Timothy Snyder

Tony Judt (1948–2010) was the author or editor of fifteen books, including The Memory Chalet and Postwar, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He was the director and founder of the Remarque Institute and a professor at New York University. Timothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University and the author of five award-winning books, most recently Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

In 2012 Heather Horn of The Atlantic talked to Snyder about his collaboration with Judt, Thinking the Twentieth Century:

The book resembles, in some sense, a guided tour through personal mental library. Is this what you mean when you say in the introduction that "this book makes a case for conversation but perhaps an even stronger case for reading"?

One of the very special things about Tony was the sovereign command he exercised over facts and arguments. He was really just as good, if not better, in person than he was on the printed page. And part of that, of course, was that he just had a very special mind. But part of it was that he was immensely well-read in a very old-fashioned way.

Neither of us was reaching for books or Googling anything as we proceeded. You have to remember that Tony was paralyzed and that we were working alone, just the two of us together. We were just talking. And that was only possible because there were all these layers of reference that were in his mind and in mine. I guess what I was trying to get across in that introduction is that a lot of solitary reading makes direct conversation possible. Because there's this world of letters that you wander around in alone for a long time. But then, when you meet someone else who has been doing even more of that wandering, you have an awful lot to talk about.

The other thing that I was trying to get across, gently and implicitly, is that reading books and not doing anything else forces you to learn to concentrate. What Tony did in this and his other final projects required heroic acts of concentration that wouldn't have been possible without his lifetime habit of concentration over books. In the world of Internet--where everybody has to Google everything all the time, where we're unsure about our own memories, where we revisit fragments and where we write based on fragments--well, if that world had conquered everyone, then this book would have been...[read on]

Read about Timothy Snyder's five top books on dissent in Central Europe.

--Marshal Zeringue

Christina Lynch and Meg Howrey

Biographical details about Magnus Flyte are sometimes conflicting. He appears to have operated under several identities, and may have ties to one or more intelligence organizations, including the CIA, the Mossad, and a radical group of Antarctic separatists.

In fact, Meg Howrey and Christina Lynch are the authors behind Flyte, authors of City of Dark Magic and City of Lost Dreams. From their Q & A with Cabin Goddess:

Q: How did your collaboration under the name Magnus Flyte come about?

A: We met at a writers’ retreat on an island off Cape Cod and became fans of each other’s work. When we got back to California, we started getting together for mini writers’ retreats at Chris’s house near Sequoia National Park. The plot for our first novel, CITY OF DARK MAGIC was hatched on a walk with Chris’s dog Max. The name “Magnus Flyte” is a hybrid (much like our novel). “Magnus” was a usurping Roman senator (not so different from City of Dark Magic’s villain, Charlotte Yates) and “Flyte” is for Sebastian Flyte, Evelyn Waugh’s wonderful lush who, like Max in our novel, has a difficult relationship with his highborn family and the house they live in.

Q. There have been a lot of news stories lately about women who use male pen names, especially when writing genre fiction. Do you think it’s helpful?

A. Possibly helpful to the author, who may have any number of reasons to use a pen name – a desire to escape gender stereotyping, anonymity, sheer whimsy. One can only imagine how delighted JK Rowling was to watch her book get wonderful reviews without any references to Voldemort! Since we had heard that men avoid books by women, we decided to choose a male pseudonym to reach both genders. But then our identities were made public from the beginning, so we didn’t get a chance to see if “Magnus Flyte” would fool anyone. No matter, we love him anyway.

Q: In CITY OF DARK MAGIC, Prague was very much its own character as well as the setting for the novel. Why did you choose Vienna to be the setting of CITY OF LOST DREAMS?

A: Vienna was...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Magnus Flyte's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.

The Page 69 Test: City of Dark Magic.

My Book, The Movie: City of Dark Magic.

The Page 69 Test: City of Lost Dreams.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jim Harrison

New York Times best-selling author Jim Harrison is one of America’s most beloved writers, and of all his creations, Brown Dog, a bawdy, reckless, down-on-his-luck Michigan Indian, has earned cult status with readers in the more than two decades since his first appearance. In a new volume, Brown Dog gathers all the Brown Dog novellas, including one never-published one, into one volume—the ideal introduction (or reintroduction) to Harrison’s irresistible Everyman.

From Harrison's Q & A with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg for the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy blog:

Speakeasy: In “He Dog,” Brown Dog is a dog catcher who befriends the biggest, roughest animals. What is it about him that dogs find so appealing?

Jim Harrison: Some people are like that. I was down in the Yucatan with a friend who has lived there a long time. We visited a small Mayan settlement back in the jungle and they have real aggressive guard dogs to protect their belongings. I was petting the guard dogs while talking to the Jefe. Finally the Jefe looks at the dogs and looks at me and says, “Are you part dog?” My translator said that was an important question to him. So I said, “Only a little bit on my mother’s side.” He seemed to find that interesting.

Why does Brown Dog –who is perpetually broke–seems happier and better adjusted than everybody else?

The trouble with money is that it’s hard to feel free. I’ve noticed that about many rich people I know, or some of them, that they don’t seem as happy as the odd job people I knew in the Upper Peninsula. I think the first year of our marriage was the year I made the most money in Hollywood. It was very aggravating. I didn’t do a very good job, perhaps for genetic reasons because no one in the history of my family on either side has done particularly well. Maybe it was beyond my capabilities. You can be pretty happy on $15,000 a year and then one year you make $850,000 and you feel like sh–. I can’t really pin it down. Maybe it’s the unhappiness of being able to have anything you want, like...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Christina Baker Kline

Christina Baker Kline's novels include Bird in Hand, The Way Life Should Be, and 2013's Orphan Train.

From her 2013 Q & A with Eva Schegulla at Publishers Weekly:

How long did [Orphan Train] take to research and write?

I stumbled on to the story of the orphan trains a decade ago. I was stunned to learn that more than 200,000 abandoned, neglected, or orphaned children had been sent from the East Coast to the Midwest on trains between 1854 and 1929. The idea of writing about this little-known part of American history percolated for years. About three years ago, I found the key: an appealingly irascible 17-year-old with nothing to lose who pries the story out of a 91-year-old with a hidden past as a train rider. I read more than 300 first-person accounts and dozens of books, attended train-rider reunions, and talked with half a dozen train riders (all between the ages of 90 and 100), and conducted research in Ireland, Minnesota, Maine, and [New York City’s] Lower East Side.

Why did you choose to write in the present tense?

The train rider’s story needed to be fresh and immediate and direct—almost cinematic. I was determined that it not seem romanticized or sepia-toned. The conceit is that the train rider is telling her story to the central character of the third-person narrative; in telling her story, she relives it. Eventually it becomes clear that the train rider’s story is...[read on]

Learn more about Christina Baker Kline's work at her website and her blog, A Writing Life: Conversations about the Creative Process.

The Page 69 Test: Bird in Hand.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Christina Baker Kline & Lucy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Katherine Bouton

Katherine Bouton is the author of Shouting Won't Help: Why I--and 50 Million Other Americans--Can't Hear You.

From her conversation with Mark J. Miller at the Barnes & Noble Review:

BNR: What was your biggest surprise in all the research you did for the book?

KB: The biggest surprise was finding out how many people have hearing loss. There's such a stigma associated with hearing loss that people don't want to acknowledge it, with the result that there is not much consciousness of hearing loss in society at large. But tens of millions more people suffer hearing loss than vision loss. Look at how many of us wear glasses! Tens of millions more should also be wearing hearing aids. It's another indication of the stigma of hearing loss, and the denial that accompanies it. This stigma also affects statistics. When I began my research, the accepted figure for those with hearing loss was 36 million. This was the number used by the NIDCD (National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders). Then, about a year into my reporting, Frank Lin at Hopkins published the results of an epidemiological study that set the figure at 48 million. Lin's was a carefully documented study, with hearing loss determined by hearing tests. The NIH is certainly a reliable source. How could there be such a disparity?

Finally after many weeks, I finally got the answer from the NIDCD. Their figures, it turned out, were self-reported cases of hearing loss. As is typical anecdotally, a quarter of those surveyed by the NIDCD denied that they had hearing loss. Most official reports now...[read on]

Visit Katherine Bouton's website and blog, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Katherine Bouton and Maxie.

--Marshal Zeringue

Renée Rosen

As clichéd as it sounds, Renée Rosen is a former advertising copywriter who always had a novel in her desk drawer. When she saw the chance to make the leap from writing ad copy to fiction, she jumped at it. A confirmed history and book nerd, the author loves all things old, all things Chicago and all things written.

Rosen's latest book is Dollface, A Novel of the Roaring Twenties. From her Q & A with Liz Baudler at Newcity Lit:

Why do you think the twenties are back in style?

We’ve all been struggling since about 2008, and the twenties was such a prosperous time, such a happy-go-lucky time, and I think that’s a perfect escape for us now. We’re tired, we’re weary. And I also think people love the fashion. Mary Janes, cloche hats are back in. People are having a lot of fun with it.

There’s a lot of consideration that goes into creating a historical novel’s world. How did you handle it?

You have to get a feel for the time, the language, the clothes. For example, there were no zippers in 1920. You have to know how much slang to put in, and how much to pull back on it. I went really heavy-handed on one draft and a friend said, “God, it reads like ‘Guys and Dolls.’” And you’re locked into certain timelines, striking that balance of the authentic coupled with your imagination, what you’re going to bring to the party.

I spent a lot of time poring over newspapers from the twenties. One thing I found interesting was that Al Capone’s alias was Al Brown, and they often refer to Al Brown in the papers—he was a used furniture salesman. They all had a front. Reading the reports of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, it’s “the killings on Clark Street.” It hadn’t yet become “the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” Whenever possible I tried to speak to people who had a relative who was connected to either O’Banion or Capone. That led me to lunch with...[read on]

My Book, The Movie: Dollface.

Writers Read: Renée Rosen.

The Page 69 Test: Dollface.

--Marshal Zeringue

Lisa Unger

Lisa Unger's new novel is In the Blood.

From her Q & A with Anthony J. Franze at The Big Thrill:

Where did you grow up?

I was born in New Haven, Connecticut, but moved around quite a bit. I lived in the Netherlands and the UK during my early childhood (even learned to speak Dutch) before my family settled back in the U.S. My teen years were spent in a small town in New Jersey called Long Valley. When I turned eighteen, I left for college in Manhattan and spent the next thirteen years in New York City. My brother swears that Long Valley was my inspiration for The Hollows [the setting of In the Blood]. But it isn’t. Not really. Well, maybe a little.

Was all that moving around difficult or did you enjoy it? Was there anything about being “the new kid” that helped in any way with your writing?

It was challenging at times; I remember a semi-permanent sense of disconnection. But I had a sense even at a fairly young age that it was cool and unusual to see so much of the world. It made me quiet self-reliant and led to my discovery of books, and eventually my identity as a writer. If I was perpetually the new kid, then at least I was at home on the page.

Moreover, this feeling of being on the sideline of things led me to become a keen observer. And that’s the first thing a writer needs to be. Maybe we can’t observe as carefully unless we’re standing a little bit outside the fray. So the traveling I did as a child was...[read on]

Visit Lisa Unger's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Megan Abbott

Megan Abbott's latest novel is Dare Me.

From her March 2013 Hostile Questions feature at Booklist Online:

Just who do you think you are?

A Midwestern gal who spent far too much of her childhood reading true crime, watching 1930s gangster movies and dreaming of moving to New York City. I imagined it just like Manhattan and I would live with Woody Allen, eating Chinese food and watching W.C. Fields movies on the late show.

I did move here, after college. Lacking Mariel Heminway’s bone structure, I had to make do with what I had. So, many years later, I’m a Midwestern expat, living in Queens and writing novels.

Where do you get off?

I’m just barely hanging on, I tell you. But I love books, desperately. I want to live in them. For all of us who were readers from a young age, we learn how to exist in the world thanks to books. They help us understand life, the murkiness of the heart. We feel...[read on]

Visit Megan Abbott's website.

The Page 69 Test: Bury Me Deep.

The Page 69 Test: The End of Everything.

--Marshal Zeringue

Libby McGugan

Libby McGugan was born 1972 in Airdrie, a small town east of Glasgow in Scotland, to a Catholic mother and a Protestant-turned-atheist father, who loved science. She enjoyed a mixed diet of quantum physics, spiritual instinct, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. Her ambition was to grow up and join the Rebel alliance in a galaxy Far, Far away. Instead she went to Glasgow University and studied medicine.

A practicing doctor, she has worked in Scotland, in Australia with the Flying Doctors service, and for a few months, in a field hospital in the desert. She loves traveling and the diversity that is the way different people see the world, and has been trekking in the Himalaya of Bhutan, potholing in Sarawak, backpacking in Chile and Europe and diving in Cairns.

McGugan's debut novel is The Eidolon.

From the author's Q & A with Paul F Cockburn for The List:

How would you describe The Eidolon?

A science fiction thriller that explores the nature of reality through an edge-of-the-seat storyline featuring dark matter, the CERN laboratory, and the boundary between the living and the dead. That’s my publisher’s description, and it’s better than the one I came up with.

* * *

How much research did you need to do for the book?

It’s tricky to say. I was still researching when it came to the final edit. I visited CERN a few years ago, just as they were preparing for the LHC warm up; that gave me a sense of what an unbelievable endeavour it is, how powerful our drive is to understand things. It’s a huge feat of cooperation crossing political, geographical and specialist boundaries. I spent a bit of time in Geneva to get a feel for writing the scenes that are set there. And I’ve done a fair amount of travelling and trekking, so I drew on those experiences for the Tibetan scenes at the start of the book. The medical scenes were easy to write, as that’s my day job!

Read the complete Q & A.

Learn more about the book and author at Libby McGugan's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Eidolon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Rachel Cantor

Rachel Cantor's highly acclaimed debut novel is A Highly Unlikely Scenario, or a Neetsa Pizza Employee's Guide to Saving the World. From a Q & A at her website:

You spent some of your childhood in Rome; did you draw on those memories when you were portraying medieval Rome in the book? What’s your favorite place to visit in Rome?

A lot of the Roman setting did come from memory—the itinerary Sally and Leonard follow, most notably, from an unnamed neighborhood to the river, across the bridge, past the Castel Sant’Angelo, to the old St. Peter’s, down the river, past the island to the Portico of Octavia (the fish market), and on to the Theater of Marcellus. I remember taking a school trip to the Portico of Octavia when I was maybe fourteen; I loved that this ruin of a once grand Roman building had become a place of low commerce. I remembered this odd fact for decades! I’ve been similarly fascinated with the Roman Theater of Marcellus, which like the portico and so much of ancient Rome was repurposed in the Middle Ages, first as a fortress and then, in its upper levels, as a dwelling. I wanted so much to see what’s inside!

But there’s not a lot left in Rome that’s medieval, apart from some churches, so I also spent a lot of time looking over old maps, and reading books about the medieval city—its pilgrims, architecture, daily life, weapons, Inquisition, Jewish population, and so on. The St. Peter’s in the book, for example, is the old St. Peter’s, which was demolished to make room for the current basilica, of Michelangelo fame. All of the details about that old church, then, I found through research. I similarly had no idea that there had been grain mills on the Tiber or that in the Middle Ages, there were kilns dedicated to transforming Roman marble (one shudders to think it!) into quicklime.

My favorite Roman places did not make it into the book, however: the...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue