Books

When thirteen-year-old Paolo Crivelli sneaks out for midnight joy rides through Nazi-occupied Florence, he imagines himself a hero on a bicycle. By day, he is cooped up at home with his mother, sister, and faithful dog Guido, with nothing to do but wait for the approaching Allied forces to push out the Germans. At night, Paolo is able to escape into a more exciting world tinged with danger, first by fooling his mother into thinking he’s safely in bed, then by evading military police patrolling the streets and riding past shadowy men lurking about the street corners. Men who could be Partisans just like his father, who was forced into hiding because of his political views against Mussolini and Hitler. What Paolo doesn’t know is that his sister and mother are very aware of his nightly activities, to the point where it keeps them up at night. Constanza, Paolo’s teenage sister, sympathizes with her younger brother’s need to escape. Hers manifests itself in the form of retreating to her room and listening to the same Edith Piaf and Rina Ketty records over and over again, but to Paolo, she just seems moody and aloof. Their mother Rosemary, who is British by birth and Italian by marriage, also understands her son’s need for excitement, but his nightly activities are yet another source of constant worry for her. In addition to her husband’s whereabouts and safety, the daily challenge of making sure her family has enough to eat, and keeping a low profile from both the Gestapo and the Partisans, she wonders every night if she should confront her son about his activities in the morning.   As it turns out, she doesn’t get the chance to decide. Paolo may look to the Partisans for adventure, but when they come to him demanding his family’s involvement in a risky and dangerous mission, Paolo gets more than he envisions for a hero on a bike. Set against the backdrop of WWII with midnight exploits, dangers, and suspense, I never truly believed any harm would come to the Crivellis. That didn’t keep me from worrying about them. Hero is very much character-driven and I found myself rooting for Paolo and his family. And I appreciated Constanza most of all. It would have been easy to write her off as Paolo’s moody teenager sister who mopes about fashion even though there’s a war on. But as the story progress, we see she’s aloof because she’s a typical teenager and because she doesn’t want to add to her mother’s burdens. Better yet, Constanza demonstrates considerable courage and comes into her own as a kind and resolute young adult in a way that stands out to me even more so than Paolo’s big moment. Author Shirley Hughes’ secondary characters are also worth mentioning. We only glimpse them through their interactions with Rosemary, Constanza, and Paolo, but they (aside from the Gestapo officer) still feel fleshed-out rather than black or white. The young German lieutenant who puts friendship above creed, Constanza’s bratty friend who enjoys blackmarket luxuries, the Crivelli’s servant’s relative who finds himself in a tough moral dilemma, the complexities of these individuals also makes this wartime fiction more gripping and real. I appreciated as well that Hughes doesn’t pound her readers over the head with a definition of what it means to be brave or heroic. Instead, we’re told the danger and the risks and given insight to how a character feels inside, and then Hughes briskly continues her narrative with that character’s actions. Lastly, it may sound silly, but I really liked Hero’s length. At a respectable 213 pages, Hughes manages to tell a vivid yet concise story. Perhaps it’s because of Hughes’ rich experience as an author and illustrator of picture books, but she’s mastered the art of saying a lot in relatively few words. In Hero On A Bicycle, the result is an intimate yet satisfying tale. Note: to see more of Hughes’ drawings for Hero On A Bicycle, I highly recommend a visit to her website.

Me, last weekend. Less date-due than I am today. The honeymoon has ended, that wonderful period of pre-baby motherhood in which it’s imperative to be taken out for afternoon tea and be administered lots of fragrant baths. Now instead of relaxing and taking care of myself, I’m given instructions like, “Try crawling around the carpet for half an hour–while watching TV or listening to music. It is good exercise as well as good for the baby’s position!” And it’s only a short slide from here to the point where I’ll be having trouble breastfeeding and crazy people on online forums will instruct me to refrain from eating anything but white rice, while I lock myself in a darkened room for a fortnight hovering naked over my colicky child in order to discourage it from nipple confusion. At least this time, I know what to expect. Today is my due-date, which I’m calling my date-due because I’m better at libraries than being patient. But what I’m better at than anything else is jumping straight to worst-case scenarios, which is why I decided that since baby shows absolutely no sign of imminent arrival (or even un-imminent arrival) that baby was never going to arrive at all. I’ve since been reassured by enough stories of babies failing to be engaged who managed to be born anyway that I am no longer fretting about booking a c-section at 42 weeks. I’ve had a hunch all along that our baby was going to be born on the Barbara Pym Centenary anyway, (June 2, but you already knew that) and I’m becoming convinced that this is really the case. I’m also sure that my bout of stomach flu at the weekend made the baby reluctant to make an entrance to the world, and now that I am feeling much better and energetic again, I am content to wait until baby decides that it’s time. As I crawl around the carpet on my hands and knees, of course. There cannot be enough of that.

Time to gripe about Things that Annoy Me in Periodicals! 1) Claire Messud's enthusiastic NY Times review of a Leskov collection says of the author: "he emerges as a literary missing link, a writer who brings the metafictional playfulness of Sterne into the Russian tradition..." Leskov is a wonderful writer, but he started publishing in the 1860s, seventy years after Karamzin, the "Russian Sterne," brought that playfulness into the Russian tradition starting in the 1790s (see this post). Karamzin was followed by a whole passel of writers influenced by him and Sterne, including Veltman (see this post), Narezhny, and Senkovsky, and doubtless others I haven't read. It's not fair to blame Messud for this, since she probably took it from Pevear's introduction (and of course I'm always happy to blame Pevear and ?Volokhonsky for things), and the real blame goes to the distorting lens through which we all view pre-Tolstoy Russian literature. 2) This is a simpler case, but more unexpected and therefore more aggravating. In Rebecca Mead's New Yorker piece on dementia care, "The Sense of an Ending," we find the sentence "Residents may choose when, and if, to bathe, provided that they maintain basic hygiene, and there is no compunction among staff members to get uncoöperative residents spiffed up for visitors." She obviously means something like "staff members feel no compulsion to..."; I don't know how the inappropriate "compunction" got in there, but even after years of watching the magazine's standards slip, it still somehow shocks me that their once-famed editing staff didn't root it out.

Today the horses are in town, those beautiful beasts that arrive each year and send my thoughts back to childhood days. You'll find me in the stables early, stroking those long, warm noses, breathing a little easier. And over the weekend, running in the Philadelphia Inquirer, you'll find a story about my love of that show and its long and storied history. Over the course of the summer and into the fall, I'll be traveling a bit, to a number of events, beginning next Thursday when I head up to the BEA to celebrate the naming of Small Damages as the Armchair BEA young adult novel of 2012. A number of other events are brewing, but these are the events I can announce at this time. Also, in the next few weeks you'll find a brief Kephart essay in Good Housekeeping and an excerpt of Handling the Truth in O Magazine. I'm grateful for the generosity of the editors. So here I shall be. Perhaps I'll have the privilege of finding you in one of these cities, at one of these times. May 30, 2013, 10 AMArmchair BEA Awards(Yay, Small Damages!)Shindig Booth # 2135Javits CenterNew York, NYJune 4, 2013Speaker,Friends of the Wissahickon Annual Member MeetingPhiladelphia, PAJune 27, 2013, 10 AMProject FlowFairmount Water Works Interpretive CenterPhiladelphia, PAJuly 2, 2013Philadelphia Literary Legacy UnveilingPhiladelphia International Airport,Philadelphia, PADetails hereJuly 18, 2013, 9 AM to NoonCoffee Klatch LeaderPhiladelphia Business JournalThird Annual Women's ConferenceCrystal Tea RoomWanamaker BuildingPhiladelphia, PAJuly 27, 2013, 3:30 - 5:00 PMLaunching Small Damages paperback/Memoir Workshopwith Debbie LevyHooray for BooksOld Town Alexandria, VAAugust 6, 2013Launching Handling the Truthwith a memoir workshopFree Library of Philadelphia(details to come)Philadelphia, PAAugust 13, 2013Five Author EventDetails to comeSeptember 7, 2013, 10 AM - noonBookPassage Memoir Workshop51 Tamal Vista Blvd.Corte Madera, CA 94925September 7, 2013, 3 PMBooks Inc. Memoir WorkshopOpera Plaza601 Van NessSan Francisco, CASeptember 8, 2013Redwood Writers WorkshopMemoir WorkshopFlamingo Conference Resort & SpaSanta Rosa, CA 95405September 17, 2013, 7 PMDr. Radway LaunchRadnor Memorial LibraryRadnor, PASeptember 22, 2013Chestnut Hill Book FestivalChestnut Hill, PA(details to come)October 3, 2013, 6 PMUniversity of Pennsylvania BookstoreMemoir Workshop/Handling the TruthPhiladelphia, PA(details to come)October 20, 2013Talking Memoir with Linda Joy Myers @Rosemont CollegeRosemont, PA(details to come)March 12, 2014, 8 PMElizabeth Boatwright Coaker Visiting Writers SeriesConverse CollegeSpartanburg, SC

Tom Felton has signed on for his first American television series, where he will costar in DirecTV's upcoming drama "Full Circle," Deadline confirmed on Thursday. The Harry Potter will be part of an impressive ensemble cast, including Minka Kelly (Friday Night Lights), Julian McMahon (Nip/Tuck), David Boreanaz (Bones), Keke Palmer (Akeelah And The Bee), Devon Gearhart (The Wait), Billy Campbell (The Killing, Killing Lincoln), Kate Walsh (Private Practice), Noah Silver (The Borgias), Ally Sheedy (Welcome To The Rileys), Cheyenne Jackson (Behind The Candelabra) and Robin Weigert (Sons Of Anarchy). The program will begin production early this summer, DirecTV announced, and will broadcast this fall on the cable exclusive channel DIRECTV?s Audience in fall 2013. No word yet on who Tom will play in the show. A synopsis of the series, by Neil LaBute, can be read here. Quote: ?Full Circle? is a modern day La Ronde meets My Dinner with Andre as it explores the nature of human contact and true togetherness in our current technology-driven world. It marks a new foray into alternative television production, harkening back to the prolific days of independent filmmaking. Please note, DirecTV is a U.S. cable provider, and only those who are subscribed to it can view the show, assuming they have ordered the Audience premium channel. More information on that can be found here.

"A religion is as much a progressive unlearning of false ideas concerning God as it is the learning of the true ideas concerning God."— Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881-1983), founder of the Reconstructionist movement of Judaism

There is currently a major European research project to investigate the furthest reaches of the human brain, involving thousands of researchers and millions of Euros. But I reckon researchers could save oodles of dosh, and do a lot worse than simply seeing Fleur Hitchcock in action: This week - as part of a book week at St Swithun's School, Kennington - Fleur tried to get schoolchildren to visualise just what it was like inside her brain as she endeavoured to create stories. The author of The Trouble With Mummies, Dear Scarlett and Shrunk! hauled up lots of volunteers, and lined them up with baskets of eggs, German war helmets, genuine bronze-age axe heads, replica Saxon armour - and she even had children mummifying each other. The result was not-quite-chaos - and for the children who had already been doing lots of writing exercises, it was a remarkable insight into the writing process. Fleur has always written, but at school - with undiagnosed dyslexia - she found no-one else could really read what she had written. Inspired by books such as The Silver Sword and The Wolves of Willoughby Chase she has quickly found herself with not one but two publishers in the eight months since her first book Shrunk! was published. She plots out stories, not with a synopsis, but in storyboards drawn on the back of long rolls of wallpaper. In response to children's questions, she compared the writing process to turning on the hot tap, and waiting for plenty of cold water to come up before the hot stuff. (Trouble with mummies: pupil at left learns never to volunteer for a Fleur Hitchcock event) Fleur signed copies for pupils afterwards... ...and St Swithun's definitely win the prize for 'best coffee offered to bookseller and author' award... We managed to lure her back to the shop with the lure of more coffee... ...and the chance to find out more about Fleur's approach to writing. Five Questions with...Fleur Hitchcock's Writing Life 1. What are you working on at the moment? So many things *clutches head*. But I am currently working on a book for Hot Key which involves time travel and yoghurt pots... 2. What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given? Mmm. Difficult. I think it has to be 'Read as much as you can'. This one really counts. You cannot be a writer if you don't read. 3. What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?The best thing is meeting the children: that lack of reverence, sometimes you find yourself sitting in primary schools, eating school dinners, talking about your book with children - who wouldn't love that, being asked all kinds of random questions! The worst thing is sometimes you have to modify your stories to get them past the gatekeepers. For example in 'Dear Scarlett' the gangsters are very tame, and believe me I wanted them to be much more scary than that but wasn't allowed to get away with it. Neil Gaiman gets away with it, but not me! 4. Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing, thing or snack essential before you can start work? I have to have a hot drink. I have to have the phone unplugged. I have to have the Internet turned off - definitely. Honestly, if you take all the tweets I've done it probably adds up to several books... 5. What was your biggest breakthrough? Being picked as the Sunday Times 'book of the week' five days before publication of SHRUNK! I think it made the biggest difference, and it made me go prickly all over.

Bonnie Wright, as she mentioned numerous times on her Twitter the past week, attended amfAR's 20th annual Cinema Against AIDS charity event, in conjunction with the Cannes Film Festival this month. Photos of the Harry Potter actress at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc in France on Thursday evening can be seen here.

Welcome to the LOVE IN BLOOM Giveaway Hop! This hop is hosted by: vvb32reads (HERE) Check out the entire list of participants HERE There are a bunch of blogs participating and each has their own entry rules and geographic limits, so be sure to read the rules for each one. This hop starts May 24th and and ends on May 27nd, midnight. HERE IS WHAT I HAVE FOR ONE LUCKY WINNER: (click on the covers for more information) Want to win this set of books? Contest is open to anyone over 13 years old with a reliable mailing address within the free shipping areas of The Book Depository. Contest ends on 5.27.13 Winner will be chosen by Random.org WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN THE COMMENTS OF THIS POST Winner will have 48 hours to respond to email or a new winner will be chosen. Duplicate entries will be deleted. Void where prohibited. This giveaway is sponsored by me and ONE set is available. Complete the below form Follow Me Extra Entries +1 Follow me on Twitter HERE +1 Like BookHounds on Facebook HERE +1 Follow my reviews on Goodreads HERE (I am at my limit of friends!) Loading...

... The Art of Staying Focused in a Distracting World - James Fallows - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)