Shades of Glenn Beck: There was a frightening (as it should be) review in the NYT about a book setting off the immigration debate in Germany.  According to reviewer Michael Slackman, Germany Does Away With Itself “laments the growing number of Muslim immigrants, contending that they are “dumbing down” society, was released Monday and is already in its fourth printing, with sales expected to exceed 150,000 copies, according to his publisher.”

Author Thilo Sarrazin “a German banker and former government official spoke publicly about a unique “Jewish gene,” when he attacked Islam as a source of violence and stunted development and when he espoused genetic theories that evoked the fright of the Nazi past.”

More frightening than Sarrazin saying these hateful words, are the many listening to them.

Yes folks, once again, if we do not learn from the past, we are condemned to repeat it.

And then, there is a review by Dwight Garner of the biography: Simon Wiesenthal The Life and Legends by Tom Segev, translated by Ronnie Hope that sounds fascinating: “Simon Wiesenthal, the legendary Nazi hunter, was in many ways a smaller-than-life character. Balding, mustached, the wearer of frumpy suits and neckties, possessed of an old-world Yiddish accent and a distracted air, he often seemed to be stooped, one observer said, “as if permanently looking for a mislaid piece of paper.

I am entranced by ‘on the campaign trail’ books and after reading The Washington Post review by Steven Livingston of Meghan McCain’s Dirty Sexy Politics, I’ll be reading the book. Hands across the divide.

Along with my love of campaign trail books, I am an armchair mountain climber and Rob Merrill’s AP review of The Last Man on the Mountain: The Death of an American Adventurer on K2 by Jennifer Jordan is certain to make me add to the mountain climbing pile.

After reading Chuck Leddy’s Boston Globe review of Shaking The Family Tree by Buzzy Jackson, it seems that genealogy could be a new interest for me.

Not sure how I missed The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Heidi W. Durrow (2008 Winner of the Bellwether Prize,) but after reading this review, it’s on my nightstand.

An excellent visual post on the crazy injustice of shelving books by color (and I don’t mean book jacket) by Lauren Leto.

If you’ve not seen any of the video book reviews by Ron Charles of the Washington Post, you can start with this review of Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.

And in the Denver Post you can read Christian Toto’s  review of Jennifer Weiner’s Fly Away Home which “focuses on the family caught in the klieg lights, a group already suffused in pain before the adultery hit the 2 4/7 news cycle.”

AS King’s post on how not correct downloading ‘free’ books is, should, at the very least, convince parents to watch out for their children’s web habits.

The evolving role of literary agents is discussed at Jungle Red in this interview between Hallie Ephron and Jane Friedman.

I’ve been accused of harping on domestic violence, and after working in the field (with batterers) for many years, I admit my abuse-radar may be higher than some. There were times my daughters dreaded my meeting their boyfriends, anticipating my narrowed eyes as I looked for signs of danger.

Recently I took a hard look at this, after the woman editing an article I was writing warned me not to throw ‘exciting’ men in the same pot with ‘dangerous’ ones. Was I being too hard in my judgments? How does one know the difference between edgy and over-the edge? You may think you have Hans (more…)

By Becky Tuch

I never thought I would stop writing. But last month, for the first time in my life, I was waking up almost every day and thinking, “What’s the point?” It seemed ridiculous to me the amount that writers sacrifice just in order to write. All over the world, throughout history, we’ve given up time with our family, financial stability, fun with friends, sleep, sex, parties, food—all to have a few extra moments tinkering with the fates of people that don’t even exist. Stepping back, as I had never quite done before, it seemed mind-bogglingly preposterous.

I know what you’re thinking. Bex, writing enables us to be more present the rest of the time. If I didn’t write, the time I was actually with my family and friends would make me miserable and crazy.

If that’s true, then kudos for you. For me, that’s true some of the time. Other times, I am downright amazed at how happy life can be when I’m not writing. During novel development, I might be editing my manuscript in my head while a friend tells me about her divorce, or thinking about character motivations while balancing on my shoulders in yoga class.

Yes, writing helps clear the head. But often, it helps muddle it too. And last (more…)

A Guest Post By Kathy Crowley

A few evenings ago, I finished reading Anne Enright’s Booker Prize winning novel, The Gathering – a brutal, beautiful story built around a suicide, a wake, a large Irish family and a narrator who is angry and honest to the point of discomfort.  It left me breathless — not in a euphoric way, but instead in that sense of needing to breathe and not, somehow, being able to do so.  Although I am happy to report my breathing resumed, I still found myself inarticulate about the book and did what any person with a laptop and wifi does: I googled and read what other (more articulate) people thought.

Which brings me to Mighty Dog.

Once upon a time I was in a writer’s workshop with a young woman named we’ll call Lisa.  In addition to the novel which was her major project at the time, Lisa had a lot going on —  a day job, a mother who wanted her to hurry up and get married, an ability to keep the rest of us laughing, and a short story named “Mighty Dog”.  This was more than a decade ago, so many details are lost, but I do remember the closing scene of this story.  The protagonist — a wife whose husband is leaving her for another woman — looms over the couple’s tiny emaciated dog.  In tears, alone in her kitchen, she opens can after can of Mighty Dog, scooping and slopping the contents into the dog’s bowl. “Eat!” she screams at the dog. “Eat!”

Great scene, right?  You haven’t even read the rest of the story and I’ve already got you.  Not surprisingly, everyone in the workshop loved it.  Also not surprisingly, the story had flaws, and everyone had ideas about how to tweak this or fix that.  It is telling that I remember none of the flaws, just the power of the story and especially of that closing scene.

So Lisa worked on it.  She brought it back, and it was still good, but not quite right.  She revised again.  And again.  But by the last time I read it, I could feel the power of it waning.  Everyone could feel it, including Lisa, though none of us could put a finger on how or why. Somehow all these minor fixes had resulted in the narrative equivalent of a slow leak, and we could hear the coming rumble of a flat.

At some point, Lisa’s boyfriend (now husband, I think) whisked her away from us, first to Connecticut, then to Ohio (or someplace like that). The spirit of “Mighty Dog” remained, though.  We all felt complicit in the damage done to this  innocent story, and eventually, “Mighty Dog” became our workshop’s shorthand for killing the spirit of a story.  “I think I mighty-dogged it,” someone might say, or “I’m just afraid of mighty-dogging it.” (more…)

Guest Post

By Miriam Gershow (author of The Local News)

Most writers I know are reading fetishists.  We each have our peccadilloes, getting hot and bothered by a particular aspect of storytelling, which we seek out over and over again.  For some, it’s the lyrical sentences that send shivers down their spine.  For others, a vivid description of setting makes them go weak in the knees.  Me, I’m a sucker for narrative voice.  Nothing pulls me into a story as quickly or haplessly as an engaging narrator.  And by engaging, I don’t necessarily mean likeable or funny or even particularly clever. I mean a narrator who authentically human, in whatever frail, flawed or crazy way that might mean.

There are the classic narrators–Holden Caulfield and Humbert Humbert come to mind at the top of the list.  Here, I present you with several others.

1. Edwin Hanratty in Jim Shepard’s Project X.  Spend these164 pages with Edwin, and he will break your heart.  To call this a “school shooting” book is to oversimplify the achingly lonely, alienating, utterly believable world Shepard constructs of junior high school.  Edwin all too believably falls through the cracks of home, school and the larger community.  And he tells his own story in the voice of a child, without ever being childish.  He is, from the opening page, perceptive, honest and doomed.  The closing paragraph will crack you open and make you want to jump into the ink to rescue him.

2. Andrea Marr in Blake Nelson’s Girl.  Oh Andrea Marr, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways:  You have the pitch-perfect vocabulary and cadence of a high school girl.  You capture, in turn, the boredom, distraction, preoccupation and longing that make up teen life.  You are smart and sensitive and keep me flying through the pages.  You think you understand yourself in the way that all teenagers think they understand themselves, while at the same time being an endearingly confused mess.  And best of all, you were written by a man.  A grown-up man.  Read this book for the story and the characters and great depiction of Portland OR, but best of all to marvel at how well Nelson flawlessly channels the voice of a teen girl.

3. Lionel Essrog in Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn.  Think it’s a gimmick to have a detective narrator with Tourette’s-like outbursts, who trips over, stutters through and garbles the language?  Then you haven’t read Motherless Brooklyn. Lionel Essrog is trapped in himself, though the readers will feel anything but trapped.  He is hilarious, wise and vulnerable all at once.  The detective story is interesting, though not nearly as interesting as the narration.  Flip to any page for Essrog’s wry voice.  I just did, and I landed on this sentence: “The big Nazi cat went on raking up thread-loops from my trousers seemingly intent on single-handedly reinventing Velcro.”  What more do I need to say?

4. Kathy Nicolo and Colonel Behrani in Andre Dubus III’s House of Sand and Fog.  Do I ruin my credibility as a high-falutin’literary fiction writer by selecting an Oprah pick?  I don’t care.  It’s worth it in this case.  The remarkable narrative feat pulled off by Dubus is crafting two diametrically opposed, utterly distinct narrators who are equally believable and equally sympathetic (or unsympathetic, as it were), so that the reader is endlessly pulled back and forth between the two voices with no safe place to land.  This makes for an unsettling and deeply compelling reading experience.  And I haven’t even mentioned the fact that what Dubus does with the Colonel Behrani narration near the end of the book breaks every rule of first-person storytelling and is absolutely stunning.

Miriam Gershow is the author of the recent debut novel, The Local News, described by Janet Maslin of the New York Times as  “Unusually credible and precise… deftly heartbreaking.” Gershow lives in Eugene Oregon where she is at work on her next novel.

It’s my birthday and my husband stayed home from work to wetvac, trying to keep the floodwaters covering our basement under the two-inch mark. He’s been down there since 6:30 this morning.

He’s unshaven.

I’m wearing torn jeans.

He forgot to say Happy Birthday and I don’t care, because this is what I know:

Living with a man who spends the day in a damp dark basement vacuuming up murky water is about as big a birthday present any woman in her right mind would want.

Living with a man who doesn’t take a minute to point out that he’s doing all the work: priceless.

Living with a man who worries more about your weak back than his wonky one: a price above rubies.

I don’t care if we have cake. It doesn’t matter if supper is Cheerios and 24. My present is right downstairs. Vacuuming up water and not complaining.

Okay, barely complaining.

But really, Dayenu.

Hebrew for: if I get nothing else, it’s enough.

In the weeks before my debut novel released, I resembled a child anticipating her jump from single digit birthdays to the doubles: 10! I could barely sleep—my husband groaned as I slipped out of bed at 4 in the morning. I ignored him and crept away, sneaking off to self-google in privacy.

As I waited for my launch date, invitations began trickling in. A reading at a library. Yay! I love libraries. A fundraiser for domestic violence. Wonderful—a perfect marriage of promotion and altruism. I could appease my inner scolding puritan while getting my book in front of people.

And then my publicist called with news of an event on book release day. Hallelujah—something to do besides scuttle from bookstore to bookstore, peeking between my fingers to see whether my book was boldly displayed up front with the big girls, or hidden deep in the back, only her sad narrow spine visible.

“What is it?” I asked, imagining a signing at the Harvard Book Store. A modest five minutes on the New England Cable News Network. She cleared her throat.

“It’s a Blogtalk radio show. Feisty Over Fifty.”

Was she kidding? This was my release day reward? Feisty Over ‘Effin Fifty?

Being a good girl, I, of course, swallowed my teary disappointment and thanked my lovely publicist (tender in her twenties.) Okay, so I’d spend my launch day coming out of the closet. Here I am, world: feisty. over. fifty.  Not that I thought anyone would believe I was a wunderkind. Have your first child at 21, and you’re pretty much locked out of the lie-about-your-age club.

But did I have to wear the number on my sleeve?

With the news of my soon-to-be coming blogtalk debut, instead of obsessing over my book, I obsessed over being feisty. over. fifty. Because that’s what this world does to us. Makes us squeamish about our age—as though once we pass a certain number admitting one’s age becomes indecent.

I worried. Would young listeners recoil in disgust from the book written by some wrinkly woman? I don’t know, but the show was a delight. The host, Eileen Williams was so warm, funny, and smart, that she stopped me from proceeding down my squirmy path. I realized something. I am over fifty—well over. Newsflash, each of us will pass through every age once. Twenty-somethings become fifty; fifty-somethings turn eighty (if they are lucky.) Why turn away in shame?

This is what I know:

I am happier at 57 than ever before. After spending my twenties and thirties playing Money Jeopardy (“Pay-Which-Bill-in August?” “What is electric,  Alex?“) I can write checks on time and without whiskey. In the second half of my forties, I found the love of my life and we married just before we tumbled into fifty. My daughters and son-in-law are all kind, wise, and honorable people whose company I love. My granddaughter is healthy and, of course, the best little kid in the world.

In January, I realized an enduring dream and Lulu and Merry, those two characters who broke my heart, were brought into existence.

Life is good. I am happy. If you want to call me feisty. over. fifty, I’m just fine with that.

A few days ago I wrote my warning about falling for the ‘bad boy.’ Now it’s time to figure out if you have one lying next to you. And what kind. You may think you have a Marlboro Man while in truth you’re harboring a Hannibal Lector.

Take a look below. Which one is your bad boy?

The Romantic Lead: Rhett Butler. Heart of gold hiding inside a scallywag. Has tons of money. Always shows up to rescue you. Loves children. Once committed to you, he’ll sweep you away to a fully staffed mansion and the best big O you’ve ever had.

The Thug: Tony Soprano. Will sweet-talk you while trying to get some. Smack you away when done. Unless you’re his wife. In which case, he’ll buy you diamonds after giving someone else the big O.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself, to determine whether you’re harboring a romantic lead or a thug:

1) When you speculate about whether he’ll ever cheat on you, your instinct tells you:

a. Of course. He cheated with me before we got married.

b. Um . . . I guess it’s possible.

c. Are you kidding? Before or after he finishes sorting out receipts for the taxes?

2) During an argument, he is most likely to:

a. Swear, call you names, pin all the blame on you.

b. Yell until you back down.

c. Walk away until he calms down.

3) For Christmas, he will:

a. Have his mistress or secretary pick something out for you.

b. Run into Macy’s on Christmas Eve and buy the first three gift sets he sees.

c. Agonize so much that whatever he buys, you feel the effort and love.

4) When you’re sick, you expect:

a. Nothing.

b. He’ll move the remote to your side of the bed.

c. He’ll ask if you need him to stay home.

5) When your mother becomes ill, he might:

a) Pout because you’re not home to make supper.

b) Ask how long this is going to go on.

c) Offer to let her come live with the two of you

If your man is an ‘a’ – get yourself to a therapist, if you’re not yet married, and to a lawyer if you are.

If he’s a ‘b’—do you have lots of girlfriends to mop up your tears? Thank goodness!

You have a ‘c?’ Congratulations, you’ll have someone to watch the Oscars with this weekend!

Perhaps the lure of the bad boy is similar to the lure of climbing Mt. Everest. It feels so good to conquer it and get to the top—despite all the pain you felt on the ascent. Unfortunately, you have to climb down and start all over again to get back up to that thrilling peak.

Working with batterers for almost ten years afforded me plenty of material and plenty of insight. The clearest and most useful lesson I learned was this: a ‘bad boy’ isn’t edgy, exciting, and a bag of fun, he’s mean and selfish and looking out for number one—himself—all the time.

Many of the batterers were classic bad boys; they could charm like no one else. They gave me smoldering glances so I’d know that I was the ONLY one in the entire world who they’d let inside their soul. When they didn’t have money to pay for classes, or had been picked up on a new charge, or failed a drug test, they’d look at me with their carefully tortured eyes and tell me how sorry they were.

And they really were sorry. Sorry they’d been caught and sorry they had to spend another night pretending to pay attention to this crap we were teaching.

At their core, these guys weren’t very different from the bad boys I’d once been drawn to. But never again, not after working that job. I wish I could share with every woman the experience of sitting in a circle with 15 court-ordered-to-be-there bad boys, because at some point during the 42 weeks they occupied that chair in the church basement, they let loose with some truth that revealed the dime a dozen ordinariness of bad boy behavior.

So, while I can’t put you in that room, I can try to share with you what I learned there:

1) When you and your bad boy get in that insane fight, and you don’t know how it began, why it happened, or why he stormed out the door . . . when you’re ready to follow him so you can beg his forgiveness—but you don’t have any idea what to apologize for—here’s what’s really going on:

He wanted to get out of the house. So he caused the fight. The men admitted it. Turns out this sleazy little tactic is very, very common.

2) Which leads to this: What did most men admit they wanted to get out of the truly awful battles? You know, the ones where he yelled so loud you finally backed down?

If Jeopardy could have more realistic categories, the response to “most common thing men want women to do during a fight?” would be “Alex, what is “shut the f*** up.”

3) Think this when he tells you “you’re the only one I’ve ever been able to talk to.” Yeah, right. First of all he’s probably said the same thing to 100 other women before you. Because he knows it’s like catnip.  The men I worked with were very clear that they used this line only to manipulate.

4) When he says, “I can’t live without you,” here’s a news flash. Yes he can. And he will. Quite well. The question is, can you live with him? Do you want to? Do you like being kept off balance? Do you treasure being used like medicine for someone’s lack of self-confidence or need to control?

5) You want to believe it will change. Things will get better. If you explain it once more, write one more email, one more letter, or cry one more time, then finally he will understand! And once he understands, those moments of incredible tenderness and bliss —when he gives you that crooked smile and takes you in his arms and then gently helps you onto his exciting motorcycle—will last forever.

I promise you, things will not change. He will not get better. There’s nothing you can do without him wanting change, and the cycle will continue as long as you let it.

So here’s my advice, as a mother, a sister, a friend and most of all, from a woman who worked with those bad boys:

Choose kind over thrilling. It wears much better.

Choose responsible over devil-may-care. It will keep you and your children warm and safe at night.

Choose a man who wants to be your friend, not one who will be your life-long home improvement project.

According to yesterday’s Boston Globe, writing about the Boston Public Library system: Circulation in the system has risen 31 percent in the last three years.

This in an article headlined: Boston Public Library may close 10 of its branches.

According to me: The dollars that a city or state will invest in their libraries, measures its willingness to care for its children, seniors, teenagers. It shows how far it will go to help those who don’t have the funds for books, don’t have a warm and safe place to spend an afternoon, or need a place for their little ones to sit with other squirming toddlers to learn the joy of books.

Our economy is down. We need to cut back. Yes. Still . . .if you are a parent and your family loses one quarter of it’s income, do you protect the person who maybe greased your way into a country club membership? (Perhaps, um, akin to a campaign contributor’s sinecure in a remote post in a hidden agency budget line?) Or do you protect the dues you pay for your children’s afterschool program, ensuring they are safe while you’re out looking for a job?

At this moment in my life I can buy the books I need—and I mean need. For me, as for many, books are how I relax, learn, research, get to sleep, get through trauma, celebrate . . . they are right after shelter, food, and health care. But it wasn’t long ago that I got 95% of my reading through the library. As did my children.

Troubled and neglected kids can be saved by books—and I don’t use those words as hyperbole. I was raised by books. Almost every day I walked the twenty or so Brooklyn blocks to get to my neighborhood library branch. Like the steady family I’d wished I had, there it always was.

That’s the beauty of books. They don’t just transport, they heal, they teach, and they soothe. On the loneliest of days, they ask no more than picking them up. In the worst of times, they stand by.

We need to offer this opportunity, now more than ever. Our economy is down; thus people are out of work. Doesn’t it make sense to protect (along with teachers, police, fire-fighters and health workers) the place where folks can (without cost) write their resumes, look for jobs, bring their children, pass the burden of unfilled hours, meet their neighbors, surf the web, learn the future and learn from the past?

I do not believe that the libraries are the only place we can cut in either a municipal or state budget, or that they should be in the first line for slashes. I know it is an easy place to take a whack. Personally, I wish there were a box to check on tax forms to give extra dollars to libraries. And I wish that every politician valued our libraries even a quarter as much as they seem to value campaign contributions.

Sometimes parents aren’t equipped to raise children. Sometimes adult children aren’t equipped to care for elderly parents. That’s when the village should step in.  That’s why we have schools. And hospices. And libraries.