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Paul Auster's Brooklyn (11/13)
Paul Auster is well-known as a Brooklyn writer. In Winter Journal, he writes of first moving to Brooklyn in 1980 after enduring stints in suburbia and an overpriced rental in Manhattan: 'Why hadn't you thought of this in 1976? you wondered … but the fact was that Brooklyn had never ever crossed your mind back then, for New York was ...
Mnemonics (10/13)
In Matt Greene's Ostrich, protagonist Alex Graham is obsessed with mnemonic devices. How did mnemonics get their start?
Simonides of Ceos was a Greek poet in the sixth century B.C. As the story goes, he was asked to recite an ode at a nobleman's banquet. Simonides began his speech, as was customary, by thanking the gods – in this...
The Tasmanian Tiger (10/13)
When Hannah, the narrator of Lois Nowra's
Into That Forest, encounters her first Tasmanian tiger, she is mesmerized:
I turned and there, on the bank not more than ten yards from us, were a wolf creature with yellow fur and black stripes. It were about the size of a real large dog…It had a long muzzle and stripes on its sides like...
Contemporary Movements Based in the Past (10/13)
Jared Diamond's question, 'What can we learn from traditional societies?' is one Westerners have been asking in a Utopian spirit for generations, looking for ways to revivify our cultural practices and trying revisionist experiments to reverse the damage civilization does to our health and psyches. It's a tricky exercise, since there are ...
The Impetus for and Implemenation of A Free Man (10/13)
A Free Man is journalist Aman Sethi's first book. It grew out of a research project and interviews he conducted in 2005 as research for an article about healthcare for homeless workers. In an August 2012
Publisher's Weekly interview, Sethi explains why he chose to write his book:
When I started as a reporter in 2005, I was surprised by ...
The Musical Legacy of St. Hildehard von Bingen (10/13)
St. Hildehard von Bingen was an incredibly gifted writer and music composer. Her music is known for its soaring registers and flourishes. As a child, she was exposed to music at the monastery when she heard others take part in the
Divine Office. She listened and learned from the interplay between words and sound. The monastery provided a ...
The Great Migration (10/13)
The Great Migration describes a large-scale movement of African-Americans out of the South between 1910 and 1970. Hattie, moving from Georgia to Philadelphia, would have no doubt agreed with Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson's
assessment of the Great Migration as 'six million black Southerners moving out of the terror of Jim Crow to...
Henrietta Leavitt, a Pioneer in Astronomy (10/13)
Neil Shubin describes
The Universe Within as a 'timeline' covering great events and processes of the history of the cosmos, the planet and life on earth. But his is also a timeline of scientists and scientific discoveries that enlarged our understanding of the world. One scientist who stood out for me was
Henrietta Leavitt (1868-1921).
...
Is the Warrior Gene a Predictor of Violence? (10/13)
Early on in The Dinner, we discover the reason Paul and Claire are meeting Serge and Babette for dinner: they are to discuss a problem facing their children, Michel and Rick. We know the boys have done something wrong. Then Paul mentions a genetic test that could—through amniocentesis—identify a mysterious and unnamed condition ...
Ashley X (10/13)
One of the stories Solomon tells in Far From The Tree is about Ashley X (the last name is to protect identity), a disabled girl whose story generated a lot of controversy about disability and its treatment.
Ashley X, born in 1997, was diagnosed in infancy with static encephalopathy, a brain disorder that is similar to cerebral palsy. ...
The Real Schroder: Clark Rockefeller (10/13)
In the interview at the close of the novel, Gaige reveals that an Associated Press snippet about the Clark Rockefeller case was the seed idea for her story. Though Gaige states she chose not to research in detail this tale of a con man turned kidnapper, a great deal of information is readily available via
news stories.
Rockefeller, ...
Back to the Future in the Kitchen (10/13)
While Consider the Fork is filled with delicious nuggets about the history of kitchen implements, some geeky gourmands are looking back to the future and revolutionizing the idea of exactly what we consider a kitchen tool.
Molecular gastronomy, the precision cooking that uses emulsification, gellification and other techniques to ...
American Names and Their Native American Origins (10/13)
When reading Sherman Alexie's stories it's hard to not think about the ways that Native American language has been adapted and used by white settlers and contemporary multicultural America. Many American place names originated in Native American languages, though spelling, pronunciation, and other linguistic qualities have been adjusted ...
Arvid Jansen: A Familiar Face (10/13)
In It's Fine By Me, on his first day at Veitvet School in 1965, 13-year-old Audun Sletten meets Arvid Jansen – a young man who would become his best, and one of his only, friends. 'A few girls were skipping rope, and coming straight towards me was a boy on crutches… I glanced left and right, but there was no one else by the ...
Google's Books Project (10/13)
I don't think it's giving too much away to note that the process of book scanning plays a significant role in the plot of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. At the center of the novel's plot is the high-speed book scanning process used by Google in its Books project.
Setting aside any of the controversy around Google Books and ...
The Royaumont Abbey, France's Treasure (10/13)
The Royaumont Abbey, where much of In Falling Snow is set, is located approximately 18 miles (30 kilometers) north of Paris in Val-d'Oise.
Dedicated in 1228 CE, the structure was commissioned by King Louis IX as a Cistercian abbey. The Cistercian order was established by a group of Benedictine monks in the Cîteaux Abbey around ...
The World of Fanfiction (10/13)
In Fangirl, Cath's story is interspersed with snippets of her fan fiction (or 'fanfic') starring characters who, in Cath's world, are as well known as Harry Potter is in ours. This hugely popular (primarily online) genre of amateur writing is inspired by existing fictional characters, settings, and themes.
Writers of fanfic are part of...
The Ojibwe (10/13)
Known as the Chippewa; Ojibway; Ojibwa; and in their own words, the Anishinabe, (meaning 'original man' and alluding to a creation story); the Ojibwe are thought to have migrated from the northeast (perhaps from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, according to late nineteenth-century history). They then settled in Southern Canada as well...
China's One-Child Policy (10/13)
The scavenger in The Scavenger's Daughters adopts many unwanted Chinese girls and adds them to his growing family. The casting away of girls has been noted as one of the many devastating impacts of China's one-child policy.
More than 30 years ago, China implemented a program where couples were allowed to have only one child with some ...
Marksville, Louisiana (09/13)
In Venice, Italy, where it is believed he was from, he was Marco Litche, a trader. In America, he became Marc Eliche. In 1794, a broken wagon wheel stranded him 62 miles north of Lafayette. But the environment was nice, and so were the Avoyels, a small Native American tribe that lived there; also he was a trader, so there was business to...
Craquelure (09/13)
As Chloe Aridjis explains in Asunder, a painting too must obey the laws of physics - in that it slowly - ever so slowly - descends from 'order' (the finished painting) into disorder. This 'disorder' is brought about by a series of cracks in the paint or varnish that forms a network over time. This network is called craquelure (pronounced ...
A Look at A. S. King (09/13)
Amy Sarig King was born in Reading, PA in 1970. No, I won't go into lots of detail about her younger years, suffice it to say she is a Pisces and, as she says, she 'believes in that stuff.' I will say that as a child she spent a good deal of time in her 'office' (aka her closet) staying up late and reading books.
King did not go to ...
Blaxploitation Movies (09/13)
In Telegraph Avenue, Luther Stallings, Archy's dad, was once a star in blaxploitation films that were all the rage in the '70s. Even though the term appears to be a loaded word, blaxploitation movies were actually powerful vehicles of self-identification for many blacks. Understandably this view was not held by all. Many black ...
Body Swap Fiction for Younger Readers (09/13)
David Levithan might take an unusually philosophical approach to the idea of occupying someone else's body in
Every Day, but he's hardly the first person to explore it in fiction. Here are just a few other great examples, which run the gamut from light-hearted to more serious:
The classic book in the 'body swap' genre is, of course,
...
What Defines Dystopian Fiction (09/13)
Dystopian themes have appeared in literature throughout history, but the first use of the word is credited to John Stuart Mill. In 1868, during a speech to the British House of Commons, he played upon the well-known word, 'utopia' (adding 'dys,' which is derived from a Greek word meaning 'bad') and used it to criticize legislators who ...
Autism (09/13)
In
Black Fridays, the main character, Jason Stafford, has primary care of his son, who is autistic.
Merriam Webster's Concise Encyclopedia
defines autism as a 'neurobiological disorder that affects physical, social, and language skills. First described by Leo Kanner (1894 -1981) and Hans Asperger (1906 - 1980) in the 1940s, the ...
Wendell Berry (09/13)
Wendell Berry is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and editorial, as well as a cultural critic and a farmer. Frances O'Roark Dowell's The Second Life of Abigail Walker begins with an epitaph taken from one of his poems. Berry lives in north central Kentucky on a 125-acre farm called Lane's Landing. The intersection of humanity and ...
New Jersey's Demographic Shifts (09/13)
Junot Díaz's characters have a strong link back to their home country,
the Dominican Republic, as they make northern New Jersey (aka North Jersey) their new home. These Dominican-American communities have a strong presence in Díaz's writing, even if specific cities or neighborhoods are not always referred to by name. Due to the ...
The Tenets of Communism (09/13)
Communism is an economic and philosophical theory that can be summed up by a phrase made popular by the 'father of communism,'
Karl Marx: 'From each, according to his ability, to each according to his need.'
In its ideal form, all property is held in common; there is no private ownership. There are also no class divisions, and equal ...
America's Commercial Bail Bond Business (09/13)
In The Prophet Adam Austen is a licensed commercial bail bondsman. It is a profession unique to only two countries in the world, the United States and the Philippines (a former U.S. colony).
Other countries use a variety of methods to ensure that defendants will show up for a court date. For example, in the UK, in the case of ...
The Current Ice Age (09/13)
Today's climate discussions are often so focused on global warming that it can be easy to forget that dramatic changes in climate, including extensive periods of global cooling, have been a hallmark of earth's history for billions of years. In fact, we're in an ice age right now. Currently, earth is in what's called an interglacial period...
The Real Life Battle That Claire Vaye Watkins Was Born Into (08/13)
Readers will notice immediately that the narrator of Claire Van Watkins's opening story, 'Ghosts, Cowboys,' shares a name with the author. This isn't an accident. The story, which is about a young woman trying to outgrow the legacy of her past, is Watkins's own. 'About once a year someone tracks me down,' she says. 'Occasionally it's...
Edward Curtis's Photography Techniques and the Preservation of a Way of Life (08/13)
Edward Curtis, with the help of his assistants in his Seattle studio, produced photogravure prints - over 40,000 of the North American Indian alone. The elaborate process produced sepia pictures with soft glowing tones.
The photogravure process, which really took off in the late nineteenth century, is widely considered as elevating ...
New Delhi, India (08/13)
India's national capital territory of Delhi, which includes the capital city of New Delhi, is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the world. It has over sixteen million people working in information technology, telecommunications, hotels, banking, media, and tourism, among other fields. It boasts globally renowned universities and ...
The Real Harry's (08/13)
BookBrowse's own Tamara Smith talks with Jo Knowles about her childhood experiences growing up in the restaurant business that inspired See You at Harry's.
Much of See You at Harry's centers around the family restaurant. Do you have experience with such a place?
Yes, my family owned a series of restaurants when I was a kid, ...
Stav Sherez (08/13)
Stav Sherez is the author of four books of crime fiction. He was born and raised in London and has persevered with his lifelong ambition to write novels despite the challenges found in the book business today. In his case this meant facing multiple rejections until he found the right agent and publisher.
His official author bio is one ...
Sikhism (08/13)
Sikhism is a monotheistic religion prevalent in the Punjab region of India and Pakistan where A Moment Comes takes place. One of the main characters in the book, Anupreet, is a Sikh.
Sikhism was founded in the 16th century by Guru Nanak. Nanak's family were Hindus, but he studied both Hinduism and Islam. This deep study, as well as ...
Rationing and Victory Gardens During World War II (07/13)
In the novel I'll Be Seeing You, Glory and Rita bond over their daily experiences trying to live a fulfilling life in the midst of wartime worry and hardship. The two women live far apart - one in Iowa, and the other in New England. In their letters to each other, they share tips for growing a decent Victory Garden as well as recipes that...
Shoah (07/13)
In 1974, Claude Lanzmann took a leave from journalism to begin work on his landmark, nine-and-a-half hour long film about the Holocaust,
Shoah (1985). As he explains in an
interview with NPR (March 2012), he chose the title
Shoah (Hebrew for 'catastrophe') because he dislikes the word 'holocaust,' which translates as 'a burnt religious ...
The West Country & Council Estates (07/13)
J. K. Rowling grew up in England's West Country, which is an informal term used to embrace the southwestern part of England, the peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. The West Country doesn't have any rigid borders but generally includes the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. A looser definition also includes all...
A Visit to Seville (07/13)
Located in the southern part of Spain, Seville is Andalusia's capital and its biggest city. The Guadalquivir River runs through the city, which is close to the Atlantic Ocean.
Iberians founded Seville, which was later the center of many conquests and settlements by the Romans, Vandals and Visigoths. The Moors conquered it in 712 AD...
Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) (07/13)
Chartered in 1962 under the John F. Kennedy administration, the
Institute of American Indian Arts is still educating young Native American artists in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
The school boasts numerous notable Native professors, faculty, staff, visiting artists, scholars and alumni, including Joy Harjo, Dan Namingha, Fritz Scholder...
Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell (07/13)
As Ami McKay notes in the afterword of The Virgin Cure: 'In 1870, there were over thirty thousand children living on the streets of New York and many more who wandered in and out of cellars and tenements as their families struggled to scrape together enough income to put food on the table.'
The New York Infirmary for Indigent Women...
Tom Wolfe (07/13)
Tom Wolfe was born on March 2, 1931 in Richmond, VA. He was editor of his high school newspaper and sports editor of his college newspaper. His college professor of American Studies, Marshall Fishwick, stressed looking at the entirety of a culture including its profane aspects. Wolfe's books show how much he took this to heart.
After ...
The Asian American Writers' Workshop (07/13)
In
The Collective, the characters Eric Cho, Joshua Yoon, and Jessica Tsai form a shaky coalition called the 3AC - Asian American Artists Collective. A similar organization was founded in New York around twenty years ago:
The Asian American Writers' Workshop.
This non-profit organization works to spread the growth of literature by ...
Thirteenth-century England (07/13)
Something Red is set in 13th century England, in the latter part of what is known as England's High Middle Ages (essentially the time period from the Norman conquest in 1066 to the end of the reign of the last Norman king in 1272).
Although English life was beginning to change with the gradual development of cities, the economy was ...
A Short History of the Zeppelin (07/13)
In Flight from Berlin, Richard Denham inherits his love for and fascination with zeppelins from his father. The highlight of his press coverage of the 1936 Olympic games is flying into Berlin on the Hindenburg with a film crew. At that time, passenger zeppelins were mostly a uniquely German phenomenon having been developed in the late ...
The Game of Cricket (07/13)
In Homesick, Victor, a Sri Lankan immigrant to England, views his native country's cricket team as his own. He owes allegiance to them and takes pride in their successes. Roshi Fernando uses this sport as a metaphor for her character's desire to break free of colonial ties.
The game of cricket is defined by Merriam-Webster as 'a ...
Military Intelligence Section 5 (MI5) (07/13)
Just as the United States has separate bureaus for internal and international intelligence and security (the FBI and the CIA), so too does the United Kingdom. Serena Frome is recruited to be part of the Security Service, the internal counter-intelligence and security agency, more commonly known as
MI5 (for Military Intelligence, Section 5...
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