Seven stories that teach resilience

Keggie Carew won the Costa Biography Award 2016 for her shape shifting memoir, Dadland. Before writing her career was in contemporary art. Her new book is Quicksand Tales.

At the Guardian she tagged seven tales of failure...and resilience. One title on the list:

Drawing on her life, Lucia Berlin’s short stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women are itinerant and restless as she drifts between towns and jobs – as a cleaner, a nurse, a switchboard operator – and relationships. Booze-soaked marginal lives are never far away as we see her working in a laundromat, a bar – or on the way to visit a drug dealer. Life throws up hardship and incident, and Berlin’s observations are transmuted into wry and coruscating prose. “My whole life I’ve run into these situations, like that morning with the psychiatrist,” she begins, and we are in her grip.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nina Krushcheva's 6 favorite books to help you understand the world

Nina Khrushcheva is Professor of International Affairs at New School University in New York. She is senior fellow of World Policy Institute and contributing editor to Project Syndicate: Association of Newspapers Around the World. After receiving PhD from Princeton University, she had a two-year research appointment at the School of Historical Studies of Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and then served as Deputy Editor of East European Constitutional Review at NYU School of Law. Khrushcheva is the author of Imagining Nabokov: Russia Between Art and Politics and The Lost Khrushchev: A Journey Into the Gulag of the Russian Mind. Her new book is In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones (with Jeffrey Tayler).

One of Khrushcheva's six favorite books to help you understand the world, as shared at The Week magazine:

Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 by Stephen Kotkin (2015).

This second volume of Kotkin's planned Stalin trilogy has won numerous awards. Kotkin's account of the despot's career stands apart from others because he portrays Stalin as a product of the Russian political system, rather than the sole creator of Soviet dictatorship.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine mysteries to take you on a journey from Paris to the south of France

Deborah Lawrenson is one half of the team writing as Serena Kent, author of Death in Provence.

At CrimeReads she tagged nine mysteries that will take you on a journey from Paris to the south of France, including:

The Mystery of the Blue Train by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie showed the way south in 1928 with The Mystery of the Blue Train, a story that begins steeped in old-style glamor at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, where even today you can eat at one of the most sumptuous station restaurants in the world, Le Train Bleu, named for the iconic Blue Train, the luxurious night express train to the Riviera that was the choice of wealthy and famous passengers in the decades before World War II. As the train nears the warmth and fabled blue of the Mediterranean of the South of France, an American heiress is murdered, and her fabulous ruby stolen. But Hercule Poirot is at hand…

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Samin Nosrat's ten desert island books

Samin Nosrat is a writer, teacher, and chef. Called “a go-to resource for matching the correct techniques with the best ingredients” by The New York Times, and “the next Julia Child” by NPR’s All Things Considered, she’s been cooking professionally since 2000, when she first stumbled into the kitchen at Chez Panisse restaurant. She lives, cooks, surfs, and gardens in Berkeley, California. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is her first book.

A documentary series based on Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat is now streaming on Netflix.

One of Nosrat's ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

Honey From a Weed by Patience Gray

This was the first cookbook I ever saw, let alone read, that strayed from the usual format. Ms. Gray followed her husband, a 20-century sculptor, on the hunt for marble in often remote locations throughout the Mediterranean. Written with humor, elegance and grace, it’s a culinary catalogue of a journey and a kind of cooking that’s the “result of a balance struck between frugality and liberality.” This is a cookbook to read in bed.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top novels about North Korea

D. B. John was born in Wales. He began training as a lawyer but switched to a career in publishing, editing popular children’s books on history and science. In 2009 he moved to Berlin, Germany, to write his first novel, Flight from Berlin. A visit to North Korea in 2012 inspired Star of the North. He lives in Angel, London.

At CrimeReads he tagged five exceptional novels about North Korea, including:

The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Jun Do grew up with nothing, not even a name. He chose his own from the list of the 114 martyrs of the Revolution given to orphans. Trained as a soldier then as a kidnapper, Jun Do carries out his brutal roles with an unemotional curiosity. He does not take the many opportunities he has to defect because he longs to make sense of who he is, and the world that made him—the closed universe of North Korea itself. At times verging on magical realism, especially the scenes featuring the buffoonish Dear Leader, the novel is part thriller, part comic satire, and part exploration of what it means to be human. Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Adam Johnson has written one of the finest novels of this century.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about women and the sea

Charlotte Runcie is an author and journalist. Her first book, Salt on Your Tongue, is a nonfiction story about women, art and the sea, and the epic nature of childbirth, told through the myths and legends of salt water.

One of her ten favorite books about women and the sea, as shared at the Guardian:

Female Tars: Women Aboard Ship in the Age of Sail by Suzanne Stark

Stark revealed the previously untold stories of female sea-goers from the 17th to the 19th centuries, women who were “officially ignored and often hidden”. Female Tars was a rare study of women at the sea when it was published in 1996, and has since become a crucial historical text, encompassing accounts of navy wives, prostitutes, deck hands, nurses, servants, and women who dressed as men in order to become sailors. I love Stark’s passionate writing, full of fascinating stories of a secret underclass.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six sci-fi & fantasy novels inspired by the worlds of Africa

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Ross Johnson tagged six "favorite recent sci-fi and fantasy novels that explore worlds inspired by African nations and traditions, past, present and future," including:

Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor

There’s been a recent international boom in literature of all genres from Nigeria, as a new generation of writers has joined with publishers eager to translate works for a global audience. At the same time, we’re seeing some of our most impressive science-fiction set in and around the country, lead by Naijamerican superstar Nnedi Okorafor. Her novels Akata Witch and Lagoon, both set near Lagos, are absolutely worth reading, but the Binti trilogy is her most impressive accomplishment to date. The three novellas (now collected together) together tell the story of a young Himba woman who defies her family to join a prestigious intergalactic university, in the process becoming something other when she communicates with and comes to understand the murderous and very alien Meduse.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen top books with a twist

Sophie Hannah is the New York Times-bestselling author of numerous psychological thrillers. Her latest novel is The Next to Die.

At CrimeReads she tagged fifteen excellent examples of novels with genuine twists, including:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Not all superb twists need to come at the end. There’s a twist in the middle of this classic novel that takes it to another level of passion, intrigue and excitement. There are hints before the big reveal, but not even the most imaginative reader would dare to imagine the truth. Twists in the middles of stories rather than at their ends tend to say: “And what do we all think now?” rather than, “So THIS is what we’re supposed to think!”—and this one does that brilliantly.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Jane Eyre also made E. Lockhart's list of five favorite stories about women labeled “difficult,” Sophie Hannah's top ten list of twists in fiction, Gail Honeyman's list of five of her favorite idiosyncratic characters, Kate Hamer's top ten list of books about adopted children, a list of four books that changed Vivian Gornick, Meredith Borders's list of ten of the scariest gothic romances, Esther Inglis-Arkell's top ten list of the most horribly mistreated first wives in Gothic fiction, Martine Bailey’s top six list of the best marriage plots in novels, Radhika Sanghani's top ten list of books to make sure you've read before graduating college, Lauren Passell's top five list of Gothic novels, Molly Schoemann-McCann's lists of ten fictional men who have ruined real live romance and five of the best--and more familiar--tropes in fiction, Becky Ferreira's lists of seven of the best fictional depictions of female friendship and the top six most momentous weddings in fiction, Julia Sawalha's six best books list, Honeysuckle Weeks's six best books list, Kathryn Harrison's list of six favorite books with parentless protagonists, Megan Abbott's top ten list of novels of teenage friendship, a list of Bettany Hughes's six best books, the Guardian's top 10 lists of "outsider books" and "romantic fiction;" it appears on Lorraine Kelly's six best books list, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, and Jessica Duchen's top ten list of literary Gypsies, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best governesses in literature, ten of the best men dressed as women, ten of the best weddings in literature, ten of the best locked rooms in literature, ten of the best pianos in literature, ten of the best breakfasts in literature, ten of the best smokes in fiction, and ten of the best cases of blindness in literature. It is one of Kate Kellaway's ten best love stories in fiction.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Eyre.

--Marshal Zeringue

Leila Aboulela's recommended books

Leila Aboulela was born in Cairo, grew up in Khartoum and moved in her mid-twenties to Scotland. She is the author of five novels, Bird Summons, The Translator, a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year, The Kindness of Enemies, Minaret and Lyrics Alley, Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards. Aboulela was the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing and her latest story collection, Elsewhere, Home won the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year Award.

At The Week magazine Aboulela recommended six books, including:

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai (1999).

In a crumbling leafy bungalow in India, a dutiful daughter is restricted by her bad luck and selfish parents. This is juxtaposed against the culture shock felt by her brother, a student in the U.S. who is staying with a family in which the only daughter has an eating disorder. This is Desai at her most beautiful and insightful.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best books about Hollywood

At the Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw tagged the best books about Hollywood, including:

Literary takes on the movies have darkened over recent years, but they couldn’t get much darker than screenwriter Bruce Wagner’s 1996 novel I’m Losing You, an ensemble-cast horror story of modern Hollywood that encompasses paranoia, cruelty, assistant-abuse and self-hate. This horrid rush of fear is perhaps only to be expected from an author who co-wrote the screenplay for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, but it also anticipated the allegations in 2017 against Harvey Weinstein.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten notable scary books by women

Maryse Meijer is the author of Heartbreaker (2016), Northwood (2018), and Rag (2019). She lives in Chicago.

At Publishers Weekly Meijer tagged ten essential scary books by women, including:

In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes

Written in 1947, this noir masterpiece is narrated by a chillingly rational psychopath who stalks Los Angeles in search of young, single women. Hughes resists the sensational, keeping the violence mostly off-stage; instead, what makes Hughes’s novel so compelling and so disturbing is its focus on the mundanity of her killer’s life and motives; many readers will recognize the toxic masculinity seething beneath the surface of a charming, intelligent man who, feeling the world has not given him what he is owed, unleashes his rage on the bodies of women. It’s fast-paced, beautifully written, and almost suffocatingly dark in tone, and yet In a Lonely Place manages to resist cynicism, embracing instead a message of empowerment at its climax, refusing to glorify violence at the expense of its female characters—a truly radical stance that ennobles the murder-mystery genre.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about coming out

Kate Davies studied English at Oxford University before becoming a writer and editor of children’s books. She also writes comedy scripts and had a short-lived career as a burlesque dancer.

In at the Deep End is her debut novel.

At the Guardian Davies tagged ten very good books about coming out, including:

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Waters’ first novel, set in the 1890s, follows Nan King as she goes from naive Whistable oyster-girl to music-hall star to London rent boy to openly lesbian “tom”. Nan’s coming out is gradual: she falls for male impersonator Kitty Butler as soon as she sees her on stage, but quickly realises she has to keep her feelings to herself. By the end of the novel, though, she embraces her sexuality. She takes her lover’s hand in public, “and – careless of whether anybody watched or not – I leaned in and kissed her”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue