What’s a nice girl like Ann Rule doing in a genre like true crime? In this piece in one of her hometown newspapers, true-crime queen Ann Rule, a former Seattle police officer, tells how she found her true calling. Her first book contract was for the story of a serial killer then stalking the Pacific […]
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Minneapolis Ousts Seattle as Most Literate City The folks at The Seattle Times are lamenting their city’s fall from the top spot of the annual list of most literate cities in the U.S. The rankings, originated and authored by CCSU’s [Central Connecticut State University] president John W. Miller, compare the country’s 69 biggest cities in
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THIRD CULTURE HOLIDAY READING 2007 This is the season for year-end lists of books in which the mainstream review media steer literate culture away from deep questions about how our world works and who we are and toward celebrations of narcissism, celebrity gossip, and literary cliques. John Brockman, editor and publisher at Edge, laments “that
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NPR : A Brutal, British Mystery Novel for Boxing Day Jonathan Hayes, a New York City forensic pathologist, describes how a BBC broadcast of Dorothy Sayers’s novel The Nine Tailors made him appreciate Sayers’s influence on the mystery genre: In Nine Tailors, the violence is not bloodless, but brutal, and the characters are made of
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NPR : The Ones That Got Away: Books Not to Miss NPR’s Lynn Neary talks with book writers — Laura Miller of Salon.com, and blogger Mark Sarvas of The Elegant Variation — about worthy books that got overlooked by the mainstream book-review sections in 2007. Here’s a rundown of their recommendations.
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From The Writer’s Almanac, a publication of Prairie Home Productions, presented by American Public Media: Literary and Historical Notes: It’s Christmas Eve, the setting for many works of fiction including O. Henry’s (books by this author) “Gift of the Magi,” a short story about Jim and Della, the impoverished young couple, in which each
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I have just taken a drastic action: I deleted all previous Notes in the Margin Weblog entries in order to install and use WordPress from now on. It was quite a nostalgic moment for me. My earliest entries were from January 2002. Yes, that’s right–almost six years ago. I’m sure that just as much has
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Hood, Ann. The Knitting Circle New York: Norton, 2007 ISBN 0-393-05901-4 Blackstone Audiobooks, narrated by Hillary Huber Highly recommended This novel is all about perspective, and about the healing power of telling our stories. When Mary Baxter’s five-year-old daughter dies suddenly of meningitis, Mary finds herself unable to read, write, go to work, or do
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Milford, Nancy. Zelda: A BiographyNew York: Harper & Row, 1970Paperback, 426 pagesISBN 0-060-91069-0 They were among the most beautiful people of the Jazz Age: the dashing young writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his striking young bride Zelda. Fitzgerald christened the era the Jazz Age, and he made his wife its first Flapper. Zelda Sayre was
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