Note: The key icon
indicates member-only content.
Learn more about membership.
Literary Predecessors of Maggie O'Farrell (01/11)
According to BookBrowse reviewer Marnie Colton, Maggie O'Farrell's dry wit and keen observations owe a debt to these predecessors:
Nina Bawden (b. 1925)
Nina Bawden, CBE, is one of Britain's most distinguished and best-loved novelists for adults and children. She has published over forty novels and was shortlisted for the Booker ...
The Religious "Nones" (01/11)
Because the US Census doesn't collect information about religious affiliation, the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) began its own survey in 1990 with 113,000 interviews, and followed up with 54,000 in 2008.
According to the ARIS Survey, Nones make up 15% of the US adult population, up from 8% in 1990. So who are they?...
The Origin of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (01/11)
(From author Melanie Benjamin's
website)
On the 'golden afternoon' of July 4, 1862, Charles Dodgson and his friend Robinson Duckworth rowed the three Liddell girls - Ina, Alice and Edith - down the Isis (or the Thames, as it's known as it nears London)* for a picnic lunch. During the
trip, Dodgson began to tell the sisters the story...
William Wordsworth (01/11)
Characters in
Bloodroot rely on
William
Wordsworth's poetry as a source of comfort and inspiration, but echoes of
his literary philosophy and poetic interests can also be found in the
pages of Amy Greene's novel.
Just as
Bloodroot relies on memory to tell its stories, much of Wordsworth's poetry focuses on capturing moments of ...
The Omega Point (01/11)
What does Don DeLillo share with Marilyn Manson and Dilbert?
Answer: An interest in the omega point, a theory developed by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his book The Phenomenon of Man, which was written in 1938 but was so contested by the Catholic church that it wasn't published until just after his death in 1955.
...
Indonesia (01/11)
Map of the Invisible World takes place during a tumultuous time in recent Indonesian history - the post-colonial turmoil that is common when empires finally relinquish territories they've been occupying for centuries. Like many areas of the world, Indonesia has been influenced and sometimes occupied by successive waves of immigration and ...
The 1974 Ethiopian Revolution (01/11)
Ethiopia was a monarchy until 1974, ruled by a dynasty that can be documented back to the 13th century, and claimed by oral tradition to trace its lineage to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Emperor Haile Selassie I, born in 1892, was the country's last emperor, beginning his rule as regent in 1916 and officially becoming emperor in ...
The All-YA-Author Band (11/10)
Natalie Standiford is a rock star! Not only does she write books for children and young adults, but she is also in two bands.
One is a punk rock band called Ruffian, and the other - check this out! - is an all YA-author band called Tiger Beat. Natalie's band-mates include
Libba Bray,
Daniel Ehrenhaft, and
Barnabas Miller. Natalie plays ...
Desegregation Bussing (11/10)
In 1954, the United States Supreme Court handed down its judgment for
Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas. In their landmark unanimous (9-0) decision, the Court stated that 'separate educational facilities are inherently unequal', and thus ruled segregation to be a violation of the
Equal Protection Clause of the&#...
Evolutionary Ideas Before Darwin (11/10)
The theory of evolution states that all life is related and has descended from a common ancestor; complex creatures evolve over a long period of time from simpler organisms. Evolution is not concerned with the origin of Earth or of the Universe, but attempts to explain why different living things have developed and diversified since life ...
Fiction about Women, Artists and Genius (11/10)
One of the key themes in The Swan Thieves is the challenge of male and female artists who form relationships and must navigate the storms of artistic ...
Too Much Happiness=Ecstasy? (11/10)
Munro's stories often contain mysterious elements that deepen their appeal, leaving the reader with something extra to savor, like a fine mint after an especially flavorful dinner. No story in the collection better exemplifies this than 'Too Much Happiness,' a tale brimming with sadness that nonetheless ends in ecstasy. The chemical ...
Australia's role in the Korean and Vietnam Wars (11/10)
When war broke out in Korea in June 1950, the United Nations Security Council asked all of its members to assist in repelling the North Korean invasion into South Korea. North Korea was under the influence of the Soviet Union and later in the war Communist China entered the fray as well. Fifteen nations sent contingents to defend South ...
Brazil's Favelas (11/10)
In his novel Heliopolis, James Scudamore candidly describes the favelas of Brazil as poor shantytown communities; 'from a distance, you can't imagine anyone living in such a place: the area has the chaotic texture of a landfill site, a rubbish dump… dense thickets of unofficial power lines; walls and roofs of remaindered breeze-block...
Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder (11/10)
Although Tim Farnsworth's condition never receives an official diagnosis in The Unnamed, his relentless walking might seem to belong to the category of obsessive/compulsive disorders.
Obsessions are defined as recurrent, unavoidable thoughts, and compulsions are categorized as repetitive behaviors. Obsessive/compulsive disorder (OCD) ...
Illegal Drug Use in the USA (11/10)
The primary protagonist in Crossers is the head of a powerful Mexican
drug cartel specializing in the sale and distribution of both marijuana and
cocaine.
Illicit narcotics have been smuggled across the Mexican border into the United
States for decades, and the illegal drug market in the United States is one of
the most ...
An Irish Lexicography (11/10)
When reading Love and Summer, American readers will encounter many Irish words and phrases with which they may not be familiar. What follows is a list of some of these, highlighted within a sentence from the book, along with the accompanying definition. Definitions come from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).
1. By the time the stairs ...
Mary Anning's Fossils (11/10)
he cliffs and beaches of Lyme Regis, in Dorset on the south coast of England, are fertile hunting grounds for creatures who lived in what were equatorial seas in the early Jurassic period, around 190 million years ago. Here is a look at some of the fossil types Mary Anning discovers in
Remarkable Creatures:
Ammonites are distant ...
J.M. Coetzee (11/10)
Born in Cape Town, South Africa, on February 9, 1940, J. M. Coetzee* studied first at Cape Town, earning degrees in English and mathematics. He worked for several years as a computer programmer while he researched his thesis on the novelist Ford Madox Ford. In 1968 he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a PhD in English,...
America's Most Haunted Cemeteries (11/10)
Luckily for young Bod he happened upon an abandoned graveyard that was
haunted by benign, some would even say friendly, ghosts. Caspers, one and all.
Apparently, not all cemeteries are so hospitable.
The
Haunted America Tours website chronicles the ten most haunted cemeteries in the United States. Topping the list is the St. Louis ...
The Norfolk Coast (11/10)
Norfolk is a largely rural county, located on the east coast of England, in an area known as East Anglia, about a 2 hour train ride from London. Its 43-mile coast along the North Sea is defined by a range of wide beaches, chalky cliffs, sand dunes, and salt marshes that house world-famous bird reserves. The area was designated an Area of ...
A Brief History of North Korea (10/10)
Korea's earliest known history begins around the 4th century B.C. Korea developed into several regions based around walled communities that acted somewhat like states. China controlled some southern parts of Korea, but in the 7th century A.D., one of the states, Silla, was able to drive China out of Korea's borders. As a result, Korea was...
Ethiopian Authors (10/10)
Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. In 1980 he immigrated to the United States with his mother and sister, joining his father, who had fled the communist revolution in Ethiopia two years before. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and of Columbia University's MFA program in fiction. He has also reported ...
Broughton Castle (10/10)
The unnamed location of William Fiennes' memoir is Broughton Castle, a
medieval manor house near the village of Broughton, two miles southwest of
Banbury, in the county of Oxfordshire, England.
The estate is situated at the confluence of three streams, making it an ideal
location for a fortified manor house complete with ...
Kazuo Ishiguro (10/10)
Born in Nagasaki, Japan on November 8, 1954, Kazuo Ishiguro moved to Britain in 1960 at the age of five when his father began research at the National Institute of Oceanography. His family had not expected to stay, but ended up making Britain their home. He was educated at a grammar school for boys in Surrey, and later read English and ...
The Australian Penal Colonies (10/10)
You might wonder why Britain would choose to send ships filled with convicts
and their jailors to, quite literally, the other side of the world. The
answer is simple economics.
In the 1780s, the British population was increasing fast, as were the effects of
the Industrial Revolution which led to the displacement of a great ...
Margaret Drabble (10/10)
Margaret Drabble was born in 1939 in Sheffield, England. Her father was a barrister, county court judge and a novelist. Her sister is the author
A.S. Byatt. Margaret attended the Mount School in York from where she won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge to read English. She received a Starred First (First Class Honours with ...
The Wicasa Wakan in Lakota Native Culture (10/10)
In 'Brown Dog Redux,' the second novella in Jim Harrison's The Farmer's Daughter, an enigmatic quality surrounds the character of Charles Eats Horses. At Wounded Knee he sits alone in the moonlit cemetery, arms raised to the sky; the next morning he is found unmoving in a trance-like state; and throughout the story his peers carefully ...
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (10/10)
Mary Shelley was born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin in London in 1797. As the daughter of the feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and William Godwin, a political philosopher and an early anarchist proponent, Mary was born into a family that challenged social norms and encouraged ...
Iceland (10/10)
Located midway between North America and mainland Europe (
map), Iceland is the same distance from New York as New York is to Los Angeles. The island is the same size as the state of Ohio, with 11% of its surface covered in glaciers. Much of the country is an other-worldly moonscape of ancient lava flows covered in moss, and tall, treeless...
Factory Farm Alternatives (10/10)
Foer suggests that meat lovers who don't want to support factory farms consider patronizing small family farms rather than buying grocery store meat, which has been produced by factory farms. The products offered by these small farmers tend to be pricey, but these producers say that their animals live most of their lives outdoors, pain-...
The Real Homer and Langley (10/10)
The Collyer brothers of Doctorow's novel, like many of his fictional characters, are based on historical personalities. Though he shifts the time-period up a few decades and re-imagines the brothers, the bones of the narrative can be found in the headlines of decades past.
The real Homer Collyer (b. 1881) was found dead in his ...
Touring New York City (09/10)
Everyone knows New York! Even if you've never visited you've probably read about it in books such as
Jonathan Letham's (which are all set in the City). If you haven't read about it, the chances are that one of the countless TV shows such as
NYPD Blue,
Friends, and
Sex and the City has introduced you to a variety of its streets, apartment ...
Contemporary Saints (09/10)
Los Angeles artist
J. Michael Walker thinks a lot like Antonia Labella, heroine of
The Possibilities of Sainthood. In the summer of 2008 he exhibited a series of large portraits of saints whose names are commemorated in the roads and streets of many Los Angeles neighborhoods. Each large, ink on paper portrait portrays a ...
Trotsky in Mexico (09/10)
Kingsolver's fictional protagonist, Harrison Shepherd, spends much of his life brushing up against the lives of real people, including the Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera who played host to Leon Trotsky in the 1930s. Undoubtedly, you know of Trotsky, Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist, but did you know that he spent...
The Chinese Zodiac (09/10)
Author Alison Goodman models her concept of the twelve energy dragons of good fortune after the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. Falling in an established order within the cycle, the animals, according to legend, once bickered over who would head the ...
Comfort Women (09/10)
Carmen's experience as a comfort woman in Los Baños was not an uncommon one for southeast Asian women during World War II. The system of brothels began in 1932. In the early stages, volunteer Japanese prostitutes were used until Japan's military expansion made it difficult to get volunteers. At this point, the military turned to ...
wolf Hall: Cast of Characters (09/10)
Henry VIII
King of England 1509-1547
Painted by Hans Holbein in 1536
German painter Hans Holbein made his reputation in Basel, designing wood blocks for book printers, and painting portraits and commissions for churches. Despite his relative success, the disturbed conditions of the Reformation led him to doubt his financial future and ...
Beijing (09/10)
Many of Yiyun Li's stories revolve around her childhood home of Beijing, China's capital city. Beijing (meaning Northern Capital) is one of China's
four great ancient capitals, alongside Nanjing (meaning Southern Capital), Xi'an (meaning Western Peace) and Luoyang (known during the Tang dynasty as Dongdu, meaning Eastern Capital).
...
John Clare - A Little Known English Poet (09/10)
The Quickening Maze is based on real events in the lives of English poets John Clare and Alfred Tennyson. Tennyson, better known as Lord Tennyson (even though he was well into his eighth decade before becoming a peer) will be familiar to most of us for a handful of his better known poems including
The Charge of the Light Brigade, one...
The Lost Boys (09/10)
While The Chosen One focuses primarily on the plight of Kyra, a young girl growing up in an unspecified polygynous fundamentalist community, it also explores the issue of the 'lost boys'.
The lost boys is a term used to describe young men raised within polygynous Mormon sects such as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter...
Yiddish (09/10)
Mandelman's novel is generously peppered with Yiddish words and phrases, complete with translations. There are other Yiddish words that require no translation having found their way into common English usage; words such as bagel, maven and klutz, have become so widespread that it would be difficult to spend a day without hearing, reading ...
Keith Thompson - Leviathan's Illustrator (09/10)
Keith Thompson, who contributed fifty illustrations for the interior of
Leviathan, began freelancing as an artist in high school. After graduating, he studied illustration and continued his freelance work. He has contributed art for books, video games, film, and television.
Preparing the Leviathan illustrations involved a year of ...
Studio Pottery (09/10)
One of the main characters in The Children's Book is Phillip Warren, apprentice to eccentric master of ceramics Benedict Fludd. While Fludd is a fictional creation, the kind of pottery being made in his house is in a style that came to be known, in the early 20th century, as Studio Pottery - that is to say pottery made by artists working ...
Uruguay (09/10)
Uruguay (
map
of South America) is home to about 3.5 million people about half of whom
live in or around the capital city of Montevideo. Montevideo was
founded by the Spanish in 1726 as a stronghold. Claimed by Argentina but
annexed by Brazil, the country won its independence in 1828 following a
500 day conflict.
Early 20th ...
A brief history of borders (08/10)
Most of us take it for granted that every person on earth is the citizen of a nation
state, but this is a relatively recent concept.
Take Europe for example. Although there had long been empires that stretched across large tracts of land, up until the Middle Ages Europe was essentially made up of multiple city states. Indeed, the ...
100 Years of Korean Immigration (08/10)
In 2008 there were more than 1.3 million people of Korean ancestry living in the United States, making Koreans the fourth largest group of Asian Americans, after Asian Indians, Chinese and Filipinos. As of 2000, roughly one-third of Korean Americans had been born in the United States, one-third are U.S. citizens born in Korea, and one-...
.png)
