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Books About Empathy (09/17)
Empathy seemed to take a huge hit in 2016. I can't think of many weeks that went by where blatant hate or some form of intolerance wasn't at the forefront of the news. I got to a point where I decided to disconnect from media. I couldn't take it anymore.
When Will Schwalbe's Books for Living arrived on my doorstep, ...
Storyboarding (09/17)
In The Animators, best friends Sharon and Mel spend hours hunched over their artwork that will form the basis of an animated movie. 'I know a day of work has been really good when I have to look up from the board and recall who I am and what I'm doing,' Sharon says. That 'board' that she refers to is one of a series of images that ...
Hospice Care (09/17)
Hospice is a medical specialty that focuses on end-of-life care for individuals and support for their families. Its roots come from the Latin for hostis meaning stranger, and more specifically from hospitem meaning a guesthouse - from these roots we also get hospital, hotel and hospitality.
The idea of caring for those suffering from ...
Young Adult Novels Exploring Depression (08/17)
According to Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE), suicide is the second leading cause of death in people 15-24 years of age, and ranks tenth when considering all ages. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in the United States, eight percent of all people over the age of twelve suffer from depression in ...
The Manson Girls (08/17)
Cruel Beautiful World is set in the early '70s against the specter of the Manson girls.
The horrific story of Charles Manson, the cult leader who believed he was the Messiah and who then orchestrated murders in Los Angeles to spark a race war, is fairly well-known at least in American culture.
More recently, his 'girls,' women ...
Contemporary YA Novels about 9/11 (08/17)
Over 3,000 people died on September 11, 2001. With the impact of that catastrophe being so far-reaching, it's no surprise that there have been a plethora of films and books released that recall 9/11. Oliver Stone's
World Trade Center and Paul Greengrass'
United 93 are two of the most popular movies to recreate that day. Jonathan Safran ...
Luxury Watches (08/17)
According to Michael Honig's imagined life of Vladimir Putin in his novel The Senility of Vladimir P., the dictator-president could be impressed by the gift of a fine wristwatch – 'fine' meaning anything beyond the standard Rolex.
In this era, a good majority of the younger generation keeps track of time by using a smart phone, ...
The Brixton Riots (08/17)
With his nappy black hair and dark complexion, the boy at the center of Kit de Waal's debut, My Name is Leon, is caught up in the middle of the racial tensions of 1981 South London. The biracial child has a nine-year-old's agenda, born of anger, and stumbles innocently into a roiling stew of grownup rage and frustration. The ...
The Concept of Sainthood (08/17)
In The Guineveres, Sarah Domet weaves the stories of eight saints—Rose of Lima; Cecelia; the sister saints, Irmina and Adela; Ita; Agatha; Alice and Christina the Astonishing. These holy figures have a relevance to certain themes in the novel including the concept of sacrifice, the sanctity of the female body, and the recognition of...
A Whiff of Papal Controversy (08/17)
In Conclave, Robert Harris creates an imaginary world of Cardinals meeting in the Sistine Chapel to elect a new Pope. The Bishop of Rome, known as the Pope or Holy Father, is the leader of the Catholic Church, a religion with over one billion members worldwide.
The Roman Catholic Church recognizes 266 popes in the Annuario Pontificio ...
Gardens of Heligan (08/17)
The grounds of Black Rabbit Hall (In Eve Chase's eponymously named novel) are depicted as lush and untamed, a state of wildness that could be the site of enchantment or of danger. Several times Chase mentions 'giant rhubarb' growing wild in the woods around Black Rabbit Hall, a detail that immediately reminded me of a real Cornish garden ...
Books About Books (08/17)
In
The Book That Matters Most, literature turns out to be an important lifeline to Ava as she joins a book club to offer her some soul sustenance through trying times. Here a few other recommendations for books about other books, whose theme is the joy of the written word.
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
The ...
The Underground Railroad (08/17)
The U.S. government changed the portrait image on the U.S. $20 bill. It used to be President Andrew Jackson and now includes abolitionist Harriet Tubman. By 21st century standards, 19th century military hero and politician Jackson could be classified as a racist and an indirect perpetrator of genocide. By 21st century and 19th century ...
Persistent Cloaca (08/17)
Miss Jane is based on Brad Watson's great-aunt's life. She, like the central character in his novel, suffered from a genital birth defect. But what exactly was it?
In an interview at W.W. Norton, Watson says:
As was common in her day (she actually lived from 1888-1975, but it applies to my Jane's day and time, too), no one ...
The Jonestown Settlement (08/17)
In New People, Maria's dissertation focuses on the Jonestown settlement in Guyana and on the massacre that resulted in the death of some 900 men, women, and children from poisoning on November 18, 1975. Jonestown was developed, and sold to believers, as a sort of utopian community led by Jim Jones, who founded the People's Temple in ...
Child Prodigies in Visual Art (07/17)
When we hear the phrase 'child prodigy,' our minds almost automatically go to Mozart and other musicians, and from there, towards young geniuses in the areas of mathematics and science. One of the shorter lists of child prodigies is in the visual arts: drawing, painting and sculpture. But the world has witnessed some exceptional artistic ...
Young Adults as Unreliable Narrators (07/17)
In How to Set a Fire and Why, Lucia claims to not remember exactly what occurred during an argument with her aunt's landlord, leaving her exact reasoning and motivation somewhat mysterious. In writing Lucia as an unreliable narrator, Jesse Ball draws from an established tradition.
An unreliable narrator lies, expresses uncertainty or ...
Ambulocetus, The Walking Whale (07/17)
Zubaida Haque, the main character in Tahmima Anam's The Bones of Grace, is a marine paleontologist with a particular interest in Ambulocetus, an amphibious (able to live on land and water) cetacean (carnivorous, finned, aquatic marine mammal) that lived over 40 million years ago. Fossils of Ambulocetus are believed to show how whales...
The Cult of Personality (07/17)
In Julian Barnes' The Noise of Time, Dmitri Shostakovich notes that under Stalin, '[Russians] would listen to [Stalin's] insane daily insistence that all was for the best in the best possible of worlds, that Paradise had been created, or would be created quite soon…when a few more saboteurs had been shot. That happier times ...
Tips for Making the Perfect Pie Crust (07/17)
In Dinner with Edward, Isabel Vincent's memoir, Edward's two tricks for making a perfect pastry crust are crushed ice and a mixture of grated butter and fresh lard (from his Queens butcher), all kept as cold as possible. What are other chefs' top tips? The choice of fat(s) and their proportions are the main differences.
Julia Child...
London Fog (07/17)
Vyleta's Smoke draws inspiration from the very real issue of smog in Victorian London, the result of fog off the Thames river mixing with smoke from early industrialization and coal-burning fires in homes. This is hinted at when the novel's young protagonists are briefly hidden in a coal mine before making their way into the city. Making ...
Spring Temple Buddha (07/17)
Like many kids on the autism spectrum, Tilly has a passionate interest, one she loves to research and that she'll happily talk your ear off about if you ask (or even if you don't). In her case, she's fascinated by massive sculptures past and present, from the Colossus of Rhodes to the Lincoln Monument.
More than ...
The Lehman Brothers (07/17)
Clark Edwards, one of the main characters in Behold the Dreamers, works as an executive for Lehman Brothers.
Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States at the time of the housing market crash (2007-2009), employing over 25,000 employees worldwide.
The company began in 1844 as a ...
Early Aviatrixes (07/17)
In Crossing the Horizon, author Laurie Notaro highlights the lives of three women who dared to attempt flight across the Atlantic Ocean during the early days of air travel. They were not the only ones who defied expectation by taking such risks. The novel mentions three other women who also took on the daunting challenge of transatlantic ...
Belfast (07/17)
In So Say the Fallen, it is murder most foul in Belfast. Northern Ireland's capital city is as much a character in Neville's work as it is a place in the novel. It's where the author lives and, has been the home of a number of famous people; it is the birthplace of the Christian author and philosopher C. S. Lewis; John Wood Dunlop ...
Late 19th Century Texas (07/17)
Paulette Jiles' News of the World takes place in late 19th century Texas. Much of the state's land was untamed and rugged, but in this time between the end of the Reconstruction and the beginning of the Progressive Era, Texas changed and grew, as did much of the western frontier and the New South.
It was the era of cotton, cattle and ...
Immigration to Australia (07/17)
Author Stephanie Bishop's maternal grandparents left England for Australia in 1965. Her grandmother was reluctant to make the move and never truly warmed to the country. Their experience forms the basis of
The Other Side of the World. (Bishop's
Guardian article gives the whole story.)
Beginning in the latter decades of the eighteenth ...
Thoroughbreds (06/17)
In Mercury, when Donald Stevenson sees the horse for the first time he says, 'Mercury, true to his name, was unmistakably hot-blooded. The lines of his body, the arch of his neck, the rise and fall of his stride...were...beautiful.'
Horses, like dogs, are defined by breeds, and each have their own traits and purposes. Mercury is a ...
Cultural Heritage Sites Destroyed by Earthquakes (06/17)
In Here I Am, a severe earthquake destroys practically all of Israel's (and its neighboring countries') cultural heritage sites. While this situation is fictional, there have been real instances of prized world heritage sites being destroyed or damaged by catastrophic seismic events. Here are a few examples of many:
The ...
Eva and Miriam Mozes (06/17)
The twins in
Mischling are loosely based on Romanian sisters Eva and Miriam Mozes, survivors of
'Angel of Death' Josef Mengele's sadistic experiments at Auschwitz. Having studied twins in a legitimate capacity earlier in his career, Mengele took advantage of his position as a doctor at Auschwitz to perform unwarranted operations, ...
Brother, Can You Spare a Few Books? (06/17)
The Great Recession, in 2008, was the vicious charley horse that followed the extreme chest pains of the financial crisis in 2007. During that period, the $8 trillion housing bubble burst, and the stock market dropped precariously, taking down consumer spending, driving up the unemployment rate (from 5% in December 2007, to 9.5% in June ...
Obsessive Personality (06/17)
In Thomas Rydahl's The Hermit, protagonist Erhard Jørgensen displays an obsessive personality. He is mildly obsessed with the finger he is missing on one hand and so obsessed with having ten fingers he resorts to a rather unconventional solution. Additionally, he develops an unhealthy obsession with prolonging a young woman's life. ...
A Snapshot of Snake Handlers (06/17)
In the opening pages of Jeff Zentner's The Serpent King, we come to know about Dill Early's family history of snake-handling. His father is an infamous snake-handling pastor at the Church of Christ's Disciples with Signs of Belief. Dill's great grandfather was also a preacher with a shared tenacity for using snakes in ...
San Francisco's Palace Hotel (06/17)
One of the special things about Thanks for the Trouble is its strong sense of place, utilizing several San Francisco landmarks and other locales as a backdrop for Parker and Zelda's story. One of the most important settings is the historic Palace Hotel, which is where the novel opens and which also plays a pivotal role later.
...
Folk and Bluegrass Music (06/17)
In
Before We Sleep, Oliver, a World War II veteran, repairs fiddles for others to play folk and bluegrass tunes.
Fiddles and violins are essentially the same instrument (for more about this, read the '
Beyond the Book' for
Black River), but the music that they produce can be classified into different categories. According to
Strings ...
A Brief History of Uganda (06/17)
Kintu is set in Uganda, a landlocked country in central Africa bordered by South Sudan, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and The Democratic Republic of Congo. It is home to approximately 39 million individuals (2015).
click for bigger image
Human activity in the region that is now Uganda dates back at least 50,000 years as evidenced by ...
Lorenzo de' Medici (05/17)
One of the main characters in Alyssa Palombo's novel, The Most Beautiful Girl in Florence, is a fictional representation of Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-1492), one of the de facto rulers of the Republic of Florence during the height of the Italian Renaissance.
The illustrious de' Medici family was prominent in the banking industry, with ...
Community Gardens (05/17)
In The Garden of Small Beginnings, the book's heroine becomes involved in a community garden.
A community garden is generally a piece of public land set aside for use by individuals who don't have the real-estate or resources to create gardens of their own. Although the idea of a shared planting space has been around for centuries, ...
The Arduous Process of Writing (05/17)
John Hart took five years to produce his fifth novel, which he has said is surprising, given that his previous four books only took him approximately a year apiece to write. In the case of Redemption Road, Hart penned 300 pages, practically a whole novel, before deciding that he had chosen the wrong person to be his main character. It ...
The Kremlin (05/17)
'Kremlin' is the Russian word for a castle or fortified complex, and many Eastern European cities, including Novgorod, Smolensk and Kiev have one. Most people however, associate the Kremlin with the seat of the Russian government in Moscow.
The site of the Moscow Kremlin, a hill near where the Neglina and Moskva Rivers converge, shows ...
The Blackout of 1977 (05/17)
Set in the 1970s, Another Brooklyn references numerous contemporary events, from Vietnam to Son of Sam (a killer convicted of a series of shooting attacks that began in New York City in the summer of 1976 and ended in the summer of 1977.) One event in particular that figures in August's memories is the electrical blackout of July 13-...
House Architectural Styles (05/17)
Laura McHugh's atmospheric novel Arrowood is set in Keokuk, in the south-east of Iowa, where the Des Moines River meets the Mississippi. This setting is an important component in establishing the sense of the past overshadowing the present — a major theme in the story. The house, Arrowood, plays a vital role and McHugh's ...
The Dachshund (05/17)
In Lily and The Octopus, the main character struggles with the decline of his beloved canine companion, a charming dachshund named Lily. Famously described by the German-American journalist, H. L. Mencken, as 'a half-a-dog high and a dog-and-a-half long,' dachshunds are one of the most popular dog breeds in America. Affectionately called ...
Reclusive Celebrities (05/17)
In Maggie O'Farrell's This Must be The Place, Claudette Wells is a movie star who has quit the world to live on a remote Irish farm. As unusual as this may seem, there are many real-life examples of celebrated individuals who have abandoned the public eye for a more private life.
In 1932 the Hollywood superstar, Greta Garbo, playing ...
Shanghai (05/17)
The Street of Eternal Happiness, or Changle Lu, is the subject of Rob Schmitz's book and also his home. It is located in Shanghai, which means 'City on the Sea' in Chinese. Shanghai is located on a delta of land on the country's eastern coast, where the Yangtze River empties into the East China Sea. Home to over 24 million people (2014), ...
Freeborn Black Children Sold Into Slavery (05/17)
Freedom is a wonderful thing. It allows us choices in where we go and how we live. Without it, our lives would be very different. Abraham Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves, was signed in 1863. Just think: it's only been 150 years that freedom has been the law in the United States.
Before Lincoln's ...
Multigenerational Homes (05/17)
In
We Are the Ants, Henry Denton's maternal grandmother, Nana, lives with him. Early on, it's clear that Nana has Alzheimer's and lives with his family because she can no longer live on her own. Henry is very fond of her and although she has moments of clarity, she is becoming a challenge:
Nana's forgetfulness was...
The Philosopher's Stone (05/17)
Its powers are said to be remarkable. It is the source not only of great wealth but also, perhaps, freedom from mortality. It was sought after for centuries, often by some of the greatest minds in history. Its legend has lived on in movies, novels, video games, music, and comic books. Its fabled existence has fired the human imagination ...
Young Adult Literature Set in the Big Apple (05/17)
A lot of books for children and young adults are set in suburbia - but some truly memorable examples of the genre are set in cities, especially (like Goodbye Stranger) in Manhattan. Here are just a handful of the many classic and contemporary novels for young people set in the Big Apple. Whether your family already lives there or you just...
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