A Brief History of Close Protection Agencies (07/25)
In Richard Osman's thriller We Solve Murders, a series of murders surrounds Maximum Impact Security, a close-protection agency, or a company that provides bodyguards to paying clients. The concept of employing a select group of individuals to guard an important person isn't a new one by any means. Many believe that this sort of quid pro ...
Wind Knots (06/25)
The coastal California setting of The Witches of Bellinas is often beset by fierce and powerful winds. As the strong gusts rage, Mia, Bellinas's unofficial matriarch, explains to main character Tansy that wind has often been associated with magic. She gives the example of a peculiar, and largely forgotten, bit of history.
Hundreds...
A Short History of the Cooking Show (05/25)
In Lessons In Chemistry, the main character is the reluctant host of a popular TV cooking show.
Gordon Ramsay, Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray are just a few of the many modern TV chefs who’ve become household names. Cooking shows are now not only daytime television staples; they're featured in the primetime lineup. Such was not ...
The Lost Continent of Lemuria (05/25)
Amy Carlson, the leader of the Love Has Won cult, claimed to have been many different figures in past lives—Jesus, Cleopatra, and Marilyn Monroe, to name just a few—but one of her most eyebrow-raising claims was that she was once the Queen of Lemuria, an ancient, hyper-advanced kingdom that originated the human race before ...
How to Become a WWE Star (05/25)
BJ, one of the characters in Ocean Vuong's The Emperor of Gladness, aspires to become a professional wrestler for World Wrestling Entertainment — more commonly known as the WWE.
Merriam-Webster defines professional wrestling as 'a form of athletic theater where performers engage in staged mock combat, emphasizing entertainment ...
Fan Culture and Parasocial Relationships (05/25)
For those living in the dystopian world of Soyoung Park's Snowglobe, the main source of entertainment is reality television shot within a climate-controlled dome. The lives of the actors on these shows are on 24-hour display to be consumed obsessively by the fans in the icy world beyond the dome's barrier. Every detail of the stars' lives...
Hot Air Balloons (04/25)
The novel Hot Air begins with a hot air balloon falling from the sky into a backyard pool. Hot air balloons have a long history dating back to the eighteenth century, significantly predating the airplane. The hot air balloon was invented by French paper manufacturers (and brothers) Joseph Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier, who were ...
The American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel (04/25)
Anne Curzan, author of Says Who?, has some compelling bona fides when it comes to remarking upon English grammar and usage. Not only is she a linguistics professor, she was also for many years a member of the illustrious (and somewhat mysterious) American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Usage Panel. If you, like me, own a copy...
The "Moon Is Made of Cheese" Trope (04/25)
While the central conceit of John Scalzi's When the Moon Hits Your Eye is that the Moon has turned to cheese, the book is not overly concerned with how this has happened. Instead, it's more interested in how the world — specifically America — reacts to such a sudden, inexplicable event, as well as what happens when science ...
Spring-Heeled Jack (04/25)
Judge Dee Ren Jie, the protagonist of the Dee and Lao mystery series, frequently masquerades as Spring-heeled Jack, a legendary figure out of Victorian London. Sometimes Dee uses the costume to intimidate suspects into divulging information, but more often, he uses it to disguise his true identity while interacting with London's police ...
How to Become a Professional Clown (03/25)
In Stop Me If You've Heard This One, the main character, Cherry, chases her dreams of becoming a successful clown. The unusual career path actually requires a lot more work—and financial investment—than one might assume. If you're considering trading in your 9-to-5 for a bright red nose, here are some steps you might ...
Fish and Chip Shops (03/25)
In Colm Tóibín's novel Long Island, one of the main characters owns a chip shop in Enniscorthy, Ireland – a carryout restaurant that sells fish and chips (french fries in the United States). The dish is a staple of the British Isles, and hundreds of chip shops (aka 'chippies') can be found in the Republic of Ireland, where...
Demeter and Persephone (02/25)
Rachel Lyon's novel Fruit of the Dead is based on the story of Demeter and Persephone from Greek mythology. In the original story, Demeter, goddess of the harvest, is devastated when her daughter Persephone is kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld, who intends to make her his wife. Demeter's grief is so great that it affects the ...
Escape and Evasion Maps (02/25)
In Lea Carpenter's Ilium, some of the spies have escape and evasion maps. Also known as escape maps or silk maps, these are scarves imprinted with maps that intelligence officers and soldiers have historically used when they've ended up behind enemy lines. They offer information about how best to escape or at least find somewhere safe to ...
US Military Mules in World War II (01/25)
One of the characters in Derek B. Miller's novel The Curse of Pietro Houdini is a limping mule named Ferrari. The author notes that mules were used extensively during World War II in the Italian theater, in areas where trucks couldn't go, such as mountain passes and forests.
Mules are remarkable creatures that have been used as pack ...
This Historical Deed: The Attempted Assassination of Ronald Reagan (01/25)
Adam Ross's novel Playworld takes place between 1980 and 1981, during which time the characters follow with interest the election, presidency, and attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.
The attempted assassination of Reagan took place in March 1981, just a few months after he was inaugurated for his first term. The would-be ...
The History of Grog (12/24)
Hampton Sides' book The Wide Wide Sea records the third and final voyage of Captain James Cook and relays some of the exploits of his crew aboard the HMS Resolution. One of Cook's key decisions concerned an alcoholic drink known as "grog."
During the Age of Exploration—the 15th to 18th centuries—Royal Navy...
The Classics Discipline (12/24)
When you hear the word "classics," what jumps to mind? Literature over the centuries? Famous authors? For people entering university to study "classics," it means something quite specific. Classics is typically defined as the interdisciplinary study of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds, their interactions and ...
The History of the Sin-Eater (12/24)
In Elizabeth Strout's novel Tell Me Everything, the author discusses the concept of the modern-day 'sin-eater.' In her interpretation, the term applies to a person who helps others unburden themselves of their guilt or emotional pain, allowing them to move forward with their lives. In England, Scotland, and Wales, however, 'sin-eater' was...
What's the Story with the Online Platform OnlyFans? (11/24)
In Margo's Got Money Troubles, Margo begins creating content on OnlyFans, which eventually becomes quite lucrative work. But what is OnlyFans? Is it a pornography hub? Is it even legal?
OnlyFans was started in London, England. It is a subscription-based online platform with messaging features. It basically acts as a video-hosting ...
The 2023 Spiel des Jahres: Dorfromantik (11/24)
In his section on European games in Around the World in Eighty Games, Marcus du Sautoy discusses the Spiel des Jahres ('Game of the Year'), the most prestigious award in tabletop gaming, awarded annually since 1979 by a jury of journalists who write about games. The Spiel des Jahres carries no cash prize, but certainly the winners (which ...
The Case for Rats as Pets (10/24)
Rats are polarizing animals. In some people, they evoke feelings of fear and disgust, thanks to their historical association with squalid settings and the spread of disease. But others find them adorable and friendly—the sort of creature that makes a great companion.
In the book Blood Test by Charles Baxter, the main ...
Movies and Romantic Idealization (10/24)
Movies are great escapism, and why shouldn't they be? An art form in its own right, rich in imagery and metaphor, the cinema offers many lessons that can be learned about ourselves and others just by watching someone else's drama play out on screen.
But while movies can be healing in the right circumstances, and have been proven to aid...
The Greek Myth of Eros and Psyche (09/24)
In the original Greek myth that The Palace of Eros retells, Psyche is the youngest daughter of a king and the most beautiful woman in all the land. She is mistaken for Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, and worshiped accordingly. An envious Aphrodite commands her son, Eros, to shoot Psyche with his arrows of love and make her become ...
Stolen Relics (07/24)
M.T. Anderson's novel Nicked is based on a real-life relic theft occuring when, in 1087, an expedition from Bari, Italy, traveled to Myra, in present-day Turkey, to steal the bones of St. Nicholas. Even today, St. Nicholas's primary reliquary can be found in Bari, where pilgrims can buy holy water infused with the 'myrrh' his bones ...
Blood and Ink: Writing Materials Through the Ages (07/24)
In Emma Törzs's Ink Blood Sister Scribe, the first word of the title plays an important role: By mixing blood with herbs, people can make ink with magical properties. In the real world, writing has been done with a variety of materials throughout history — including, from time to time, blood.
Evidence points to ink first ...
Japanese Yakuza Films (07/24)
Akira Otani's intense thriller The Night of Baba Yaga tells the story of two women trying to escape from a branch of the yakuza, a real-life organized crime group thought to have originated in the 17th century when many samurai left the service of lords and turned to banditry. Like the mafia in American movies, there is a long history of ...
The Birkin Bag (07/24)
In Yasmin Zaher's novel The Coin, the unnamed protagonist, who has inherited a coveted Birkin bag from her mother, enters into a pyramid scheme with a relative stranger that involves buying more of these elusive items and reselling them. In many ways, the Birkin, a luxury handbag made by the French designer Hermès, is the ultimate ...
The "Bury Your Gays" Trope (07/24)
The meaning behind Bury Your Gays' title becomes clear as soon as oily Harold Bros. executive Jack Hays orders protagonist Misha to do the bidding of the algorithm for the sake of his streaming TV show and kill off two lesbian characters. Author Chuck Tingle is commenting on the cynical use of queer representation in entertainment, ...
The "Foul Days" of Bulgarian Folklore (07/24)
Genoveva Dimova's debut novel, Foul Days, takes place over a twelve-day period known in Bulgarian culture as the 'Unclean Days,' 'Dirty Days' – or, indeed, 'Foul Days.' In the first chapter, in a pub on a dark, wintry New Year's Eve, one of the characters explains: 'The Foul Days have begun. The New Year was born, but it hasn't been...
The Death Doula Profession (06/24)
The protagonist of Mikki Brammer's The Collected Regrets of Clover is a death doula. Just as a doula (or midwife) helps in childbirth, a death doula helps people who are approaching death. The profession has grown remarkably since 2000, when a New York City program co-funded by NYU Medical Center and the Shira Ruskay Center of the Jewish ...
The Symbolism of Urine (06/24)
From the first pages of K-Ming Chang's novella Cecilia, narrator Seven is preoccupied with urine. She describes overhearing the strong flow of a chiropractor's urine in the toilet, and remarks upon the receptionist's quieter stream. She holds her own urine until her bladder 'tautens into a grape of pain'; later, while dreaming of Cecilia,...
Greek Words for Love (06/24)
Love is a universal and history-spanning feeling. What would we be without the Romantic movement or the Renaissance, fairy tales or the chivalry of the Middle Ages? Even further back, ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle took note of the many variations of this ubiquitous emotion, creating and describing different words ...
The History of Antler and Horn Décor (05/24)
In Courtney Summers' I'm the Girl, much of the plot focuses on the mysterious, imposing Aspera resort. Part of what gives Aspera its exotic and vaguely menacing atmosphere is the fact that its luxurious interiors are heavily decorated with deer antlers (the book's endpapers also contain images of antlers). For Matthew Hayes, the owner of ...
Hungry Ghosts in Art and Culture (03/24)
Kevin Jared Hosein's title Hungry Ghosts has its origin in Taoism, Hinduism and Buddhism. According to the Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, hungry ghost, or preta "literally means 'one who has gone away from here' and is used to indicate the disembodied spirit of a dead person, especially during the first ten days after ...
Moon Art (02/24)
When you look at the Moon, what do you see? Since ancient times, the Moon has ignited our imaginations, as Rebecca Boyle demonstrates in her history of Earth's relationship to its closest neighbor. In mythologies and legends, it has been seen as a canvas depicting a rabbit and a jovial man's features, among other things. It has been with ...
Townsizing: Trendy or Timely? (02/24)
The city versus country trope is as old as Aesop's fabled mice, yet the debate continues to warrant new narratives. In Jas Hammonds' We Deserve Monuments, the protagonist, Avery Armstrong, puts this very debate to the test when she moves to the small fictional town of Bardell, Georgia. Raised in the cultural mecca of Washington, D.C., ...
Trail Names (02/24)
In Kristin Dwyer's The Atlas of Us, Atlas and her friends are given trail names by their program director; these nicknames allow Atlas (trail name Maps) to create a new identity and forge a new beginning, one unencumbered by her personal history. Names in Dwyer's novel serve a symbolic purpose, but there's a very real phenomenon of trail ...
Teddy Ruxpin (11/23)
The portability and low price point of cassette tapes meant that they were easily integrated into many areas of technology, as Marc Masters explores in High Bias. Toys began incorporating tapes too, and the most famous tape-playing toy of all was named Teddy Ruxpin. First introduced in 1985, Teddy was quickly a favorite cutting-edge toy ...
Dream Interpretation (11/23)
One of the short stories in Kij Johnson's The Privilege of the Happy Ending lists whimsical interpretations of specific dreams. For instance, to dream about an Audi 'signifies great strife and financial disaster. It is hard not to connect this to the fact that your ex left you for someone who owns an Audi.'
But the interpretation of ...
Zines and the 1990s (10/23)
In his memoir, Stay True, Hua Hsu recalls his college years in the 1990s, including the role that zines played in the evolution of his identity: 'Zines are a metaphor for life…It's your creation and your voice.'
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a zine as being a short form of fanzine, a kind of amateur-produced magazine ...
Changelings in European Folklore (09/23)
In addition to being a reimagining of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, T. Kingfisher's novella Thornhedge is inspired in part by the tradition of stories about changelings. In European folklore, changelings represented an intersection between the fairy world and the human world; a fairy would steal a baby—usually one who had not yet ...
How TV & Film Portrays Capital Accumulation (06/23)
Hernan Diaz has
said about writing his novel
Trust that, despite the numerous books depicting 'the symptoms of wealth,' 'there are very, very few novels that deal with the process of accumulation of capital. This, to me, was baffling.' This isn't surprising to me, as the accumulation of capital seems narratively uninteresting, at least ...
Au Pair Exchanges (05/23)
The novel The Caretakers centers on several young women who are au pairs in France, living there on special visas that allow them to stay with a family, take language classes and immerse themselves for a year in Parisian social life.
The term 'au pair' refers to a (usually young) person who lives with a family in a foreign country in ...
The Electra Complex (05/23)
We have all heard of the Oedipus complex, right? Its origin is in Greek mythology, where Oedipus, King of Thebes, unknowingly kills his own father and marries his mother. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept of the complex, which posits that a young boy has a subconscious sexual desire toward his mother and anger or jealousy toward his ...
Winston Churchill in TV and Film (05/23)
Countless movies about Winston Churchill have been made in the decades since World War II, with different actors playing the starring role to varying degrees of success. What are some of the most — and least — memorable of these cinematic depictions, and what effect did these films have in perpetuating the Churchill legend?
...
Joan Didion's "On Self-Respect," and Social Media Culture (04/23)
For a moment, I can pretend I am a professor, like Joan Didion-obsessed NYU English professor Nick Harrison in Grant Ginder's
Let's Not Do That Again, as he discusses her 1961 essay '
On Self-Respect' with his undergraduate class. For a moment, I can pretend that in the high evening before one of my part-time jobs, I am not 23, sitting in ...
Palimpsests (04/23)
The heroine of V.E. Schwab's novel, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, often takes notice of what she refers to as 'palimpsests,' which she defines as instances where the past is blotted out and written over by the present.
The word palimpsest comes from the Greek palimpsestos, meaning 'scraped again.' Strictly speaking, the term ...
Social Media Addiction (04/23)
In The Candy House, the allure of social media, with its illusions of security, comfort and happiness are frequently described in terms similar to those related to addiction. Egan presents characters who struggle with substance abuse and deal with their isolation by withdrawing into the social media platform Own Your Unconscious.
While...
Studebaker and the Land Cruiser (04/23)
In The Lincoln Highway, the main characters undertake a would-be cross-country road trip in Emmett Watson's pride and joy, a 1948 powder-blue Studebaker Land Cruiser.
The Studebaker company, now known as a long-lasting and iconic automotive manufacturer, was founded in South Bend, Indiana in 1852. The Studebaker family had emigrated ...
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