Jonathan Lyons

Writer and independent scholar Jonathan Lyons spent twenty years as a foreign correspondent and editor for Reuters, much of it in the Islamic world. His research and writing focuses largely on the shifting boundaries between East and West.

He is the author, most recently, of Islam Through Western Eyes: From the Crusades to the War on Terrorism. Earlier works include The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization, and (with Geneive Abdo) Answering Only to God: Faith and Freedom in Twenty-first-Century Iran. He has a doctorate in sociology and carries out his research in the Old World splendor of the Library of Congress.

Last month I asked Lyons what he was reading. Here is his reply:

I am taking something of a detour from my engagement with the Muslim world to apply some of the same analytical approaches to early American history, specifically to the question of how America became the world’s leading technological power. As a result, much of my recent reading has addressed colonial and British intellectual history. But I also try to read novels, both classics and newer works, when I can.

I have several historical books on the go right now. These include Ron Chernow’s impressive Washington: A Life, which Gordon S. Wood’s notice in the NYRB called “the best, most comprehensive, and most balanced single-volume biography of Washington ever written.” It is instructive to watch Chernow at work, as he painstakingly fashions an accessible and human story from the man behind the emotional mask.

Of a more specialist nature are a number of works on the history of science, largely revolving around Benjamin Franklin. I recently finished James Delbourgo’s A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment on Early America, which captures the bodily experience of early American science. In Benjamin Franklin and the Politics of Improvement, Alan Houston stresses the “identification of truth and utility, of natural philosophy and social theory” in pre-revolutionary colonial thought.

Of special notice was my recent re-reading of James Simpson’s Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and Its Reformation Opponents. Simpson unpacks the culture of reading in the 16th century to examine the roots of religious fundamentalism. Along the way, he takes apart the convention that Protestant reading, now freed of the strictures of a hierarchical Church, naturally led to European liberalism.

Robert Middlekauff’s Benjamin Franklin and His Enemies provides a welcome counterpoint to the avuncular popular image of Ol’ Ben by focusing on the central antagonists in Franklin’s dramatic lifetime.

For fun I try into dip into novels as time permits. After reading Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, I am exploring the author’s other works. And then there is my decennial encounter with Moby Dick.

Learn more about Islam Through Western Eyes at the Columbia University Press website, and visit Jonathan Lyons's website and blog.

The Page 99 Test: Islam Through Western Eyes.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeffrey Abt

Jeffrey Abt is associate professor in the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University. He is the author of A Museum on the Verge: A Socioeconomic History of the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1885–2000.

His new book is American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute.

Recently I asked Abt what he was reading. His reply:

My day-to-day reading usually consists of books and articles by scholars for whom, it often seems, writing is like truck building. Their vehicles are plain and sturdy, and they reliably if ponderously deliver the goods. After spending many hours with these kinds of writings, I feel the need to inoculate myself against being affected by that approach. I’ve done so by returning to old literary favorites that, although less efficient conveyances, are nonetheless skillfully crafted and often very beautiful. The most recently read among these are works by Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, and E. B. White.

Readers often know Capote through works that were made into major films such as Breakfast at Tiffany’s or In Cold Blood. I much prefer his earlier writings including The Grass Harp and the novel I just reread, Other Voices, Other Rooms. I particularly admire the rhythmic quality of that work and especially the tense, sometimes pungent nature of Capote’s descriptions. Eudora Welty also compressed a world of observations into taut phrases. But hers are offered in a polite and lyrical manner that belies her penetrating if reserved sensibility. It has been a long time since I read some of her best-known stories, such as "Death of a Travelling Salesman." The work I just reread is her One Writer’s Beginnings which epitomizes her particular qualities. E. B. White, who polished the short-form magazine piece into a high art form at The New Yorker, deserves our undying gratitude for his edition of The Elements of Style. There are several collections of his writings to be enjoyed and one into which I’ve been dipping for his lessons on brevity, self-deprecating humor, and well-crafted phasing is Quo Vadimus? Although I read his work for its literary qualities, I find that much of it—written over three quarters of a century ago—remains amazingly current. Indeed, where are we going?

Learn more about American Egyptologist at the University of Chicago Press website and Jeffrey Abt's website.

My Book, The Movie: American Egyptologist.

The Page 99 Test: American Egyptologist.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bill Fitzhugh

Bill Fitzhugh is a writer. He’s published novels and short stories, has written television and film scripts, and he writes, produces, and hosts a show on the Deep Track Channel of Sirius-XM Satellite radio.

His latest novel is The Exterminators.

Not so long ago I asked him what he was reading.  His reply:

Lately I've been re-reading the Harvard Classics: Essays by Huxley, Freeman, Channing and the like. Really? No, wait, that's what I should be reading but am not and probably never will. And I don't read much crime fiction either except for books I've been asked to blurb. Along those lines, I recently read Steve Brewer's Calabama and The Big Wink. I love how Steve combines humor and violence.

Most of my reading time is spent trying to keep up with The New Yorker. I'm a slow reader, what can I say? Here's a dirty secret: I am not only reading but actually enjoying Adam Carolla's In Fifty Years We'll All Be Chicks. I've laughed out loud several times much to my surprise. Hard to know how much of this is his real opinion and how much is just the character/persona he's been portraying since The Man Show. But there is some funny, and true, stuff in the book. Sure, some of it's written to a lowest-common-demoninator-pig-ignorant-man audience, but I've got enough of that in me to admit I like it. So there. Harvard Classics? No. Adam Carolla? Yes.

A few notches up the intellectual ladder (maybe step-ladder) I'm also reading The 50 Funniest American Writers (According to Andy Borowitz), a comedy anthology going from Mark Twain to S.J. Perelman to Bruce Jay Friedman to Molly Ivins (who was a fan of my books, thank you very much), to Calvin Trillin, George Saunders and Dave Barry. Both the Adam Carolla and the comedy anthology are excellent bathroom reading, what with them being lots of little bite-size pieces.

I do read short story collections and must recommend one from a few years ago, Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollack. Opening line of the first story: "My father showed me how to hurt a man one August night at the Torch Drive-in when I was seven years old." And a novel I highly recommend from 2002: Polar by T.R. Pearson. Brilliant and hysterical writing. The sentences themselves are genius, let alone how they add up to characters.

Visit Bill Fitzhugh's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Exterminators.

My Book, The Movie: The Exterminators.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christopher Morgan Jones

For eleven years Christopher Morgan Jones worked at the world’s largest business intelligence agency, Kroll International. He has advised Middle Eastern governments, Russian oligarchs, New York banks, London hedge funds, and African mining companies.

The newly released The Silent Oligarch is his first novel.

Last month I asked Jones what he was reading.  His reply:

I try to balance fiction and non-fiction, but have found recently that fact has been winning out over stories. When I’m writing I find that fiction is too rich, one way or another – any voice worth reading is strong enough to start affecting my own.

I’ve just finished a fascinating book about the customs and superstitions that characterized different parts of London over the centuries. It’s called London’s Lore, and is written by Steve Roud, an amateur folklorist who writes extremely well. The book is organized geographically, splitting the city into regions and areas, and is full of tales of hauntings, hangings, wife-selling, vampires, May Day celebrations, green men – a rich assortment. For anyone interested in social history and the layering of event and belief that you find in old cities it’s a compelling and sometimes moving read.

On a similar theme is Lost London: 1870-1945 by Philip Davies. This is a large format picture book, really – not the easiest thing to get through in bed – but the text is excellent and well worth reading. Davies has selected hundreds of images of buildings, streets, squares, whole areas that used to form a part of London but have since been lost to bombing or redevelopment. As a Londoner I’m finding it at once riveting, appalling (some of the poverty only a hundred years ago is difficult to credit) and shocking, because nothing I’ve read before has shown quite so clearly how much of the old city has been destroyed in the last century.

I have been reading some stories, though. Weir of Hermiston, Robert Louis Stevenson’s unfinished last book, is a rich, strange story about a passionate, tricky young man who falls out with his strict judge father and is sent to manage the family estate in the countryside outside Edinburgh. Like all unfinished books it’s frustrating, but it’s so incredibly beautifully written that you don’t mind.

And lastly, I finally read two of George V, Higgins’s first novels, The Friends of Eddie Coyle and Cogan’s Trade, both of which are two-thirds dialogue and as thrilling as any more conventional piece of crime fiction. They’re also brilliantly written. If they’d been published in Paris in literary jackets they’d have won literary awards.

Visit Christopher Morgan Jones's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Silent Oligarch.

--Marshal Zeringue

Howard Shrier

Howard Shrier was born and raised in Montreal, where he earned an Honours Degree in journalism and creative writing at Concordia University. He has worked as a writer for more than thirty years in a wide variety of media, including print, magazine and radio journalism, theatre and television, sketch comedy and improv, and high-level corporate and government communications. His critically acclaimed first novel, Buffalo Jump, which introduces Toronto investigator Jonah Geller, won the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Novel. The sequel, High Chicago, won the Arthur Ellis for Best Novel of 2009, making Shrier the first author in the history of the awards to win both back to back.

Shrier's latest Jonah Geller novel is Boston Cream.

Recently I asked the author what he was reading.  His reply:

Raylan, by Elmore Leonard. The latest work by my all-time favourite crime writer features U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, the hero of the novels Pronto and Riding the Rap, and the story “Fire in the Hole,” which launched the hit series Justified. Less of a novel than three interconnected stories—an organ theft ring, an arrogant and ruthless strip-mining company and a hip young poker-playing college girl who may or may not rob banks on the side.

It’s interesting to see Leonard bend reality to suit the TV show. Boyd Crowder dies in the original story after being shot by Raylan. But actor Walton Goggins’ portrayal proved so popular in the pilot, they allowed him to survive. So Boyd is back in this book, guarding a coal company's killer executive, courting local beauty and former sister-in-law Ava, and generally getting in Raylan’s way.

The dialogue is always sweet and spot on, as usual. It’s a different rhythm from the man whose best novels, set in Detroit and Miami, were known for their urban, jazzy sound. Here he pares down the mountain patois to its barest needs. No one ever says more than they have to. And Leonard can’t write anything uninteresting. How it hangs together as a “novel” doesn’t approach his best work, and I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether the instant love affair between the fortyish Raylan and the 23-year-old Jackie holds water. But I own everything Leonard has ever written, including his great Westerns, and I’ll continue to buy whatever he puts out.

Field Gray, by Philip Kerr. I’ve read all the Bernie Gunther novels in this great series set in Germany before, during and after WWII. This one is more sprawling than the others, a kind of remembrance of things past for Bernie as he languishes in American custody—first in New York, then in Germany—following his arrest in Cuba in 1954. Kerr jumps back and forth in time to incidents that tormented Bernie, including his role as part of the Paris occupation force and as a prisoner of war in Russia, all linked to the war criminal Erich Mielke. Growing to hate his American interrogators, he reveals episodes that took place in the thirties and forties, each crammed with dozens of key Nazi figures, most of them real. Bernie is allowed to resume contact with an old Berlin flame linked to Mielke, a woman whom he has helped over the years, now alone after failed affairs with American servicemen.

The result is not up to the same standard as Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy or others that have followed in the series. I honestly grew weary of all the jumps and found it hard to keep track of every name and rank spelled out. I also didn’t find the love affair that convincing or compelling.

I’ll keep reading the series but this one was overwhelmed by all the research and needed tapering to a sharper flame.

The Drop, by Michael Connelly. This latest Harry Bosch novel—and again, I’ve read them all—is a winner start to finish. Two very different cases weigh on Harry as he adjusts to life as a single dad of a teenager. One is the latest from the Open/Unsolved cold case squad, in which a DNA hit in a brutal slaying leads them to a man who was just eight years old at the time of the murder. Harry also catches a fresh case fraught with political bullshit, also known as high jingo: the apparent suicide of the son of his longtime nemesis Irvin Irving, who either jumped, fell or was pushed from the top of L.A.’s fabled Chateau Marmont. There’s pressure from the chief to satisfy Irving, now a councilman seeking revenge on the department after his ouster, which puts a strain on Harry’s relationship with friend and former partner Kiz Rider, now a police bureaucrat. Connelly does his usual masterful job on every level and I tore through this one in a hurry.

Hound of the Baskervilles and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I’ve been fascinated by crime fiction for more than 30 years, but never was a big fan of Sherlock Holmes. I’ve read most of the novels over the years, watched various adaptations on film and TV and certainly acknowledge his influence and importance in the history of the genre, but mostly maintained a polite relationship with the whole canon. Prepping for an online mystery workshop I’m teaching through the New York Times Knowledge Network, I downloaded these free to my Kobo and thoroughly enjoyed them.

Hound of the Baskervilles will be a great example of setting, as Conan Doyle completely captures the moors in their haunting menace. I was surprised at how well Watson could carry a story in which Holmes is gone for long periods of time.

The Memoirs include the introductions of Sherlock’s smarter brother Mycroft and his great nemesis Moriarty, whose criminal prowess absolutely delights Holmes, who relishes a case that will crown his Hall of Fame career. I read most of these eleven stories while flat on my back after a Boxing Day accident, and under the slight influence of Dilaudid, so their length perfectly matched my compromised attention span. A good Holmes book to have if you only have one.

Visit Howard Shrier's website.

Writers Read: Howard Shrier (May 2009).

--Marshal Zeringue

Wessel Ebersohn

Wessel Ebersohn is an internationally published author who was born and lives in South Africa.

His recent novels include The October Killings and Those Who Love Night.

Last month I asked Ebersohn what he was reading.  His reply:

Much of my readings is about my own country and continent. Recently I have been reading Robert Guest’s The Shackled Continent, a gripping account of the many challenges Africa faces.

I am also fascinated by human behaviour and found The Boy Who Couldn’t Stop Washing, Judith L. Rapoport’s study of obsessive compulsive disorder truly absorbing. I was astonished to read how prevalent the disease is throughout the world. According to the author, some five million people in the USA alone suffer from it.

The resurgence of religion in the world is the subject of God is Back by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. I have rarely been as surprised as often as I was in these extremely well-researched pages. I had no idea religion could be that entertaining.

Earlier this year I reread a favourite novel of my early adulthood and was delighted to find that I enjoyed it as much as I had many years before. To Kill a Mockingbird remains a special treat for any intelligent reader. I was interested too to discover that one of the children in the book was based on the young Truman Capote.

Visit Wessel Ebersohn's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: The October Killings.

My Book, The Movie: The October Killings and Those Who Love Night.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jo Anderton

By day Jo Anderton is a mild-mannered marketing coordinator for an Australian book distributor. By night, weekends and lunchtimes she writes science fiction, fantasy and horror.

Her debut novel, Debris (Book One the Veiled Worlds Series) was published by Angry Robot Books in 2011, and will be followed by Suited in 2012.

Recently I asked Anderton what she was reading. Her reply:

I'm just about to finish When We Have Wings by Claire Corbett. I met Claire at a science fiction convention last year. After listening to her speak on a panel I just knew I had to read her book, and I was so right, I'm loving it. Set in a future divided between people rich enough to afford wings and everyone else, it's both a mystery and a thought provoking look at class structures in society. It's beautifully written, and the world is disturbingly believable. Also, coming from a family full of flyboys, the loving way Claire writes about flight and flying itself rings so true for me!

Before that I read Future Babble by Dan Gardner. It's all about so-called 'expert predictions', why they get it wrong all the time but we believe them anyway. Fascinating stuff that has really changed the way I look at news and opinions in the media. It's got me thinking in foxes and hedgehogs. This book is part of my husband's drive to get me reading "something without dragons in it for once" (don't fret, he also loves science fiction, fantasy and horror and is the only person who will ever get away with saying that to me!). I believe next on my list is Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, but let's see if I can get away with squeezing another novel in first!

But it's a tough choice. Roil, by Trent Jamieson is on my 'OMG I seriously need to read this next!' list, as is Angel Arias by Marianne de Pierres. I'm half way through Justina Robson's Quantum Gravity series and really want to know what happens next. I also need to get Goliath by Scott Westerfeld. So, some difficult decisions ahead. Don't you just love that?

Visit Jo Anderton's website and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue

Colin Cotterill

Colin Cotterill is a London-born teacher, crime writer and cartoonist.

His latest novel is Slash and Burn.

Earlier this year I asked Cotterill what he was reading. His reply:

My response to the question, ‘What are you reading?’ usually amounts to The Bangkok Post or one of a heap of textbooks I plough through for research for the books. Fiction doesn’t often make it to the top of the pile. But when I was in South Africa last year (see how casually I drop in the exotic) Deon Meyer signed me a copy of his book, Thirteen Hours. Deon’s a big fella so I started reading it in case he asked me how the book was going. I was on the road – or rather stuck in airports for the next month so I got into it. And I did – get into it. One plotline was a chase thriller, the type of thing I’d happily watch on film but not read. Yet old Deon did a great job of keeping me sucked in. The book came all the way back to Thailand with me and last night, with the power off again here on the rain-swept gulf, I put on the hurricane lamp and finally got the last chapter read. I rarely give a toss as to whether the helpless victim makes it or not, but in this case the young lady had been through such a wringer I really wanted her to get out of it in one piece.

People ask my why I like to stick a couple of plot lines into my books. My response is that there’s double the chance that the reader will remain on the edge of his/her seat, both buttocks, you might say. Thirteen Hours had a second story about the South African music industry which didn’t do much for my other buttock. But Deon, who writes in Afrikaans and has the books translated into English, did lure me all the way to the end of his book and that is no easy feat.

Visit Colin Cotterill's website.

The Page 69 Test: Slash and Burn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jennifer R. Hubbard

Jennifer R. Hubbard is the author of The Secret Year and Try Not to Breathe.

Last month I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

I’m usually reading more than one book at a time, and now is no exception. Last week, in the throes of writing my own novel, I found myself incapable of absorbing new fiction written in anyone else’s voice. I was desperately trying to keep my own novel’s narrator’s voice in my head. So I picked up two books I’ve reread many times before:

Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis. Lewis wrote this about ninety years ago, but nobody else captures the American societal conflict that we now call the “red-blue” divide as effectively as he does. I like to reread Babbitt and Main Street when I’m trying to make sense of my own political times—when I find the current names, personalities and issues too volatile, but I want to see through to the underlying structure. These aren’t just novels about Issues, though; the characters are fully fleshed out, in all their strengths and flaws.

The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac. I’ve only made it through On the Road once, but I reread The Dharma Bums constantly. To me, this one is the quintessential road novel: the main character crosses the country twice, and then hitchhikes from California up to the Canadian border to spend a summer alone on top of a mountain. This is the book I wanted On the Road to be. It’s Kerouac at his best: free-flowing, with just the right balance of description and action, insight and movement.

A bookstore gift card enabled me to buy Julie Salamon’s Wendy and the Lost Boys, a biography of the late playwright and essayist Wendy Wasserstein. (I’ve been looking forward to this book, and I’m relieved to find that this nonfiction work is not interfering with the voice of my novel.) I’m a sucker for writer’s-journey stories, especially when the subject had as strong a voice as Wasserstein did; I regularly reread her essay collections Bachelor Girls and Shiksa Goddess. Wasserstein was also writing feminist plays during the Women’s Liberation movement of the 1970s, so there’s an extra excitement and historical resonance there.

Visit Jennifer R. Hubbard's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lucy Burdette

Lucy Burdette is the author of nine mysteries, some of them written as Roberta Isleib.

Her latest book is An Appetite For Murder, the first in the Key West food critic mystery series.

Earlier this month I asked her what she was reading. Her reply:

Ever since I signed a contract with NAL/Penguin for three books in the Key West food critic mystery series, I've had a marvelous excuse to immerse myself in foodie books--both fiction and nonfiction. I've always loved reading culinary mysteries, like Diane Mott Davidson's Goldy Schultz series about a caterer in Colorado or Julie Hyzy's White House chef mysteries or Krista Davis's domestic diva series. In these books, I can enjoy the pleasure of reading about food, cooking, and eating, but in addition, the character's quirks and personality are revealed in the way she deals with food. Heaven! Barbara O'Neal's How to Bake a Perfect Life is another recent favorite about a woman who owns a bakery while struggling with a difficult family and her own yearning for love that will be as dependable as her yeast. And don't let me forget Meredith Mileti's Aftertaste, starring a chef/restaurant owner in New York City whose life is turned upside down by an unexpected pregnancy.

In the nonfiction department, I'm reading about chefs and cooking and food in order to inform the books I'm writing about Hayley Snow, aspiring food critic. I adored former NYT food critic Frank Bruno's Born Round and Diana Abu-Jaber's memoir The Language of Baklava. Right now I'm starting Michael Ruhlman's The Reach of a Chef, as I'm anticipating the third book in my series will take place at a top chef competition.

Visit Lucy Burdette's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: An Appetite For Murder.

--Marshal Zeringue