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Yolande of Aragon (07/16)
Popular history remembers Joan of Arc but not so much Yolande of Aragon (1384 – 1442) who, according to Helen Castor's
Joan of Arc, was more influential in placing Charles VII on the throne of France than 'The Maid of Orleans,' or indeed of the rather weak-natured Charles himself.
The kingdom of Aragon was a wealthy, ...
Charles Dickens' Illustrators (06/16)
Illustrations were crucial to Victorian novels – a fact that is difficult to absorb nowadays, when the only books for adults with drawings are graphic novels. Charles Dickens was known for showing obsessive interest in his novels' illustrations, always making sure that artists adhered closely to his written descriptions. All but...
The Human Brain (06/16)
British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, the author of
Do No Harm, operates on the brain.
The Mayfield Clinic provides this succinct description of the organ: 'Nothing in the world can compare with the human brain. This mysterious three-pound organ controls all necessary functions of the body, receives and interprets information from the ...
Emily Brontë (06/16)
In The Lost Child, Caryl Phillips takes up elements from the life of Emily Brontë and her masterpiece novel of 1847, Wuthering Heights. Brontë's life and works are often read in tandem. Perhaps because her life was so brief and her oeuvre so small, both the biography and the work are needed to get a grip on what she was thinking...
Gothic Literature and the Influence of Dracula (06/16)
Dracula by Irish author Bram (Abraham) Stoker is widely considered to be a classic of Gothic horror literature. With the possible exception of
Frankenstein, it is perhaps the most recognizable and influential of all such novels. Stoker's most famous work was not, however, at the vanguard in the development of the genre; at the time of its...
Writing as Therapy (06/16)
In Julia Pierpont's Among the Ten Thousand Things, eleven-year-old Kay secretly writes fan fiction based on characters in the American television series 'Seinfeld.' It is how she distills events that are happening around her. After she is accidentally exposed to pages of salacious emails, witness to her father's infidelity, she is at...
The Oregon Trail (06/16)
One of the defining qualities of the American character has always been restlessness. But even within the traditions of that locomotive impulse, the so-called 'Great Migration of 1843' stands out as a singularly significant upheaval in the history of continental relocation – and a central concern of Rinker Buck's The Oregon Trail: ...
Unusual Swimming Pools (06/16)
The members of the Three-Year Swim Club began their careers in rough and dangerous irrigation ditches. However, even after they moved their practices to a more traditional swimming pool, they had to compete in other challenging venues.
Some were simply an unconventional size — sometimes creating an advantage, other times ...
Gerald and Sara Murphy & Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night (06/16)
Gerald and Sara Murphy are widely believed to be the inspiration for Dick and Nicole Diver, the central couple in F. Scott Fitzgerald's last novel,
Tender Is the Night (1934), not just for their physical resemblance, but also for their habit of hosting lavish parties at Cap d'Antibes in the south of France. Indeed, Fitzgerald dedicated ...
Imitation: Flattery or Fraud? (06/16)
The legitimacy of a painting that hangs in the hotel of the murder victim, Pierre-Louis Pennec, is at the heart of Jean Luc-Bannalec's
Death in Brittany. Is it a forgery or is it an authentic Gauguin?
There is popular story among writers about world-famous author Jack London (
Call of the Wild, White Fang).
Rumor has it that he ...
Autism in Middle Grade and Young Adult Literature (06/16)
Eli Gottlieb's Best Boy tells the story of the life of Todd Aaron, an autistic man struggling to understand and fit into the world that surrounds him. Todd's story, while unique in its own right, is increasingly familiar. Autism is something that is increasingly talked about in the American popular culture and embedded in the ...
This Is Your Life, a Television Phenomenon (06/16)
Along with Queen for a Day and Candid Camera, This Is Your Life was one of the first reality television shows. It aired in the United States from 1952 to 1961, and in the United Kingdom from 1955 until 2003. At least nine other countries adopted the format too. In each episode, the host surprised one audience member – either a ...
Epistolary Novels (06/16)
Epistolary novels are not new – Bram Stoker's
Dracula, for example, was published in 1879, and Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein even earlier, in 1818. The form, which is not limited to letters, (nor to horror novels!) but also includes journal entries, newspaper clippings, emails, and other forms of correspondence, has held appeal, ...
Bending Real Life into Fiction (06/16)
Clare Mackintosh's debut novel, I Let You Go, is inspired by an event – a hit-and-run accident – that happened early in the author's career as a police officer. Embarking on a work of fiction by using an actual event as inspiration is a common occurrence in books, movies and television. Note that this story is 'inspired by'...
The Sport of Rodeo (06/16)
Bad Country's protagonist, Rodeo Grace Garnet, is a second-generation rodeo contestant who quit the circuit without setting records or achieving lasting fame. Cowboys like P.I. Garnet dream of competing and winning the big money stakes at the annual National Rodeo Finals but most endure a hard-scrabble, impoverished lifestyle and limited ...
The Gujarat Riots: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Tainted Legacy (05/16)
In The Association of Small Bombs, the 2002 Gujarat Riots become the rationale for a bombing as terrorists seek revenge against then Chief Minister (and current Indian Prime Minister) Narendra Modi.
The incident began in the western Indian state of Gujarat on February 27, 2002. A train carrying Hindu pilgrims was parked at a station ...
Settling Western Canada (05/16)
In Patrick Gale's A Place Called Winter, he describes how Harry Cane comes across an office for Canadian emigration, and decides that moving abroad to become a homesteader/farmer in Canada is the solution to keeping the scandal of his being homosexual away from his family. Most people know something about the American push to settle the ...
A Tour of New York Public Libraries (05/16)
At the beginning of chapter 2 of
Murder at the 42nd Street Library, Con Lehane describes the New York Public Library's famed 42nd Street branch thusly:
The 42nd Street Library stretches along the west side of Fifth Avenue from 42nd to 40th Street. The landmark beaux arts structure houses the humanities and social sciences ...
A Medicine Walk (05/16)
Many cultures have a tradition of using a solitary walk to help individuals achieve their inner goals, whether it be deepening their spirituality, finding insights to problems, or helping determine a path in life. Some Native American tribes in particular, encourage adolescents to go on a 'medicine walk' to obtain inner peace and ...
Coney Island Amusements (05/16)
Coney Island, Brooklyn has long been known as a seaside vacation destination. As early as the 1830s, it was a retreat for New York City workers, and its attraction grew as it became more accessible by train, streetcar, and steamboat. Between the 1880s and World War II, Coney Island was the nation's foremost leisure area, with three large ...
The Norwegian Seamen's Church (05/16)
At several points in Per Petterson's I Refuse, two different characters find themselves feeling lonely while in Singapore. One character says she begins to feel a 'certain weariness inside, a reluctance to speak English and nothing else for a long time to come' and decides to head to the Norwegian Seamen's Church, which is not ...
Grief in Contemporary Literature (05/16)
Bill Clegg's Did You Ever Have A Family tells the story of different characters whose lives intersect as they deal with the struggles (and few successes) of life. One character stands out among the large cast: June Reid, a middle-aged woman, who is dealing with the loss of her entire family from a tragic fire.
As you might guess...
Oh the Horror of It All! - Stephen King on Writing What You Know in Thrillers (05/16)
The consensus across a wide swath of authors and writing teachers is 'write what you know.' This advice may be even more important when writing a horror story. Sure, horror stories characteristically feature things that are not known, not normal, unfamiliar in the extreme. That's why they exist. People like to be scared by things out...
The Space Race (05/16)
Much of The Last Pilot revolves around the United States' participation in the technological contest between the US and the Soviet Union involving conquests in outer space.
The Space Race had its origins in Nazi Germany prior to the outbreak of World War II. Military scientists and engineers designed ballistic missiles and liquid-...
Reincarnation and the Dalai Lamas (05/16)
Susan Barker's The Incarnations explores the five lives of one man who, in his present life, is a taxi driver in Beijing. The highest-profile example of reincarnation is that of the Dalai Lamas in Tibet – 14 in all, so far. The Dalai Lamas come from the Yellow Hat Sect of Tibetan Buddhists, which was founded in the late 14th century...
A Murderer's Point of View (05/16)
The Convictions of John Delahunt is narrated by a murderer. The technique of using a first-person account to bring readers into the world of the killer can certainly be effective. Here are some of the better-known novels written from the viewpoint of a murderer.
- Hyde by Daniel Levine (2014)
Levine flips the plot of Robert Louis ...
The Real-Life Kopp Sisters (05/16)
Girl Waits With Gun is historical fiction based on the true-life accounts of the Kopp sisters of New Jersey, whose lives were irrevocably changed after one roadside incident when their horse-driven buggy was damaged by a car.
The car's owner, Henry Kaufman, was a local industrialist who, along with his brother, owned a silk dyeing ...
The Turing Test (05/16)
The Turing test judges a machine's ability to exhibit human-like intelligence, as envisioned by Alan Turing (1912–1954), one of the characters in Louisa Hall's novel Speak. The test is conducted as a written conversation between a human and a machine, externally monitored by a human observer. The conversational partners exchange ...
Forgetting the Past? (05/16)
In Adam Silvera's YA debut, More Happy Than Not, Aaron Soto, a poor Hispanic teenager, goes through a lot of difficult situations. His dad committed suicide when Aaron was younger. He doesn't really love the girl he thought he once loved. His best friend, Thomas, is his complicated love interest. Yeah, life is tough for our ...
Afghan Women's Writing Project (05/16)
When the Moon is Low has Fereiba narrate much of the action as she flees Afghanistan, along with her children, for refuge in England. While Fereiba's story is one of escape, there are countless women left behind who must endure daily life in a country where the Taliban's extremely stifling laws leave a suffocating footprint.
The
Afghan...
The Mighty Lusitania (05/16)
Greg King and Penny Wilson's Lusitania commemorates the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the great ship by exploring its glamorous passengers and the fateful torpedo that highlighted a microcosm of the elegant Edwardian era and possibly initiated the U.S. involvement in World War I (WWI).
In 1915, after the beginning of WWI, a German ...
Swiss-German (04/16)
Switzerland has four official languages, each primarily spoken in different regions of the country (please click map below). A portion of the West speaks primarily French; Italian dominates in some portions of the South; and Romansh, the closest living language resembling ancient Latin, works in a very small section of the southeast. A ...
The Fall of Saigon (04/16)
Viet Thanh Nguyen's debut The Sympathizer vividly describes the fall of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in the opening chapters as the narrator is transported out of the city along with a host of fellow citizens who have served the American cause in some way.
April 30, 2015 marked the fortieth anniversary of the fall of Saigon. ...
Edna St. Vincent Millay (04/16)
In Spinster, Kate Bolick leans on the examples of women who have come before her, as a source of solace and encouragement for her own life choice to remain single. She found herself looking to the examples of five 'awakeners,' all talented women whose creativity and professional success were independent of their marital status.
One of ...
Cleveland "Old Probs" Abbe (04/16)
One of the many people profiled briefly in Rain: A Natural And Cultural History, is Cleveland Abbe, a pioneer in American meteorology. Born in New York City in 1838, the eldest of seven siblings, Abbe would go on to earn professional degrees in astronomy. But as he advanced his studies, he increasingly came to realize the intersection ...
The Backyard Chicken Movement (04/16)
'The backyard chicken movement sweeping the United States and Europe is a response to city lives far removed from the daily realities of life and death on a farm, and the bird provides a cheap and handy way for us to reconnect with our vanishing rural heritage,' writes Lawler in Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? 'This trend may not ...
50-Year Writing Career: A Look at Anne Tyler (04/16)
In March 2013, Anne Tyler announced the title of her upcoming novel in an
interview with the BBC. She also noted that she didn't want to finish another novel - not even this one. She described the book as a 'sprawling family saga,' which starts with the present generation and then moves back, one generation at a time. Fortunately, she ...
Quicksand (04/16)
Though there is no literal quicksand in Steve Toltz's novel, his main character, Aldo Benjamin, is consistently trapped in a metaphorical quicksand. He struggles through many varieties of bad luck, but that classic epitome of bad luck - getting stuck in quicksand - might not spell the certain death that some think.
According to
...
Pandemics (04/16)
Pandemics – global outbreaks of disease across countries and continents – have been a feature of human history for centuries: as inexplicable and frightening as the contagion in Emily Shultz's novel The Blondes, where women with blonde hair are turned into crazed maniacs. While The Blondes is clearly satirical and we shouldn't...
Bare-Knuckle Boxing (04/16)
Bare-knuckle fighting has probably existed ever since humanity learned to make a fist, and it has been practiced as a sport since at least the 3rd millennium BCE. The
earliest records are found in Sumerian reliefs from that time period, and ancient Egyptian artwork from the 2nd millennium BCE depicts an audience watching barefisted ...
Artists Who Painted Their Wives (04/16)
In Paint Your Wife, Alma Martin, though just thirty and physically healthy, was left behind while other fit men went to war. The loss of both his young wife and some of his memory in a train accident had rendered him 'a less-than dangerous male. A male without horns.' During his rehabilitation, he began to draw. Art became his obsession; ...
Child Soldiers in the Yugoslavian Civil War (04/16)
The Civil War that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia consisted of a number of separate but related ethnic conflicts spanning the period 1991 to 2001. Sara Novic's debut novel, Girl at War, zeroes in on the Croatian War of Independence, which lasted from 1991 to 1995.
The United Nations estimates that 3,000 to 4,000 child soldiers (some ...
Extreme Skiing (04/16)
In This Is How It Really Sounds, one of the Pete Harringtons is an extreme skier – a sport, he complains, not many people find appealing or artistic because, unlike regular downhill skiing, it does not have as much cachet with the general public.
The strict definition of extreme skiing is taking on very steep cliffs, with the ...
Detroit's Property Crash and the Road to Recovery (04/16)
In 2013, the city of Detroit declared bankruptcy. The decline of the automotive industry, the growth of the suburbs, unemployment, poverty, and high crime rate are all cited as factors in the city's decline. From a peak population of 1.85 million in 1950, the city shrank to around 700,000; it steadily leaked people to the Michigan suburbs...
Impressionism in Literature (04/16)
Kate Walbert's The Sunken Cathedral is an impressionistic novel. But what does that mean?
When we hear the word impressionism, the first things that come to mind are the names Monet, Degas, Cezanne and other artists who were part of this movement of painting and sculpture during the late 19th century. Their unique use of color and ...
Selective Mutism (04/16)
Mary Costello's Academy Street follows the life of Tess Lohan, an introverted Irish woman who often feels anxious in social settings, largely preferring the world of books and imagination to external interactions. At various times in her life, she finds herself at a loss for words, in situations that '[take] all her talk away.' After...
Porcia Catonis (04/16)
In The Death of Caesar, author Barry Strauss touches on the lives of some of the women surrounding the conspirators, including Brutus's wife Porcia Catonis, the daughter of Brutus's uncle Cato the Younger, and perhaps, the only woman who knew about the conspiracy to assassinate Caesar.
Much of Porcia's life is undocumented. It's ...
Plague-Era Medicine (04/16)
As Oswald, the hero of Plague Land tells it, most fourteenth-century medical practices were hit-or-miss experiments, with the misses resulting in dead patients and blood everywhere. The spread of the Great Mortality (Bubonic plague, or as it was later known, 'The Black Death') inspired all manner of medical trial and error, as Europe ...
The Challenger Disaster (04/16)
'The day I fell in love with Lindy Simpson was January 28, 1986. This was also the day the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, and seven courageous astronauts died. I was eleven years old and in fifth grade.'
Although not a historical novel, M.O. Walsh's My Sunshine Away evokes a real sense of the recent past when the narrator, fourteen...
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