, what was later to come.” If you protest that you don’t live close to a doorstep through which someone like Maxine Kumin or Seamus Heaney is likely to pass, check out the rapidly growing numbers of special events and readings devoted to poetry in your hometown this month. Also take note of Robert Polito, author of the book’s postscript. As the director of the New School’s Writing Program, Polito was London’s boss as well as a participant in Works in Progress, as the seminar came to be known. Polito’s most recent addition to his string of much-lauded titles, a collection of poems called Hollywood and God, has been featured on the web in a variety of forms, including interviews, personal statements and archived audiovisual material. For a sample, go Googling.

New thinking
One of the most amusing chapters in Poetry in Person represents Robert Hass. His newest publication, The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems, has as its anchor “Meditation at Lagunitas,” the poem whose opening lines became, almost overnight, a cultural mantra: “All the new thinking is about thinking / Hence it resembles all the old thinking.” Hass came to London’s class with his thoughts somewhat awry, having mistakenly brought the very first draft of the poem, forgetting its three-line second page and thus having to quote it from memory. In addition to adding to his own canon—see “My Mother’s Nipples” for a jolt—during the past 30-odd years, Hass has worked tirelessly as a translator; and during his tenure in our nation’s capitol, he inaugurated “The Poet’s Choice” series for the Washington Post Book World. Hass’ aesthetic functions like Neubauer’s introductions in Poetry in Person, and perhaps it functions best in triplicate fashion: Whether writing about the maternal body, rendering into the American idiom a piece originally in Polish or turning our attention to a contemporary from our own country, Hass aims, sometimes mercilessly, to give the subject at hand such a real, palpable nature that we sense a new living presence, one demanding our acquaintance, on our doorstep.

A master wordsmith
Easily the best-known and most acclaimed poet with a new book available on shelves today is Derek Walcott, one of those Nobel winners Neubauer mentions as a visitor to London’s classroom. Perhaps coincidentally, White Egrets flows—or beats its wings and flies—more naturally out of Midsummer, the 1984 collection upon which Walcott was laboring at the time of his visit to Works in Progress, than any of his books since then. Nature collides with history, history with nature, with humankind and language acting as go-betweens, and no grander verbal or intellectual magnificence has been seen in our time. Not only does White Egrets convey the masterful wordsmith’s ability to combine near- Elizabethan diction with Caribbean patois and even American slang (“What? You’re going to be Superman at seventy-seven?”), but the collection also serves as a reminder of his dramatic achievements. Among these is The Haitian Trilogy, which resonates all the more tragically in the aftershocks of that country’s horrific earthquake, the effects of which will be felt for at least as long as the slave rebellion and the savage corruption of the Duvalier regimes.

The human element
Andrew Hudgins—who, like Polito and Deborah Digges (see box), represents the younger generation here—has garnered nominations in his prolific career for both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. American Rendering: New and Selected Poems gives ample proof for the critical esteem in which his work is widely held. Hudgins’ poems are often funny, hinging on a joke or wisecrack or malapropism, but human nature red in tooth and claw has always been his greatest theme, whether writing about the pain, fear and trauma that are an inevitable part of childhood, or the female victims of a serial killer (“It’s raining women here in Cincinnati”), or the three young men murdered by the Ku Klux Klan during Mississippi’s “Freedom Summer,” repeating and repeating their names, “Goodman, Cheney, Schwerner,” in the difficult litany required by the villanelle.

A light extinguished too soon
The poetry world reeled out of its accustomed orbit last spring when the news traveled that Deborah Digges had committed suicide at the age of 59. Fewer poets have, throughout their careers, been seemingly more life-affirming. We’re lucky to have been left, as part of Digges’ legacy, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart, a final collection of her work that will be published next month. In beautiful and multilayered poems such as “The Birthing,” we experience, through the poet’s words, not only a calf ’s fraught entrance into the world but also one of the means by which humans seek renewal—“[we] made love toward eternity, / without a word drove slowly home. And loved some more.”

How lucky too that Digges’ work is so readily, personally and manifestly available through audio and video archives—including YouTube, where Digges can be seen and heard reading the aforementioned poem. She also bequeathed to the world two memoirs full of the flora and fauna she loved: Fugitive Spring (1992), focusing on her Missouri childhood, spent largely in the apple orchard outside her house; and The Stardust Lounge (2001), recounting her travels and travails as a mother seeking to give a new life to a troubled son through empathetic immersion in the animal world. For those seeking a personal invitation into Digges’ life, and thus into her poems, these memoirs are doors that will always remain open.
Poet Diann Blakely’s most recent book is Cities of Flesh and the Dead (Elixir Press).

Business & Finance, Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts, Hobbies & Home Business & Finance

Reduce, reuse, recycle

Feature by Joanna Brichetto

by Joanna Brichetto

Here are three things to buy that will help you either redeem or get rid of a hundred others. This trio of spirited, pragmatic books exemplify the deceptively simple principle that less is more. What’s more (and therefore less!), they offer a sound set of tools to help you take back your living space, whether you’re clearing out your clutter, becoming more thrifty with your resources or reusing what you’ve already got.

62 Projects To Make With a Dead Computer is filled with fun and surprises, and an almost puritanical zeal for the redemption of “lost souls”—otherwise known as discarded electronics. Digital cameras, keyboards, PDAs, MP3 players, earbuds and drives are, to author Randy Sarafan, raw material ripe for creative repurposing. Most of us have at least a few obsolete bits lying about—a bundle of mystery cords and a cell phone or two—as well as the basic skills to transform them into something else entirely: a mouse pencil-sharpener, a scanner side table, a cable coaster. Some projects call for tricky work involving voltage and solder, but even if you don’t “do” electricity beyond changing a bulb and you can’t begin to pronounce solder (sod’- er), many creations can be managed with a glue gun and basic hand tools. The Floppy Disk Wall Frame, for example, is super easy and really quite spectacular. The circuit panel memo board with keyboard key magnets is simple, too, and just as gorgeous. Projects range from fun to practical, with category-defying wonders like the flat-screen ant farm and the iMac terrarium. Whether weird or wonderful (or both), each aims at nothing less than the intersection of art, technology and ecology.

A penny saved
Anxious to distinguish thrifty from cheap, Be Thrifty: How to Live Better with Less, edited by Pia Catton and Califia Suntree, begins with the lesson that “thrift” and “to thrive” are cognates. Thus, thrift should radiate positive associations, not miserly ones. To be thrifty is to thrive, to flourish. The editors present seven categories in which to flourish: home, garden/pet, food, family, personal care, leisure and financial stability. Each offers more than enough information to tweak or outright overhaul even the most profligate of habits. In the first chapter, we learn to clean and maintain our home and car more greenly, reducing utility and repair bills and generating less waste. Need to know about furnace filters, clogged toilets, tire inflation or gutters? You’ll find the big picture and the little details. The same goes for every other facet of everyday life—even the faucets. This jam-packed omnibus encourages an old-fashioned, no, timeless self-sufficiency, while keeping an eye on how our choices affect not just our ability to thrive, but the planet’s as well.

Clean and clear
What’s a Disorganized Person To Do? by Stacey Platt answers its titular question with its subtitle: “317 Ideas, Tips, Projects, and Lists to Unclutter Your Home and Streamline Your Life.” As if to underline my own need for such a guide, when I type the word “unclutter,” my word processor underlines it in red: The term is unknown to it and to me. But if all I have to do is consult this fat little book full of numbered, logically sequenced bits of clarity, packed with smart photos and arranged with color-coded tabs printed on the fore-edge, I am set. Clarity is a key term: The author, a successful professional organizer, says “clarity is the foundation for a joyous and accomplished life.” (I’ll have what she’s having, please.) The message couldn’t be clearer: Reducing clutter—not just finding cute ways to store it—sets us free. Even the most overwhelmed among us can jump right in, thanks to quick tips taming every room in the house. Learn what papers to save for taxes and for how long, where to put the newspapers, when to throw away cosmetics, how to organize a closet and why you should defragment your hard drive—plus 312 other things. The format is a pleasure to browse, but it is also wisely designed to answer targeted questions on demand. Pare down, wise up. Less, again, proves to be much more.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Mirror, mirror, on the wall: poetry books for one and all

Feature by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

Clever and delightful—those are the best words to describe Mirror Mirror, a new collection by noted poet Marilyn Singer. In her latest book, Singer has created her own new form of poetry, which she calls a “reverso,” a poem that reads the same backward and forward. “When you read a reverso down, it is one poem,” Singer explains. “When you read it up, with changes allowed only in punctuation, capitalization, and line breaks, it is a different poem.” She focuses on fairy tales, such as “In the Hood,” which first gives Little Red Riding Hood’s perspective, and then, when read the other way, tells the wolf’s side of the story. “Cinderella’s Double Life” tells her tale before and after the ball, while “Mirror Mirror” is a poem by both Snow White and her Wicked Stepmother.

Josée Masse’s accompanying art continues the double view in striking fashion, by dividing each scene in two. Older preschoolers will enjoy these poems, as well as elementary students, who are likely to want to write their own reversos.

For the fun of it
The theme of different points of view continues in Our Farm: By the Animals of Farm Sanctuary. Maya Gottfried wrote these poems in the voices of various animals, such as “It’s Good to Be a Kid,” by baby goats Ari and Alicia. These are humorous, short poems—good for preschoolers and young elementary students. The farm animals from the sanctuary in Watkins Glen, New York, come to life with the soft, up-close artwork of artist Robert Rahway Zakanitch. His pleasing style brings to mind the artwork of children’s illustrator Jane Dyer.

Allan Ahlberg and his late wife Janet are beloved for their Jolly Postman series, and Allan has a new title that will be immediately captivating to young poetry readers: Everybody Was a Baby Once. The humorous artwork of Bruce Ingman seals the deal, making this a book that will make children laugh out loud. Ingman’s art is simple, yet funny and full of action and expression. The poems include such hilarious selections as “Dirty Bill” (“I’m Dirty Bill from Vinegar Hill, / Never had a bath and never will”). These short verses are full of old-fashioned fun and reflect the British heritage of their author, but children from around the world will enjoy poems like “Soccer Sonnet,” which includes the line “Little Jack Horner / Scored straight from a corner.”

The fun continues in Name That Dog! Puppy Poems from A to Z. Peggy Archer has named each poem after a dog, such as a long-haired cocker spaniel named “Elvis,” who “wiggles and jiggles and dances around. He swings to the music with a rock ’n’ roll sound.” You’ll also meet “Houdini,” a mini-pinscher who escapes from his collars; “Melody,” a basset hound who sings; and a giant Saint Bernard named “Rex” (first initial: T). Stephanie Buscema’s artwork aptly defines the shining personality of each puppy. Buscema has worked for Marvel Comics, DC Comics and Disney, and her background is reflected in her lively, colorful illustrations, which are vibrant and sure to draw children in. Name That Dog! is a crowd-pleasing canine chorus.

Digging deep
Don’t be fooled by the cover of Can You Dig It?. With its big purple dinosaur, this volume looks like it might be yet another dinosaur book. Rest assured that it is not. Robert Weinstock has done a brilliant job of both writing and illustrating this clever book of verse. His wordsmithing is extraordinarily fun, with lines like these:

My great aunt was LuAnn Abrue,
The pal-e-on-tol-o-gist who,
Was famed for finding fossil poo,
Like giant T.rex number two.

With these poems about dinosaurs, archaeologists, Neanderthals and more, kids will be smiling, but adults may chuckle even more. Weinstock’s cartoon-style illustrations are eye-catchingly fun.

Over the years I’ve seen many poetry books by Douglas Florian, and I always find his gift of language and sense of nature to be particularly sensitive. That’s certainly the case with Poetrees, which is filled with odes to trees. Students will enjoy and learn from Florian’s short poems about trees like banyans, sequoias, Japanese cedars and dragon trees. There’s a glossary in the back, explaining, for instance, that monkey trees are originally from South America, and how they got their name. Florian’s evocative illustrations are made with gouache, colored pencils, watercolors, rubber stamps, oil pastels and collage on primed paper bags. This paper bag background gives the illustrations a unique textured look and added depth.

Nature’s wonders
Lee Bennett Hopkins has been creating anthologies of poetry for years, and I particularly like his latest collaboration with Caldecott Award-winning illustrator David Diaz, Sharing the Seasons: A Book of Poems. Diaz’s bold, bright colors and stylized, luminescent mixed media illustrations give this anthology a contemporary, edgy feel.

The poems are arranged by season, with an opening quote introducing each section, such as Longfellow’s “Spring in all the world! /And all things are made new!” Poets include Carl Sandburg, Marilyn Singer, Rebecca Kai Dotlich and more. The poetry is easily accessible, but not always predictable, such as Beverly McLoughland’s fun “Don’t You Dare,” which begins:

Stop! cried Robin,
Don’t you dare begin it!
Another tweety rhyme
With a redbreast in it!

One of my very favorites of this season’s poetry books is the beautifully illustrated and organized Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors. It’s a unique book that includes poetry, biology and ecology lessons, along with spectacular artwork. Author Joyce Sidman notes that 99 percent of all species that have ever existed are now extinct, and in this book she pays tribute to a variety of species that continue to thrive, such as bacteria, mollusks, lichen, sharks, beetles, ants, diatoms and humans. Each spread contains a short but comprehensive biological discussion of the species, a gorgeous illustration and a poetic tribute.

Sidman’s poems are fun and innovative. For instance, the text of the shark poem is laid out in the shape of a shark. Some are traditional, while “Tail Tale” is a free verse monologue humorously told by a squirrel. Becky Prange’s illustrations are arresting, informative and gorgeously filled with color. The book’s endpapers are a timeline showing when various forms of life appeared on Earth. Ubiquitous is a brilliant book that mixes art, poetry and science in imaginative ways, and is an excellent choice for home, schools and libraries.

A colossal poem
Emma’s Poem: The Voice of the Statue of Liberty is not a book of poetry; instead, it’s a picture book about one of the most famous poems in America. Writer Linda Glaser has created a lovely biography of Emma Lazarus, who in 1883 wrote a poem called “The New Colossus” that is engraved on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Her poem has become immortal, as though the Statue of Liberty itself were speaking, saying: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Glaser’s text is interesting and informative, making history come alive in storybook fashion. Claire A. Nivola’s watercolor and gouache illustrations are rich in color and historical detail, propelling the story forward while showing the lifestyles of the day.

Lazarus was born in 1849 to a wealthy Jewish family in New York City. This book explains how she began helping immigrants at Ward’s Island in New York Harbor, and how she began writing about immigrants for newspapers and in poems. Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” when she was 34 years old. She died four years later of Hodgkin’s Disease, before the Statue of Liberty was erected—although she wrote her poem to help raise money for its pedestal. Emma’s Poem is a superb book for elementary-age children interested in our nation’s history and values.

Alice Cary writes from her home in Groton, Massachusetts.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Sense of Wonder: Exploring artificial intelligence

Feature by Sean Melican

by Sean Melican

This month’s picks take us from the exciting world of artificial intelligence to that of a criminal genius to the very best best-of-the-year collection.

One of the most wildly anticipated technological feats possible in our lifetime is the development of genuine artificial intelligence. Luckily for us, Robert J. Sawyer has written a series covering a wide range of the issues and obstacles surrounding AI, including perception, tactility, beauty, language, game theory, neurophysiology and morality. In WWW: Watch, the second book in a trilogy, teenager Caitlin Decter continues to discover the visible world after receiving her eyePod implant. Webmind, the emergent AI she has awakened, grows into a full being of its own, but is discovered by American spook agencies and the military—who, ironically, are determined to destroy any entity with the potential for evil, regardless of actual intent or action. As the agencies close in, Webmind announces its existence and demonstrates its beneficence. Sawyer covers an astonishing breadth of concepts, but perhaps does so at the expense of depth; for instance, Webmind’s massive social engineering comes with surprisingly little cost. If Sawyer is a bit overly optimistic about the future of AI, his writing is still a welcome breath of fresh air after decades of machine intelligences portrayed as necessarily inimical to human existence. Webmind may never exist or may arise under vastly different circumstances, but Sawyer has given us a wonderful primer for our potential future.

Twin trouble
Gene Wolfe has always written eloquently about the plasticity of identity and the subjectivity of the narrator—indeed, his last name is now an adjective describing such stories—but never has he so thoroughly entwined these two things as in The Sorcerer’s House. In a series of letters, the book’s narrator, Bax, tells us he is a recently released, exceptionally well-educated convict who has been given a house haunted by, among other creatures, a Japanese shape-shifter, a werewolf and twin brothers. But Wolfe being Wolfe, the story is not as obvious as it first appears. Bax is himself a twin whose brother George is the ‘good’ one—though with a short and violent temper—while Bax has always been the ‘bad seed.’ Such duality also exists in the brothers who haunt Bax’s house, but at one point the mysterious brothers’ behaviors make us wonder if George and Bax’s roles are perhaps reversed. Bax writes of the fantastic events only to his brother and his brother’s wife, while he mentions nothing of these odd occurrences to a friend from prison; the pedestrian tone in these letters is in sharp contrast to those written to George. Since everything Bax tells us must be viewed with suspicion, his apologetic and contrite narrative is almost certainly a fabulous invention intended to cover up real-estate fraud. Or is it? While The Sorcerer’s House is not the best of Wolfe’s stories, it is nevertheless an important addition to a giant’s oeuvre.

Pick of the month
An anthology of the best of the year is more a reflection of its editor’s vision of which stories are important than it is an objective collection. While there are a few traditional stories in Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four involving first contact, time travel and so forth, it is the stories that directly address sexuality and gender that make this a must-have volume. The science fictional and fantastical aspects of Nicola Griffith’s “It Takes Two,” Andy Duncan’s “The Night Cache” and Ellen Klages’ “Echoes of Aurora” are less important than the three stunningly beautiful love stories between women that are depicted within. Besides a powerful exploration of identity, Kij Johnson’s graphically sexual story “Spar” is unlike any other first-contact story. Sara Genge’s “As Women Fight” extrapolates sex roles in a dichogamous species, while Kelly Link’s “The Cinderella Game” examines gender type in fairy tales. And Rachel Swirsky’s “Eros, Philia, Agape” combines parental roles, robotic free will, identity, sex and love into a bittersweet broken romance tale. It is a rare feat for one story to use genre tropes to radically rewrite Western assumptions; to have multiple such stories in one volume is a singular, priceless accomplishment. Quite frankly, this is a book that should top every science fiction and fantasy fan’s need-to-read list.

In alphabetical order, Sean Melican is a chemist, father, husband and writer.

This month’s picks take us from the exciting world of artificial intelligence to that of a criminal genius to the very best best-of-the-year collection.

One of the most wildly anticipated technological feats possible in our lifetime is the development of genuine artificial intelligence. Luckily for us,…

Top 20 Books of 2010—so far

Feature by the editors of BookPage

by the editors of BookPage

From January 1 until March 31, 2010, the following titles were the most-viewed new books on BookPage.com. How many have you read? Which book will be the top pick of 2010? Weigh in on The Book Case.

1. Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
2. This Book is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson
3. The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
4. Secrets of Eden by Chris Bohjalian
5. Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters
6. The Next Best Thing by Kristan Higgins
7. The Poker Bride by Christopher Corbett
8. Safe from the Neighbors by Steve Yarbrough
9. Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen
10. House Rules by Jodi Picoult
11. Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert
12. The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale
13. A Mountain of Crumbs by Elena Gorokhova
14. The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow
15. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
16. Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart by Beth Pattillo
17. The Three Weissmanns of Westport by Cathleen Schine
18. The Privileges by Jonathan Dee
19. Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler
20. Roses by Leila Meacham

From January 1 until March 31, 2010, the following titles were the most-viewed new books on BookPage.com. How many have you read? Which book will be the top pick of 2010? Weigh in on The Book Case.

1. Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth…

Business & Finance, Memoir

Memoir Business & Finance

Lessons for life’s journey

Feature by Deanna Larson

by Deanna Larson

Cap, gown, diploma: now what? Having many options can be as difficult as having none, but the risk-taking and wisdom in these books will help any new grad make the important decisions.

A YEAR OF CAREERS
After graduating from college, Sean Aiken was overcome with pressure to live up to his potential. Still living in his parents’ basement at 25, searching job boards and newspaper ads, he thought: Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly what these jobs were like before committing to them? The One-Week Job Project documents Aiken’s brazen, funny and often fascinating search for the job that will make him happy (and pay the bills). Aiken starts by accepting an offer to be a bungee “jump master,” a fit symbol for his plunge into uncertainty. Then, using connections and media buzz to find work, he travels more than 46,000 miles in a year-long journey, taking on 52 jobs from snowshoe guide, florist and dairy farmer to NHL mascot, Air Force recruit and firefighter. Along the way, he notes the salary of each position and what he took away from the experience. In the end, he concludes that a career is “merely a vehicle to fulfill our passion”—and that happiness depends greatly on your co-workers, and the chance to do meaningful work.

SEARCHING FOR SATISFACTION
What do you do with your life when you’re the offspring of a billionaire, expected to use Dad’s money to zoom to the top? If you’re Peter Buffett, son of renowned investor Warren Buffett, you ditch the silver spoon and forge your own path. Buffett, now an Emmy Award-winning producer and composer, details his road to personal and professional accomplishments in Life Is What You Make It. When he reached adulthood, Buffett received a relatively small inheritance (under six figures), along with fatherly advice to find what made him happy and try to help others. The modest sum allowed him to discover a passion for music and spend a few frugal years getting established without worrying about the bills. Buffett shares what he learned working his way up in the competitive world of TV and film composing in thoughtful, inspiring sections including “No One Deserves Anything” and “The Gentle Art of Giving Back.” He believes that anyone can have the “advantages” of discipline, integrity and vision that produce the best careers—and the best lives.

LOST AND FOUND
Like most of us, Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett and Amanda Pressner talked about quitting their jobs (in their case, high-powered New York media jobs) to backpack around the world. The difference: They actually did it. The Lost Girls is the story of their 60,000-mile journey, told from their perspectives as newbie world travelers and searchers. The book places the reader smack-dab in the moment as the three friends hike up for sunrise over Machu Picchu, try to design a volunteer project for orphaned girls in Kenya (their solution is heartwarming) and discover a mystical $4 day spa near a forest temple in Laos. There are amusing and sometimes frightening culture clashes aplenty, but the real appeal of the story is the long road they take together, each supporting the others on a soul-searching quest to create a life that matters.

Cap, gown, diploma: now what? Having many options can be as difficult as having none, but the risk-taking and wisdom in these books will help any new grad make the important decisions.

A YEAR OF CAREERS
After graduating from college, Sean Aiken was overcome with…

Comics, Graphic Novels & Comics

Graphic Novels & Comics Comics

When worlds collide

Feature by Becky Ohlsen

by Becky Ohlsen

The unifying theme for the latest batch of comics and graphic novels is the blending of two worlds that are usually thought of as separate: fiction and reality, artists and material, families and their ancestors.

Confronting the truth
Even before you peek inside, it’s clear that The Unwritten is an unusual book. The extremely cool cover, by Yuko Shimizo, shows someone reaching or falling out of a cloud of tangled words in the sky, through a blank distance and into an open book. Simple but wild, it also turns out to be a perfect reflection of the story. Volume 1 collects the first five issues of the ongoing series, a labyrinthine metafictional tale about the art and power of storytelling. The art is beautiful if not earth-shattering, but the plot takes serious risks—and is deeply rewarding. It hinges on Tom Taylor, the son of a man who wrote a Harry Potter/Books of Magic-type series of books, the star of which was named Tommy Taylor. The series ended without its final volume, on a cliffhanger, and fans are still rabid. Tom’s dad is long gone, but the younger Taylor still makes the comic-convention circuit, signing autographs and trying to maintain the boundary between his own personality and that of the fictional hero based on him. Mostly he succeeds. But when a probing question at one convention raises public suspicions about Tom’s real origins, the line between fiction and real life blurs. Add to that a creepy mansion, a mad vampire, a couple of possible femmes fatales, a hit man whose glove dissolves objects into words, a winged cat and Rudyard Kipling, and—well, we can’t wait for Volume 2.

Chabon’s Escapist comes to life
Like The Unwritten, The Escapists is about the joy of storytelling and the often insubstantial membrane that separates the fictional world from the physical one. Inspired by Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, it features a collaboration of artists bringing to life Brian K. Vaughan’s story of three youngsters who buy the rights to a long-dead comic book character, the Escapist, and attempt to revive him. The blend of styles works perfectly to move the story between the real world and the comic-within-the-comic, which naturally move along parallel tracks. The dark, large-paneled, painterly pages of the new Escapist book are simply gorgeous, and the interplay between the two worlds in the book is not only entertaining but also makes some sharp observations about the origins of inspiration, life’s impact on art and vice-versa, and the difficulty of recognizing which “reality” is more important. There’s also a charming introduction by Chabon.

One town, two worlds
Positioned for young readers, but with a richness of ideas and atmosphere that adults will equally enjoy, Mercury, the latest from Hope Larson (Chiggers), spans two worlds: a farm community in Nova Scotia in 1859, and the same setting 150 years later. In the first, Josey Fraser falls for the mysterious stranger Asa Curry, who turns up on her family’s doorstep with a proposition. While stealing Josey’s heart, he persuades her father to help him dig for gold on the family’s land, a project that leads eventually to disaster. A century and a half down the road, in the same spot, teenage Tara Fraser is struggling to work her way back into public school life after her family’s house, where she was home-schooled, burns down. The two stories converge when Tara comes across a necklace with a strange power to pull her toward history and a kind of multigenerational redemption. Larson’s spare line drawings are great at evoking movement and emotion—family tensions around a dinner table, for instance—and they lend themselves nicely to her touches of the supernatural.

A peek at the creative process

Anyone interested in how comics end up looking the way they do will be fascinated by Rough Justice, a behind-the-pages study of the work of Alex Ross, the legendary artist behind the Kingdom Come epic as well as various famous character re-imaginings. Through the pencil and ink sketches that eventually become Ross’ characteristically gorgeous paintings, you can see the artist experimenting with his characters, their expressions, costumes, postures and even the lines on their faces, all in the service of the larger story. How many crinkles should the Kingdom Come Superman have beneath his eyes? How much gray in the temples will look right? There are also proposals for new looks for reinvented characters, such as one story idea in which a disabled Batgirl spends some time in the Lazarus Pit and comes out healed but much darker. For fans, witnessing the artist/writer’s creative process at its very beginning is a treat, and it doesn’t hurt that the art looks incredible even in these embryonic stages.

Becky Ohlsen is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon.

Confronting the truth
Even before you peek inside, it’s clear that…

Children's & YA, Middle Grade, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book Middle Grade

Kids make a difference on Earth Day

Feature by Eliza Borné

by Eliza Borné

April 22, 2010, is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, and there is no time like the present to be an environmental advocate. To teach children about the consequences their actions have on plants and animals—and how small changes can help Mother Nature—picture books provide important lessons, simple instructions and fun illustrations.

Veteran author and illustrator Todd Parr (Reading Makes You Feel Good) gives children concrete reasons to care for the planet in The EARTH Book, a colorful first-person story. No task is too small; even the little things can “make a BIG difference.” For example, “I take the school bus and ride my bike because . . . I love the stars and I want the air to be clear so I can see them sparkle.” In passages such as these, Parr demonstrates the relationship between our choices and the environment: recycling equals a cleaner planet, using less bath water means helping the fish, bringing reusable bags to the market can conserve trees. The bright and blocky illustrations convey the diversity of life on earth, from carrots in the ground to big blue whales. Simple text delivers a powerful message, so early readers can discover—on their own—ways to commemorate Earth Day.

Save the animals, or they’ll be gone
Frances Barry celebrates the grandness of our endangered species—and how we can help them survive—in Let’s Save the Animals. The paper collage, lift-the-flap illustrations are a delight, and children will be entranced by the forest of the orangutan, the sea of the dolphin and the meadow of the butterfly. That joy will be sobered by the small-print facts on every page, such as one stating, “Amur tigers live in the forests of eastern Russia, which are being cut down.” The book’s final words pack a punch, stating that if we don’t save the animals, they will be “gone forever.” This message is echoed by a clever visual trick: One side of the flap shows silhouettes of endangered animals, but the opposite side of the flap is blank, showing a vast nothingness. The story ends on a positive note, however, explaining simple actions children can take to protect and save animals, from visiting a wildlife sanctuary to recycling paper.

“Cooking” for Mother Nature
Compost Stew is a rhyming how-to book on the importance of composting, the simple act of turning kitchen and yard waste into nutrient-rich soil. Mary McKenna Siddals’ energetic text shows how fun and easy it can be to turn “apple cores, bananas, bruised, coffee grounds with filters, used” into something “dark and crumbly, rich and sweet.” Ashley Wolff provides collage-style illustrations that portray a bustling and happy neighborhood where everyone is eager to help. Upon finishing this book, readers are bound to want to get in on the action, asking their parents about starting a compost heap. And Siddals ensures that their curiosity does not end with her book; she provides resources for aspiring composters, such as a web address with further instructions. The final page in the book is a “Chef’s Note”—or information on what (and what not) to put in a compost. (“Earth? Yes! Meaty? No! Synthetic? Stop! Natural? Go!”) This Earth Day, why not make a resolution to throw fruit peels, dryer lint and more in a compost instead of the trash can?

It’s the little things that count
We Are What We Do is a global movement to change the world one step at a time, based on the equation “small actions x lots of people = big change.” With 31 Ways to Change the World, the organization took suggestions from 4,386 children and compiled a list of earth-changing habits and activities, from “Don’t sing in the shower” (because shorter showers mean less wasted water) to “Stand up for something.” The book, which is intended for a middle-grade audience, is filled with cartoons, scribbles and photographs and has the feel of scrapbook. And it’s not all serious. Some tips, like “Talk trash to your parents,” are sure to leave kids in giggles (and energized to make a difference). The last tip in the book should be the most inspiring; readers are invited to fill in the blank with their own invented action to change the world, emphasizing the fact that saving the planet can start with you.

Children's & YA, Picture Book

Children's & YA Picture Book

Dear old Daddy

Feature by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

In my house, it seems, daddies can do no wrong—especially in the eyes of my 11-year-old twin daughters. (The same cannot always be said for dear old mom!) In honor of Father’s Day, here are four new picture books that salute proud papas everywhere.

Young children will enjoy the gentle rhymes of Sherry North’s Because I Am Your Daddy, illustrated by Marcellus Hall. This follow-up to Because You Are My Baby begins: “If I were a pilot, I would fly you to your school. / Your friends would all look up and say, ‘Your daddy is so cool!’ ”

The rhymes continue with the father voicing many “If I were” thoughts about being a baseball player, paleontologist, park ranger, movie director and all sorts of exciting professions. With each imagined activity, daddy, daughter and her dolly have an exciting adventure. This poem of mutual admiration ends with: “And if I were a wizard, I would make your dreams come true. / Because I am your daddy, I would do anything for you.”

Daddy/daughter bedtime reading doesn’t get any cozier. The text is accompanied by Hall’s fun and stylishly retro watercolors. His airline pilot and robot look like they could have come from the 1960s, while his use of color is lovely, especially in a northern sky night scene.

What's in a name
Acclaimed children’s author Jane Yolen wrote the delightful tribute My Father Knows the Names of Things in honor of her late husband, David Stemple. The encyclopedic dad in this book knows the names of many wonderful things, including mosses, insects, fish, cows, stars, cats and candies.

Stéphane Jorisch’s illustrations (watercolor, gouache, pen and ink) are whimsically delightful, making the father/child explorations great fun. The explorers wade through hugely tall sunflowers, head for the clouds in a biplane and explore the planets from an amusement park ride. Everything is fun and full of expression in Jorisch’s world—even a row of colorful birds in a cage.

Standing tall
Daddy Devotion is also alive and well in My Father is Taller Than a Tree, by another award-winning children’s author, Joseph Bruchac. This rhyming text features a variety of boys with their dads: old, young, white, black, Hispanic, Asian and even a blind dad. Wendy Anderson Halperin’s pastel illustrations show fathers and their sons enjoying splendid times together—playing the piano, walking on the beach, reading, playing chess, painting a doghouse. These tender scenes conclude with a panorama of sons and their dads, and this lovely line: “When I grow up and have a kid / we’ll do all the things that Dad and I did.”

Saluting stepfathers, too
Finally, blended families will adore Dad and Pop: An Ode to Fathers and Stepfathers. Writer Kelly Bennett celebrates how both a father and a stepfather can be equally fun and loving in very different ways. For instance, both father and stepfather bike (one on a bicycle, one on a motorcycle) and both love music (one goes for the symphony while the other rocks out). Paul Meisel’s colorful, energetic illustrations show dads with their daughters enjoying all sorts of entertaining outings together.

Young children…

Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction, Women's Fiction

Nonfiction Fiction Women's Fiction Memoir

Selections for the sultry season

Feature by the editors of BookPage

by the editors of BookPage

Reading in the summertime has a different pace. Life slows down as the weather heats up, leaving readers with more time to savor a special book. Whether you’re heading to the beach, cooling off in the mountains or simply relaxing at home, add one of these recommendations to your summer reading list.

A MASTER OF APPALACHIAN FICTION
Author Sharyn McCrumb has forged a successful career by dipping her pen into the inkwell of Appalachian culture and conveying the region’s stories to the rest of the world. A resident of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains herself, McCrumb has the unique ability to paint mythic portraits from the past and present of the people who call this region home.

Her latest offering, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, skewers folks who distort the truth, notably big-city journalists who have arrived in 1930s rural Virginia to cover a murder trial. The case makes headlines only because it contains sensational elements sure to sell papers: A beautiful, educated young teacher is on trial for killing her coal-miner father.

McCrumb introduces two veteran journalists, Rose Hanelon and Henry Jernigan, as well as their accompanying photographer Shade Baker, as the vultures that promptly descend upon Wise County as soon as the accused, Erma Morton, is booked for the crime. Instead of communicating the facts, these three will relay whatever headlines are most likely to increase the paper’s circulation. In Rose’s own words: “What you emphasized and what you omitted told the viewers what they ought to think of the subject.”

There is one honest, fledgling writer in the ranks of gawkers as the court case unfolds. Newbie reporter Carl Jenkins struggles with separating fact from opinion as he tries to make a name for himself.

Readers may recognize Jenkins’ young cousin, mountain psychic Nora Bonesteel—introduced in McCrumb’s beloved Appalachian Ballad books—who arrives at Carl’s urging to help forecast the trial’s outcome.

McCrumb demonstrates her usual mastery of historical detail and pointed description of place in The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, a finely spun tale where neither guilt nor innocence is evident until the final page is turned.

—Lizza Connor Bowen

A LOVABLE HEROINE FROM ISAACS
Does anyone create more likeable characters than best-selling author Susan Isaacs?

I thought my favorite Isaacs heroine was a toss-up between feisty Amy Lincoln, the investigative reporter in Any Place I Hang My Hat, and suburban amateur detective Judith Singer of Compromising Positions and Long Time No See. But now, after reading Isaacs’ latest, As Husbands Go, there’s a new contender.

Susie B. Anthony Rabinowitz Gersten lives on Long Island with her four-year-old triplets and husband Jonah, a successful plastic surgeon, doting father and devoted husband—which makes it kind of strange when he turns up murdered in the apartment of Manhattan call girl Dorinda Dillon, stabbed in the chest with a pair of scissors.

Anxious to solve the high-profile case, detectives quickly determine that Dorinda is the culprit. She’s arrested and charged, but Susie can’t shake the feeling that everyone—police, prosecutors, her own family—is missing some piece of the puzzle. To make matters worse, her high-society mother-in-law has suddenly become Susie’s biggest critic, accusing her of pressuring Jonah to work too hard to maintain their comfortable lifestyle. And neighbors are gleefully (but not subtly) whispering about this unexpected turn of events for what seemed like the perfect family.

With her usual keen eye for detail and humor, Isaacs takes a hard look at the sometimes impenetrable, often absurd social politics of upscale New York. Susie is a winning heroine: wry, smart and self-deprecating. Fast-paced and immensely satisfying, As Husbands Go is a novel about a woman trying to prove that her charmed life was no fairy tale, and in the process learning a lot about herself.

—Amy Scribner

ANOTHER BINCHY WORTH WATCHING
If nice guys always finish last, then David, the hero of Chris Binchy’s American debut, Five Days Apart, is doomed from the start. Sweet and unassuming, he has navigated his college social life by hiding behind his gregarious friend, Alex, an immature heartbreaker who never seems to take anything seriously. Then, at a party just before graduation, David is struck by a woman in a way he never has been before, and he turns to Alex for romantic help. But Alex is as smooth as David is awkward, so he inevitably moves in on Camille himself, leaving David devastated.

David graduates from college and outwardly does everything he should—he gets a job in a bank, earns praise from his superiors and becomes a grown-up. But he can’t forget Camille, and eschews any attempt to get over her or meet anyone else. Meanwhile, Alex and Camille have moved in together, though Alex is sputtering through his stalled college career and can’t seem to make any real commitment either to her or to himself. David isolates himself, from the world and particularly from Alex, and the demise of their lifelong friendship and David’s staggering loneliness is detailed with particular insight.

Binchy—a bestseller in Ireland and the nephew of beloved author Maeve Binchy—tackles the age-old issues of love, friendship, loneliness and ambition with a surprisingly nuanced hand. There are some flaws here—the story is so simple and timeless that it doesn’t always feel completely fresh, and David’s total social paralysis undermines his narrative sympathy at times. But where Binchy excels is his subtle commentary on this new generation, clearly stunted by an unparalleled amount of choice. The ways in which David and Alex treat their freedom—and friendship—is fascinating, far beyond their conflict with Camille, and their dilemma makes this perceptive debut stand out from America’s lackluster lad lit scene.

—Rebecca Shapiro

A LIGHT, DREAMY READ
Francesca, Louise Shaffer’s heroine in Looking for a Love Story, won the publishing jackpot. Yesterday she was an unheard-of writer. Today she is a best-selling author. Now the publisher is panting for a sequel, but when Francesca fires up her laptop, she is met with radio silence. For months. And as that sound of silence becomes all-consuming, her very handsome husband moves out (or on). The only thing sticking by her side is her dutiful dog, Annie, and the few extra pounds inertia brings to someone frozen in fear of failure.

And it is Annie who jumpstarts this tale. After all, a dog that lives in a Manhattan condo must be walked. And fed. So income must come from somewhere, even if the dog’s owner has writer’s block.

After several ill-fated attempts, Francesca finally lands a freelance writing assignment with “Chicky,” an old woman who wants to tell the story of her 1920s vaudevillian forebears. To Francesca, it sounds a bit lame, but a job is a job. Then for some inexplicable reason the characters start to get into Francesca’s blood. Words flow effortlessly onto the page. But Chicky holds a mighty big secret that sets the stage for life lessons that will smack Francesca right between the eyes and, to her delight, squelch that radio silence.

A story all tied up in a pretty bow? No, but you’ll find several real love stories from the past and present smoothly braided together in this light, dreamy read.

—Dee Ann Grand

AN ESSAY COLLECTION WORTH SHARING
No one would call Sloane Crosley’s first essay collection, I Was Told There’d Be Cake, juvenile, but her second effort, How Did You Get This Number, is decidedly more grown-up. It matures, say, from a fabric scrunchie to a sleek hair clasp without losing any of the can-you-believe-this-is-actually-happening-to-me moments. Crosley, who lives in New York City and is developing her first book as an HBO series, writes like your enviably witty, completely chic friend who also swears like a sailor when relaying a story.

Crosley begins her essays with captivating leads, the first sentences telling stories of their own. In “Light Pollution,” a small anecdote flourishes and crescendos, taking the reader from an Alaskan car-trip musing to a baby bear’s shocking mercy killing. “An Abbreviated Catalog of Tongues” details her family’s escapades with pets—from a stingray named Herb to a blind bichon frise to a series of birds that died mysterious deaths. And finally, the collection’s title comes from “Off the Back of a Truck,” in which Crosley has a perfect working relationship with a dishonest furniture store worker and a not-so-perfect relationship with a handsome writer named Ben.

Crosley writes like a student of literature, figuring out along the way which techniques work, which words are funny and how seemingly separate storylines parallel. She seems to unravel the morals to her own stories aloud, while the reader almost embarrassingly listens in. Her stories are joyful and nostalgic, but above all, they are really funny. Her new essay collection, like the last one, should be taken on trains and planes, read on the beach, shared and enjoyed. Crosley is going to be around for awhile; best to get on board now and say you knew her back when she bought furniture off the black market and played charades with Portuguese circus clowns in Lisbon.

—Katie Lewis

ANOTHER HIT FROM WEINER
Jennifer Weiner's Fly Away Home opens with a scandal: a philandering senator caught with a much-younger mistress. But after the familiar headlines fade, a broken family flounders in their wake.

Weiner creates realistic characters in the senator’s wife, Sylvie, and daughters Lizzie and Diana, all central to this story of unraveling and rebuilding relationships. Sylvie, who has long abandoned her personal ambitions to buoy her husband’s political aspirations, faces her newfound independence with a mix of joy and trepidation. She finally has the opportunity to pursue interests like cooking, dating and mothering the daughters she overlooked while trying to be the perfect politician’s wife, but she finds that freedom isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Meanwhile, Lizzie and Diana are dealing with their own set of problems: Lizzie, a recovering addict, tries to prove to her family that she’s not a lifetime screw-up. However, she gets herself into a predicament that could grease the hinges for a relapse. Diana, a successful doctor, wife and mother, struggles to maintain a pristine exterior while her own loveless marriage deteriorates.

While the subject matter is heavy, Fly Away Home isn’t a downer. Weiner’s light touch, especially evident in Diana’s sarcastic dialogue as well as with the amusing Selma, Sylvie’s Jewish, feminist mother who never lacks an opinion, makes this a quick and engaging summer read.

—Lizza Connor Bowen

FOR THE MUSIC GEEK IN ALL OF US
In 1995, Nick Hornby gave a gift to music geeks everywhere with High Fidelity, a charming novel with a hero who somehow knew all the same obscure B-sides that they did. In 2007, music journalist Rob Sheffield picked up where Hornby left off with his heartbreaking memoir, Love is a Mix Tape, about, in equal parts, Nirvana and the crippling loss of his young wife, Renee. Now Sheffield is back with the same encyclopedic knowledge of pop music and touching, resonant prose in Talking to Girls About Duran Duran, this time tackling two profoundly painful topics—adolescence and the 1980s.

Growing up a nerdy Catholic boy in a Boston suburb, Sheffield turned to music for the same reasons as everyone else: to fit in, and to be able to talk to girls. He doesn’t really achieve either goal, as a hilariously awkward conversation with one potential conquest attests—she assures him that while he is sadly destined to remain a geek for life, thus giving him no chance with her, one day he will meet “others like him.” It’s an oddly poignant moment, and pinpoints what’s so special about Sheffield’s writing—sheer recognition, for anyone who has ever felt a little bit different.

Amid Sheffield’s adolescent angst, too, is incredible, almost stream-of-consciousness commentary on 1980s music, from total one-hit wonders to the phenomena of David Bowie, Boy George and, of course, Duran Duran. The minutiae of his musical mantras can feel overwrought at times, overwhelming the seemingly effortless charm of his childhood stories, from an idyllic summer job as an ice-cream man to his awe for and helplessness in the face of three younger sisters. But fans will appreciate his total nerddom and value his impressive knowledge of and, above all, raw emotional response to music.

—Rebecca Shapiro

American History

American History

The American Revolution revisited

Feature by Edward Morris

by Edward Morris

America’s Revolutionary War is so encrusted in myth and preconceptions that there always seems room for another angle. Three new histories take only sidelong glances at the war itself, instead examining such aspects as motivation, political maneuvering and the significant people who never achieved the status of “Founding Fathers.”

FROM THE GROUND UP
T.H. Breen’s American Insurgents, American Patriots argues that without the anti-royalist groundswell that occurred throughout the colonies following Parliament’s passage of the Coercive Acts in 1774, the men now acknowledged as our Founding Fathers would have constituted no more than a debating society. The Coercive Acts were Britain’s tough response to the Boston Tea Party. In showing its willingness to punish the people of Boston indiscriminately, Britain simultaneously revealed the danger it posed to the freedoms of all colonials. Responding to that perceived danger, towns and villages from New Hampshire to Georgia began forming militias and “committees of safety” to resist imperial heavy-handedness. They used newspapers and pamphlets to advance their arguments and keep abreast of each other’s activities. Their collective pressure, Breen notes, made the First Continental Congress, which convened in Philadelphia in September 1774, far more radical in its outlook than it otherwise would have been. These local resistance units were manned by volunteers in the months leading up to the war; but as other histories have shown, volunteerism waned dangerously as the war progressed. Filled with anecdotes about citizen hyperactivity, Breen’s book is a valuable addition to Revolutionary War scholarship.

OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE
Jack Rakove’s Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America delineates the political realities Americans faced from just before the war began until the ascent of George Washington to the presidency. He does so by chronicling the political evolution and interactions of dozens of activists, among them the firebrands John and Samuel Adams; the moderates John Dickinson, Robert Morris, James Duane and John Jay; Washington as a military leader; Tom Paine as the supreme propagandist; George Mason as a constitutional theorist; and Henry and John Laurens as ambivalent anti-slavers. In the post-war period, Rakove dissects the uneven contributions of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison (“the greatest lawgiver of modernity”) and Alexander Hamilton. While Rakove’s research traverses well-worn territory, he presents an excellent overview of intricate Revolutionary politics and the role personality played in shaping them.

TRUTHS AND MYTHS
William Hogeland’s Declaration takes the reader inside the nine weeks of wheeling and dealing—May 1 to July 4, 1776—that culminated in the passage and signing of what is now called the Declaration of Independence. (Originally, it had no title.) Although America was fully embroiled in war at that time, sentiments still ran high in some of the colonies—particularly in Pennsylvania, where the Second Continental Congress was meeting—to reach a resolution with England that did not involve actual separation from the mother country. Hogeland describes how Samuel Adams and his faction, which burned for independence, conspired successfully with working-class radicals to turn Pennsylvania around. The author also shreds some myths about the Declaration, noting, for example, that it isn’t a legal document but an explanatory one; that it didn’t flow fully formed from Thomas Jefferson’s pen but was picked apart by other delegates before it was agreed on; and that it was not signed by the delegates on the day of passage (July 2, not July 4) but over a period of six months. Declaration is immensely readable and entertaining—almost like being there.

All Features

Movie masters, on both sides of the camera