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Fearing for their lives, Li Mo and her family fled China. (Streetfeet) |
Shelf Life
Reading ranks
Boston hung on at number eight as Pittsburgh and Portland, Ore. surged ahead in the 2009 ranking of America’s Most Literate Cities, an annual survey conducted by Central Connecticut State University.
Reasonable people can quibble about how the rankings in the annual survey are determined, but Boston’s performance on three of the six key indicators raises serious questions. Among cities with a population of 250,000 and more, Boston ranked 45th (along with Charlotte, N.C.) in the number of booksellers per capita, 25th in the level of educational attainment, a category that includes high school diplomas and bachelor degrees, and 20th in library services.
On the brighter side, Boston ranked in the top 10 for newspaper circulation, magazine publishing, and Internet resources (a category that included online newspaper reading and the number of Internet book orders per capita).
In launching the survey in 2003, John W. Miller, president of CCSU, emphasized his interest in encouraging cities to promote literacy.
Perhaps Boston can learn something from Seattle, Washington, D.C., and Minneapolis, deemed the nation’s most literate cities for 2009.
Turning the page
Brookline Booksmith launches its 2010 literary series this week with a tantalizing trio of events, each beginning at 7 p.m.On Tuesday, Dr. Jonathan A. Edlow will discuss the real-life medical detective stories in “The Deadly Dinner Party’’ (Yale University). Edlow teaches at Harvard Medical School and is vice chairman of emergency medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
The following evening, writing coach Sherry Ellis will interview novelists Margot Livesey and Julia Glass. Ellis’s new book is “Illuminating Fiction’’ (Red Hen), a collection of her interviews with writers, including Glass, who said, “You can’t take all the ‘rules’ of fiction writing seriously.’’
You don’t need a master’s of fine arts, a room of your own, or the discipline of writing every day, she added.
On Thursday, journalist Benoit Denizet-Lewis will talk about his new collection “American Voyeur: Dispatches from the Far Reaches of Modern Life’’ (Simon & Schuster). The Jamaica Plain resident has written about gay culture, a summer camp for young pro-life activists, and teen suicide.
A tale of survival
Li Mo’s mother was a gifted writer and her father a brilliant law school professor. After Chinese authorities, claiming her father was an enemy of the state, executed him, Mo’s mother smuggled her and her brothers out of China.They lived in a number of cities before settling in New York City in 1960. Life remained a struggle - they fought poverty, racism, and illness. As a young woman, Mo moved to Cambridge, where she raised three children and grew determined to tell her story. Her new memoir “Spirit Bridges’’ (Streetfeet) is a plain-spoken tale of hard-won wisdom.
Coming out
■ “Unfinished Desires,’’ by Gail Godwin (Random House)■ “Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948-May 1949,’’ by Richard Reeves (Simon & Schuster)
■ “Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage,’’ by Elizabeth Gilbert (Viking)
Pick of the week
Claire Benedict of Bear Pond Books in Montpelier recommends “Knives at Dawn: America’s Quest for Culinary Glory at the Legendary Bocuse d’Or Competition’’ by Andrew Friedman (Free Press): “Extraordinarily popular in Europe, the Bocuse d’Or, known as the Olympics of cooking, is all but unknown in this country and the US never makes a good showing. A group of top American chefs attempted to change that in 2009. There’s interesting history, exciting competition, and great food.’’Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com. 
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