Note: The key icon
indicates member-only content.
Learn more about membership.
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (09/18)
It would be hard to dispute that Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita mirrors the true story of Sally Horner. Nabokov's character Humbert Humbert is quite similar to Frank LaSalle, the real kidnapper, and Dolores 'Lolita' Haze bears similarities to Sally. Both men spirited the young girls away across the country. Yet Nabokov's fictional story has ...
The Little Sisters of the Poor and Sister St. Jeanne Jugan (09/18)
The nuns in The Ninth Hour belong to an order that appears to be similar to the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order with humble beginnings, founded by Sister St. Jeanne Jugan, also known as Sister Mary of the Cross. Jugan was born in Brittany, France in 1792, amid the hardships of the French Revolution, a time when Catholics were being ...
The Homestead Act of 1862 (09/18)
It's not mentioned specifically in Robert Olmstead's Savage Country, but his references to settlers driven off the land by crop failures, drought, and other factors might be seen as one of the adverse influences of 1862's Homestead Act, probably the most significant factor in the expansion of the United States across the continent.
...
Where Do Terrorists in the US Come From? (09/18)
As detailed in Lalehi Kadivi's novel, A Good Country, the Boston Marathon Bombing took place on April 15, 2013. Three people were killed and over 260 others were injured including at least 16 who lost limbs. Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tzarnaev, two brothers aged 24 and 19, had manufactured home made bombs contained in pressure cookers which ...
Fairy Tales and Fiction (09/18)
I noted in my review of Joy Williams'
Ninety-Nine Stories of God that it felt like a compilation of fairy tales. But then I began to wonder why I felt that way. On closer inspection, I perhaps learned why.
Fiction, of course, is not factual, even if the writer uses known facts in order to mirror reality. Writers make things up; they ...
The Boxer Rebellion (08/18)
One of the main characters in Rebellion is a Protestant missionary to China in the 1890s, who goes missing during the Boxer Rebellion.
Though not nearly as old as Confucianism, Christianity existed in China as early as the seventh century, but the presence of Christianity in the country varied widely as Nestorian Christian, Roman ...
Halide Edib Adivar (08/18)
The Turkish author and activist Halide Edib (also sometimes spelled as Edip) Adivar is one of the influential women highlighted by de Bellaigue in The Islamic Enlightenment, for her literary talent as well as her ardent nationalist allegiance. She published two memoirs and 19 novels, and was an outspoken voice of support for women's ...
Tanglewood (08/18)
The cluster of small towns in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts where The Locals is set is near Tanglewood, a fact referred to several times in the narrative.
The Berkshires have long been a summer get-away destination. There are lodges, cultural sites, and several historical spots, including the homes of Edna St. Vincent ...
Cigarette Smuggling to New York City (08/18)
In Joan Silber's Improvement, one of the characters starts a cigarette-smuggling venture after getting out of Rikers prison.
A carton of cigarettes might cost around $55 in Virginia but close to double that in New York City because of steep taxes. New York state has the highest state tax on cigarettes and New York City imposes an ...
The Life and Times of a Human Smuggler (08/18)
We have heard a lot about illegal immigration in the past few months – it is a hot topic of discussion and debate, vast amounts of time and money are spent on controlling, limiting or shutting it down across the border between the US and Mexico. However, there are many stories of migrants who make it across: Isabel Allende's In the ...
The Beguines (08/18)
In Bernard MacLaverty's novel,
Midwinter Break, Stella is intrigued by the Beguines, a lay Catholic sisterhood, and while she and her husband are on vacation in Amsterdam she meets with a spiritual director at the Begijnhof to investigate how she might become more involved.
click for bigger image
Amsterdam's Begijnhof was founded ...
James M. Cain's Noir Novels (08/18)
At one point in Sunburn, Polly recalls having gone to a film series back in Baltimore, a showing of several films grouped under the title 'Raising Cain.' At the time, she didn't know what that meant, but savvy readers will pick up on Lippman's reference to her fellow Baltimorean James M. Cain, author of influential noir novels, ...
Personal Device Assistants (08/18)
In Judith Newman's
To Siri With Love, one of the book's chapters conveys how important the personal digital assistant has become to the author's son, Gus.
According to
Britannica.com a personal digital assistant (PDA) is 'a handheld organizer used to store contact information, manage calendars, communicate by e-mail, and handle ...
Forensic Psychology (08/18)
A forensic psychologist for the FBI, Dr. Abby Walker, is one of the two narrators of Emma in the Night. Her understanding of the thought process of the missing girls' narcissistic mother allows her to fill in the gaps in Cass's story.
The American Board of Forensic Psychology identifies forensic psychology to be 'the application of the...
Kafka and the Court Case (08/18)
While reading Nicole Krauss' novel Forest Dark, it occurred to me that although most lovers of literature know the name Franz Kafka, many might not realize that Kafka's rise to fame came mostly posthumously. Furthermore, even fewer people may know much about the court battle over his papers that finally reached its conclusion in 2016.
...
The Angelus Prayer (08/18)
Solar Bones is set in the county of Mayo in Ireland, where the narrator can distinctly hear the village church bell ringing its 'six chimes of three across a minute and a half;' he refers to it as the Angelus bell.
The Angelus bell is essentially a church bell that rings as a reminder to recite the Angelus prayer. The Angelus prayer ...
Climatology: Did You Know? (08/18)
In
The Water Will Come, journalist Jeff Goodell shares climatology concepts and active research. Here are some notable concepts introduced in the book:
- The Keeling Curve, a famous graph named after scientist Charles David Keeling, measures the increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the air since 1958; it is considered the ...
Sometimes Fantasy is More Real Than Nonfiction (08/18)
Ask me with a gun to my head if I believe in them, all the gods and myths that I write about, and I'd have to say no. Not literally. Not in the daylight, nor in well-lit places, with people about. But I believe in the stories we can tell with them. I believe in the reflections that they show us when they are told. And forget it ...
Borderline Personality Disorder (08/18)
In her debut novel, The Blind, A.F. Brady, a licensed psychotherapist, has created a memorable narrator, Sam James, who suffers from borderline personality disorder.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), the handbook used to describe and diagnose mental disorders, lists ten forms of personality disorder ...
Provincetown (08/18)
In Who is Rich?, Matthew Klam deliberately avoids setting the story in any specific place, but we do know it's in New England. 'Everybody knows a spot like this, a fishing village turned tourist trap, with pornographic sunsets and the Sea Breeze Motel,' Rich says.
Nevertheless Klam does drop clues, including this crisp sentence: ...
Female Comic Book Writers (08/18)
Leia Birch, the central character in Joshilyn Jackson's The Almost Sisters, is the writer of a comic books series published by DC Comics. While the characters and the comic are both fictional, in real-life, as is in the book, female writers are in the minority. The comic book world is chock full of men - they are both characters in the ...
Norse Settlements in Canada (08/18)
The Half-Drowned King, Linnea Hartsuyker's wonderful Norse saga, is set prior to the end of the first millennium, significantly before the major explorations of the Norse to the west, an era when anthropologists have traced their footprints to the edges of the North American continent.
It was only a few decades ago when school ...
Love Story or Romance? (08/18)
Although the focus of George and Lizzie by Nancy Pearl is their romantic relationship, I consider this novel to be a love story, not a romance. This distinction is arguably subjective and open for interpretation—perhaps rooted in literary snobbery—but as someone who appreciates both genres, this is how I discern the two.
...
Jazz, Sweden, and WWII (08/18)
While most people might think of Harlem, New Orleans, or Paris when they think of jazz music, Swedish jazz is the thread that binds the past and present in the lives of Steffi and Alvar in Sara Lövestam's Wonderful Feels Like This. Alvar is a jazz musician in 1940s in Stockholm, right before what was considered the golden age of ...
Chronic Lyme Disease (08/18)
Porochista Khakpour's Sick is a memoir of living with chronic Lyme disease. Lyme disease is caused by a bacterial infection, specifically a bite from a tick bearing the Borrelia burgdorferi bacterium. B. burgdorferi is one of just a few spirochetes, or 'spiral-shaped' bacteria, to be identified to date. (The pathogen that causes ...
Historical Characters in Confessions of the Fox (08/18)
Jack Sheppard
Jack Sheppard was born in London in 1702. As described in The Confessions of the Fox, Sheppard was apprenticed to a carpenter before succumbing to the attractions of the inns and whorehouses of Drury Lane.
He began a relationship with a prostitute, Elizabeth Lyon, known as Edgeware Bess, and took to petty theft. By ...
Whitewashing Argentina (08/18)
In her memoir Tango Lessons, author Meghan Flaherty says that tango is 'more than its prurient reputation. It contains genres, movements, cultures, continents. It is both African and European, yet uniquely Argentine - and carries within it the early story of that nation. A nation built upon a heritage it would rather see obscured.'
...
Bibliotherapy (08/18)
The Story of Arthur Truluv by Elizabeth Berg is by many accounts a "feel-good read" – a book that readers say makes them feel upbeat after having finished it. But that raises the question: Can a book truly influence your mood? It turns out that scientists have long speculated that reading can, in fact, have ...
Wise Women: Willfulness or Witchcraft? (07/18)
Whether talking about Rules of Magic or its predecessor, Practical Magic, Hoffman always makes one thing clear about the Owens sisters – there is something different about them. The town is not quite sure whether to revile or fear them, but that never stops the community from turning to the Owens' unorthodox problem-solving ...
Performance Poetry and Slams (07/18)
Most sources date the first 'poetry slam' to Chicago in 1984, when the American poet Marc Kelly Smith held the first open mic. According to the
Encyclopedia Britannica, Smith did this because 'poetry readings and poetry in general had lost their true passion' and he wanted to 'bring poetry back to the people.' So he initiated the weekly ...
Appendix from Star of the North (07/18)
Star of the North is full of intriguing asides about the North Korean regime. The author, D. B. North, includes much of the background behind these nuggets as an appendix at the end of the novel. Below is an excerpt from it, and you can read the rest of it
here.
The idea for this story came to me during a visit to North Korea in 2012, ...
The Omnibus Project (07/18)
Readers who enjoy Jennings's dense, fact-laden prose in
Planet Funny might like to check out his relatively new podcast,
Omnibus! The podcast is cohosted by Jennings and John Roderick, front man for the indie rock band
The Long Winters.
The premise of the twice-weekly podcast is that the two hosts — who both hail from Seattle &#...
The Great Hunger (07/18)
Grace is set in an Ireland devastated by The Great Hunger—the potato famine of 1845-1852, which occurred when three successive harvests failed due to blight, causing a million people to starve to death and at least as many to emigrate for a better life. Ireland, Britain and America have all been shaped by its political, economic and...
Obesity and Childhood Trauma (07/18)
In
Hunger, Roxane Gay associates her ongoing struggle with obesity to the rape she endured at age twelve. Psychological studies indicate that she is not alone. Dr. Vincent Felitti of the Kaiser Permanente Department of Preventative Health in San Diego has been tracking this connection since the 1980s and has found
ample evidence that ...
Domestic Workers in the US (07/18)
Bridget, the Borden family's Irish maid in See What I Have Done, is a young woman who came to the United States with visions of making a decent living and maybe one day getting married. Sadly, young immigrant women with limited skills and education were more often than not put to work as domestic help. Sadder still, with no union or ...
170 Years of World's Fairs (07/18)
Love and Other Consolation Prizes largely revolves around two World's Fairs that took place in Seattle in 1909 and 1962.
Officially known as Universal Expositions, more than 100 World's Fairs have been held in more than 20 countries, large and small, since the first one premiered in 1851. The events showcase a country's ...
The 1939 World's Fair (07/18)
The events in Brendan Mathews's The World of Tomorrow lead up, appropriately enough, to the 1939 World's Fair held in what's now Flushing Meadows Park in the New York City borough of Queens. According to the official World's Fair publication, it would showcase 'the tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made.'
...
The Roman Emperor Nero (06/18)
In The Golden House, readers are introduced to Nero Golden, a larger-than-life figure who claims the name of Rome's most infamous emperor for his own. As it turns out, Nero Golden's tragic life closely mirrors that of Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, who ruled the Roman Empire for just over a decade, from AD 54-68. Nero became ...
Cruise Ship Catastrophes (06/18)
The disaster at the heart of Do Not Become Alarmed unfolds while the characters are on a shore excursion, but certainly some of the more notorious cruise ship disasters have taken place on the ships themselves. Some cruise ship voyages are truly tragic, such as the Costa Concordia ship that ran aground in the Mediterranean, killing thirty...
Petra (06/18)
Petra, the ancient city that is one of the Seven Wonders of the World, features in The Confusion of Languages as one of the sights that Margaret longs to visit.
The remains of Petra, once a bustling city more than 2,000 years ago, were rediscovered in the early nineteenth century by a Swiss explorer, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt. It is ...
Familial Co-Authors Writing Under One Pen Name (06/18)
According to their
website, 'Liv Constantine is the pen name of sisters Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine.' Hearing this piqued my curiosity regarding, not simply literary collaborations (there are tons of those), but writers who collaborate and then publish their fictional works under a single pseudonym--and in particular writers...
New York City Women During World War II (06/18)
In Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan has produced a closely researched exploration of life in New York City during World War II and describes a range of ways in which New York women became involved in the war effort.
Brooklyn Navy Yard
During the 1930s a small number of women worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, almost exclusively in ...
Makloubeh (06/18)
War and political divisions are not the only reasons for people living in exile from their families, but they are often why people must leave in haste and abandon everything behind them. Sometimes homes are destroyed by war or, as with Alia's parents in Hala Alyan's novel Salt Houses, they are occupied following invasion. What can ...
The Benefits of Mentorships (06/18)
Renee Watson's excellent Young Adult novel Piecing Me Together follows the life of a high school junior. Jade, who is African American, receives a scholarship to a new, predominantly white school, and finds herself feeling alone. Her guidance counselor approaches her with information about participating in a mentorship program ...
An Incurable Disease Affects Identity (06/18)
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is not shameful and shouldn't be something that is kept secret. However, an MS diagnosis plays with the mind – and that is before the hallucinations and trembling and tremors begin – and patients can feel like they did something wrong. The Inward Empire: Mapping Out the Wilds of Fatherhood and Mortality...
Nudge Theory (06/18)
In Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, the protagonist's lack of knowledge or understanding of social norms and conventions evokes sympathy, and leaves her lonely and isolated, at odds with the world. She expresses bafflement at many, and rightly so – they simply do not make sense. But social norms are not just cultural oddities ...
Retired RV Adventurers (05/18)
When Norma joined her son Tim Bauerschmidt and his wife Ramie Liddle on the road, Tim was 57 years old. 'Ramie and I had been able to retire early because of many years of frugal living, our lack of debt, and forgoing having a family,' he writes in his memoir about his mother, Driving Miss Norma. 'We always drove older vehicles and almost...
A Brief Look at the American Communist Party and Labor Unions (05/18)
America prospered at the turn of the 20th century, but that prosperity wasn't reflected in working conditions or compensation for laborers. Many on the left felt the American Federation of Labor leadership was corrupt and began to support Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party. There was then a further schism, created by those who felt...
Rastafarianism and Dreadlocks (05/18)
In the acknowledgments in Augustown, Kei Miller reveals that the novel was inspired by a story told to him by fellow poet Ishion Hutchinson, who had his dreadlocks cut off by a teacher when he was a young boy in Jamaica. Wearing dreadlocks and the ritual smoking of marijuana are two well-known practices in Rastafarianism, an Abrahamic ...
.png)
