Cultural Compass
Book Supplement
book fairs offer the opportunity to pick up that book everyone is talking about, and discover lesser known gems. Learn about an international bestseller everyone is talking about, and much more.
Every fall brings a new harvest of books, and the epitome of literary celebration is the Miami Book Fair. Hundreds of authors flock to the Magic City to share their latest work. 2020 is no exception but for a little twist: it’s going virtual. Or, said the Fair’s co-founder, Mitch Kaplan, it’s like Netflix for books. Whatever the format, book fairs offer the opportunity to, indeed, pick up that book everyone is talking about, and discover lesser known gems. Downtown News selected an international bestseller, five Florida books, a Business Communications guide, and the memoir of a rock and roller.
International Bestseller
The Lying Lives of Adults, by Elena Ferrante (Europa).
Giovanna’s pretty face is turning ugly, her father thinks. Giovanna, he says, looks more like Aunt Vittoria. But can it be true? Is she really changing? Is she turning into her Aunt Vittoria, a woman she hardly knows but whom her mother and father despise? Surely there is a mirror somewhere in which she can see herself as she truly is.
Giovanna is searching for her reflection in two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: Naples of the heights, which assumes a mask of refinement, and Naples of the depths, a place of excess and vulgarity. She moves from one to the other in search of the truth, but neither city seems to offer answers or escape.
Set in the early 1990s in Naples, Italy, the story is that of 12-year-old Giovanna Trada. The adult Giovanna reminisces her past. In Giovanna’s imagination, Vittoria is a “lean, demonic silhouette, an unkempt figure lurking in the corners of houses when darkness falls.” Giovanna has to meet Vittoria and discover her own destiny.
This novel is about the transition from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Smoothly written, and compelling. Author Elelena Ferrante, a pseudonym, is one of the world’s most read and beloved writers.
The book quote: Sometimes we tell ourselves lovely tales, sometimes petty lies. Falsehoods protect us.
The Review: “There’s no doubt [the publication of The Lying Life of Adults] will be the literary event of the year.” — Elle Magazine.
Business Communications
Make it Clear, Speak and Write to Persuade and Inform, by Patrick Henry Winston (MIT).
This book explains how to communicate, how to speak and write to get your ideas across. The author was a professor of both computer science and communications at MIT for more than forty years. It starts with the basics: finding your voice, organizing your ideas, making sure what you say is remembered, and receiving critique, and goes on to cover such specifics as preparing slides, writing and rewriting, and even choosing a type family.
The Book Quote: Previous, former and latter force your reader to stop reading, to scan back, and to reread previous material. Use an unambiguous reference instead: Bad: I like sports, especially the sport discussed previously.
Good: I like sports, especially skiing.
The Review: I learned more from Patrick Wilson than any otyher professor while at MIT. I use many of his lessons, both inside and outside the workplace. Eric Chemi, CNBC TV Reporter.
Briefly Reviewed Five Florida Books
Jane Wood Reno, Miami’s Trailblazing Journalist, by George Hurchalla, (UPF). Journalist, activist, and adventurer, Jane Wood Reno (1913–1992) was one groundbreaking and colorful American women of the twentieth century. Told by her grandson, George Hurchalla, The Extraordinary Life of Jane Wood Reno is an intimate biography of a free thinker who shattered barriers during the explosive early years of Miami. She scored as a genius on an IQ test at the age of 11, earned a degree in physics during the Depression, worked as a social worker, explored the Everglades, wrestled alligators, helped pioneer scuba diving in Florida, interviewed Amelia Earhart, downed shots with Tennessee Williams. She built her own house by hand, funding the project with her writing. She wrote countless freelance articles under male names for the Miami Daily News until the paper was forced to let her publish under her own name.
The Year of Dangerous Days, Riots, Refugees, and Cocaine in Miami 1980, by Nicholas Griffin (37 Ink). A fascinating chronicle of a pivotal but forgotten year in American history. With a cast that includes iconic characters such as Jimmy Carter, Fidel Castro, and Janet Reno, brought to life through intertwining personal stories. At the core, there’s Edna Buchanan, a reporter for the Miami Herald who breaks the story on the wrongful murder of a black man and the shocking police cover-up; Captain Marshall Frank, the hardboiled homicide detective tasked with investigating the murder; and Mayor Maurice Ferré, the charismatic politician who watches the case, and the city, fall apart. These three figures cross paths as the city explodes in one of the worst race riots in American history as more than 120,000 Cuban refugees land south of Miami, and as drug cartels flood the city with cocaine and infiltrate all levels of law enforcement.
Victory for the Vote, by by Doris Weattherdfodr, (Mango). This history of the American suffragist movement puts the fight for suffrage into contemporary context by highlighting the revolutionary women whose activism changed the world in the decades following the passage of the suffrage amendment. Weatherford addresses key challenges for women since 1920, such as reproductive rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, and expanding political power. With Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s foreword. A cent
Florida’s Healing Waters, by Rick Kilby (UPF). Through images, Kilby shows how Florida’s natural wonders were promoted and developed as restorative destinations for America’s emerging upper class. The rapid growth in tourism infrastructure that began during the Gilded Age lasted well into the twentieth century, and Kilby explains how these now-lost resorts helped boost the economy of modern Florida. Today, these splendid health spas and elaborate bathing facilities have been lost, replaced by recreational amenities for a culture more about sun and fun than physical renewal. Kilby emphasizes the value of honoring and preserving the natural features of the state in the face of continual development. He reminds us that Florida’s water is still a life-giving treasure.
Miami Noir, The Classics, edited by Less Standiford (Akashick).”When terrible things threaten in some tough cities, a reader of these stories might be forgiven for expecting the worst; but when calamity takes place against the backdrop of paradise, as we have here in Miami, the impact is all the greater,” Len Standiford writes in the introduction to this sequel to 2006’s bestselling Miami Noir, an outstanding tradition of legendary writers exploring the dark side of paradise. Featuring classic noir fiction from Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Elmore Leonard, Lester Dent, Les Standiford, Preston L. Allen, and more. Added Les Standiford: “Miami remained at the time essentially a frontier town, a city on the edge of the continent, inviting all comers, full of fractious delight, where nothing of import had been settled, where no special interest group could yet claim control of politics or culture, and every day brought a new melee between some subset of those destined to collision. The perfect literary medium to give voice to such a place, I venture, was the story of crime and punishment.”
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