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Hello,
This week in First Impressions, we bring you Carl Safina's Alfie and Me, a touching, philosophical account of the author's experience rehabilitating an owl with his wife, as well as The Roaring Days of Zora Lily, Noelle Salazar's vividly rendered work of fiction about a fashion designer in Prohibition-era America.
From the Roaring Twenties, we make our way forward in history with a "beyond the book" article about Thornton Wilder and his 1938 play Our Town, which appears in Ann Patchett's new novel Tom Lake. And in an interview, Anthony Marra discusses the wider context surrounding his World War II-era novel Mercury Pictures Presents with fellow author Amor Towles.
Plus, we have free books for members to request, and a new Wordplay!
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With best wishes,
The BookBrowse Team
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Each month, we share books with BookBrowse members to read and review. Here are their opinions on two recently released titles. | |
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Alfie and Me
by Carl Safina
"Carl Safina blends ecology and natural science with philosophy to show the inextricable connections between nature and human existence. Over the course of their homebound Covid-19 year, the author and his wife rescue a fledgling owl who had been left for dead. Through interactions with and observations of Alfie the owl and her eventual mate and three owlets, Safina muses about humanity's belief systems (philosophy, theology, technology) through history and how we've arrived at the separation of man and nature and our planet's crisis conditions." —Ann B. (Kernville, CA)
"If you love animals, nature, the great outdoors...you will certainly enjoy this book about this spiritedly little owl and the relationship formed with her caregiver... I really enjoyed the author's writing style and I felt as though I was at his elbow throughout Alfie's rehabilitation and eventual release." —Leslie G. (Kathleen, GA)
"This was the first book I have read by this author and it made me so much more aware of the magic of everyday life. It left me wanting to spend more time outdoors and immerse myself in nature." —Mary S. (Edmonds, WA)
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The Roaring Days of Zora Lily
by Noelle Salazar
"In 2023, a museum curator finds a hidden label on a dress that Greta Garbo wore. Who is this Zora Lily whose label is on this dress? I loved the characters and the descriptions of all the dresses that Zora mended and designed. Her rise up from poverty to becoming a successful designer and business owner is a great story... I highly recommend this book!" —Tracey S. (Largo, FL)
"Well-developed characters as well as excellent descriptions of the settings allow the reader to be transported to the Roaring Twenties. It is a wonderful story of perseverance and the belief in a dream at a time when career choices for women were limited. Historical fiction fans are sure to love this book!" —Cindy B. (Waukee, IA)
"What a pleasure it is to be immersed in a story quickly when one begins a new book. The tale of Zora Lily kept my attention throughout with fresh perspectives of one of the most interesting times in history." —Jennifer B. (Oviedo, FL)
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Members! This month's First Impressions books are now available to request. Offer closes end of Saturday, October 14.
Books are provided free of charge to BookBrowse members resident in the U.S. with the understanding that they'll do their best to write a short review. Members who choose to take part generally receive a book about every three months.
Not yet a member? Free books are one of the many benefits of a BookBrowse membership, for just $3.75/month!
Join (or renew a lapsed membership) by end of Saturday 14th, and you'll be in time to request book(s) from this month's offer. As we assign based on when a member last received a book, new members always have priority!
Most books are offered in print and mailed free of charge to members; occasionally, titles are ebook downloads. The format is always clearly stated on the request page. See this month's books!
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Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) and Our Town
In Ann Patchett's novel Tom Lake, the main character fondly remembers starring in a production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town. This is Wilder's best-known play, which debuted in 1938 to mixed reviews but earned him a Pulitzer Prize that same year, making him the only writer to have received the award in both fiction and drama.
With Our Town, Wilder wanted to portray ordinary people having ordinary lives, which even still contain extraordinary events like weddings and deaths. He worked on the play for over six years, in New Hampshire and New York, but also in Zurich, where he learned experimental theater methods introduced in Weimar Germany. Our Town's opening performances in Princeton and Boston received negative reviews. Audiences didn't care for the experimental techniques Wilder used, such as forgoing sets and props to have actors mime the action. Breaking the fourth wall by having the stage manager speak directly to the audience was likewise poorly received. Eleanor Roosevelt remarked that the play "moved and depressed [her] beyond words." ...continued
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- Author Homes in Massachusetts (relates to Dayswork)
- Françoise Sagan (relates to The Book of Goose)
- A Chilling Rise in Book Bans in the United States (relates to Our Missing Hearts)
- Tiny Reparations Books (relates to Perish)
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Amor Towles Interviews Anthony Marra | |
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In a conversation with Amor Towles, Anthony Marra discusses his novel Mercury Pictures Presents, as well as the real-world events and family history that inspired it.
Amor Towles: Tony, can you start by giving us a brief overview of the novel?
Anthony Marra: Frank Lloyd Wright once said that if you tip the world on its side, all the loose pieces will land in Los Angeles. This was never more true than it was in the 1930s and '40s, when thousands of European émigrés and exiles landed in LA. Many ended up working at the margins of Hollywood. You had internationally renowned playwrights like Bertolt Brecht, who struggled to churn out B-movie potboilers. You had German Jewish actors who, because of their accents, could only find work portraying the very Nazis they thought they had escaped. This community of exiles became foundational to the US movie propaganda apparatus during the war, even though, as citizens of Axis-aligned countries, they were branded enemy aliens and denied the very rights and freedoms that their movies championed.
This is the broader world of Mercury Pictures Presents. And its story is about how such an unlikely group of people arrived to such an unlikely place and ended up transforming American culture. ...continued
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Solve our Wordplay puzzle to reveal a well-known expression, and be entered to win a one-year membership to BookBrowse.
"G O T P, B The P, F T P"
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The answer to the last Wordplay: A M I A Terrible T T W
"A mind is a terrible thing to waste"
This has been the slogan of the United Negro College Fund since 1972.
The UNCF, also known as the United Fund, was incorporated in 1944 by Frederick D. Patterson (then president of what is now Tuskegee University). It describes itself as the U.S.A's largest and most effective minority education organization. It funds scholarships for black students and general scholarship funds for 37 private historically black colleges and universities. ...continued
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With so many new books published every month, it's difficult to find the standouts, the ones which are really worth your time. This is why hundreds of thousands of readers rely on BookBrowse to do the hard work of sifting though the multitude of titles to find the most promising new books, with a focus on books that entertain, engage and enlighten. | |
BookBrowse Highlights is one of our four free newsletters. We also offer Publishing This Week every Sunday, and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly.
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