Ghosts and Lightningby Trevor Byrne
A young man’s mother’s death forces him back to the gritty, druggy Dublin world he fled.
When his mother suddenly passes away, Denny Cullen is forced to return to Dublin, the hometown that haunts him, full of everyone and everything the young self-imposed exile never wanted for himself. Danny’s struggle to cope with loss is expectedly sad, eerily frightening, and surprisingly funny at times as the protagonist and the rest of the cast of mainly drugged-up, punkish characters know how to laugh in the face of frightening situations in Trevor Byrne’s debut novel. Perhaps it’s their penchant for heroin, pot, and partying, or it could be Byrne’s ability to reveal the dark, yet humorous side of a coming-of-age tale that emerges from tragedy. The 28-year-old Dublin-born author seemingly knows Danny’s world well, though claims to not personally believe in ghosts at all, despite evoking incredibly poignant séance and exorcism scenes. “There is much to applaud in Byrne’s powerful debut. His writing is concise and unfussy, yet not without literary flourishes,” writes Sunday Business Post. “Judging by this poignant, compelling and often deeply comic tale of life on the margins of Irish society, Byrne seems certain to enjoy greater longevity than the Celtic Tiger, which abandoned Denny Cullen and his friends so comprehensively.”
You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifestoby Jaron Lanier
The creator of virtual reality argues that the Web is actually our downfall.
The ringing in of 2010 closed out a decade that technologically revolutionized our lives, but Jaron Lanier wonders in his controversial book whether we’re in control of the tools we created or do they control us? Lanier, a Silicon Valley visionary since the 1980s when the World Wide Web first developed, analyzes the danger of the online realms the earliest programmers created. The founder of the term “virtual reality” discusses the technical and cultural problems those designs could cause. Is Wikipedia really elevating “wisdom?” Is file sharing destroying the artistic bourgeoisie? Are we losing the individualistic voice? Lanier thinks not in this jagged-edged debut effort that ultimately concludes that the digital revolution could change our lives for the worse. But fear not, Facebookers—because according to Lanier, all is not lost. “Lanier, to his credit, is not a simple pessimist,” writes Slate. “He does propose a solution to the difficulty of how to compensate artists, artisans, and programmers in a digital era: a content database that would be run by some kind of government organization.” If the author had his way, it sounds like Twitter would soon be the new health care.
Remarkable Creatures: A Novelby Tracy Chevalier
A master of historical fiction returns with another acclaimed novel
Famed historical fiction novelist Tracy Chevalier has returned to the types of character that made her Girl With a Pearl Earring such a success (both in print and on screen) with her latest, Remarkable Creatures. Set in England in the early 19th century, unpolished, uneducated Mary Anning and upper-crust intellectual Elizabeth Philpot develop an unlikely friendship when Elizabeth is exiled to the seaside town where Mary grew up. Despite their 20-year age difference, they bond over a shared love of fossils, the two fight tumultuous weather and social conditions (elitism and chauvinism) for the sake of the remnants they both seek. “It is a stunning story, compassionately reimagined,” writes Ruth Padel in The Guardian. “The ways in which Mary and Elizabeth regard each other over the years allows the author… to do what she excels at: reveal slowly, in meticulous period detail, not one but two women being looked at.”
Notes from the Cracked Ceiling: Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and What It Will Take for a Woman to Winby Anne Kornblut
A journalist's in-depth look at what held women back in the 2008 campaign
In 2008, two women stepped into new, prominent political roles that galvanized national optimism for America being ready for the first female president. Yet despite Hillary Clinton’s ferocious battle for the Democratic endorsement and Sarah Palin’s presence on the presidential ticket with John McCain, Washington Post White House correspondent Anne Kornblut asserts that these women’s candidacies brought old stereotypes back to life and resulted in a setback in closing the political gender gap. Kornblut cites examples of double standards in media treatment of males and females, like the negative attention toward Palin about the maternity of her youngest child, while the news of John Edwards’ love child was pushed under the rug and, for the most part, ignored. “Kornblut has a tendency to be a tad repetitive and she offers little new information about the 2008 campaign,” says the Associated Press, “but this book's value lies in its detailed examination of the current state of women in politics.” For women in politics, it is simply harder to succeed.
Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilizationby Steven Solomon
How water shaped history and why it’s the oil of this century
Oil may have been the forefront of discussion a few years ago, but Steven Solomon brings the attention back to water in his latest work tracing its importance from the distant past to the present. From Rome's empire, which he credits to its massive aqueducts and control of the Mediterranean seas, to the construction of the Grand Canal by the Chinese, water has proved to be a source of power, wealth, and control throughout history. It is also a scarce resource for many, and a leading cause of death and global crises in Third World countries. “Solomon surveys the current state of the world's water resources by region, making a compelling case that the U.S. and other leading democracies have untapped strategic advantages that will only become more significant as water becomes scarcer,” says Publishers Weekly. An essential read on an essential resource.
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