It seems my goal of finishing a book by week’s end pales in comparison to the substantial ambition of author Julie Powell. The book is Julie and Julia 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen. The goal implicated in this title is astronomical yet entirely doable. Sometimes we need the astronomical to make us feel alive, or make us hungry at the very least.
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There are ghosts in Cincinnati and our humble corner of Ohio. Really!
Haunted Cincinnati and Southwest Ohio (2009), the new book by brothers Jeff and Michael Morris, is a fascinating journey to haunted locations all around us. It's more than that, too, with in-depth historical research backing up all the stories. Black-and-white photos, both vintage and modern day, illustrate the interesting stories about places we have all visited, such as the Western Hills Showcase Cinema, the Museum Center at Union Terminal, Eden Park, and Music Hall. There are other more obscure locations as well, such as Congress Green Cemetery, Tiny Town, and the bridge at Miamitown.
I enjoyed this book a great deal; in fact, I couldn't put it down! The conversational tone of the writing flows smoothly, and I felt like Mike and Jeff were right there, guiding me through scary places. They are the founders and tour guides of the Miamitown Ghost Tour, and often work closely with CAPER (Cincinnati Area Paranormal Existence Research), an excellent local paranormal investigations group.
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As a new parent, I find myself in situations so foreign I might as well be the first human on Mars. The sheer volume of things we must do (baby swim class?) and not do (don't even get me started here...) is nearly incomprehensible.
In American Parent: My Strange and Surprising Adventures in Modern Babyland, author Sam Apple documents his own journey into parenthood.
Apple is full of questions, and no theory is left unexplored: Is the Lamaze Method a Stalinist Plot? (Yes). Are newborns really fetuses that are born too soon (Sort of.) Is there a universal theory that can explain the origins of circumcision in geographically diverse cultures? (Maybe.) Does it sting when you pour baby shampoo into your own eyes? (Big time!)
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Good historical fiction serves several functions: it transports you to a different place and time, it expands your knowledge of that place and time, and it (usually) makes you feel grateful to be living in the here and now, by comparison. Sea of Poppies is a splendid historical novel that, in addition, takes the English language and makes it flow like water.
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Several writers have tried to write about the World Trade Center since 2001. I hope you have read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, for example, which was a deeply moving novel that addressed that grief head on.
Colum McCann does so only indirectly in his new book, Let the Great World Spin, which is set in 1974. But the gorgeous complexity and emotional depth of his novel can’t help but be a tribute to the towers and the city and all of the lives lost. As the author says in his endnote, “Literature can remind us that not all life is already written down: there are still so many stories to be told.”
On the day when a daring funambulist walks a tightrope between the newly built Twin Towers, the lives of several characters intersect in unforeseen ways.
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What happens after we die is all summed up in forty scientifically sporty vignettes written and compiled by David Eagleman. The stories are concise, creative and air-tight. Thought provoking and based on science as well as religion, Eagleman's debut conjures seizmic blips on the radar the size of Everest. Things that we’ve never thought of are happening in our afterlives according to David Eagleman’s dazzling debut, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives.
Celebrated southern writer Pat Conroy became a legend with The Prince of Tides in 1986. Since then he has published both fiction and nonficton, but the buzz going on right now involves his latest epic southern family saga. South of Broad will be published in early August, and it promises to be vintage Conroy. With its setting in Charleston, South Carolina - Broad Street being one of its main thoroughfares - the story could be as colorful as the old mansions on Rainbow Row.
Charleston is such a lovely and storied old city, it easily lends itself to fiction. While you're waiting for Conroy's next adventure, take a look at another recent novel set in Charleston: The House on Tradd Street by Karen White (2008) features ghosts, old houses, and romance amidst the charm of the city itself.
