Information, Answers & Reviews

Microhistories are a subgenre of non-fiction books which take a particular subject or single event and through intensive historical research try to contextualize the chosen subject within the broader picture.  Both Simon Winchester and Mark Kurlansky are well known microhistorians.  Kurlansky in particular is known for Salt: A World History, 1968: The Year That Rocked the World, and The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell.  As a history nerd, I find that a well written microhistory uncovers a previously unthought-of subject or event and breathes life into the history cannon as a whole.  Curious?  Check out titles like Aspirin: The Remarkable Story of a Wonder Drug, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, or Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers.  Several years ago I read and enjoyed a microhistory called Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World by Dan Koeppel. Read more »

My question of the week - Do women read war novels?  I don't mean to ask this in a polarizing and dramatic way, but out of genuine interest. 

I recently finished the excellent Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, a novelization about the Vietnam War.  Marlantes is a highly decorated Marine who served in Vietnam and this 600 page book was 30 years in the making.  The book is technical and almost solely set in Vietnam.  There isn't room for families, girlfriends, or real life.  This book is intense - filled with racial tensions, horrifying wounds, tigers, leeches, jungle rot, thirst, hunger, diarrhea, boredom, bad language and inept military structure.  I probably lost some of the technicalities of the military maneuvers, but in the end you really care about the characters.  At times, reading this was stressful but the pain and longing seems universal and touching.   Read more »

Thalia Chaltas’ Because I Am Furniture is the story of Anke, a quiet, lonely freshman who feels helplessly invisible at home and at school. She compares herself to furniture, because whereas her abusive father pays far too much attention to her older brother and sister (and Mom pretends it’s not happening), he treats her like part of the background at home, ignoring her completely. Dad is a very charismatic professor at the local university, loved by everyone outside, and feared by his family at home, where his anger and need to rule his children with an iron fist literally paralyzes them. Meanwhile, Anke risks his wrath and makes the school volleyball team, and is soon learning to feel accepted, and becoming a center of attention.

Thalia Chaltas’ Because I Am Furniture is the story of Anke, a quiet, lonely freshman who feels helplessly invisible at home and at school. She compares herself to furniture, because whereas her abusive father pays far too much attention to her older brother and sister (and Mom pretends it’s not happening), he treats her like part of the background at home, ignoring her completely. Dad is a very charismatic professor at the local university, loved by everyone outside, and feared by his family at home, where his anger and need to rule his children with an iron fist literally paralyzes them. Meanwhile, Anke risks his wrath and makes the school volleyball team, and is soon learning to feel accepted, and becoming a center of attention.

Read more »

Alexandra Fuller writes beautifully about Africa. This is her second memoir set there. Both Cocktail Hour under the Tree of Forgetfulness and Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight also give homage to her parents, particularly her mother, Nicola, or Nicola of Central Africa, as her mom playfully nicknamed herself.

Nicola loves books and reading and wanted her first daughter to become a writer but Vanessa held firm about spurning books and taking up art. So Alexandra became the writer in the family, but not one that her mother could not control.  For Nicola, Alexandra’s career as a writer is a mixed blessing.  She constantly calls her daughter’s first memoir that “awful book” probably because Alexandra tells the truth in it about her Mom’s drinking. Read more »