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By Jennifer Szalai

Reading James Vincent’s quietly thrilling new book, “Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement From Cubits to Quantum Constants,” I began to think that one measure (so to speak) of the human experience might be the number of things we take for granted. Rulers and scales and clocks: These are mundane appliances of daily life, obvious and uncontroversial to the point of banality.

But wait! Vincent, a London-based science writer for The Verge, shows how wrong this assumption is. The story of humans measuring things is no less than the story of civilization — a claim that sounds like irritating hyperbole but in this case turns out to be true. Vincent conveys how measurement developed as a “scaffold for knowledge,” encouraging us to categorize and make comparisons. It is also extraordinarily powerful, “a tool of social cohesion and control.”

When people agree on a standard of measurement, they can coordinate their actions. You tell me that the sofa you’re selling is 72 inches wide, and from that bit of information I can see that it will fit in my living room. Scientists tell us that the world has gotten 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter, and from that bit of information governments can implement policies to address climate change (in theory, at least). The stakes in the first scenario are nonexistent by comparison, but the underlying principle of metrology — or the science of measurement — is the same. I assume that your measure of an inch is identical to mine. I also assume that you’re telling the truth — that by “72 inches” you do not mean 53 inches, or 107 inches.

Standardized measuring tapes ensure that these kinds of simple commercial transactions don’t (usually) cause much of a fuss. But as Vincent explains, cheating with false measures has historically been taken extremely seriously. In the Holy Roman Empire, punishments included whippings, amputated hands, deaths by hanging. Unlike, say, a simple act of thievery, which caused individual harm, metrological trickery could undermine the entire social order by sowing mistrust. “Measurement is a covenant that binds communities together,” Vincent writes. In addition to

its obvious practical benefits — the ancient Egyptians couldn’t have built the Pyramids by eyeballing it — measurement has been embraced “for its ability to create a zone of shared expectations and rules.” This social dimension, then, is what has made metrology a more potent source of controversy than I had ever imagined. As societies became bigger and more complex, measurements became more abstract, allowing disparate individuals to communicate and interact with one another. Not everyone was pleased by this development. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Vincent says, the most common system of measurement — the metric system — has become fodder for the endless culture wars. Early forms of measurement were connected to the body: A cubit, for instance, is the distance from elbow to fingertip; a fathom is the span of one’s outstretched arms. Bigger measurements stayed local, too, reflecting the labor of everyday life, like the Irish collop, which was the amount of land needed to graze a single cow. The Finnish peninkulma measured the distance at which a dog’s bark can be heard (apparently around six kilometers). The Saami of Northern Europe have a unit known as the poronkusema — the distance a reindeer can walk before it must stop to urinate (around six miles).

Metrology’s early history is marked by plurality — different units developing in different places, each one suited to a particular community’s needs. This variability allowed for flexibility, but it also allowed confusion and corruption to flourish. Vincent gives the example of France under the ancien régime, where the unit known as the pinte measured a measly 0.93 liters in Paris and a whopping 3.33 liters in Précy-sous-Thil. Elastic units were “exploited by the rich and powerful.” In exchanges with the peasantry, feudal lords used their authority over weights and measures to their own benefit.

Consequently, the metric system was a radical departure — the brainchild of the French Revolution’s savants, who promised to dispense with arbitrary units like the pied du Roi, or “the king’s foot,” in favor of weights and measures that were rational and impartial because they would be tethered to the Earth itself. A meter was standardized to one ten-millionth of the

distance from the North Pole to the Equator. But even that definition turned out to be too “crass,” Vincent writes. Now the meter is defined in terms of something even more constant: the speed of light. Vincent is a companionable guide to these adventures in metrology. He travels to Cairo to descend into an ancient nilometer, an ingenious structure for measuring the Nile’s floodwaters; in Paris, he witnesses “the overthrow of a king” — the decommissioning of “Le Grand K,” a lump of platinum-iridium alloy that was the official kilogram until 2018, when the international science community voted to redefine it in terms of Planck’s constant, a foundational concept in quantum mechanics.

Of course, the constancy of Planck’s constant hasn’t quelled anti-metric sentiment — if anything, it has only fueled suspicions that the metric system amounts to a bunch of elitist nabobs bent on crushing the ordinary person’s (literal) rule of thumb. Such fury became part of the pro-Brexit platform, with Brexiteers seizing on instances of British shopkeepers getting prosecuted for selling their produce in pounds instead of kilos. Even in the non-metric United States, Tucker Carlson has railed against “this weird, utopian, inelegant, creepy system that we alone have resisted.”

(Not so. We happen to keep company with two other officially non-metric countries: Liberia and Myanmar.)

Toward the end of “Beyond Measure,” Vincent explores how measurements have made their way into so many areas of modern life, from tallies of social media “likes” to trackers that count the number of steps we take. We cling to such numbers because we have been conditioned in “the era’s prevailing ideology.” Vincent eloquently describes his own experiences in online journalism with what the historian Jerry Z. Muller calls “metric fixation,” or the relentless production of clickable stories.

But just because we can count something doesn’t make it any good. As Vincent puts it, “An obsession with measurement above all else will distort, distract and destroy what we claim to value.”

By Jennifer Szalai

Rachel Aviv was 6 years old when she was hospitalized for not eating. She was so young that she had never encountered the word “anorexia” before; it sounded to her like a kind of dinosaur.

Her doctors decided that she should be kept with the older girls with eating disorders, who taught her how to exercise obsessively and treated her like an “anorexic-in-training.” But Aviv soon started eating again and quickly lost interest in depriving herself of the food she had previously refused even to talk about (pronouncing the words had felt the same to her as consuming them). A year later, she would confide in her diary, “I had some thing that was a siknis its cald anexorea.” She explained that she had anorexia “because I want to be someone better than me.” It’s a startling passage in the prologue of “Strangers to Ourselves,” but like so many of the stories in this intimate and revelatory book, the truth of it is real but incomplete. As an adult, having written a number of stories about people in extremis for The New Yorker, Aviv has come to “question whatever basic feelings existed in me before they were called anorexia.” Her medical records failed to present a “coherent picture” of why she stopped eating and drinking, but that didn’t stop the doctors from issuing diagnostic proclamations. “The original experience couldn’t be captured or understood on its own terms,” she writes, “and gradually became something that wasn’t entirely of our own making.”

By “our” Aviv is referring to the other people in her book. There’s Ray, who sued an elite psychiatric hospital that prided itself on its psychoanalytic approach for failing to make him better; Bapu, a wealthy Brahmin mother of two who repeatedly left her family in Chennai, India, to pursue the ascetic life of a mystic; Naomi, who was incarcerated for second-degree murder after throwing herself and her twin babies into the Mississippi River; and Laura, a Harvard graduate from a well-to-do family, who had been prescribed psychiatric medications since she was a teenager and decided — years later — to see who she was without the drugs. We learn about these people one by one, with a chapter for each, so that Aviv can recount their lives in detail and therefore in full. She interviews doctors, friends and survivors; she reads her subjects’ journals in order to get a grasp on how they explained themselves to themselves. Aside from her candid reflections in the prologue and the epilogue, Aviv mostly hangs back, even though her own experience primes us — as maybe it primed her — to be alert to how stories can clarify as well as distort the mental distress that a person is going through.

Psychiatric explanations can be helpful and harmful, Aviv says. They pretend to a neutrality that can offer consolation but also condescension. Persistent colonial assumptions about the irrationality of Indian religions meant that some of Bapu’s doctors were disdainfully dismissive. “She was ugly,” one tells Aviv. “She was living like a witch, and looking like a witch.”

In Naomi’s case, medications helped with her psychosis, but psychiatric evaluations were also used against her. Naomi, who is Black, said that she had dropped her babies into the river in order to save them from a life of “inferiority,

indifference and ridicule” in a racist society.

The psychiatrists who first evaluated Naomi after her arrest decided that even though she talked about an impending apocalypse and living in another dimension, her remarks about racism were too astute for her to meet the legal bar for insanity. But as her release date approached, 13 years later, a psychiatrist concluded that she had not yet “achieved adequate stability”: “Now she was deemed unwell enough to be indefinitely detained,” Aviv writes.

Aviv’s narrative is so attuned to subtlety and complexity that any summary risks making it sound like she’s doing something she’s not. This isn’t an anti-psychiatry book — Aviv is too aware of the specifics of any situation to succumb to anything so sweeping and polemical. What she does is recognize the multiplicity of stories that attach to her subjects’ experiences, exploring a variety of interpretations instead of jumping at the impulse to explain them away. “Strangers to Ourselves” delicately balances two truths that prove remarkably difficult to hold in tandem. We all have our own minds, our own experiences, our own suffering; we are also social creatures who live among others, and social forces have at least some bearing on how we understand who we are. Aviv suggests that we continue to cling to reductive theories about brain chemistry because “the reality — that mental illness is caused by an interplay between biological, genetic, psychological and environmental factors — is more difficult to conceptualize.”

Psychiatrists talk a lot about “insight,” or what one defined as “the correct attitude to a morbid change in oneself.” Aviv points out the professional presumption baked into the term, as if insight is supposed to measure “the degree to which a patient agrees with his or her doctor’s interpretation.” Aviv, for her part, finds more resonance in Keats’s notion of “negative capability” — the capacity to experience “uncertainty, mysteries and doubts, without any irritable reaching after facts or reason.” She admits how hard it is for her to sustain such patience for her own anxieties and preoccupations, but “Strangers to Ourselves” is a book-length demonstration of Aviv’s extraordinary ability to hold space for the “uncertainty, mysteries and doubts” of others.

Looking back on her hospitalization three decades ago, Aviv remains haunted by what happened to another girl in the ward, named Hava, who died in her early 40s from complications of bulimia. In her journals, the 12-year-old Hava showed plenty of insight about her condition, referring frequently to her “chemical imbalances,” whereas the 6-year-old Aviv “had basically none.”

But perhaps it was this lack of insight — “I never felt stuck in a particular story that others had created for me” — that made Aviv’s diagnosis feel more malleable to her, allowing her to pursue other possibilities. The divide between her fate and Hava’s was enormous but also porous. “There are stories that save us, and stories that trap us,” Aviv writes, “and in the midst of an illness it can be very hard to know which is which.”

By Sloane Crosley

These days, teenagers of the 1990s find themselves in the bizarre position of having to conjure their childhoods as if they had taken place in the 1890s. Is life before smartphones really so alien? American teens still drive around with their nascent licenses, listening to questionable music, eating Pop-Tarts from gas stations (possibly, chillingly, the same Pop-Tarts). More important, they still develop intense and thrilling friendships. In his fourth novel, “Now Is Not the Time To Panic,” Kevin Wilson (best known for “Nothing to See Here” and “The Family Fang”) addresses the contours of this liminal time, capturing the still-relevant feeling of trying “to remember what was in the cassette player, if it was cool.” His is a buoyant tribute to small-town life, a book about creativity and creation in a world before “send” buttons.

Fade in: Summer, 1996. Coalfield, Tenn. Sixteen-year-old Frankie Budge is bored out of her mind. She lives with her saintly, divorced mother and triplet brothers, interchangeable characters who have all the menace of Shakespearean witches and none of the prophecy. One gestures with the tip of his pizza slice “in a way that only my brothers could make look threatening.” Frankie is a bit of a blank slate herself, awkwardness being her defining characteristic. While at the local pool, observing a casually violent contest involving a Vaseline-coated watermelon, Frankie encounters Zeke, a “skinny and twitchy” peer who presumes the friendless Frankie is also new in town. The two forge a bond (she a budding novelist, he a budding illustrator), engaging in occasional make-out sessions haunted by the specter of bad breath. But what seals their friendship and serves as a cue-ball break for the story is their imaginative impulse. At loose ends one day, Zeke, a thoughtful boy but no match for the inner workings of a teenage girl, suggests they “make art” — “like art was cookies or microwave popcorn,” Frankie says. From then on, their summer is defined by the sound of “pencils and pens scraping so softly against the paper” as they develop a shared aesthetic language. Wilson adeptly evokes what it was like to be a creative kid in the 1990s, having to fend for inspira-

tion (books, images, films, lyrics, zines) on your own, or through a sibling or a friend, and then follow the trail. He captures the nonlinear absorption of culture before listicles, when “every single thing that you loved became a source of both intense obsession and possible shame.”

One day, Frankie and Zeke produce an enigmatic image using both of their skill sets, an illustration with Frankie’s words scrawled above it: The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us. Is it nonsense? Is it brilliance? It matters not. What matters is that there’s a photocopier in Frankie’s garage. The words take on the power of incantation. Frankie, in particular, is electrified (“a kind of electrocution that kept your heart beating in time”) by her and Zeke’s stealth as they pin copies of the poster around town. “We didn’t know about Xerox art or Andy Warhol or anything like that,” Frankie tells us. “We thought we’d made it up. And I guess, for us, we had.” But the cryptic posters seize the public’s attention far beyond anything the artists anticipated or intended, spawning copycats, conspiracy theories and, eventually, fatalities. This fantastical frenzy will become known as the Coalfield Panic of 1996.

Wilson shines when detailing the domino effect and the dissemination of images before social media. There are the headlines that read “Troubling Street Art Vexes Small Town,” the subsequent TV movies, the “Saturday Night Live” sketch and the Urban Outfitters merchandise. In a roundabout way, he also uses the tumult to cast light on Frankie’s artistic insecurities. When an art professor opines to a reporter that the poster’s creators “seemed to have some awareness of culturally relevant artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring,” a frustrated Frankie just wants to know “if the professor thought the poster was any good.”

“Now Is Not the Time to Panic” reads like a movie. By which I don’t mean “cinematic,” I mean like a movie. Strings of dialogue, more predictable than verisimilar, are linked with episodes of brief action that could have been dropped into “Adventureland,” a 2009 film about the summer of 1987, or — given that we’re dealing with at least one dead body, a secret pact and a narrator

who’s now a professional author — into “Stand by Me,” a 1986 film about the summer of 1959. Are these negative comparisons? I, too, am a teenager of the mid-90s, so I vote “no.” Here is a charming story with enough pockets of pathos to keep the novel from feeling weightless. The only issue is that it seems to want more for itself. A lot more. And it becomes increasingly vocal about asking for it.

The grand themes (art, friendship, memory) sit like Vaseline on the surface of a pool, with repetition too often standing in for insight. The book is adamant that the adult Frankie, who is telling us this tale (sometimes with a stray “you know?” slumped up against the fourth wall), is so haunted by the episode that she’s basically living in hiding like a character from Dana Spiotta’s great novel “Eat the Document.” Long estranged from Zeke, she is running from a past she’s convinced will have major repercussions for her present. This is a passable concern for a “well-behaved dork” convinced at 16 she’s a “bad person,” but for a grown woman? It comes off as manufactured drama. The anxiety that adult Frankie feels when a writer from The New Yorker plans to expose her as the originator of “one of the weirdest mysteries in American pop culture” becomes as implausible as the fact that her narrative voice has not changed a lick in 21 years. “I could feel the world getting smaller and smaller,” adult Frankie says, “and that scared me because I’d already made myself pretty small to ensure none of these memories got out of me.” The novel becomes dominated by the author’s valiant attempts to make a case for adult Frankie’s conundrum, for her poster-adjacent compulsions. But our heroine did not commit an act of political terrorism. She didn’t eat any of her friends after a plane crash or push them into a ravine. She’s barely had occasion to lie about this incident because, New Yorker reporters notwithstanding, no one has ever accused her.

To Wilson’s credit, this last fact is part of his point. No one suspected Frankie or Zeke would be capable of such impact because they flew under the radar as kids, half-abandoned at a pivotal age. If you focus on this and the more sentimental aspects of “Now Is Not the Time to Panic,” if you take it as a spirited PG-13 tale of summer mischief, you’ll enjoy yourself.

By Catherine Hong

If I’ve been acting a little “extra” these days, chalk it up to recent quality time with “Anne of Green Gables,” the classic 1908 novel by L.M. Montgomery about a spirited red-haired orphan with a flair for melodrama. “I cannot tie myself down to anything so unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment,” I declared one evening after forcing my family to admire a particularly pretty sunset. Another day, as I skimmed the class notes in my alumni magazine, I told my husband, “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.” And after my neighbor kindly offered to check my mail while I was away, I nearly blurted, “You are a bosom friend.”

Like millions of readers — the original book has sold more than 50 million copies and remained continuously in print — I was captivated as a child by “Anne of Green Gables” and its sequels. The plight and possibilities of orphanhood, the hearty meals and daunting chores of farm life, the catastrophic debacles with things like green hair dye all made a lively impression on me, a Korean American girl growing up on 1980s Long Island. Later, my fandom was solidified by the CBC’s popular mini-series, memorable for the breathtaking beauty of Prince Edward Island and for Marilla Cuthbert’s merciless hair bun.

Anne’s story has never really left us. There have been picture book and board book adaptations, an anime version and the Netflix series “Anne With an E,” which explored the darker intimations of Montgomery’s novel: post-traumatic stress, bullying, male privilege. This year, children’s publishers are offering three new books reimagining “Anne.” They include two middle grade graphic novels (one set in West Philadelphia and one in a suburban apartment building called the Avon-Lea) and a Y.A. version where the protagonist is a queer Japanese American who loves disco. On the horizon, we can expect a fantasy remix and a graphic novel following a teenager named Dan who lives with his grandparents in Tennessee. (Yes, it’s titled “Dan of Green Gables.”)

Even in a publishing landscape flush with remakes, that’s a lot of Anne. The swell of appreciation for the book cannot be owed simply to the current vogue for homemade cakes, backyard chicken coops and frilly dresses. Anne is a classic underdog who makes waves in her conventional community, eventually winning everybody’s hearts. Spunky and outspoken, she’s a proto-feminist who wonders aloud why women can’t be ministers, expresses zero interest in marriage and seems to be the only one of her chums immune to the “roguish hazel eyes” of Gilbert Blythe. It’s easy to imagine yourself as Anne. She doesn’t have to be white, straight, Protestant or even a girl. And all of the episodes central to the Anne liturgy — mouthing off to the busybody Rachel Lynde, finding a bosom friend in Diana Barry, breaking a slate over Gilbert’s head, nearly drowning in a pond while re-enacting a Tennyson poem — can be readily updated for modern life.

In “Anne of West Philly,” Weir tiptoes so lightly around this theme, young readers could well miss it. Gros, by contrast, puts the gay stuff front and center: Anne gets a butch haircut, holds hands with Diana at a concert and asks her

diary, “What does it mean when your best friend (who you kind of think you have a crush on) says she turned down the boy who asked her to the dance???” The story culminates with the girls kissing.

If Gros’s is among the gayer adaptations out there, so is the Y.A. novel ANNE OF GREENVILLE (Melissa de la Cruz Studio, 294 pp., $18.99, ages 14 to 18), by Mariko Tamaki — more a playful riff than a retelling — in which Anne is the half-Japanese, disco-loving, “deliriously queer” adopted daughter of two moms. After the family moves to the conservative small town of Greenville, Anne encounters a scary nativist clique and a thorny love triangle involving two girls, Berry (as in Diana Barry) and Gilly. Tamaki’s nods to the original have a postmodern flair. When Gilly calls Anne “Carrots” (an unforgivable insult in Montgomery’s version), Anne responds: “Carrots? … That’s what you got?” Still, “Anne of Greenville” was missing something for me that became clear only after I’d read Heather Fawcett’s novel THE GRACE OF WILD THINGS (Balzer + Bray, 361 pp., $17.99, ages 8 to 12), coming in February.

The least obvious Anne reboot of all, this middle-grade fantasy is about a hotheaded young sorceress named Grace who persuades a terrifying child-eating witch to take her in as an apprentice. The touchstone scenes are all here. But the truest homage it pays is in conveying a child’s intense connection to home. Montgomery’s florid descriptions of seemingly every shrub, rosebud and piece of furniture at Green Gables (which used to make my eyes glaze over) communicate this deep attachment. “I love this little room so dearly,” Anne says of her gabled room, with its “white-painted bookcase filled with books, a cushioned wicker rocker, a toilet table befrilled with white muslin.” Similarly, Grace, when she first encounters the witch’s home, is enraptured by its scent of raisin bread and date pudding, its “beautiful wallpaper, patterned with dark green leaves.”

Perhaps it’s because I’m middle-aged with a mortgage and an addiction to decorating blogs that I respond most to Anne’s very real fear that her home will be lost (a fear echoed in “The Grace of Wild Things”). And perhaps this is why, reading “Anne” this time around, I found myself less mad about the ending.

As readers will recall, at the novel’s close Anne forfeits her hard-won college scholarship to stay home and keep Green Gables from being sold — a sacrifice that even most Avonlea residents consider “foolish.” As a young person I remember thinking her decision was unfathomable and retrograde. She had studied so hard! But now it doesn’t seem quite so crazy after all. Anne’s truest, deepest love is for her home, which has given her everything. “Nothing could be worse than giving up Green Gables,” she declares.

I could say the same about the novel itself.

Iris

Vilma: How did the idea for All Your Perfects spark?

Colleen: I had just come off of writing Without Merit, which is very YA. The protagonist is only 17, so I wanted to write about adults for my next book. I decided to write about a married couple because I had never tackled that subject before. When I was outlining the book, I stole an idea that my sister had incorporated into her marriage that plays a huge role in Graham and Quinn’s story. I don’t want to give away anything, so I’ll leave it at that.

Vilma: I remember telling you how different this book felt to me after I first read it — how wonderful it was, of course, because I loved it so much … but it felt intimate and raw in a way that differed from your other novels. It’s also the first time you explore the complexities of a troubled marriage. Did it feel different for you while you were writing it? Was it odd sort of beginning after what would usually be the HEA?

Colleen: I had just come off of writing Without Merit, which is very YA. The protagonist is only 17, so I wanted to write about adults for my next book. I decided to write about a married couple because I had never tackled that subject before. When I was outlining the book, I stole an idea that my sister had incorporated into her marriage that plays a huge role in Graham and Quinn’s story. I don’t want to give away anything, so I’ll leave it at that.

Colleen: Writing the NOW chapters (the book is told in THEN and NOW time frames) definitely felt different. Most of my books usually end when the HEA happens, so we don’t follow the couple to see how they tackle the everyday challenges of a relationship. Because of the state of Graham and Quinn’s marriage, the book definitely had a heavier, darker feel than the interactions I normally write between couples. I think the THEN chapters helped balance out that darkness, though, to give readers those falling-in-love feels.

Vilma: One of the most poignant aspects of Quinn and Graham’s story is that they love each other deeply, and yet, their marriage is at the brink of shattering. In their case, there’s a very specific reason for their divide, but I think this is a really resonating, powerful point. A marriage can be tested, can fall apart for reasons big and small, despite the couple still loving each other. Was this a point you set out to make, or what did you hope to explore?

Colleen: I never start a book with a specific goal in mind. I wasn’t even sure what struggles these two would face until I sat down to outline their relationship. I like to let the story develop as I write. It feels like I’m watching a movie sometimes, as though the characters are in control and I have no say as to what’s going to happen or what they’re going to do. I’m just the middleman who puts their story into words. I know that’s odd, considering I make it all up, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. With Quinn and Graham, I felt like a spectator observing this crumbling marriage, and I was drawn to how much they loved each other, despite the external factors that were putting strains on that love.

Vilma: Give us some insight into Quinn and Graham. Could you tell us a little bit about each person?

Colleen: When I was developing their characters, I tried to make them realistic. As fun as it would have been to make Graham a billionaire bachelor, I knew something outrageous would disconnect us from the issues between the two couples. Instead,

I made him an accountant with a normal upbringing and a good childhood. With Quinn, I wanted her to be drawn to him because of his personality and the goodness in him. Not because he was rich or had the perfect looks. Quinn and Graham are your normal, everyday couple. I wanted readers to be able to relate to them personally, so the subject matter and the troubles in their marriage would also feel more relatable.

Vilma: What was your writing process for All Your Perfects? Was it a difficult story to write? Or did it flow easier than others?

Colleen: Honestly, the first draft was one of the easiest I’ve written so far. The hard part came during the revisions. I wrote at least five different final chapters. I also moved chapters around so much, I’d have to go in and rewrite portions of the story. Normally, my rough drafts are very similar to the final product, but with this one, the rough draft is very, very different from the final product. I’m much happier with the final product, obviously. It just took a while to get there.

Vilma: I know you are always coming up with ideas for books, whether they are for your next project or for a later date. Do you have your next story yet? Anything you can share?

Colleen: I’m the kind of writer who can only focus on one book at a time. But for some reason, I have so many ideas this year and they are all so different from each other. I can’t decide which one I want to write next, so I keep going back and forth between them. One of them is a YA romance called Heart Bones. I’ll probably be finished with it first and hope to have it out sometime in early 2019. Another idea came to me last week and I’m obsessed with it. Amazon always categorizes my books as psychological thrillers, but I’ve never even written one. This one would fall in that category, though. So maybe the incorrect categorization on Amazon helped spur the idea. ?

Vilma: Any kickass books you’ve read lately? Or books that are coming soon you’re excited to read?

Colleen: I’m really looking forward to Samantha Young’s new novel, The Fragile Ordinary. I love her writing. Also, Emily Giffin’s new book releases soon, and I’ve got it on preorder.

Vilma: Anything else you want to share with us?

Colleen: I want to talk about this book so badly, but I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. If readers want to know behind-the-scenes stories or even a huge secret from the book, they should join the All YourPerfects discussion group on Facebook. But not until you finish reading the book!

Vilma: Thanks, as always, Colleen. I can’t wait for everyone to read this book. It’s so beautifully written — unflinchingly raw and honest. Everyone will be feeling Quinn and Graham’s story deeply!

Interview with Colleen Hoover by blogger Vilma

JAKE TAPPER:

The latest “Stephen King” movie, which opens later this month, is “The Mist,” about a small town in Maine enveloped by a dangerous fog. It focuses on the townspeople stuck in a supermarket, facing a new threat, their world having changed forever in an instant, turning on one another, disagreeing on how to deal with the threat. In one very pointed line in the film and the novella, a character says, “If you scare people badly enough, you’ll get ‘em to do anything. They’ll turn to whatever promises a solution.” It is all so evocative of 9/11, and yet amazingly, the novella on which the film is based was first published in 1980.

STEPHEN KING:Keep in mind that I also wrote a book called “The Running Man” that was made into a movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie is nothing like the book. But the book ends with a passenger jet into hitting a skyscraper. And blowing the top off it. And after Sept. 11, I thought of that, and I thought, “Geez, I published that book around 1978.” There’s another one called “Rage,” that I’ve withdrawn from publication, because it was about a school shooter. It had been part of the scenery in a couple of shootings, and so I thought it seemed better to pull it than to leave it around.

If you tell the truth, within the scope of a fantasy, people will hear those reverberations. Because a story like “The Mist” is a nightmare. But anybody who’s ever had a nightmare knows that every nightmare has a basis in actual anxiety. It’s a place where you can take your real anxieties, and park them for a while, and not worry about them anymore.

But the story of “The Mist,” in the background, there’s this idea that the military has been fooling around with something that’s too big for them, and has torn an actual hole in the fabric of reality, and these awful creatures from another dimension have come through.

In another part of the story, there’s a religious zealot, Mrs. Carmody, who’s in the market, and to begin with she’s sort of a figure of fun. Because everybody’s pretty well solemnly grounded, and nobody’s worried about anything. But once the disaster strikes, Mrs. Carmody gets a weird power. And certainly we’ve seen this time and time again in our own lives, that as the situation worsens, in various parts of the world, the religious fanatics have a tendency to become more and more powerful.

So all of this stuff has resonance. That’s one of the things that I’ve always liked about horror fiction, and about fiction in the fantastic, is that it does have

a resonance. But as far as 9/11 or the things that happened, I think that with a movie like “The Mist” people will mention that sort of resonance and they’re going to conjure up 9/11. But the fact is, that was simply uh, a great big old dent in the fender of the American psyche. That changed the way we think about things and in a way, it’s what my brother used to call “the blue car theory.” You buy a blue car, you see blue cars everywhere.

After the 9/11 apocalypse happened in New York City, people, particularly New Yorkers, who breathed in the ash, or saw the results of that, have a tendency to keep seeing echoes and having flashbacks to it. But that’s one of the things this kind of story’s supposed to do is to help you deal with that a little bit.

TAPPER:Religious characters don’t fare very well in your books, I’ve noticed. Whether it’s Mrs. Carmody or others. You are not a religious man?

KING: I am a religious man. Well, I’m a spiritual man. I certainly believe in God, and I meditate on a regular basis, and try to stay in touch with the God of my understanding. But I haven’t been through the doors of the church, I don’t think since my mother-in-law died. And I certainly don’t have anything against churches per se. I’m not a vampire type, when somebody shows me the cross or something like that. But organized religion gives me the creeps.

TAPPER: How did the idea of “The Mist” come to you?

KING: “The Mist”? (Laughs) I answer these questions and I always sound totally mad, barking mad. There was a market, it is an actual market in Bridgeton, Maine, where my wife and I lived at that time. And I’d been blocked for some time. I’d written a very long novel called “The Stand,” and I’d finished it. And I couldn’t seem to get anything else going. And about four months went by and I would try things, and they would die, and uh, I’d crumple up pages, and the wastebasket was full of paper, and the desk was bare. It was that kind of a situation. It was a writer’s block.

So I was in the market one day, and uh, I was shopping, and I looked toward the front, and I saw the whole front of the market was plate glass. And what I thought of when I saw those big plate glass windows was, “What if giant bugs started to fly into the glass.” (Laughs)

TAPPER: That’s what you saw?

KING: That’s what I thought. That’s what I thought. And I had no idea why. Probably because I saw too many movies when I was a kid.

TAPPER: You see a plate glass front of a supermarket and you think, “What if giant bugs were trying to get in.”

KING: Yeah, right. I did in that particular case. Not every time.

TAPPER: Well, it’s pretty terrifying. What was Stephen King’s childhood like? Was it dark and depressing and full of horrific events?

KING: No. It was normal. We were raised by my mother, who was a single mom, so we were latch key kids in the ‘50s before latch key kids actually existed. Um, so in that sense there was no dad around.

TAPPER: How good a writer are you?

KING: I have no idea. It’s not for me to say. And nobody’s ever really going to know ... I’ve heard people say “Oh, God, Stephen King! He writes like Dickens!” Well, bulls**t. Nobody writes like Dickens. Nobody ever did, and nobody ever well. I’ve been extremely popular. I think given the basis of the longevity of some novels of fantasy, like Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that some of the books may outlive me.

If I had to guess, I’d say that I’ll be sort of the Somerset Maughm of Horror. At the time of his greatest popularity, he was very popular and there had been dozens and dozens of movies made from his books. But now nobody really knows who he is. There are a few people who might remember “The Razor’s Edge” or “Moon and Sixpence,” but not very many. And I would suggest, I would suspect, that after I die or retire, that I’ll turn the page and somebody else will come along. And that doesn’t concern me. What concerns me, what has to concern me, is that every time I sit down, I do the best job that I can. Because that’s all that’s in my control.

TAPPER: What will your epitaph read?

KING: I hope it will say, “Loving husband and father.”

Interview with Stephen King by Jake Tapper

with Sarah J. Maas by blogger Charlie

We all love Throne of Glass, but you’ve ventured on to new turf with A Court of Thorns and Roses. Is it exciting to be writing in a new world?

It’s actually awesome because the world of ACoTaR is so different, so when I get stuck in one world I can just go to the other. It’s just really cool to have a whole new set of characters to play with, new romances – I love romance. I like writing the action scenes and the world building, but whenever I’m drafting a book I’ll be like, “When are people gonna hook up?” and I’ll figure out those points first. Sometimes mid-draft the ship will collapse, and I’ll be like, “Oh, there’s a new ship, and I didn’t see that coming!” I like to listen to my characters, so they tell me they want to go in a different direction, and it’s like, ‘oh, all right, we’re going with that!’ I believe in trusting my gut; some writers stick to outlines, but I’m not an outlining type person. I outline through very extensive music playlists because music is very essential to my writing, so when I’m drafting a book I’ll just start making a playlist of all the songs that inspire me for the scene and then set the mood. So when I’m revising I can cut a track or move it up and down in the playlist, and it helps if I need to go back to a certain scene. I can just listen to those pieces and be in my character’s head.

smoking.” I think that’s why when I wrote ACoTaR I wanted to have the physical romance, so I wanted him to be able to shapeshift. […] There’s not nearly enough romance in Beauty and the Beast, just one kiss at the end. I need a whole movie with the dancing and the tension and the making out!

Is that what inspired the masquerade idea?

Yeah, I wanted there to still be an element of her not seeing his true face. I think I must have been on a Phantom of the Opera kick at the time, so I was like, “Masks are really hot and mysterious.” And I wanted the masks to kind of be like animal shapes to reflect their spirit animal, like their Patronus. With Tamlin, he doesn’t have a specific animal because he can shapeshift into any animal. Obviously, the servants have their bird masks, and Lucien is a fox, sly and crafty.

Are there any castles or palaces that inspired you, real or fictional?

Oh, man. I actually went to Versailles when I was 21, and it was just so glossy! I was way more into the Petit Trianon, like the little version. And Marie Antoinette’s fake peasant village that she had built. I loved that, where the servants would clean the eggs and then lay them out and play at being peasants. I loved that!

I have so many; it’s so hard to pick just one! There’s the Oblivion soundtrack, which was an okay movie, but there’s a really good track in there called “Knife Fight in a Phone Booth” that I’ve been listening to for three days at a time, and it gets me amped up. There’s one really intense emotional note in the middle, and I’m the type of person [who] will listen to the same ten seconds in a six-minute piece of music, and I’ll listen to those seconds of a song over and over.

I feel like to get into the sad moments… the Deathly Hallows [- Part] 2 soundtrack with “Statues” and “Courtyard Apocalypse”… those variations of a theme get me teared up and ready for everyone to die [laughs] and be miserable. I draw the line at killing pets, though! Fleetfoot in Throne of Glass will survive to the end of the series because Hedwig’s death was super traumatic for me. I was like, “Wwhhhhy, whhhhy?!” You don’t see it coming. When I first read it I was like, “No, that didn’t happen. She’s alive.” That was the worst. That hit me harder maybe than anyone else.

ACoTaR draws on a lot of “Beauty and the Beast” themes. Do you have a favorite “Beauty and the Beast” telling?

I’ve compiled a list of my favorite retellings before, and I listed The Beautician and the Beast with Fran Drescher as one of my favorites (laughs). I don’t think that’s what they were looking for. I just love Fran Drescher!

I love this reverse retelling called Lady Hawk, which was an ’80s fantasy film where the woman has been transformed into a hawk, and the curse is on her, and only her true love will break the curse. I love that. But the Beauty and the Beast Disney version is so beautiful; that’s the killer. I still cry, like, every time I see it, and you get to the end where she’s all [as Belle], “Please don’t leave me!” Every time I die.

Are you someone who prefers the Beast to the Prince?

No, I like the prince. He’s so hot with his torn clothes and ripped body! When I was a kid I was like, “He is not that hot, gross,” but now that I’m older I’m like, “He is

I was just in Scotland last summer on vacation, doing some research, actually, for the ACoTaR sequel, and I saw Eilean Donan Castle, which is situated on three sea lochs, and it’s this castle that you have to access by a bridge from the mainlands, and it is so cool, with these mountains surrounding it. I loved that. That wasn’t directly an influence in ACoTaR. I just love the old castles with bloody history to them. With those narrow staircases where your shoulders are brushing the walls as you go up and up and up. Just driving around the Isle of Skye in Scotland there were all these little castles everywhere. I’d do like distance shots with them in the background.

I went to the Outlander castle. I’m the biggest Outlander fan, so I took a photo in front of that like “Maybe Jamie was standing here!” – I was wigging out after that. Castles are fun. I wish we had like actual castles in America. I just love the history.

Magic is quite a dark force, and everyone in the Fae world is using it. Does that make it harder to pin down the bad guys?

Well, there are different types depending on [which] court you’re in, and I think it actually makes it really fun for me to write the characters. Like with Rhys, his magic is very black and white – some people might see it as very evil, but Rhys does something that others might see as merciful. So he sees himself as more of a grey character. And people in the world judge according to what your magic is, so with Tamlin they think that shapeshifting must be good… but maybe in later books you might find out some of the truth behind it!

But also the magic [is] tied to the land and the people [who] run it. I have to have certain rules of what they can and can’t do, and the high lords have their own class. They have their own limitations and elements to their power, so the high lords can all shapeshift into these beasts. When I discovered Rhys’s form, it was one of my favorite scenes… mostly because he is just lounging on a bed. Oh my God, I will die if someone draws that. I don’t think I’ve seen any Rhys fan art yet. Oh my God, please, I will just combust [laughs].

Interview

Do you have a favorite song for writing a fight scene?

What inspired you to take on the mission of getting more kids to read?

When my son, Jack, was eight, he wasn’t excited about reading. Neither were many of his friends at school. I was thinking, well wait a minute here --- if one of the bestselling authors in this country has a kid who doesn’t enjoy books, what’s going on with our kids in general? Is this a problem we have to tackle? And of course, we quickly realized that was a resounding YES. So that summer, my wife and I told him that he would have to read every day. We went out with him, helped him to find books we thought he would like --- and wouldn’t you know it, but by the end of the summer, Jack said, okay, I can get into this. And the next summer, he had warmed more to the idea of getting books together, and the following summer, he was really excited to do it.That was why I wrote my first series for young adults --- Maximum Ride. Then came Daniel X, Witch & Wizard, Middle School, Confessions, and now Treasure Hunters. I also launched a website, ReadKiddoRead.com, which helps parents and teachers find the right books for the kids in their lives.

What have you heard as reasons that kids are not reading? And what is your answer when you hear those reasons?

There are a number of studies on this, and what I’ve found --- the number one reason kids don’t read very much ---- is that they can’t find books that they like. So come on, parents, let’s show them the light here. You know your kids better than anyone. What do they like? If they like sports, get them hooked on Mike Lupica’s books. If they like gross-out alien adventures, I’ve got a particularly grossed-out series called Daniel X. If they like facts and quizzes, there are some great nonfiction books they can pick up and leaf through. Everyone loves those Guinness World Record books. Meet your kids where they are with their own interests, take an active role in it, and you’ll see them start to change their minds.

From the notes you have received from reluctant readers, what are some of the books that they have enjoyed?

The Middle School series seems to be really clicking with just about everyone. A principal from an elementary school in Pennsylvania recently read I FUNNY with his son, and they concluded that it should be required reading for all the incoming students.

Look, I’ll be honest: I’m not really a crier. (Okay, maybe

John Green will do it, or Lauren Graham in “Parenthood.”) But when I receive letters from parents telling me how much their kids enjoyed Witch and Wizard or Maximum Ride or Middle School or any of my books --- when they say thank you, you got my kids reading --- finally! --- I can’t help but tear up.

What do you think kids can do to encourage their friends to read?

Sharing books and talking about what’s good out there works wonders. Why is Facebook so popular? It’s a social thing --- people love getting these recommendations from their friends, starting conversations. “Hey, have you heard about this creepy Spiderwick Chronicles series...” I hear stories all the time from my readers that after finishing one of my books, they passed it on to a sibling or friend.

What do you think that public figures can do to come out in support of reading?

Kids need to see their stars reading and talking about books. Make it more visible. Talk about what they’re reading or what their kids are reading during interviews. If one of the morning shows did five minutes a week on kids’ books and families saw stars talking about the newest read on TV, it would make a huge difference. They’ll think, hey, this is actually something these guys do. They’re not putting me on just for some mandatory PSA.

We know that NBA All-Star and Miami Heat player Dwyane Wade has joined you in promoting reading. Who are some other celebrities, be they actors, musicians, sports stars or politicians, who you would you like to see campaign for reading with you?

I’ve talked with a few for ReadKiddoRead. Julie Andrews and her daughter have been fighting the good fight for years. I wish the Obamas would do more with it. Make a World Reading Day where kids could walk into any bookstore and receive a free book, like they do in the UK. But the campaign is really open to everyone: what if every experienced parent, teacher, librarian and bookseller contributed one great idea and we pooled them together? How do we get our kids reading? “Well, I bring in two service dogs into my library, and kids get to cuddle with the dogs as they read. Huge turnouts.” “Last week we gave the kids an option to do chores or to read, and they chose the books… and it actually got them involved with a chapter book.” And on and on. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a master list of these and could work our way through it?

Which book was the book that inspired you to start reading or writing?

I worked my way through college working the night shift at a hospital. During these late nights, I started scribbling, started reading good books. The only thing that got me through were these books, my new writing habit, coffee and… more coffee. I did Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco, James Joyce. This is when the love of reading really clicked for me. (To be honest, I wish I’d had it earlier.)

You have said that you started writing books for kids because you wanted your son, Jack, to find enjoyment in reading and you wanted to create books with the stories that he wanted to read like Daniel X, Maximum Ride, Witch & Wizard, and Middle School. What books besides yours has he enjoyed?

When he was younger, he loved the Warriors series, Alex Rider, THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET. And Percy Jackson --- for a moment there I thought I was going to lose him over to the Rick Riordan camp for good. Now he’s knee-deep in high school and off to the races --- he’s been reading nonfiction, more politically-tuned books lately.

What book or series for kids are you working on now?

I’m very proud of TREASURE HUNTERS --- it’s a funny adventure for middle schoolers. The Kidd siblings are professional treasure hunters, but when their mother is kidnapped and their father is lost at sea, they’re left on their own on the high seas. Jamie the sit-down-stand-up comic (he’s in a wheelchair) is back in I EVEN FUNNIER in December. There are lots of adventures on deck.

Interview with James Patterson by Chris Grabenstein

lADY IN rED Book rEVIEw

By Alicia M. Walker

While a dystopian novel may not seem like the obvious choice for a sociology course, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale offers an opportunity for students to apply both critical thinking and their sociological imaginations to a story still as relevant today as the moment it hit the shelves. As Laz wrote for Teaching Sociology in 1996, “Despite its status as fiction, SF [science fiction] is ‘truthful’ because it is consistent with reality. It is not ‘real’ in the sense of being actual, concrete, and verifiable, but it is ‘true’ because it corresponds or conforms to that which is real, actual, and verifiable” (Laz 1996:54). Atwood always referred to this book as “speculative fiction” (Barajas 2019), meaning that it envisions a possible future. The book was written in 1985, a time when conservatism in the United States took aim at women’s reproductive rights. The connection between the events in the novel and the political climate of the times proved salient. Now in 2019, we find ourselves in similar circumstances. Women’s reproductive rights stand under assault, with many states now requiring mandatory waiting periods, in-person counseling sessions, and invasive ultrasounds (Guttmacher Institute 2019). These bills are signed into law by majority-male legislatures and governors. As climate change accelerates and scientists warn us that time to reverse it is quickly evaporating, our government openly denies climate changes and rolls back Environmental Protection Agency protections rather than taking steps to address our impending doom (Popovich, Albeck-Ripka, and Pierre-Louis 2019). Our vice president’s anti-LGBT beliefs are well known, and the freedom of the media to publish the truth is under attack. For students with sociological backgrounds, reading this book within a class context should enable an unpacking of its themes and ideas beyond simple entertainment.

The novel details the events following a coup that kills the president of the United States and most of Congress. A radical religious group takes control of the government, and in short order it renders the Constitution null and censors the newspapers. Before long, the radical religious group curtails women’s rights so that women can no longer handle money, own property, read, or write. This new government renames the United States the “Republic of Gilead,” then declares all divorces null and void. Thus, the Republic of Gilead declares any woman now married to a man previously divorced as an adulteress and a “wanton woman” and declares her husband now still married to his ex-wife. The book’s narrator, Offred, a name given to her by the Republic of Gilead because she is assigned to a man named Fred, explains that during an attempted escape to Canada with her family, she became separated from her husband, Luke, and was captured. As a result, her daughter was given to a loyalist family. Once the Republic of Gilead confirms Offred’s fertility, she becomes a handmaid for the Commander, a man of the ruling class. The purpose of handmaids is to provide children for the commanders and their wives. The Republic of Gilead bases this practice on the biblical story of Rachel and her handmaid, Bilhah, who is impregnated by Rachel’s husband, Jacob, at Rachel’s request so that she could have a child “through her” (p. 88). The handmaids represent women living with a complete lack of autonomy. Further, they endure punishments, ritualistic rape at the hands of the commanders and facilitated by their wives, and hateful treatment.

The book consists of an introduction, 15 sections containing 46 chapters, and a final section called “Historical Notes.” The story is told in the present interspersed with flashbacks explaining how Offred’s current situation came to be and detailing the dynamics of her interpersonal relationships. The Historical Notes sec-

tion imitates a symposium on Gileadean studies. This section explains that the preceding chapters came from a series of cassette tapes recovered and the attempts to verify the information presented.

The themes of this book lend themselves to analysis within many sociology courses, including courses dealing with gender, family, power, social problems, and even introductory courses. Power plays heavily throughout the novel. The Republic of Gilead is an obvious and visible form of power. However, the book showcases other forms of power, as well. Moira, Offred’s longtime friend, displays power in her repeated acts of resistance to the Republic of Gilead. From her refusal to conform and show respect to those in power to her repeated attempts at escape, Moira serves as a symbol to the handmaids that perhaps they, too, can resist what is happening to them. However, when Offred encounters Moira at Jezebel’s, the unofficially sanctioned brothel designed to meet men’s needs, she discovers Moira has given up. After being captured and given a choice between being sent to do hard labor in the Colonies, areas contaminated by radioactive waste, or serving as a prostitute, Moira has grown apathetic. Some handmaids kill themselves in a final act of power. Offred becomes aware of her power as a woman and finds enjoyment in watching the effect her body has on the men around her.

Feminism stands as a strong theme of this book. Moira and Offred’s mother serve as representatives for feminist ideas. For example, Offred’s mother marched for women’s rights, an activity that previously embarrassed young Offred. Looking back from her current situation under the Gilead regime, Offred realizes she took her rights for granted. Prior to the Republic of Gilead takeover, Offred did not identify as a feminist; however, Moira did. Moira goes so far as to suggest that a society composed solely of women would alleviate many of the problems women face.

Another prominent theme of the book is sexuality. The Republic of Gilead works hard to control sexual behavior. From the execution of LGBT individuals and abortion doctors, to the destruction of pornography and sexy clothing, to the development of the “Ceremony,” a highly ritualized event where a commander rapes a handmaid in the presence of his wife, the Republic of Gilead genuinely views sexuality as a danger to social order. Yet the presence of Jezebel’s, which the Commander tells Offred is unofficially sanctioned, tells the reader that the Republic of Gilead realizes, on some level, it cannot fully stamp out sexuality. Offred demonstrates the power of sexuality when she takes tremendous risks to continue her sexual relationship with Nick, a guardian assigned to the Commander’s family. Their sexual affair begins under the arrangement of the Commander’s Wife, who hopes it will bring about a pregnancy, thus ending the need for the Commander to continue sexual intercourse with Offred. Ultimately, no matter how much the Republic of Gilead tries to punish sexual behavior out of existence, ordinary people will risk a great deal to enjoy sexual acts with the hope of connection and perhaps even love.

The book offers many other themes worthy of discussion and analysis in sociology courses on gender, power, family, social problems, or introductory courses, such as gender conflict, the needs of society versus the needs of the individual, love, control over women’s bodies, patriarchy, and freedom. Examples of gender conflict can be seen when the Commander explains that under the new regime, life is better for men and admits that as a consequence, things are worse for women. He states, “We’ve given them more than we’ve taken away. . . . Think of the trouble they had before. Don’t you remember the singles’ bars, the indignity of high school

blind dates?” (p. 219). In addition, Offred’s husband fails to register the importance of the early changes of the new regime. Offred reflects, “I didn’t go on any of the marches. Luke said it would be futile and I had to think about them, my family, him, and her” (p. 180).

An example of the needs of society versus the needs of the individual is illustrated when the Republic of Gilead puts the problem of its declining population over the rights of the individual (specifically women). The concept of love, in various forms, is pervasive throughout the book. For example, love helps preserve Offred’s sanity and drives Nick to help her escape. Control of women’s bodies is also central to the book. For example, in the positioning of women’s bodies as vehicles for reproduction above all else, Offred observes, “It’s my fault, this waste of her time. Not mine, but my body’s, if there is a difference” (p. 81). An example of hypocrisy is shown in Offred’s trip to Jezebel’s. The commanders use prostitutes to escape the realities of a system they created. Finally, the concept of freedom is shown most clearly by Moira, who risks everything for freedom multiple times. Each of these themes provides rich opportunities to apply sociological concepts and ideas as well as to compare the book’s events to present-day circumstances and policies.

This book is appropriate for both undergraduate and graduate courses. The best approach to teaching this book would be to have students read the entire book. Since the story is revealed through both present action and flashback, it would be difficult to pull out sections for students to read without the context of the full book. The writing is very strong and clear, and the book draws the reader in quickly. Since the details of Offred’s situation and how it came to be are leaked out through flashbacks interspersed with present events, the reader hungers to learn more. Some readers may see the nebulousness of the ending as a weakness of the book. At the end of the book, Offred is unsure of whether she is being saved or has fallen into enemy hands. However, the Historical Notes indicate that Offred was indeed saved by the rebel group, Mayday. Despite this, the ending is not wrapped up nicely, and exactly what happened to Offred afterward remains unclear.

ONE OF THE BEST CULTURAL NONFICTION BOOKS TO READ!

By Naomi Blumberg

Malala Yousafzai, (born July 12, 1997, Mingora, Swat valley, Pakistan), Pakistani activist who, while a teenager, spoke out publicly against the prohibition on the education of girls that was imposed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP; sometimes called Pakistani Taliban). She gained global attention when she survived an assassination attempt at age 15. In 2014 Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of their efforts on behalf of children’s rights.

Childhood and early activism

The daughter of an outspoken social activist and educator, Yousafzai was an excellent student. Her father—who established and administered the school she attended, Khushal Girls High School and College in the city of Mingora—encouraged her to follow in his path. In 2007 the Swat valley, once a vacation destination, was invaded by the TTP. Led by Maulana Fazlullah, the TTP began imposing strict Islamic law, destroying or shutting down girls’ schools, banning women from any active role in society, and carrying out suicide bombings. Yousafzai and her family fled the region for their safety, but they returned when tensions and violence eased.

Discover the life of Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Prize laureate

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On September 1, 2008, when Yousafzai was 11 years old, her father took her to a local press club in Peshawar to protest the school closings, and she gave her first speech—“How Dare the Taliban Take Away My Basic Right to Education?” Her speech was publicized throughout Pakistan. Toward the end of 2008, the TTP announced that all girls’ schools in Swat would be shut down on January 15, 2009. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) approached Yousafzai’s father in search of someone who might blog for them about what it was like to live under TTP rule. Under the name Gul Makai, Yousafzai began writing regular entries for BBC Urdu about her daily life. She wrote from January through the beginning of March of that year 35 entries that were also translated into English. Meanwhile, the TTP shut down all girls’ schools in Swat and blew up more than 100 of them.

In February 2009 Yousafzai made her first television appearance, when she was interviewed by Pakistani journalist and talk show host Hamid Mir on the Pakistan current events show Capital Talk. In late February the TTP, responding to an increasing backlash throughout Pakistan, agreed to a cease-fire, lifted the restriction against girls, and allowed them to attend school on the condition that they wear burkas. However, violence resurged only a few months later, in May, and the Yousafzai family was forced to seek refuge outside of Swat until the Pakistani army was able to push the TTP out. In early 2009 The New York Times reporter Adam Ellick worked with Yousafzai to make a documentary, Class Dismissed, a 13-minute piece about the school shutdown. Ellick made a second film with her, titled A Schoolgirl’s Odyssey. The New York Times posted both films on their Web site in 2009. That summer she met with the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, and asked him to help with her effort to protect the education of girls in Pakistan.

With Yousafzai’s continuing television appearances and coverage in the local and international media, it had

become apparent by December 2009 that she was the BBC’s young blogger. Once her identity was known, she began to receive widespread recognition for her activism. In October 2011 she was nominated by human rights activist Desmond Tutu for the International Children’s Peace Prize. In December of that year she was awarded Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize (later renamed the National Malala Peace Prize).

Shooting and Nobel Peace Prize

On October 9, 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by a TTP gunman while she was en route home from school. Fazlullah and the TTP took responsibility for the attempt on her life. She survived the attack and was flown from Peshawar to Birmingham, England, for surgery. The incident elicited protests, and her cause was taken up around the world, including by the UN special envoy for global education, Gordon Brown, who introduced a petition that called for all children around the world to be back in school by 2015. That petition led to the ratification of Pakistan’s first Right to Education bill. In December 2012 Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari announced the launch of a $10 million education fund in Yousafzai’s honour. About the same time, the Malala Fund was established by the Vital Voices Global Partnership to support education for all girls around the world.

Yousafzai recovered, staying with her family in Birmingham, where she returned to her studies and to activism. For the first time since being shot, she made a public appearance on July 12, 2013, her 16th birthday, and addressed an audience of 500 at the United Nations in New York City. Among her many awards, in 2013 Yousafzai won the United Nations Human Rights Prize, awarded every five years. She was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people in 2013 and appeared on one of the seven covers that were printed for that issue. With Christina Lamb (foreign correspondent for The Sunday Times), Yousafzai coauthored a memoir, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (2013). She also wrote the picture book Malala’s Magic Pencil (2017), which was based on her childhood. In 2014 she became the youngest person to win the Liberty Medal, awarded by the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia to public figures striving for people’s freedom throughout the world. Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013 but passed over that year, Yousafzai in 2014 won the prize, becoming the youngest Nobel laureate.

After winning the Nobel Prize, Yousafzai continued to attend school in England—she graduated from the University of Oxford in 2020—while using her enhanced public profile to bring attention to human rights issues around the world. In July 2015, with support from the Malala Fund, she opened a girls’ school in Lebanon for refugees from the Syrian Civil War. She discussed her work with refugees as well as her own displacement in We Are Displaced (2019).

Her life, before and after the attack she endured, was examined in the documentary He Named Me Malala (2015). The title referenced the fact that Yousafzai had been named for the Afghan heroine Malalai, or Malala, who purportedly led her people to victory against the British in the 1880 Battle of Maiwand.

(Quotes in the novel)

“We realize the importance of our voices only when we are silenced.”

“Let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the

most powerful weapons.”

“Our men think earning money and ordering around others is where power lies. They don’t think power is in the hands of the woman who takes care of everyone all day long, and gives birth to their children.”

“He believed that lack of education was the root of all of Pakistan’s problems. Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be re-elected.”

“Outside his office my father had a framed copy of a letter written by Abraham Lincoln to his son’s teacher, translated into Pashto. It is a very beautiful letter, full of good advice. “Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books…But also give him quiet time to ponder the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and the flowers on a green hillside,” it says. “Teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.”

“In Pakistan when women say they want independence, people think this means we don’t want to obey our fathers, brothers or husbands. But it does not mean that. It means we want to make decisions for ourselves. We want to be free to go to school or to go to work. Nowhere is it written in the Quran that a woman should be dependent on a man. The word has not come down from the heavens to tell us that every woman should listen to a man.”

“Mahatma Gandhi said, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

“Someone gave me a copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, a fable about a shepherd boy who travels to the Pyramids in search of treasure when all the time it’s at home. I loved that book and read it over and over again. ‘When you want something all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it,’ it says. I don’t think that Paulo Coelho had come across the Taliban or our useless politicians.”

ONE OF THE BEST CLASSIC BOOK EVERYONE LOVED!

By Jennifer Y. Gao

It’s 1934 in Alabama, and a Black man named Tom Robinson (Yaegel T. Welch) is on trial for a crime he did not commit. He faces a jury of entirely white peers and will face the electric chair if convicted. So begins “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which runs from April 5 to 17 at the Citizens Bank Opera House.

The show, after debuting this past November on Broadway, is now embarking on its first national tour. Based on Harper Lee’s 1960 novel of the same name, the play tells the story of the trial and highlights the lives of the defense attorney Atticus Finch (Richard Thomas) and his children, Jim (Justin Mark) and Scout (Melanie Moore). The adaptation manages to capture the very essence of the novel and it skillfully grapples with the age-old question: Who deserves to be treated with respect?

The play puts an interesting spin on the source material — the scenes jump around from place to place in a non-linear fashion, often returning to the courthouse. Moreover, it does a wonderful job of reshuffling the most important moments of the novel into a well-paced sequence that highlights the main tensions of respect, innocence, and racial injustice, all the while showcasing the nuances of these issues. The non-linear timeline allows for contrasting scenes to be pitted right up against each other, enabling the audience to see many sides of the complicated narrative.

One of the play’s greatest strengths is its ability to showcase a wide variety of emotions by including several humorous and childish moments along with the somber, serious, and sad ones. The jokes, delivered perfectly with the right amount of pause and emphasis, often have the audience roaring with laughter. Dill (Steven Lee Johnson) and Calpurnia (Jacquline Williams) in particular nail their executions, Dill with his boyish energy and Calpurnia with her no-nonsense deadpan eliciting loud chuckles.

Aside from the humor, the show also nails its delivery of emotional scenes and pivotal moments convincing enough to move anyone in the audience. These moments are often punctuated by a weighty sentence deftly capturing the essence of the situation at hand. Calpurnia and Tom Robinson, who feature in many of these moments, are welcomed additions to the original storyline which adds greater depth to the situation.

While the play overall stays true to the original story, the onstage Atticus Finch is different from the book protagonist people have grown to love and respect. He is not the perfect person he is sometimes made out to be: He is portrayed as a bit naïve with his idea that everyone, no matter what they think or have done, deserves respect. What’s more, he fails to understand the extent of the prejudice Tom Robinson and Calpurnia face. In some aspects this is a welcomed change, which makes for a much more realistic portrayal and adds further color to the issues the play explores. No one in the story is entirely right in their beliefs, illustrating the real-life complexity of such situations. However, some tenderness between him and his children — arguably one of his best and most loved traits — are lost.

Visually, the show is incredible. The sets offer phenomenal depth; the scenes set in the house manage to create both an inside and outside world. Alongside lighting and costumes, it perfectly complements the mood of the scenes and transforms the stage into the 1930s Alabama of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The set transitions are very smooth and natural, with the acting

seamlessly carried through. The final house scene, which caps off the show flawlessly, is emblematic of the show’s strengths. Despite featuring many characters, it manages to portray their interactions naturally without overwhelming the audience. The characters are able to move from within the room in the house to the outside, creating an effect where Scout (Melanie Moore) is inside the house explaining certain events to a group but also able to slip out during her story and act out the events for the audience, all the while telling her story without missing a beat.

Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” masterfully delivers a new look on a classic tale. There is never a dull moment in the show and every scene and every character is an integral part of the narrative. The story artfully tackles serious, relevant questions, and the cast delivers brilliantly, making this run of the show a must-watch.

(Quotes in the novel)

“Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—” “Sir?” “—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

“Atticus said to Jem one day, “I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the blue jays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing except make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corn cribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the tree what we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.”

“There are just some kind of men who-who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

“But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest JP court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal”

ONE OF THE BEST CULTURAL NONFICTION BOOK TO READ!

By Jason, We Need to Talk About Books

Steinbeck’s epic American family saga, East of Eden, played out in rural California between the Civil War and the First World War, is full of beautiful writing and tragedy. So much so that I did not have to read far before I began to wonder if this novel would become one of my favourites.

Early in East of Eden, the narrator explains a misconception of America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as being the same country as frontier America, with plentiful land where a newcomer can make a new life, work diligently and aspire to provide a more prosperous life for his children. Land is still plentiful but it is not of equal quality. Those who come with money, probably from selling land elsewhere, will get the best new land and remain wealthy. Those who arrive poor will only be able to afford the most difficult land to work with and remain poor.

The narrator’s grandfather, Samuel Hamilton, arrived in California’s Salinas Valley neither rich nor poor, but with all the best land taken, he settles for the dry foothills that have little topsoil. A big man, but delicate, Samuel is a laugher, a soother, a peacemaker, a man people open up to. He is also clever, inventive and hardworking; able to innovate solutions to several obstacles but without a mind for business to profit from them. Despite his intelligence and capacity for labour, Samuel’s family can never escape the threat of poverty that clings to them.

Samuel’s wife, Liza, is probably even more hardworking, raising their nine children in these bare circumstances. Liza, though does not share Samuel’s capacity for joy; she is suspicious of fun and believes dancing invites the devil. Stoic and uncomplaining, Liza powers through her suffering with a religious conviction that she will be rewarded for it in the end.

Many years after the Hamiltons, Adam Trask comes to Salinas already wealthy and buys an established estate with good farmland. Adam has had an up-and-down life. His mother died when he was still a newborn. His father, Cyrus, was a drinker and a gambler even before he lost a lower leg in the Civil War. And yet, the baby boy seems to inspire Cyrus to change his ways. He remarries quickly, as much to give Adam a mother as to have a partner for himself, and has a second son, Charles, with her. Cyrus raises his sons and works his farm with an efficiency he had never displayed in his life before. He reads obsessively on the Civil War and becomes renowned for his knowledge and sought after for his advice; a new career that turns lucrative despite the fact that he hardly experienced the war.

Gentle Adam is little like his stepbrother Charles. Once, when still young, Charles almost murders Adam in a jealous rage. Charles’ hatred comes from the unequal treatment from their father which, Charle’s feels, favours Adam. Cyrus, though, defends his differential fathering by pointing to how different the brothers are. This includes forcing Adam, but not Charles, to join the army against his wishes.

Adam Trask experiences more ups and downs, good fortune and ill, in his journey to manhood. Now, with money and a wife, Cathy, he is eager to start over in Salinas. His dream of happiness and contentment, however, is blind to the wishes and nature of Cathy, who wants a very different life and will make certain she gets it.

Just fifteen pages into East of Eden I was already loving

it. The prose is beautiful and it felt like each paragraph had been carefully crafted and whittled down to be exquisite. Twenty pages later I already began to wonder if I was reading a book destined to become one of my favourites. Charle’s assault of Adam, early in the novel, was so sad, so tragic, so masterfully done. By the time the novel reaches its climax, I found myself amazed that Steinbeck had succeeded in getting me so invested in his characters that I was quite strongly affected by their fate. The devastating, heart-breaking events were not necessarily surprising, the reader knows they are coming, you hope the author won’t go there but Steinbeck is following a chain of causality as impossible to deny as it is unforgiving and leaves you feeling that this is incredible writing and storytelling.

Before I move on, there is an aspect of this novel that surprised me and contributed to my high regard for it. One of the main characters in the novel is Lee, a Chinese American man, hired by Adam Trask as a cook who becomes a life-long friend of Adam. In one chapter, soon after we meet Lee, Samuel and Lee get to talking. Samuel is curious as to why he chooses to speak pidgin when he can also speak excellent English and was born in America? Why does he wear the queue? Why does he not go back to China? Why is he content to work as a servant? Lee’s answers to these questions are as honest as they are profound and came as a pleasant surprise to me given that this novel was published in 1952.

Modern readers criticise Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath for its focus on the Okies, neglecting the diversity of those struggling in the Western United States of that period, particularly the large number of Chinese Americans. I am unsure if Steinbeck received much criticism on that point at the time or if Lee and this passage are responses to it. Even if they were, it should not diminish the humanising aspect of this passage. It may even show a side of interaction across cultures worth celebrating and enduring.

Today, there is considerable cultural momentum against even asking questions like this, with accusations ranging from being triggering to being racist, though it is difficult to see how leaving a curious person in ignorance provides any solution. Here, Samuel’s questions are asked out of honest curiosity. Lee is not offended by them and can see that Samuel is sincerely challenging his own preconceptions and assumptions by asking them. Lee’s answers are not counter-accusational but aims to inform and educate Samuel without judgement. It is a standout passage in a standout novel.

I have enjoyed family sagas before – long stories of a family’s survival, changes of fortune over time and generations. East of Eden contains those traits associated with such stories and make them enjoyable and companionable. These include themes of recurring inherited character and associated fate and of the legacy of the past burdening the future. Father and son relationships dominate, but this is not necessarily a heredity-is-destiny tale; a comparison between generations in the novel show the relationships are more complex than that.

East of Eden is said to be partly inspired by Steinbeck’s own family history. The narrator of the novel is a John Steinbeck, one of Samuel Hamilton’s grandsons. But the novel also makes some clear biblical allusions. Most obvious is the Cain and Abel relationship between Charles and Adam Trask – a relationship that is repeated in the next generation. There is also the search for a promised land, a place to begin again, also alluded to in the novel’s title. I am unsure if Samuel Hamilton and Adam’s wife, Cathy, are also representative of Biblical

persons. Samuel certainly has something prophetic about him.

The main theme of the novel concerns a passage from the Book of Genesis and the Hebrew word “timshel”, which is open to interpretation (I am ignoring the technicalities around this aspect – about the accuracies around the word’s spelling and meaning, the passage from the Bible, etc, and treating it as the novel does). The passage concerns man’s relationship to sin and whether a person’s fate is all but predetermined or if free will and the exercise of it can allow one to alter the course of their fate. As you might imagine, if the character’s had an answer to this question, one way or another, it may effect the way they interpret their lives and choices.

I set out to read Steinbeck’s three most famous novels; Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden. There is a sense in some of Steinbeck’s comments about this book that he felt his career was building up to East of Eden. My experience of reading these three novels has provided confirmation to me of this trend. Each novel is a powerful story but I liked each better than the last. Of Mice and Men is an experimental form, a ‘playable-novel’, that keeps the plot and characterisation very simple and I had mixed feelings for it. The Grapes of Wrath is a much more conventional novel, one where the characters are small players in a world that is changing rapidly, moved by forces they can barely grasp let alone contend with, and I liked it much better. East of Eden is much more character-focused in a much smaller world. The socio-economic themes are less involved, but the writing is exceptional. Steinbeck felt he had put the benefits of his experience, the lessons of technique and style, to best use in East of Eden and I would have to agree.

Even before I read East of Eden, I had already decided to read more of Steinbeck’s writing than these famous three I initially thought I would limit myself to. Tortilla Flat, Cannery Row and The Pearl are others I am considering. I don’t really have a favourite author. To me, to qualify, I would have to consider at least one of their books to be a favourite, none of their books to be terrible and, at the time of writing, no one makes that standard. There are a few that come close – Tolstoy, Hardy, Ghosh, Rushdie, Renault for instance. I now think, after reading East of Eden and supported by the other two, that I must include Steinbeck and he may even be the leader of that pack.

LOOKING FOR THE BEST BOOK APPS TO DOWNLOAD?

HERE ARE A FEW OF THE BEST ONES!

dle apps for book lovers.

14 Best Reading Apps for Book Lovers: Get Millions of Free Books

By Intellectsoft

Not everyone loves the hustle and bustle of party life— some of us prefer simpler things like reading books and playing board games after dinners with family. There is great news for big fans of reading as there has been a resurgence of awesome reading apps.

Want to cope with all the books striving for your attention or find interesting ones quicker? Read our guide to find the perfect app for a book lover such as yourself.

How to choose among different apps for book lovers

Apps for book lovers serve different needs. So, before diving into their variety and choosing your best bookmate, ask yourself a question: “What do I expect from an app?” What matters are your wishes, the platform, and the frequency of usage. If you know your preferences, this guide will be of use.

Here’s a list of the top 14 apps for book lovers, ranged by your possible interests:

Goodreads, #1 among the best apps for book lovers, Libby by OverDrive, the connection with your library to read the best free books for iPhone offline, Wattpad, the communication platform between writers and readers, Inkitt, our recommendation among the best book apps for Android, Litsy, the great combination of social media and reading in the range of the best Android book apps, Shelfie, the representative of the best iPhone apps for book lovers for managing notes, Blinkist, the easiest way to master non-fiction and one of the best iPhone apps for book lovers, --Audible, the top choice among the best book apps for listeners,

Epic!, the representative of the best book apps for youth, ComiXology, the top choice among the best apps for book lovers if you’re a fan of comics, Scribd, a top subscription-based choice among apps for book lovers (Android and iOS), Serial Reader, a bite-size reading among Android apps for book lovers, The Paris Review, the top lit-crit choice and one of the best iOS apps for book lovers, Amazon Kindle eBooks, the leader among best Kin-

Free reading apps:

1. Goodreads

The leader in the list of free book apps for book lovers.

Available platforms: iOS, Android, browser.

Top choice for everybody interested in books.

Interesting feature: mobile barcode scanner that allows adding paper books to your digital “to read” list.

Goodreads is the first platform in many rankings of best free reading apps for book lovers. Why so? It has plenty of information for various purposes: recommendations for you, recommendations from your friends, different collections (like Best Books 2019), a list of quotes, and a field for reviews. Also, it unites authors and readers, with 90 million users in general and more than a billion books.

2.

Libby by OverDrive

The compilation of the best free books for iPhone from your public library.

Available platforms: iOS, Android, Amazon.

Top choice for true old-fashioned bookworms who miss their public libraries.

Interesting feature: Enter your library card information to feel the complete process of borrowing a book.

If you miss your favorite public library, you’re welcome to look through epub versions of its books in Libby! This app from OverDrive awesomely digitalizes the process of borrowing books, so it takes just a couple of seconds. If you use Libby in connection with Amazon, you can also enjoy the collection of audiobooks from your public library.

3. Wattpad

One of the best iPhone apps for book lovers and storytellers.

Available platforms: iOS, Android, web.

Top choice for amateur writers.

Interesting feature: You can join a niche to connect with your special interest club.

Wattpad is much more than just an app; it’s the entire community. On this platform, you can share your talent in writing and make friends with other people

interested in reading and storytelling. It’s one of the best iPhone apps for book lovers.

4. Inkitt

One of the best Android apps to read books (iOS-friendly).

Available platforms: Android, iOS.

Top choice for people who love reading and writing.

Interesting feature: Has a huge library of free books in different genres.

Inkitt is an app from a publishing house that allows accessing numerous books online for free and keeps them in your offline digital library. Besides, it encourages the self-promotion of new authors. The great design and usability make Inkitt one of the best Android book apps.

5. Litsy

A social media for book lovers.

Available platforms: Android, iOS.

Top choice for extroverts who love reading and sharing their thoughts about books.

Interesting feature: You can create groups with other users enjoying this top Android app for book lovers. Also, it supports hashtags.

Litsy is an app where each feature is developed to help you socialize. You can see the “reading moments” of your friends, favorite authors, and popular influencers. This in-app community makes you feel connected with other people while reading. And of course, you can share your thoughts about books with them instantly!

6. Shelfie

The digital version of your bookshelf.

Available platforms: iOS, macOS.

Top choice for people who want to arrange and categorize their bookshelf.

Interesting feature: Simply point your camera at a book — and let this representative of top iPhone apps for book lovers work its magic!

If you’re the type of person who always buys books in each bookstore, this app is just for you!

CrEADTHE ofoNTINUATIoN lIlY’SSTorY