| Mistress of the author in crisis
It started with the direct gaze of a voluptuous beauty. Sarah Dunant was intrigued by the Titian painting Venus Of Urbino in Florence's Uffizi Gallery. "She's the first woman in Western art at this period who is both naked and staring straight out at you; all the others from then had been pretending to be coy or modest," says English author Dunant, 56. "I thought, 'Who else could she be but a courtesan?' Now work being done on Titian's letters shows we're pretty certain she was." The Venus Of Urbino inspired Fiammetta Bianchini, the talented, high-class prostitute in Dunant's latest historical novel, In The Company Of The Courtesan. "I had been thinking about ways in which women, who had very little obvious power in the Renaissance, could make their living.
Herodotus - The Father Of History, Or The Father Of Lies?
Almost all of what is currently accepted regarding the struggles of the Persians and that of the Greeks, deemed "The Persian Wars" is based on the writings of one man: Herodotus. Are "The Histories" of Herodotus true historical accounts, or are they mythology? Furthermore, almost all that is known about Herodotus comes from his own writing. There is not a substantial alternative body of evidence to either corroborate or refute his accounts; at least none that has survived in history. One is therefore left to simply analyze his works in order to render judgement. Common sense and logic, as well as a basic understanding of the world at that time period are at the present the main tools used to scrutinize Herodotus' works. I. A Greek storyteller presenting Greek valor to a Greek audience: Herodotus was a native of Helicarnassus, in present day Western Turkey.
Paranormal, or paternal, attack on girl
Having fulfilled his generational obligation as a talented young man with an eye to the world at large by writing a first novel about young Americans bumming around Europe, Arthur Phillips has expanded his horizons to take in ever-wider swaths of literary history. Phillips' second novel, "The Egyptologist," was an old-fashioned archaeology action-adventure that owed its pleasures to its remarkably unreliable narration. His new novel, "Angelica," turns unreliability into a burning existential, psychological question and an essential condition of the world as we know it. It is also a book-length tribute to the work of Henry James, with Phillips doing his utmost to pen a worthy companion to "The Turn of the Screw." Phillips is no James (as if that required stating, about him or any other contemporary writer), but he makes a valiant effort, with encouraging results.
Therapy yields six-figure book deal
ASCOTTISH JOURNALIST'S magazine column about her therapy sessions which regularly captivates thousands of women all over the UK every week is to be turned into a major Bridget Jones-style novel. Lorna Martin's column Conversations With My Therapist - which appears in the top-selling weekly glossy Grazia and has become increasingly popular with thousands of fans who read all about her love life, friendships and therapy sessions with psychiatrist, Dr H Grazia - has a UK circulation of more than 210,000 each week. After she had been writing the column for seven months, publishers began a bidding war to secure a book deal with Martin, who settled on a six-figure deal with John Murray Publishers last week. .
Cell phone conversations you'd rather not hear
Okay. Right here. Not too crowded. I have about two hours until boarding. My book, a bottle of water, some roasted almonds and this chair. Flip open the pages. Where was I? ''I'm right here. It's OK. I love you. I will never leave you ''
Hold on one minute. Who is this and what's she doing with that cell pho ... oh, jeez.
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The Dating Game: How to find him - and how to land him?
Browsing through a bookstore recently, I stopped over at the relationships section to look at some of the dating guides written for guys. Unsurprisingly, the number of books I found geared toward men weren't even a third of those aimed at women.
So I decided to check out what women were reading, how they were being advised about dating.
One book caught my eye and ended up raising my eyebrow: "Dating Up" by J. Courtney Sullivan.
This book should be renamed "Gold Digging for Dummies."
It contains a breakdown of the top 20 highest-paying jobs and suggests hanging out in a coffee shop near a hospital since half of the top-paying jobs are in the medical field.
(While it lists everything from air traffic controllers to computer information systems managers, for some reason "journalist at your local newspaper" is not on the list.)
Compelling stuff.
Finally, a return to 'Peyton Place'
In the age of bobby socks and Eisenhower, upstanding citizens dared not sing the praises of Grace Metalious. The New Hampshire native, conventional wisdom held, had disgraced New England with the 1956 publication of her novel "Peyton Place" and its unbottled, unbuttoned portrait of life in a small town. "She was called a slut, to her face," recalled Jeanne Gallant, a neighbor and friend of Metalious's in Gilmanton, N.H., where she lived and based the book. "People threw rocks on her property. Rotten tomatoes. People kept their children away from her children. You name it, they did it." The wild success of the book was little antidote to the attacks, which, Gallant and others say, precipitated Metalious's descent into drink and her death of cirrhosis of the liver at age 39 in a Boston hospital.
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