James Hider

James Hider was born in London in 1968, and studied at Bristol University and the London School of Economics. He first visited the Middle East as a kibbutz volunteer while still a teenager. He started working as a journalist in Prague in 1991, has since worked as a journalist in the Balkans, the Middle East, Latin America and the United States. He is currently The Times Middle East correspondent and lives in Jerusalem.

His new book is The Spiders of Allah: Travels of an Unbeliever on the Frontline of Holy War.

A few days ago my query about what he was reading caught up with him in Kabul. Here's his reply:

World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler

I was recently traveling in the Peruvian Amazon and picked up a book at a scientific research station called World Made By Hand, by James Howard Kunstler, a writer I’d never heard of. It was one of those totally unexpected surprises that turned out to be the best book I’ve read all year. It is a beautifully written tale of a small community in New York state after a series of vaguely alluded to disasters, including (rather presciently since it was written a few years ago) a disastrous Mexican flu. Kunstler vividly creates an entire society, bringing to life the ruined and patched-up little town with its characters struggling to cope with the abrupt absence of modernity. The characters are convincingly drawn, little by little, through the daily detail of all the chores they have to accomplish with no electricity, machinery, and with the tension of violence in an unregulated society always lurking not far from sight.

I was fascinated at the way this futuristic parable is more of a sudden return to the past, as experienced by contemporary characters, rather than some post-apocalyptic future. And as a journalist who has covered a number of wars, I was also struck that Kunstler’s story is actually one of the best descriptions of why men fight: wars always look pointless and strange from the outside, but for the people inside them there is always an inevitable logic to them: the violence of others, some perceived past injustice, the need for some kind of tribal identity and the desire to secure whatever scarce resources are there for one’s own group. I loved the fact that the trailer-park bikers had taken over the town landfill and set up a recycling business in a camp run by a violent warlord, while the respectable townspeople had shown no great initiative of their own and had come to be dependent upon their much coarser neighbors. It was also fascinating that rough justice comes in the form a bizarre Christian travelling cult, underscoring the tensions between those who hang on to their individuality, and struggle to get by, and those who form a tribe with a unifying ideology, and derive their power from that.

God’s Favorite by Lawrence Wright

This is an absolute page-turner, the imagined narrative of Panamanian president Manuel Noriega’s last days in power seen through the lens of The Sopranos and I, Claudius, a laugh-out-loud tale of insane statecraft mixed with paranoid witchcraft, with quite a bit of sex thrown in, The blistering finale is the US invasion to finally be rid of a sociopath up to his neck in murder and debauchery. The character of Noriega is so brilliantly written that you can’t help liking him even as he murders and tortures his way through his friends and enemies alike, like some crazed Roman emperor watching his city burn. The story telling is perfectly pitched, and I was surprised that the author is none other than the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Lawrence Wright, who penned The Looming Tower, the definitive history of Al Qaeda and the rise of militant Islam before 9/11. Interesting that the same man can write such an esteemed semi-academic tome as well as a rollicking, sometimes touching, yarn like this.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

I was slightly wary of bringing this book with me to Afghanistan, where I am currently spending a month covering the war, but am glad I did. I knew from his previous books that McCarthy’s pessimism can be a wrist-slittingly relentless, and wasn’t sure I wouldn’t need some light relief while in a country where horrors are being perpetrated every day. But it actually gives you a great perspective on the bloody history that we in the West would rather airbrush out of our memory, but which we are happy to condemn in other parts of the world: the blood-curdling descriptions of casual murder, sadistic massacres and the joyous celebration by the good townspeople of the city of Chihuahua at the return of the Yankie scalp-hunters, covered in gore and festooned with necklaces of human ears. McCarthy explores the boundless capacity of human beings for violence, often without remorse, in a culture where everyone is indulging in unrestricted brutality and justifying in the name of their own civilization, backed up by greed. McCarthy’s Melville-esque writing style demands absolute concentration – this is not an easy read -- but rewards your attention with some hallucinatory, beautiful descriptions of landscape (in fact, most of the book is a poetic description of the US-Mexico borderlands).

Visit James Hider's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bruce Weigl

Bruce Weigl is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, several translations, and the best-selling memoir The Circle of Hanh.

He has been awarded many honors, including the Paterson Poetry Prize, Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Yaddo Foundation, two Pushcart Prizes, and the Poet’s Prize from the Academy of American Poets.

Last week I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

What I’m reading lately has to do with the work I’ve been doing in preparation for teaching Homer’s The Odyssey, a poem I’d also like to co-translate someday. Barry Strauss’ The Trojan War provides the clearest and most inclusive history of the war that Homer based at least one of his epic works on, and he does it with a wonderfully lyrical regard for his writing so that it feels like you’re reading a great adventure story rather than a work of history. What’s particularly interesting to me as a teacher are the ways in which Homer deviated from what Strauss argues was the real history of Troy, evidence that the role of the author was far more important in these early texts than I had originally believed.

I’m also reading Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming, Jonathan Shay’s amazing study that argues that Homer’s Odyssey can be seen in part as an extended metaphor for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. What’s especially interesting about this book is the way that Shay, a psychiatrist for a VA outpatient clinic in Boston, combines groundbreaking psychological work about returning warriors with some astute and original literary interpretation of Homer’s great and enduring poem.

Read selected poems of Bruce Weigl.

--Marshal Zeringue

A. Roger Ekirch

A. Roger Ekirch is an award-winning author and a professor of history at Virginia Tech. In addition to scholarly articles in such journals as the William and Mary Quarterly and Perspectives in American History, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, and Newsday. His books have included Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718-1775 and the multiple prize-winning At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past, a sweeping study of nocturnal culture before the Industrial Revolution.

His new book, Birthright: The True Story of the Kidnapping of Jemmy Annesley, is due out in January 2010.

I recently asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Believe it or not, I am at this minute reading the final page proofs of a book that I have coming out in January, compliments of Norton. I know that this answer is not in the spirit of the question that you’ve posed, but please indulge me, for I’ve been reading little else of late. Entitled Birthright: The True Story of the Kidnapping of Jemmy Annesley, the book recounts, for the first time, the real-life story that inspired five nineteenth-century novels, most famously Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. Arguably, no saga of personal hardship so captivated the British public in the eighteenth century as the turbulent life of James Annelsey, the presumptive heir of five aristocratic titles and scion of the mighty house of Annesley. Kidnapped at twelve years of age by his uncle (a serial bigamist), “Jemmy” was shipped from Dublin to America in 1728 as an indentured servant. Only after twelve more years did he at last escape, returning to Ireland to bring his blood rival, the Earl of Anglesea, to justice in one of the epic trials of the century. So it’s a story about betrayal and loss but also resilience, survival, and redemption.

The last book that I read for pleasure was No Country for Old Men, which I enjoyed as much for the taut prose as for the story itself – a fine example of how writing can still be evocative without adjectives piled one atop another.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karen Walker

Karen Walker is a writer who has published essays in newspapers and magazines, as well as an anthology series. After a 30+ year career in marketing and public relations, she went back to college to complete a Bachelor’s degree and graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2005 from the University of New Mexico’s University Studies program with a major emphasis in Creative Writing.

Her memoir Following the Whispers came out earlier this year.

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

I am a voracious reader and have been since I learned to read. Just finished three books in two days: Queen of the Road, by Doreen Orion, The Prairie Grass Murders by Patricia Stoltey, and The Ride, by Jane Sutton Kennedy.

I hadn't read murder mysteries in a while and had forgotten what great escape reading they can be. Prior to that, I re-read A New Earth by Eckart Tolle and I'm working with Voice of the Muse by Mark David Gerson, a guide for writers.

At the top of the reading stack is Fearless Confessions and Because I Remember Terror Father I Remember You, both by Sue William Silverman. For fun, it will be The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, then another murder mystery, Pretty is As Pretty Dies, by Elizabeth Spann Craig.

Visit Karen Walker's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bruce Coston

Bruce Coston is a veterinarian and the author of the newly released Ask The Animals: A Vet’s-Eye View of Pets and the People They Love.

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

My taste in books is widely variable and erratically eclectic. The following books are ones I am reading or have read in the last three months or so. They include the following:

1) Current read. The One Percent Doctrine by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Ron Suskind, and published by Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. This is a very enlightening, though perhaps acutely angled, inside account of America’s war on terror as prosecuted by the Bush administration. It is based on this reporter’s assembly of data from interviews, documents, and investigative reporting. No previous information I have heard has outlined so succinctly the foundational principles of the war on terror which were elucidated by Bush and Cheney. Within the administration this became known as the one percent doctrine: if there is even a one percent chance that an aggressive event is being contemplated by a terrorist network or rogue state, then America would respond as if the event was 100% reality. This stance was rooted in the perceived need for the public protection of Americans who, after 9/11, understood that potential attacks were possible, if not likely. Suskind posits, however, that the subsequent decisions and actions which arose from this doctrine have undermined the principles and freedoms of a democracy such as ours and has resulted in an unwarranted war in Iraq.

2) Will My Pet Go to Heaven? by Steve Wohlberg and published by Winepress Publishing. Over the years, this question has been posed to me by countless bleary-eyed clients and their children whose beloved pets have been eased into eternity to relieve intractable pain, disease or injury. For Christian believers who also happen to be suffering pet lovers, such a question deserves a reasoned and sensitive answer rooted as much as possible in Biblical teaching. Unfortunately, many people seek an answer from a clergy member who may be overly committed to their own theological “dog”ma or too insensitive to the hearts of their pet-loving parishioners to respond with anything but patronizing platitudes. Wohlberg’s conclusion: The Bible is silent on the specific question of whether our pets will go to heaven. But the Bible speaks volumes about three related concepts. First, animal life is precious is God’s eyes and holds a place of significant value. Second, the Bible is clear that there will be animals in heaven and that they will exist in relationship with us. And third, God loves us like a Parent and we can reasonably surmise that in a perfect world such a loving Parent would derive pleasure from making us happy. These conclusions are presented after careful evaluation of scripture from all perspectives. Bottom line, no one knows for sure, but there is no valid reason to dismiss the possibility out of hand.

3) The Collectors by David Baldacci and published by Warner Books, Hatchette Book Group USA. One of the scions of the mystery, thriller genre, Baldacci continues in The Collectors his ability to keep the reader on the seat’s edge. In this rendition, a group of collectors of rare books and documents has an insidious, but firm, grasp on the power structures in Washington; and, while wielding this power, learns of intrigue and treason that they seek to remedy. Twists and turns to the end. Baldacci’s books have taken on an even greater level of interest for me since I learned that he has a place on the same lake that I do. Granted, his is palatial and mine is postage stamp, but we share a common love of the beauty of the lake. Recently, he was gracious enough to spend an informative half hour on his dock giving me suggestions for making the most of my up-coming book release. Now he’s not only one of my favorite authors and my literary idol. He’s now also an acquaintance.

4) Alex and Me by Irene M. Pepperberg and published by Harper-Collins Publishers. Pepperberg is a behavioral scientist whose interest is in researching the facets of animal intelligence. Alex is an African Grey Parrot that she obtained as a research subject, but who quickly became a beloved companion. Dancing on the knife edge between rigorous scientist and adoring pet lover, Pepperberg documents the amazing cognitive and emotional abilities of this remarkable bird. Alex continually challenges the scientific community’s commitment to the concept that “lower” animals are not able to function on a cognitive level, think from cause to effect, draw logical conclusions or experience emotions such as anger, embarrassment or love in any meaningful way. An eye-opening and interesting book.

Read excerpts and some of the early praise for Ask the Animals, and learn more about the book and author at Bruce Coston's website.

See--Coffee with a Canine: Starr and Bruce Coston.

--Marshal Zeringue

Blake Nelson

Blake Nelson's first novel Girl (1994) has been translated into six foreign languages and was made into a feature film. After Girl, he published two more adult novels, Exile (1997) and User (2001). In 2003 he wrote his first Young Adult novel, The New Rules of High Sschool.

Since then Nelson has published six YA novels, New Rules, Rockstar Superstar, Prom Anonymous, Gender Blender, They Came From Below and Paranoid Park, which has been made into an award winning film by Gus Van Sant.

His latest book is Destroy All Cars.

Last week I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Right now I am beginning David Levithan's Love is the Higher Law, which I heard him read from about a year ago in NY. It's about 9/11 and the passage I heard had a cool haunting quality to it. I stayed away from 9/11 literature during the first wave of books on that subject. I couldn't really digest it, the reality of what happened or the reaction to the reality.

Now though I am ready to look at it again. And feel it on a visceral level. Sometimes I close myself off to things as they are happening to maintain my "cold and objective" writer's perspective, but when it's time to go there, literature is a great way to experience things.

Visit Blake Nelson's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Philip Matyszak

Philip Matyszak teaches ancient history in Cambridge. His books include Legionary: The Roman Soldier's (Unofficial) Manual, Ancient Athens on Five Drachmas a Day, Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day, and The Classical Compendium: A Miscellany of Scandalous Gossip, Bawdy Jokes, Peculiar Facts, and Bad Behavior from the Ancient Greeks and Romans.

Last week I interrupted his holiday and asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Usually I have several books on the go at once ... my current crop consists of:

The Breath of Hades by Gregg Loomis - I wanted something light and trashy for reading by the lake, and certainly got trashy. This horribly predictable 'thriller' is riddled with factual errors and bizarre right-wing views. There's a hilarious two-page anti-Canadian rant which is totally irrelevant to the plot, but which the writer evidently needed to get off his chest. It's a library book, but I might still do future readers a favour and drop it in the lake when I'm done.

The Man from Pomegranate Street by Caroline Lawrence - Yes, it's a kid's book, but a fun read for adults too. The adventures of Flavia Gemina and friends combine rock-solid research with a good plot and interesting characters. I count Caroline as a friend, and we often exchange extracts of ongoing projects for comment and review. At the moment Flavia is accused of treason and on the run from the authorities. I can't wait to see how it all ends up. It's my bedtime read, accompanied by Charlie Parker and Johnny Walker.

The Dreaming Void by Peter F. Hamilton - British science fiction at its best. This is one of a series of Hamilton's books set several centuries from now in a strange world of long-lived humans, digital personalities, and in this case a race with strange psychic powers who live at the heart of the galaxy. It's an epic read, and best approached by those who have read the earlier books in the series.

Vote for Caesar by Peter Jones - The sub-title is How the Ancient Greeks and Romans solved the Problems of Today. This idiosyncratic little book is by a dyed-in-the-wool classicist who has little patience with the self-inflicted problems of the 21st century. On taxation, water supplies and crime and punishment, Dr Jones has views which are forthright - verging on curmudgeonly - and invariably thought-provoking. For example, after a guilty verdict in ancient Athens, defence and prosecution presented alternative punishments, and the jury voted for the one they thought most appropriate.

Visit Philip Matyszak's website and blog.

See: The Page XCIX Test: Ancient Rome on Five Denarii a Day.

--Marshal Zeringue

Margot Livesey

Margot Livesey's first book, a collection of stories called Learning By Heart, was published by Penguin Canada in 1986. Since then she has published six novels: Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona and The House on Fortune Street.

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

I don't read as many books as I should by Antipodean writers. Richard Flanagan's gorgeously written novel Wanting made me want to correct this failing. Flanagan is a Tasmanian writer and Wanting is set in the nineteenth century, partly in Tasmania and partly in London. In 1854 Lady Jane Franklin, the widow of the famous polar explorer Sir John Franklin, visited the novelist Charles Dickens, then at the height of his fame, and asked him to rebut an article that suggested that her husband's crew had turned to cannibalism during the last days of their desperate expedition. This meeting provides the dark spark that ignites Flanagan's novel. In alternating chapters he explores Dickens's relationship with his wife, Sir John Franklin and a young actress named Ellen Tiernan and the Franklins' relationship with a young aboriginal girl named Mathinna. Flanagan succeeds in making both Dickens's inner life and the genocide of the aborigines in his native Tasmania equally powerful.

The Scottish writer, James Kennaway, was born in 1928 and died in a car crash in 1968. I first heard of him because he attended the school in Scotland where my father taught but happily, during the sixties, many other people knew him because of his brilliant novels. I just read his posthumously published novel, The Cost of Living Like This. The subject matter could easily sound trite - a married man in his thirties, who's dying of cancer, has an affair with a much younger woman - but the writing is electrifying, crackling with wit and energy and passion. I wanted to stop strangers in the street and read them passages.

Currently I'm re-reading Jane Eyre, and marvelling all over again at Bronte's capacity to invoke the giant passions of childhood and the stages of Jane's journey as she makes her way from girlhood to adulthood. This time I'm trying to pay more attention to Bronte's handling of religion throughout the novel. She was, after all, a minister's daughter.

Learn more about Margot Livesey and her work.

--Marshal Zeringue

Pamela Redmond Satran

Pamela Redmond Satran is the author of the New York Times bestseller How Not To Act Old, based on her blog of the same name, as well as of five novels and the coauthor of ten baby name guides. She is also a developer of the website nameberry.com and the cowriter of The Glamour List.

Among the topics covered in How Not To Act Old, the book:

-- How not to facebook old
-- How to grind without totally embarrassing yourself
-- What to say to get out of holding the baby
-- Why you should never bring donuts to work
-- How to die cool, if you absolutely must

Late last month I asked Satran what she was reading. Her reply:

Methland by Nick Reding – As gripping and terrifying as a horror novel, though I never read horror novels, Methland is a non-fiction book about the destruction of a small town in Iowa by the meth epidemic. I’m working on a new web project, a kind of serialized novel based on a television show I invented a few years ago, that’s set in the Meth Belt of Middle America. One of my characters is a meth addict and another is on his way there. I am totally fascinated by this and find myself relishing this dark true-life read especially while I’m writing so much humor stuff. The only daunting thing is that the truth is so much more outrageous and otherworldly than anything I could invent.

Julia Child’s My Life in France – This was sent to me as a review copy, and I grabbed it one day as I was heading out the door to the lake. I hadn’t yet seen Julie & Julia, had not read that book, and had never been especially interested in Julia Child. But I found this book unexpectedly transporting as the tale of a middle-aged woman’s discovery of herself, of her true calling, and of ambition. Even now, there’s so little that celebrates over-40 professional women and since images of age and of old and young have been much on my mind because of How Not To Act Old, I found this particularly illuminating. I was especially impressed that Child was able to recall and recount all this for her nephew when she was in her 90s.

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson – I’ve really loved this series of Kate Atkinson detective novels, set in England and Scotland, but what I didn’t expect when I read this on a plane from Paris to New York was that it would revolutionize my thinking about a novel I’ve been working on for three years now. She’s so wonderful at inhabiting her very different characters’ points of view in a very intimate third person voice, that it gave me a window into what I needed to do with my own novel. She also has the very rare and enviable ability to be extremely funny while writing about very dark things. I started a fresh draft after reading this novel that’s much closer to each of my three main characters’ viewpoints and is much improved, thanks to Atkinson’s influence.

Perfection, by Julie Metz – This memoir of a wife who discovers her husband’s many affairs after he drops unexpectedly dead was one of the summer’s big beach reads, which is exactly where I devoured it in less than two days. I’ve been thinking of doing a marriage memoir of my own, so I was reading it with part of my brain meditating such questions as whether I’d be willing to reveal as much as Metz did, and if my story was intrinsically as juicy as hers. But – and this is great testament to an author from a fellow writer – ultimately I was able to get out of thoughts about my own theoretical project and be transported by her book.

Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline – Christina, Alice Elliott Dark, Benilde Little, and I have for many years had a novelists’ group in which we talk about craft, business, and occasionally trade manuscripts. Christina’s just-published novel is a wonderful examination of four people and the relationships they make and break with each other over many years. Having read this book in a couple of drafts and reading it again now reminds me that writing fiction means changing the details and events and changing them again until you arrive at the most compelling possible story.

Visit Pamela Redmond Satran's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jordan Christy

Jordan Christy is a music publicist and has worked with dozens of artists and celebrities, in addition to various TV and media outlets. She has also written for local and national fashion magazines and music trade publications.

Her new book is How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World: The Art of Living with Style, Class, and Grace.

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

I just finished Nora Ephron's I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts On Being A Woman and am happy to report that it elicited twelve chuckles and six laugh-out-louds (which is not easy to do). I am a non-fiction reader at heart, and prefer those non-fiction books to be funny, if at all possible. Nora Ephron delivers every time. Nora, if you're listening, I would like you to write the screenplay when my book gets made into a movie.

I also just read Hitman: Forty Years Making Music, Topping the Charts, and Winnings Grammys by the legendary producer David Foster. I work as a publicist in the music industry by day, so I'm always amused and entertained by other insider's thoughts and insights into the industry. It was fun to learn how he got started in the biz, as well as hear his personal experiences with some of music's greatest legends.

If you were to ask me this same question, "What are you currently reading?" tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, you would probably get the same response for this next book. My 9-month old is currently obsessed with My Little Counting Book by Roger Priddy, so we read it about 14 times a day. These Priddy books are phenomenal tools for associating words, colors, and numbers ... but I feel they could accurately rename it, My Ginormous Counting Book, as it weighs about twenty pounds, and when open, is as big as my daughter.

Visit Jordan Christy's website, blog, and Facebook page.

--Marshal Zeringue