January 2012
30 posts
“I’m over the moon about the title of my next memoir Jeneration X. My friend Karyn Bosnak (author and screenwriter) came up with that one and it’s so perfect that I dedicated the book to her. My weight loss memoir was supposed to be Pretty Fat but far too late I found out that the dot com domain was a big girl fetish site. Um… no…Now before I decide on a name, I check domain registries.”
—Jen Lancaster, in an interview with Claire Zulkey
Play
Context is Everything →
wnyc.org
PSB author Sam Sommers, professor of psychology at Tufts University and author of Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World, looks at how the where, when and who influence actions and attitudes. Listen to his interview on WNYC’s the Brian Lehrer show.
Mark Stevenson talks the future of food (and more) with Gourmet. What makes him so optimistic, though?
Originally the book was called A World Tour of the Future, but as I did my research, I came to realize that, rather than our future being terrible, it could be a renaissance. I’m not saying the future will be better, but I do believe we still have everything to play for—and everyone of good conscience should be in that game.
Deborah Harkness’ Discovery of Witches (now in paperback) is this month’s “Pennie’s Pick” at Costco!
“One of the joys of this novel is reading about the otherwordly creatures operating freely in today’s world. (You may never look at the person next to you in the checkout lane the same way.) Equally compelling is the author’s obvious knowledge of history, which peppers the plot. I’ve little doubt that most readers will become as enchanted by this debut novel as I am.”
David Owen chats with space mogul Richard Branson in this week’s New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town.” Branson’s next adventure? The Deep Sea!
“I’m going down on one of the trips, to the Puerto Rico Trench, and it will take about seven hours, heading down in this dark abyss, not knowing what you’re going to find at the bottom. It will be full of Spanish galleons—I’ll just see all this gold scattered around.”
December 2011
34 posts
“Deborah Blum has done it again – written a fast-paced page-turner, full of action and intrigue, and with TONS of science in it. It reads like a detective novel.Oh wait. It is a detective novel.”
—Scientific American loved Deborah Blum’s suspenseful science book, The Poisoner’s Handbook.
Another honor for Geraldine Brooks! Her novel Caleb’s Crossing is this year’s Reading Across Rhode Island selection. Approximately 25 libraries, 20 public and private high schools, and 60 book clubs across the state will read and discuss the book. We hope everyone loves it!
Salon columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams reminds us that our “bucket lists” don’t have to seem so out of reach. Here’s to PJ’s and gooey grilled cheese!
Feeling exhausted this holiday season? According to Marketwire, 55% of American women expect to spend between 1-5 hours per night on holiday-related tasks this month. Michael Breus, the “Sleep Doctor” and author of Beauty Sleep, offers some smart tips for getting some shut-eye. (Hint: steer clear of late-night egg nog.)
“A question mark walks into a bar?”
—Gotta love bookish humor, like McSweeney’s list of “Seven Bar Jokes Involving Grammar and Punctuation.”
“The other day I posted on Time.com about seven books I’m looking forward to in 2012, and I didn’t mention [John] Green’s book, because I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’d heard his stuff was good, but I’d never read it myself, and because I’m a suspicious and distrusting person, I didn’t take its goodness on faith. Then I picked up The Fault in Our Stars. I am totally devastated by this book. I cried when I read it, and I never cry. You don’t want to throw around phrases like “instant classic,” but I can see this book sitting next to The Catcher in the Rye. It’s that good.”
—Lev Grossman
