A Burning Social Issue Across the Pond As Well

 

"In his powerful, wrenching debut, Lelic takes a sadly familiar crime and delves into the equally familiar menace at its root: bullying." -People
 
In this riveting debut novel about sexism, bullying, and the horrific effects of random acts of violence, Detective Inspector Lucia May investigates a school shooting in which a teacher has killed three pupils, another teacher, and then himself-a tragedy that could not have been predicted. It should be an open-and- shut case. Yet as Lucia begins to piece together the testimonies of the various witnesses, an uglier and more complex picture emerges, calling into question the innocence of others. Brilliantly interweaving the witnesses' accounts with Lucia's own perspective, A Thousand Cuts is a narrative tour de force from a formidable new voice in fiction.

TC Tidbits: Pack Your (Book) Bags

Time Magazine brings us a list of 23 authors and their summer reading plans.

Shakespeare Changed Everything, Including Pete

How Shakespeare Changed Everything

Did you know the name Jessica was first used in The Merchant of Venice?

Or that Freud's idea of a healthy sex life came from Shakespeake?


Nearly four hundred years after his death, Shakespeare permeates our everyday lives: from the words we speak to the teenage heartthrobs we worship to the political rhetoric spewed by the twenty-four-hour news cycle.


In the pages of this wickedly clever little book, Esquire columnist Stephen Marche uncovers the hidden influence of Shakespeare in our culture, including these fascinating tidbits:

• Shakespeare coined over 1,700 words, including hobnob, glow, lackluster, and dawn.
• Paul Robeson's 1943 performance as Othello on Broadway was a seminal moment in black history.
• Tolstoy wrote an entire book about Shakespeare's failures as a writer.
• In 1936, the Nazi Party tried to claim Shakespeare as a Germanic writer.
• Without Shakespeare, the book titles Infinite Jest, The Sound and the Fury, and Brave New World wouldn't exist.

Stephen Marche has cherry-picked the sweetest and most savory historical footnotes from Shakespeare's work and life to create this unique celebration of the greatest writer of all time.

Read an excerpt here.


Pete says:
"I remember sitting in my freshman Shakespeare course when our weary instructor looked up from his desk and said something to the effect of  'This class is without a doubt the worst class I've ever had the displeasure to teach.'  I can't speak for my fellow students but I wish I had been a more adept student for our poor teacher, and I think I would have been had I had a book like How Shakespeare Changed Everything My teacher was correct in saying that when you're dealing with Shakespeare you're dealing with a topsy-turvy world. But what he couldn't quite convey, and what the author of this book reminds us, is that Shakespeare is supposed to be...fun.

Shakespeare's own life was as ghostly as some of his characters. For such a prolific writer he left very little of himself behind. There's no exact birth date. Maybe a marriage to an older woman or maybe not. Five or six signatures but none of them match. A couple of portraits may be of Shakespeare, but for all we know they may be portraits of his kid brother, Kevin (Note: Most Shakespearean scholars have long disputed the existence of Kevin Shakespeare.). 

 

So how did this mysterious literary figure changed everything? For starters he coined hundreds of new words such as auspicious, abstemious, and sanctimonious, and some words nobody can quite figure out, such as a scamel. What's that? He also gave us the name Jessica, the daughter from The Merchant of Venice.  His numerous plays have circled the globe from stage to screen. In New York City in 1849 there was even a riot between rival Shakespeare performances that left 20 dead and
hundreds injured. Over Shakespeare? Talk about much ado about nothing.  In one humorous aside the author brings Shakespeare to a modern day food court where he sits pondering a store called The Gap.  There are also mistakes to consider. In some versions of Hamlet the very first scene has Bernardo saying Francisco's line and Francisco saying Bernardo's  (though I've seen other versions where the scene is cleaned up a bit). When it comes to Shakespeare it truly is a topsy-turvy world and therefore maybe no mistake at all. I believe I'm almost ready for Shakespeare in the park now, for he really did change everything -- even me."

Missing "Left Behind"? Then Welcome to The End Series also by Tim LaHaye

The End Series by New York Times bestselling author Tim LaHaye and Craig Parshall is an epic thrill ride ripped from today's headlines and filtered through Scriptural prophecy. As world events begin setting the stage for the 'end of days' foretold in Revelation, Joshua Jordan must weigh the personal price he must pay to save the nation he loves. Thunder of Heaven appeals to the tens of millions of readers who have already made Tim LaHaye a household name and one of the best selling authors of all time.

This book is a return to form for Tim LaHaye whose previous prophetic fiction series, Left Behind, has sold roughly 70 million copies. Those who have read Left Behind and are eager for more highly charged fiction based on biblical prophesies will embrace Thunder of Heaven for the same reasons that turned Left Behind into the world's most celebrated publishing phenomenons of the last two decades.

Read an excerpt here.

TC Tidbit: National Book Foundation's BookUp Reading List

Click here for the list.

Meet This Icon TONIGHT!!!

The Iovis Trilogy, Anne Waldman's monumental feminist epic, traverses epochs, cultures, and genres to create a visionary call to poetic arms. Iovis details the misdeeds of the Patriarch, and with a fierce imagination queries and subverts his warmongering. All of Waldman's themes come into focus—friendship, motherhood, politics, and Buddhist wisdom. This is epic poetry that goes beyond the old injunction, "to include history" —its effort is to change history.

This transformative twenty-five-year labor is published here for the first time in its historic entirety, including the first two out-of-print volumes.

Anne Waldman will  be reading from and signing her new book at our Colfax Avenue store at 7:30 pm.

Sapphire Follows Up "Push" with "The Kid"

Fifteen years after the publication of Push, one year after the Academy Award-winning film adaptation, Sapphire gives voice to Precious's son, Abdul.


In The Kid bestselling author Sapphire tells the electrifying story of Abdul Jones, the son of Push's unforgettable heroine, Precious.



A story of body and spirit, rooted in the hungers of flesh and of the soul, The Kid brings us deep into the interior life of Abdul Jones. We meet him at age nine, on the day of his mother's funeral. Left alone to navigate a world in which love and hate sometimes hideously masquerade, forced to confront unspeakable violence, his history, and the dark corners of his own heart, Abdul claws his way toward adulthood and toward an identity he can stand behind.
In a generational story that moves with the speed of thought from a Mississippi dirt farm to Harlem in its heyday; from a troubled Catholic orphanage to downtown artist's lofts, The Kid tells of a twenty- first-century young man's fight to find a way toward the future. A testament to the ferocity of the human spirit and the deep nourishing power of love and of art, The Kid chronicles a young man about to take flight. In the intimate, terrifying, and deeply alive story of Abdul's journey, we are witness to an artist's birth by fire.

Watch an interview with Sapphire about Push and The Kid.