Amy Brill

Amy Brill is a writer and producer who has worked for PBS and MTV, and has been awarded fellowships by the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Millay Colony, and the American Antiquarian Society, among others. She lives in Brooklyn.

Brill's new novel is The Movement of Stars.

Earlier the month I asked the author about what she was reading.  Her reply:

I always have a towering pile of books to be read—but since I have two kids under five, my time for actual reading is pathetically slim. That said, I’m involved in a few great books right now. First and foremost is Matt Bell’s incredible new novel, In the House Upon the Dirt by The Lake in the Woods, which will be out in June. It’s a wild and powerful fable that on its surface is about a couple trying to begin a family in an odd, desolate setting. The writing is so spare and magnificent and the events therein so profoundly strange that reading it is just exhilarating.

I’m also finishing up Leigh Newman’s wonderful memoir about growing up in Alaska, Still Points North. It’s a vivid, poignant book about fish and bears and tiny planes, but really it is about how childhood events can reverberate throughout a person’s life.

Finally, I just began The Cartographer of No Man’s Land, a debut novel coming out in October. It’s about a Nova Scotia family divided by World War I, and so far it is as beautiful and gripping as its title suggests.

Learn more about the book and author at Amy Brill's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Movement of Stars.

--Marshal Zeringue

Barbara J. King

Barbara J. King has taught Anthropology at the College of William and Mary  since 1988.  Originally focused on primate studies through her observations of wild monkeys in Kenya and captive apes, she now takes up intelligence and emotion in a wide variety of animals. Her books include Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion and the recently released How Animals Grieve.

Recently I asked King about what she was reading.  Her reply:

I’ve just finished reading two grief memoirs. In The Guardians: Elegy For a Friend, Sarah Manguso conveys, in a narrative of fragments and patches, the searing loss of her friend Harris. It was so sudden: Harris walked out (was allowed to walk out) of a psychiatric hospital and later that day jumped in front of a train. Sometimes, the fragments and patches flow along; occasionally one stops my heart. Manguso tells of the habit she fell into after Harris’s death: “I pictured my parents dead, my husband, my best friends, my relatives, everyone I knew, one by one. I started grieving good and early, so that when the deaths happened, I’d have a head start.”

Sonali Deraniyagala’s Wave punched right through me in its entirety. On Christmas holiday with her family in Sri Lanka where she was born, Deraniyagala watched from her hotel room as “a white foamy wave” advanced unnaturally far up the beach. When the wave didn’t recede, but became “charging, churning,” Deraniyagala fled with her husband Steve, and their two young sons Vik and Malli. Of the four, only Deraniyagala survived; her parents died in the tsunami as well. Her story is not one of recovery (although over time she no longer vows to kill herself soon), but rather of memory. Gradually, in a process that let her feel “less fractured,” she lets back into her mind and heart the times with Steve and the boys, watching Sri Lankan wildlife or just playing around at home in London.

These books resonate with me because I’ve spent so much time over the last two years researching and writing about grief expressed, in some cases quite deeply, by dolphins, chimpanzees, horses, cats, dogs, and other animals. It's work rooted in the sure knowledge that animals love as well as mourn. While of course I do feel sad reading the grief memoirs, I’m also moved to joy at life and love, and hold my family and friends just that bit closer as a result.

I also read a lot of accessible science, as I cast about for material for my weekly posts at NPR’s 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog. I got quite caught up, for example, in the anthropological controversy around Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday and, after reading the book, wrote about that for NPR.

Still, I read novels mostly. After a day writing and reading science, I crave immersion in fictional worlds. Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer just soars and I’m pressing it on everyone I know who loves the natural world. Set in southern Appalachia, the alternating and interlocking chapters about two women and one man are as much about the thrumming life of the forest as about the questing human characters. I’ll never look at “the spiraling flights of moths” the same way again.

And Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend made my teeth ache with a yearning to get back to Italy. Ferrante sets her story in a Naples neighborhood of the 1950s and 60s. Two girlfriends, Elena and Lila, both fiercely smart, different from those around them but in heartbreakingly vulnerable ways, anchor the narrative and I came to feel they were of flesh and blood in the room with me. It’s the first of a trilogy. The two girls, Vesuvius, and the sea remain lodged in my head, and I know that Ferrante can’t write fast enough for me.

Learn more about How Animals Grieve at the University of Chicago Press website and visit Barbara J. King's website.

The Page 69 Test: Evolving God.

My Book, The Movie: Evolving God.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alan Brennert

Alan Brennert is the author of Honolulu and Moloka’i, which was a 2006-2007 BookSense Reading Group Pick and won the 2006 Bookies Award, sponsored by the Contra Costa Library, for the Book Club Book of the Year. In addition to novels, he has written short stories, teleplays, screenplays, and the libretto of a stage musical, Weird Romance. He won an Emmy Award and a People’s Choice Award for his work as a writer-producer on the television series L.A. Law, and he has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award and for the Writers Guild of America Award for Outstanding Teleplay of the Year. His story “MaQui” won a Nebula Award. His new novel is Palisades Park.

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

I read a lot of nonfiction as research for my books, but when I want to read nonfiction for pleasure I am never disappointed by the work of Marion Meade. Her most recent book is Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney, which as a longtime fan of West’s work I devoured in several sittings. I think it’s the best biography of West I’ve read, and McKenney’s life (she inspired her sister’s book and play My Sister Eileen) is equally fascinating; their tragic end was a heartbreaking loss of talent. Meade is also the author of the fine biography Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? and the wonderful multi-subject biography Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties, which expertly interweaves the burgeoning careers of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber in the 1920s. As a writer I’m always fascinated by the lives of other writers, and no one conveys the writer’s life better than Meade.

Visit Alan Brennert's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Rock

Peter Rock was born and raised in Salt Lake City. His most recent book is The Shelter Cycle, which concerns the end of the world in Montana in 1990, among other things.  His previous novel, My Abandonment, has won an Alex Award, the Utah Book Award, and been published in Germany, Turkey and France. He is also the author of the novels The Bewildered, The Ambidextrist, This Is the Place, and Carnival Wolves, and a story collection, The Unsettling.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading.  Rock's reply:

Rather than dream up some titles that would impress people, I’ll just ‘fess up to some of the books on my bedside table, ones I’ve been reading in the last week:

My Education, by Susan Choi

This is a great and terrifying novel. I believe it comes out in July, but I got an early copy because Susan’s an old friend of mine. In fact, we had a two-person independent study about our writing when we were college students. And then we hung out all the time when she was a graduate student at Cornell and this novel is loosely based on those years, so it was eerie. More eerie, though, was how amazing Susan’s prose is. No one writes better sentences and keeps them moving, looping, twisting. What’s so amazing here is the tension is created not only by what will happen next but the mystery of how the graduate school heroine—prone to bad choices and behavior, often quite immature—is going to become the sophisticated narrator who describes her.

The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana: The Ultimate Guide to Physical Sex

Unexpurgated and still shocking after 15 centuries! Actually, it is kind of disappointing. My brother-in-law gave this to me and my wife for Christmas; he is prone to giving us gifts like this (e.g. Sensual Massage, where at least the pictures are shocking). It’s been on my bedside table and every now and then I read a passage aloud, usually about how wives should behave, and then my wife disagrees.

The Bloody Chamber, by Angela Carter

Come on, now. “Puss-in-Boots” and “Bluebeard” and all manner of the fairytales taken on, here, couldn’t be more terrifying. Angela Carter is so incredibly sharp; she turns our expectations inside out! Also, as a writer who has long striven toward sparseness, reading these stories showed me again the power of lyricism and density, how words could make colors and change temperatures. An amazing book.

The Boxcar Children: The Yellow House Mystery, by Gertrude Chandler Warner

My girls are 3 and 5, and devoted to the Boxcar Children. I have learned a lot from Gertrude Chandler Warner (she wrote the first 19; after her death the quality trails off), she of the sharp sentences and the bold, unapologetic plot turns. Her characterization is right on, and her use of “quite” and “fine,” the constant hunger of Benny—all fantastic. She’s one of my favorite authors, right now. This is the third book, where she really finds her stride, I think. The canoeing, the camping trip, the silent hermit, the helpful Indian girl: it’s all here.

Something Bright, Then Holes, by Maggie Nelson

This is a great collection of poems. I came to reading Maggie’s work through the excellent Bluets, and this may be the only book I haven’t completely read, yet. I’m especially taken by the long “Canal Diaries,” where the narrator sits by the polluted and ever-changing Gowanus Canal. Broken-down desks, silent pens, and “The green canoe still humps the red canoe.”—what a great description of a static world that’s always full of potential, late at night.

Visit Peter Rock's website.

The Page 69 Test: My Abandonment.

The Page 69 Test: The Shelter Cycle.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steven Nadler

Steven Nadler is the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin--Madison. His books include Rembrandt's Jews, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Spinoza: A Life, which won the Koret Jewish Book Award; The Best of All Possible Worlds: A Story of Philosophers, God, and Evil, and A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age.

His new book is The Philosopher, the Priest, and the Painter: A Portrait of Descartes.

Early this month I asked Nadler about what he was reading.  His reply:

I just finished reading The Vatican Diaries, by John Thavis. I've long been fascinated by and curious about what goes on in the Vatican, and in the Catholic Church generally, and Thavis (a journalist who has been covering Vatican affairs for a while) provides a real insider's view of the machinations, personalities, ceremonies, and missteps of life inside the Curia.

I also finally got a copy of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, which I look forward to reading; and the latest Commissario Guido Brunetti novel by Donna Leon -- it's a terrific police procedural series set in Venice, very addictive. Also on my night-table are two recently published biographies of artists: Bernini: His Life and His Rome, by Franco Mormando; and Raphael: A Passionate Life, by Antonio Forcellino.

Visit Steven Nadler's website.

The Page 99 Test: The Best of All Possible Worlds.

The Page 99 Test: A Book Forged in Hell.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Bowler

Peter J. Bowler is professor emeritus of the history of science at Queen’s University, Belfast. He has written several books on the development and impact of evolutionism and on science and religion, including Evolution: The History of an Idea, The Eclipse of Darwinism, The Non-Darwinian Revolution, Charles Darwin: The Man and His Influence, and Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons.

His latest book is Darwin Deleted: Imagining a World without Darwin.

Recently I asked Bowler about what he was reading.  His reply:

As a child I read the English translation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea with enthusiasm and loved the Walt Disney movie with James Mason as Captain Nemo. Now we have a house in France and I’ve been reading Verne in the original French to improve my language skills, including of course Vingt milles lieues sous les mers (interesting that in French it’s under the seas, plural). I’d always been a bit concerned about the nationality of the ship that the submarine Nautilus sinks toward the end of the book, and Nemo’s hostility to the nation which sent it to hunt him down. But I hadn’t realized that another of Verne’s novels, L’isle mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island) turns into a sequel which explains Nemo’s origins.

I’ve now read this in the original French and my childhood illusions have been shattered. The American colonists of the island (escapees by balloon from a Confederate prison camp toward the end of the Civil War) eventually meet their mysterious benefactor, and he turns out to be the aged Captain Nemo. Before dying and being entombed in the sunken Nautilus he reveals that he is an Indian prince dispossessed by the British after the revolution (‘mutiny’ the British called it) of 1857. Now I’m a historian with an interest in 19th-century imperialism, so the revelation oughtn’t to be a shock, but I know that as a child growing up in the Britain of the 1950s I would have found it hard to cope with the idea that the Empire had these darker consequences.

Still, I have at least learnt a lot of French technical terms, ideal for a historian of science dealing with that period – and I have acquired a very thick French dictionary.

Learn more about Bowler's Darwin Deleted at the University of Chicago Press website.

The Page 99 Test: Darwin Deleted.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ted Kosmatka

Ted Kosmatka is the author of the novels The Games and the recently released Prophet of Bones. His short fiction has been nominated for both the Nebula Award and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and appeared in numerous Year's Best collections.

A few weeks ago I asked the author about what he was reading. Kosmatka's reply:

I’ve actually gotten my hands on several good books recently. I just finished Mark Teppo’s Earth Thirst, which I greatly enjoyed and recommend to anyone who loves gritty, well-written future-noir. I also recently read Robert Sawyer’s Calculating God, which I picked up at the Rainforest Writers’ Retreat about a month ago. The premise alone made the book impossible to put down.

Quintessence, by David Walton, is another recent read which I was very impressed by. It’s a vivid, imaginative, ambitious novel that I plowed through very quickly. I bumped into Erin M. Evans at Norwescon, and we traded some books, so I now have Brimstone Angels in my possession, and I’ll be starting that one next. Loved the first paragraph, which hooked me right into the story, so now I’m looking forward to diving in to read the rest.

Visit Ted Kosmatka's website.

Writers Read: Ted Kosmatka (March 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Games.

My Book, the Movie: The Games.

My Book, the Movie: Prophet of Bones.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tara Conklin

Tara Conklin is a writer and lawyer currently living with her family in Seattle, WA. Most recently, she worked as a litigator in the New York and London offices of a corporate law firm but now devotes herself full-time to writing fiction.

About The House Girl, Conklin's new, debut novel, Margot Livesey said:

“There’s so much to admire in The House Girl -- two richly imagined heroines, two fully realized worlds, a deeply satisfying plot -- but what made me stand up and cheer was the moral complexity of these characters and the situations they face. I’m grateful for this transporting novel.”

Recently I asked Conklin about what she was reading.  Her reply:

I’m currently in the midst of promotion for my debut novel, The House Girl, which leaves precious little time for reading. I have found that in particularly busy periods, it’s hard for me to focus on a novel so I turn to short story collections. Lucky for me, there are a host of great ones out there these days so I’m dabbling in a few, depending on my mood and whatever is closest to hand. I picked up Jess Walter’s new collection, We Live in Water, at the ALA Conference in Seattle and it’s fantastic. Beautiful Ruins was one of my favorite novels of 2012, so I was eager to read his shorter fiction and I have not been disappointed. The characters here are certainly less glamorous than Beautiful Ruins, but equally human and compelling. The title story, "We Live in Water," is particularly a doozy: time and mind bending, gritty, lovely.

I recently saw Stephanie Powell Watts read from her collection We Are Taking Only What We Need and have been making my slow way through its ten wonderful stories ever since. This is her first collection, and some of the pieces are not as polished as others, but I love the way she throws all these disparate family details and asides into a story and yet, by the end, she’s created a cohesive, compelling whole. I’ll definitely be watching for more of her work.

And finally, I’ve got George Saunders’ Tenth of December on my nightstand, as I suspect most of the reading public does this season. I’d already read some of these stories in The New Yorker and elsewhere in past years, but seeing them all collected in one place casts them in a different light. It’s illuminating to see (or rather, I think I see) the development of certain themes and ideas. His shifting points of view and the dark worlds he creates make this a wild ride, and highly educational from a writing-as-craft perspective. I’ve been underlining passages and taking notes like crazy.

Visit Tara Conklin's website.

The Page 69 Test: The House Girl.

--Marshal Zeringue

Stefan Bachmann

Stefan Bachmann is a writer and musician. He was born in Colorado and now lives with his family in Zurich, Switzerland, where he attends the Zurich Conservatory. He began writing his acclaimed novel The Peculiar in 2010, when he was sixteen years old.

Last month I asked the author about what he was reading. Bachmann's reply:

I recently read a book called The Feathered Man by Jeremy de Quidt. So good. It looks like a children's book, but I'm not sure it really is. More like a Victorian thriller with fantasy elements. In other words, my favorite kind of book ever. The writing is really atmospheric without ever being flowery, and some scenes are just ridiculously scary. So don't be fooled by the illustrated cover. Don't not read it because it's shelved in the children's section (as if that's ever a reason not to read a book...). This one's frightening and original and really, really well-written.

Visit Stefan Bachmann's website and blog.

My Book, The Movie: The Peculiar.

--Marshal Zeringue

Steph Cha

Steph Cha is a graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law School. She lives in her native city of Los Angeles, California.

Follow Her Home, Cha's first novel, is now out from Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books.

Last month I asked the author about what she was reading.  Her reply:

I read a book or two a week, and about 99% of this non-Internet reading is made up of fiction. I alternate between male and female authors and have done so for the past several years. It was a conscious decision, and one that I’m glad to have made – the quality of my reading has not suffered, and I’ve expanded my horizons since my college days of Roth and Murakami. I’ve been on a roll with good books for the last couple weeks, so I’ll share my most recent reads.

Southland by Nina Revoyr

I bought this book after a panel at Skylight Books on “How to Tell an L.A. Story.” I wish I’d read it years ago. It’s a sweeping history of Japanese and black families in Los Angeles, revealed through a slow-burning mystery. There’s a lot of heartbreak and sickening injustice, and the writing is consistently evocative and lovely. Southland reminds me of The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee, which is another one of my favorites from the last few years. If you like your fiction exhaustingly sad, I’d put both of these on your list.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

There are a couple things I don’t like about The Art of Fielding. The novel revolves around five main characters, and the one female character is a total Jessa, which, ugh, whatever. I also don’t buy one of the main storylines, which starts with a 60-year-old man exploring his homosexual feelings for the first time, for a boy a third of his age. But everything else – beautiful. Harbach’s prose is as thoughtful and eloquent as it is accessible, and I understand why his debut has done so well. The novel is about baseball and baseball players, but you don’t need to care about sports to care about Henry Skrimshander and Mike Schwartz. The Art of Fielding is about life and artistry, struggle, failure, victory, and the pursuit of perfection. It’s a very human novel.

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

I don’t read too many funny novels, and Where’d You Go, Bernadette makes me wonder why. This is a fast read, vivid and entertaining, and I’d like to read more like it. The epistolary style is unrealistic, sure, but it’s clever in the best sense of the word. The story is compelling, and each of its legs filled with feeling and sometimes biting humor. Seattle gets a neat, good-natured thrashing.

Paradise Lost by John Milton

I majored in English, but I graduated with some significant holes in my education. I’ve been trying to fill these in ever since, reading at least a handful of canonical works a year. Paradise Lost is a particularly big hole. I started it four days ago, and since I’m reading a book a day, I should be done in another week. I’m not sure why I thought I might not enjoy it, because it is a stunning masterpiece that everyone should read for the sheer fun of it. I’m reading out loud so I don’t miss a sound. Maybe it’s enriching my dog.

Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara

I started this list with Nina Revoyr, and I’m ending it with Naomi Hirahara. Revoyr is half-Japanese, and Southland’s protagonist is a gay Japanese-American woman. Hirahara is a Japanese-American woman, and her protagonist Mas Arai is an aging male Hiroshima survivor. Revoyr and Hirahara are writing in the same universe – Japanese-American communities in Los Angeles, squirming under the weight of history – and I’m happy to be reading them almost back to back. Summer of the Big Bachi is a mystery, and like all great mysteries, it uses suspense and secrets to reveal a darkened part of the world. I’m not done with this one yet, but I will probably tear through the rest of it today or tomorrow.

Visit Steph Cha's website and Twitter perch.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Steph Cha and Duke.

My Book, The Movie: Follow Her Home.

The Page 69 Test: Follow Her Home.

--Marshal Zeringue