Mr g by Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman brings together his unique expertise as both a novelist and theoretical physicist in crafting a fable of the Creation in the thought-provoking Mr g (FIC LIGHTMAN). The story makes for a fascinating look at what happens when right-brain and left-brain musings collide and coalesce.

Although the narrator of Lightman's story is never actually named, it's reasonable to guess he is the eponymous Mr g. And, given Mr g's abilities, it's a logical conclusion that Mr g is actually God. Mr g lives in the Void, where "Practically everything slept in an infinite torpor of potentiality," with his querulous Aunt Penelope and long-suffering Uncle Deva.

One day, Mr g wakes from a nap and decides to create the universe. He starts with the first necessary element: time.

"I had to chosen to replace nothingness with something. Something is not nothing. Something could be anything. My imagination reeled. From now on, there would be a future, a present, and a past. A past of nothingness, and then a future of something."

From this point on, we're taken on a wonderful ride as Mr g contemplates, examines and assesses his next steps and their impact. He soon creates space, followed by (curiously) music, and then quantum physics.

It's at this point that he meets a traveling stranger whom he can't account for: Belhor and his grinning beasts, Baphomet the Larger and Baphomet the Smaller. They are anomalies outside of Mr g's sphere. As Mr g continues crafting the cosmos, he is continually visited by the mysterious Belhor, who challenges Mr g to think critically about the nature of his creation. Even as Mr g begins refining his worlds with rules meant to add order and logic and populating that space with matter, Belhor poses difficult questions of faith, free will, and relatively.

These existential exchanges are some of the best parts of the book. Mr g comes across as young, thoughtful and optimistic. His discussions with Belhor make him realize the enormity of his responsibility: He has set in motion a chain of events that eventually leads to the evolution of sentient organisms and human life. But what is the nature of life? Of consciousness?

Mr g must decide what role he will play in the lives his worlds have spawned — never suspecting that in the end, they will effect him just as much as he does them.

This is a story that melds together elements of religion, philosophy, math, science and ethics in an easily understood matter. God, in Lightman's tale, seems like a person just like you or me (except with infinite power) faced with the daunting prospect of creating something from nothing. But not just anything:

Life. Civilization. Meaning.

2013 Pulitzer Prize winners

Photo by frproart available through a Creative Commons license

The Pulitzer Prizes announced their winners for the year this week. Named for famed newspaperman Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), the prizes go to examples of excellence in American writing. Below are the books that received the honor and comments from the judges.

History
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
By Fredrik Logevall
959.7041 LOGEVALL
"A balanced, deeply researched history of how, as French colonial rule faltered, a succession of American leaders moved step by step down a road toward full-blown war."

Biography
The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
by Tom Reiss
B DUMAS
"A compelling story of a forgotten swashbuckling hero of mixed race whose bold exploits were captured by his son, Alexander Dumas, in famous 19th century novels."

Poetry
Stag's Leap
by Sharon Olds
811.54 OLDS
"Unflinching poems on the author’s divorce that examine love, sorrow and the limits of self-knowledge."

Nonfiction
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
by Gilbert King
305.896 KING
"A richly detailed chronicle of racial injustice in the Florida town of Groveland in 1949, involving four black men falsely accused of rape and drawing a civil rights crusader, and eventual Supreme Court justice, into the legal battle.

Fiction
The Orphan Master's Son
By Adam Johnson
FIC JOHNSON and AD FIC JOHNSON
"An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart."

First Lines Quiz: Week 2

FIRST LINES QUIZ -- Week #2 » create assessment

Newer Fiction on Ancient Rome

Attila: The Gathering of the Storm / by William Napier

By the fifth century AD, the Roman Empire is on the verge of collapse as multiple armies attack its vulnerable borders, pushing for a permanent dissolution of the realm. The greatest threat posed is a conglomeration of raiders from the East led by a notorious warrior named Attila who has
succeeded in uniting the Hunnish clans with the other
Scythian tribes for one seemingly unstoppable force. (FIC NAPIER)

The Silver Eagle / by Ben Kane
In this sequel to Kane’s riveting novel The Forgotten Legion, Fabiola is a prostitute in the burgeoning Roman Republic. As current mistress to the powerful Decimus Brutus, Fabiola seeks to use her elevated status to influence matters around her and ultimately to see her enslaved brother Romulus, a former legionnaire, returned safely back to Rome. (FIC KANE)

Lavinia / by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lavinia is a prominent maiden and daughter of a king in the peaceful pre-Roman land of Latium. A beautiful woman with many suitors, she also has powers to communicate with the spirit realm. When a ship arrives carrying a man wishing to court her, Lavinia uses her gift of intuition to learn of a destiny which sees her becoming one of the primary founders of the Roman Empire. (FIC LEGUIN)

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Conspirata: A Novel Of Ancient Rome / by Robert Harris

In Harris’ riveting sequel to Imperium, things in pre-Imperial Rome are particularly tumultuous. Marcus Cicero is made the pro-consul of the Roman Republic in the year 63 B.C to the anger of several of his rivals. As he maneuvers through the complex political landscape, Cicero must look out for his life as well as his job. (FIC HARRIS)

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The Course of Honour / by Lindsey Davis

During the first century of the Roman empire, a slave girl named Caenis is a server in the household of Antonia, then the sister-in-law to Emperor Tiberius. Sparks fly when Caenis meets Vespasian, then an unknown citizen-soldier from one of the rural provinces, and a love affair begins which will witness Vespasian’s legendary rise to power, culminating with his being crowned emperor in 69 A.D.
(FIC DAVIS)
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Persona Non Grata: A Novel of the Roman Empire / by Ruth Downie

Returning back to Rome after a stint with the military in the region of Brittania, physician and part-time sleuth Gaius Ruso arrives home to find his affairs un-customarily in disarray—he’s bankrupt. When a man who owes Ruso money drops dead of poisoning, the doctor is suddenly suspected of the crime and must use every ounce of his investigative abilities to clear his name. (MYS DOWNIE)

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Give Me Back My Legions! / by Harry Turtledove

During the reign of Caesar Augustus, Publius Varus is a Roman centurion-statesman who leads three legions north of the Rhine to fight the barbarous Germanic tribes who continue to defy ultimate surrender. On the other side of the battle lines, however, is a very determined Prince Arminius, leader of the subjected Teutonic peoples. Arminius feigns cooperation with the Romans only to plot their down

fall and free his people from their grip in this thrilling alternate history novel. (SF TURTLEDOVE)

New Christmas Fiction

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The Gift: A Novel / by Cecilia Ahern

Hard-nosed workaholic Lou Steffen doesn’t have time for sentimental Christmas festivities until Gabe, a mysterious homeless man, subtly teaches Lou what truly matters and how precious the gift of Christmas really is.

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The Christmas Dog / by Melody Carlson
Betty Kowalski is feeling more alone and wretched than usual this Christmas with the lack of friends or relatives to celebrate with and her neighbor’s home renovations driving her up a wall. But when a cute dog shows up on her doorstep one night, she gets quite an unexpected Christmas surprise.
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The Christmas List / by Richard Paul Evans
One day just before Christmas, James Kier reads his own obituary in his hometown newspaper. At first he thinks it must be a joke until certain events prompt him to take the situation seriously.
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Home In Time For Christmas / by Heather Graham
Melody Tarleton never expected to become close with a strange hitchhiker she almost runs over with her car. But a peculiar brand of Christmas magic soon helps her discover a love which transcends all boundaries.
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The Memory Quilt: A Christmas Story for our Times / by T.D. Jakes
It’s Christmas time in Chicago and Lela, a single woman down on her luck, finds solace in her church’s Virgin Mary themed bible study and soon begins to look life through with new eyes.

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A Christmas Blizzard / Garrison Keillor
Wealthy loner James Sparrow intends to spend Christmas in Hawaii until he’s abruptly summoned to his North Dakota hometown where his Aunt is deathly ill. Permanently detoured after a blizzard leaves him stranded at his childhood home, James is suddenly confronted by ghosts from his boyhood past.

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A Wish For Christmas: A Cape Light Novel / by Thomas Kinkade & Katherine Spencer
This season the people of Cape Light confront their past while looking hesitantly toward the future: David is a war veteran returning home after the death of his mother, Jack has remarried and now must try and to reach out to his new stepdaughter, and crabby old Lillian Warwick may feel independent but circumstances soon force her to reach out to those she would otherwise shun
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Celebrate Native American Heritage Month: New Native American Fiction

People of the Thunder / W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear
Three wanderers--the prophet Old White, a noble warrior named Trader and a mysterious shaman woman, Two Petals--travel across the North A
merican Southeast before it was ever America and long before it was ever civilized, striving to establish peace in a desparately savage land. The territory they cross is controlled by the Sky Hand tribe, ruled by the cunning and ruthless Chief Flying Hawk and his evil nephew Smoke Shield. Together this awkward, but curiously powerful trio must bring down Flying Hawk and Smoke Shield who themselves are bent on wiping out all but their own kind.

The Red Convertible: Selected and New Stories, 1978-2008 / by Louise Erdrich
Erdrich, whose willowy novels and stories have mirrored her own Midwest-Native American heritage, has compiled a new collection of some of her most personal stories and essays. As expected, most of her protagonists are female and Indian, or Indian hybrids (Chipewa, Cherokee, Ottawa, etc. mixed with French & German ancestries) and their circumstances are embedded with varying degrees ambiguity over the fact. Some laugh, some cry and some simply ignore the constrasts present between their daily lives and the heritage of their ancestors, aspects of modern life overshadowing any semblance of customs and traditions their forefathers once shared even as Indian lore and mysticism crop up in the backs of their minds during things like thunderstorms, traffic jams, TV news and their children's gadgets.


The Reason For Crows: A Kateri Tekakwitha Story / by Diane Glancy
The real life Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680, birth-name Kahenta), daughter to a Mohawk warrior during the period when the Europeans were infil
trating the Native tribes of North America, is rehashed in this extraordinary tale of two cultures colliding and a young girl's passion in the midst of violence, pestilence and death. Nearly blind after the smallpox has wiped out most of her camp and nearly killed all of her family, a young, still-ailing Kateri is pitied by a Jesuit priest, Jacques de Lambervilles who cares for her at the mission. After nursing her back to health and reading the scripture to her, Kateri is converted to Christianity and begins a life of chastity and penitence, wholly devoted to her faith until her death at 24. Today, Kateri Tekakwitha has been venerated as a Saint among Jesuit catholics and several churches, even a summer camp in Maine, bear her name.


Runner / by Thomas Perry
Runner is Thomas Perry's sixth Jane Whitefield novel following Jane, a Native American female and skilled Indian guide with a knack for
"disappearing" who aids people who themselves need hiding. Currently Jane's living in upstate New York, married to a surgeon and keeping her own, other calling pretty much under wraps. Sure enough, though, action finds Jane in the form of Christine Monahan, a pregnant woman on the run from her abusive husband and another, more grisly assortment of shady characters seemingly bent on hunting her down. Soon both women are fleeing cross-country as Jane works fast, doing what she does best, pairing her neo-mystical Native American talents with her own tech-savvy, identity-falsifying skills to help Christine and her baby ultimately find safety.


War Dances / by Sherman Alexie
Alexie, himself a member of the Spokane tribe of the Pacific Northwest, is the award-winning author of Smoke Signals and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian. Much of his fiction has been labeled as a com
edically scathing characterization of the plight of Native Americans, his penetrating voice expertly mixing humor with anger and tragedy with comedy. His newest collection of short stories, War Dances, confronts family life through various ordinary characters, each flawed in their own unique ways yet appealing in a quite real, naturalistic sense. In his title story "War Dances", a dying man reflects back on the death of his own alcoholic father while in "The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless", a married clothing salesman slowly falls out of love with his wife after she bears him three children. While all of his stories may not connect the same, the collection as a whole presents a "spiritedly provocative array of tragic comedies"*.

*Booklist

Author and Poet John Updike

Many readers will be familiar with the late John Updike whose body of work over the last half of the twentieth century has merited boat loads of recognition from both publishers and critics. Unanimously praised for his articulate exposition and fine prose, it's ironic how much of his fiction is restricted to the small towns and rural portions of the American northeast. The winner of two Pulitzers, Updike was also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker magazine where his keen eye for satire and sentimentality entertained devoted fans for years.

Rabbit, Run (1960)
When 26-year-old Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was in high school, he ruled the roost as a star on the basketball team. In those days, Harry imagined life as promising and adventurous, his wistful ambitions fully within reach as he faced an anticipated future. But now, after having married his then sweetheart Janice, he feels the fullness of personal disillusionment as a husband and father to his two-year-old son and in his job as a door-to-door salesman of kitchen gadgets. Knowing only that he must get out from under his situation, Harry embarks on a series of loosely planned alternatives to the life he now lives. Updike's first widely-recognized novel was revered upon its first publication for its dramatic interpretation of suburban angst in America, a condition ironically meshing well with the period and individuals in similar circumstances on a widespread scale. Rabbit, Run was followed by four sequels over the next several years--Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich & Rabbit At Rest. (FIC UPDIKE)

The Centaur (1963)
George Caldwell is a man going through the motions. A schoolteacher in rural Pennsylvania, he's essentially tuned out to the world around him. It's a world which includes his distant wife Cassie, his artistically-minded son Peter and classes of his students who seem wholly obtuse to George or anything he might have to say. What little comfort he derives from his humdrum existence is only through nostalgic memories of his once eventful and somewhat glamourized youth. Updike's most autobiographical novel and a book with the revolving themes of mental escape and grand ambition, 'Centaur' figuratively identifies the novel's characters with names from Greek Mythology, specifically the gods and goddesses associated with the myth of the Centaur Chiron whose immortality was sacrificed to free Prometheus. (FIC UPDIKE)

The Witches of Eastwick (1984)
Their lives ruined by former husbands and male counterparts, three women--Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart and Sukie Rougemont--bond together as single ex-wives in the small New England town of Eastwick. Their ameliorative union manifests more than just a solid friendship, however, as a each's newfound "gifts" in the realm of the black arts suddenly unveils an entirely new world. Enthralled by their exciting new powers, the threesome seeks to gain the upper-hand over the male sex (and with life in Eastwick in general) only to have their plans interrupted by the devilish Darryl Van Horne who, as it turns out, has plans of his own. Van Horne's charm is soon able to seduce all three women, after which he subsequently enters into a mutually 'loose' relationship with each inciting scandal in the town and ultimate dissension inside the love quadrangle. The situation becomes further embroiled when Van Horne starts courting the young (and innocent) Jenny Gabriel, a longtime friend and associate of Sukie's, whose subsequent move into Van Horne's extravagant home sparks an uproar among his former lovers. Embittered over Van Horne's abrubt dismissal of them in place of a monogamous relationship with Jenny, Alex, Jane and Sukie ultimately decide that revenge is only too necessary. (FIC UPDIKE)

Terrorist (2006)

Updike’s most recent novel centers on the modern age of terrorism and its implications on domestic life in America. A New Jersey resident and son of an absent Muslim father, Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy is a lonely American teenager currently questioning the contradictions of his firm Islamic convictions with the blatantly secularized world around him. Under constant harassment at school and publicly scrutinized around his hometown of New Prospect, Ahmad’s only solace is found in the passages of his daily Qu’ran readings at his mosque where his mentor, Shaikh, furthers Ahmad’s beliefs towards radical fundamentalism. As time passes, Ahmad moves on from his school days and takes a job as a truck driver, an occupation presenting the opportunity for what he feels may be his ultimate destiny. (FIC UPDIKE)

Sammy's House by Kristen Gore

Sammy Joyce may be a trouble-magnet, a klutz, and a hypochondriac, but she is also the talented, young health-care advisor to the Vice President of the United States. Halfway through the Administration's first term, when success seems assured, a damaging leak to the press reveals that the President may be drinking heavily again. Before the source of the leak can be discovered, more scandal breaks concerning foreign drug agreements, illegitimate family members in the First Family, and drug addiction in the Administration. On the personal front, Sammy's deepening relationship with a Washington Post reporter brings more stress and confusion and the possibility of betrayal. Struggling to handle her personal life while dealing with multiple political crises, Sammy fights to keep her career, her dignity and her honesty intact.

Kristen Gore, the daughter of former Vice President Al Gore, writes from the perspective of a White House insider. This is West Wing in print, with all the drama, humor, and pathos of working at the center of American politics today. A fun and thought-provoking read.

Black Elk in Paris / Kate Horsley

I have to admit I picked up Kate Horsley's Black Elk in Paris (FIC HORSLEY) partially because of the cover. Luckily I was rewarded for my superficiality with a great story. Set in Paris at the time of the 1889 Universal Exposition (click here to view actual photos of the exposition, courtesy of the Library of Congress), the story revolves around Black Elk, a Native American healer who has been abandoned in Paris by Buffalo Bill's traveling Wild West show. The story is told from the perspective of a bachelor physician who frequents the home of the Parisian family with whom Black Elk stays. The author uses the city of Paris almost as another character in the book. It is beautiful and self-indulgent, by turns poignant and callous. All the characters are changed by their contact with Black Elk, the "savage" who desperately longs for his troubled homeland in America.

Author Kate Horsley has a simple but lyrical writing style and a penchant for unusual storylines. Her characters tend to have a mystical bent and live in times of great cultural change. She also wrote Confessions of a Pagan Nun (FIC HORSLEY), the story of a Druid woman who becomes a Christian nun in the days of the expansion of the Christianity to the British Isles. I give both books the thumbs-up.