![]() ![]() ![]() The title of his subsequent book, Demons, has also been rendered in English as The Possessed. Batuman is drawn to Dostoyevsky and his titles: Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot was serialized in 1868 and ’69. The Idiot is Batuman’s first novel, but it’s her second book her essay collection The Possessed (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) was published in 2010, the year she became a staff writer at the New Yorker. And when she got online in her room at Santa Maddalena, she found that the manuscript had been waiting for her in the cloud-a swarm of files, migrating from server to server, that finally became her first novel: The Idiot (due from Penguin Press in March). Batuman was planning to set the action of this book in 2010, but as she wrote, she kept remembering a manuscript she had worked on in California, in 20, which was set during her time in college in the 1990s. The book she had come to Italy to write was supposed to be her first novel, prospectively called The Two Lives. This last amenity turned out to be crucial for Batuman. In addition to time and the company of Baronessa Beatrice Monti della Corte Rezzori, who runs the place, writers at Santa Maddalena can avail themselves of chestnut groves, rosebushes, meals, several dogs, and Wi-Fi. The foundation is a rural estate turned refuge for writers, a species forever in need of more time. In the summer of 2015, Elif Batuman was at the Santa Maddalena Foundation in Tuscany, trying to write a book. ![]()
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![]() He and I vacationed together to Comic-Con many times, or in Seattle or my hometown of Los Angeles. He was perfectly happy in his comfortable home in a Seattle suburb, surrounded by the things he loved, doing the work he loved and communicating with those he loved. Howard, and film noir, just for starters. ![]() He also loved comics, of course, and fanzines, rock music, the James Bond books and movies, Robert E. Writing was his passion, although not his only one. ![]() ![]() He was relatively pleased with his later works, particularly the Kurtzman and Warren books he did for Fantagraphics. He was always interested in becoming a better writer, right to the end. So, it was a small leap to his initial “real” books on comics and their creators. We bonded immediately and that began a near-20 year relationship that was closer to brothers than pals.Įven then, Bill was chronicling comics history in his CAPA-alpha fanzines, and then later in self-published books about comics fandom and its creators. We reconnected in the early ’90s when he joined the CAPA-alpha amateur press alliance and then solidified our friendship at San Diego Comic-Con in 1991, where we met for the first time. In a way, Bill and I have been friends for more than 50 years, since we both contributed to the same fanzines way back in the mid-1960s. ![]() ![]() ![]() He decides to put together a theorem to explain his relationships – and which will predict who will be dumper and who will be dumpee. And to his heart, there has to be a reason that he is always the one who is dumped. As we subsequently learn, some of these ‘datings’ lasted rather less an hour, and started when his age was in single digits – but, to his mathematical mind, there must be some meaning to his having only dated Katherines. The main character of An Abundance of Katherines is Colin Singleton (not many Colins in fiction, so that was a plus!) who has dated 19 girls called Katherine. I decided to pick up An Abundance of Katherines because Rachel and I will be talking about YA fiction on the next episode of ‘Tea or Books?’ and I haven’t read a huge amount. Since then, I’ve bought a few of his books, but had yet to read any others. ![]() This was my entry to Green, and then I read The Fault in Our Stars a couple of years after everybody else read it. I started watching John Green’s YouTube channel around 2008, and still watch it now and then – it’s called vlogbrothers, and he alternates videos with his brother Hank. ![]() And almost all of them have also qualified for Project Names – including today’s, An Abundance of Katherines (2006) by John Green. You know what #13 means? It means that 25 Books in 25 Days is officially half over already! It feels like it’s been doing super fast – and has, indeed, so far been pretty doable. ![]() ![]() ![]() Suzanne Belperron, one of the great innovators of jewelry design, and a personal icon of mine, is depicted with painstaking accuracy (thanks to extensive research) in the forties- and our contemporary heroine, Violine Duplessi, carries the story into the eighties. Following two story lines, one set in 1986, and the other in occupied France in 1942, there is a expert interweaving of historical fact and the kind of fiction that is so well constructed and executed, that it feels like real life. ![]() ![]() Following two story lines, one set in 1986, and the other in occupied France in 1942, there is a expert interweaving of historical fact and the kind of fiction that is The Jeweler of Stolen Dreams is a book that resonated for me- and also haunted me. The Jeweler of Stolen Dreams is a book that resonated for me- and also haunted me. 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars ![]() ![]() It is the work of your credit union and the other credit union leaders sitting near you today that is paving the path for greater economic opportunity, greater economic equity, and greater economic justice. ![]() And, the minority depository institutions and community development credit unions that Inclusiv has brought together here in Memphis are a part of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a tireless advocate for positive social change. While the museum beautifully chronicles the trials and triumphs of the civil rights movement, it also reminds us that we, as a nation, must continue working toward the “more perfect union” envisioned by our founders. ![]() I’m pleased to join you here in Memphis, a place that is a veritable feast for the senses of sight, sound, smell, and taste.īut, besides being a destination for music and barbecue, Memphis is also home to the National Civil Rights Museum, which I visited yesterday afternoon. Senator Warner is certainly a tough act to follow, but as he is a leading congressional voice for investing in underserved communities, I consider it a privilege. And, thank you, Ed, for the kind introduction. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Held in the home of mid-fifties cookie club founder, Marnie, who is newly in love with decade-younger Jim though she’s loathe to name it love lest he leave or disappoint her like past lovers have done, the club is the start of the holidays seasons for many of its Ann Arbor, Michigan members who mark the journey to Christmas from this one special night.Īnd while the night itself is special in ways too numerous to count, not least of all because of the support and encouragement it gives to the women, one of whom knowingly remarks “What would we do without one another?”, what makes it a necessity for them all is the opportunity it affords to give them a chance to spill their hearts and receive wise counsel and comfort in return. ![]() ![]() Quite how much it matters to have your people around you becomes clear in The Christmas Cookie Club, a novel, the comforting Hallmark film-like title of which belies its emotionally substantive storyline where twelve close friends come together once a year with their home-booked cookies, stories of their past year and a need and want to connect with each other when life has left more than a little battered and brusied. If you take a close look at many Christmas stories, songs, TV shows and movies, a prevailing theme is that of connectedness, something we all want and crave but which becomes all the more important during the festive season when being with the ones you love becomes as critical to happiness as good food, sparklingly colourful decorations and some judiciously played carols. ![]() ![]() ![]() Your object, her object, all of our objects, was to mold and print ourselves on those single fits of future that, in the touching, aged into swiftly into vanishing yesterdays. If you did not seize without holding, shape without breaking, that continuity of moments, you left nothing behind. Instant by instant, tomorrow blinked in your grasp. Ray Bradbury (August 22, 1920June 5, 2012) was an American writer who specialized in genre fiction. You had a single instant, as it flashed by, to change it into an amiable, recognizable, and decent past. It was no different, she said, than life itself. I had once heard her on a radio show describe herself as a snake charmer.Īll that film whistling through her hands, sliding through her fingers, undulant and swift.Īll that time passing, but to pass and repass again. ![]() ![]() Prim, quiet lady, like an upright piano, seeming taller than she was because of the way she sat, rose and walked, and the way she held her hands in her lap and the way she coifed her hair up on top of her head, in some fashion out of World War I. ![]() ![]() Problem is, she doesn’t know his identity. Twenty years from now, a boy from her class will launch World War III, and it is up to Alice to stop him. What she discovers shakes her to the core. Determined to figure out who the voice is and what it wants, Alice hurtles into a dangerous investigation into the tangled link between the future and the present. But submitting to the voice sets off a series of bizarre demands, tasks that don’t seem to follow any rhyme or reason. Compelled by the excruciating pain in her head, Alice reluctantly obeys. Never mind that she’s never spoken a word to him before. ![]() Most Obnoxious Boy Alive: Black flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up. Until the day a strange voice appears in her mind, demanding that she approach Bandit, the cute Thai boy in her physics class–and kiss him. New Release Blog Tour: Malice by Pintip Dunn Today we have a blog tour for Pintip Dunn’s new YA fantasy thriller Malice Check it out and be sure to grab your copy today Excerpt 5:58 a.m. And she’s utterly content to stay there, as not taking risks means that she doesn’t get hurt. ![]() Could you kill an innocent life today to save millions in the future? Seventeen-year-old Alice has spent her entire life in the shadows of her charismatic twin brother. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Thus the chase commences and the story turns into a sort of mystery, or rather into a postmodernistic mystery noir… While seeking his human replica the hero sagely contemplates the nature of knowledge and cognition… ![]() Tertuliano Máximo Afonso got up from the chair, knelt down in front of the television, his face as close to the screen as he could get it and still be able to see, It’s me, he said, and once more he felt the hairs on his body stand on end, what he was seeing wasn’t true, it couldn’t be, any sensible person who happened to be there would say reassuringly, Come off it, Tertuliano, I mean, he’s got a mustache, and you’re clean shaven. The protagonist – a high school history teacher – watching some inane movie sees the actor who looks exactly like him and he becomes obsessed with the idea to find his double… ![]() ![]() ![]() Shortly after the book appeared, the author told a New York Post interviewer, “I set out to tell a story of Israel. ![]() Without question, Uris deliberately intended Exodus to serve as a vehicle for winning support for the Jewish state, especially in America. ![]() Exodus also helped enlist support for Israel among American political leaders and the American public at large–an alliance that has continued, despite periodic tensions, to this day. The novel also played a crucial role into transforming the majority of American Jews (who until then largely had maintained a cool, uneasy relationship with the Jewish state) into ardent Zionists. But Exodus’s success extended far beyond the literary marketplace. Published in 1958, the book became an international bestseller and was translated into over fifty languages. Reviewed by Henry Gonshak (Montana Tech of the University of Montana)įew novels have ever wielded the sociopolitical influence of Leon Uris’s Exodus, about the founding of Israel. Our Exodus: Leon Uris and the Americanization of Israel's Founding Story.ĭetroit: Wayne State University Press, 2010. ![]() |