The Power of Stories
Stories are up to 22 times more memorable than facts alone.
Stanford Univ. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB7FfKPMZvw
The Power of Storytelling: How are Brains are Wired for Narratives (3 theories)
The first theory focuses on sensory stimulation. When we hear a story, our brains react as if we are really experiencing the events first-hand. The auditory cortex activates to process the sounds of the words, while the sensory cortex ignites to imagine details like sights, smells, tastes, and movement.
The second theory delves into how stories help make meaning out of chaos. The human brain is wired to detect patterns. When we encounter information, the pattern-making hippocampus works to arrange it into logical sequences and narratives. In this way, stories serve as contextual organizers that help turn disjointed information into meaningful episodes
Finally, the third theory explores social bonding. Because humans are inherently social animals, we are wired to connect with others. Stories allow us to simulate social experience even when we are alone.
The Power of Stories
2024 National Book Festival
Annalee Newitz, Stories are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind
Peter Pomerantsev, How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler and This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality
Video available on c-span:
Interview with Peter Pomerantsev on NPR
Novels we will read
House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (238 pps, 4.3*)
Amazon blurb:
In The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton depicts the glittering salons of Gilded Age New York with precision and wit, even as she movingly portrays the obstacles that impeded women's choices at the turn of the century. The beautiful, much-desired Lily Bart has been raised to be one of the perfect wives of the wealthy upper class, but her spark of character and independent drive prevents her from becoming one of the many women who will succeed in those circles. Though her desire for a comfortable life means that she cannot marry for love without money, her resistance to the rules of the social elite endangers her many marriage proposals. As Lily spirals down into debt and dishonor, her story takes on the resonance of classic tragedy. One of Wharton's most bracing and nuanced portraits of the life of women in a hostile, highly ordered world, The House of Mirth exposes the truths about American high society that its denizens most wished to deny.
NOTE: The Kindle version is available for free on Amazon books (copyright expired), and listed as 290 pages. But it is a classic and therefore widely available in many formats. It is one of the masterpiece novels in American literature and therefore deserves to be read, again. She was a woman from a wealthy and socially prominent family, so she had "insider knowledge." And in 1921, she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, for another novel, The Age of Innocence.
The Book of Lost Names, Kristen Harmel (396 pps. 4.7*)
Amazon blurb
“A fascinating, heartrending page-turner that, like the real-life forgers who inspired the novel, should never be forgotten.” —New York Times. Inspired by an astonishing true story from World War II, a young woman with a talent for forgery helps hundreds of Jewish children flee the Nazis in this “sweeping and magnificent” historical novel from the #1 international bestselling author of The Winemaker’s Wife.
Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books when her eyes lock on a photograph in the New York Times. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in more than sixty years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names.
The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer, but does she have the strength to revisit old memories?
As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris and find refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, where she began forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.
An engaging and evocative novel reminiscent of The Lost Girls of Paris and The Alice Network, The Book of Lost Names is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of bravery and love in the face of evil.
NOTE: Unlike the previous novel, this is not "great literature," but it is a good read that captures and holds your attention from the very beginning.
The Librarian of Burned Books, Briana Labuskes (412 pps., 4.5*)
Amazon blurb:
For fans of The Rose Code and The Paris Library, The Librarian of Burned Books is a captivating WWII-era novel about the intertwined fates of three women who believe in the power of books to triumph over the very darkest moments of war.
Berlin 1933. Following the success of her debut novel, American writer Althea James receives an invitation from Joseph Goebbels himself to participate in a culture exchange program in Germany. For a girl from a small town in Maine, 1933 Berlin seems to be sparklingly cosmopolitan, blossoming in the midst of a great change with the charismatic new chancellor at the helm. Then Althea meets a beautiful woman who promises to show her the real Berlin, and soon she’s drawn into a group of resisters who make her question everything she knows about her hosts—and herself.
Paris 1936. She may have escaped Berlin for Paris, but Hannah Brecht discovers the City of Light is no refuge from the anti-Semitism and Nazi sympathizers she thought she left behind. Heartbroken and tormented by the role she played in the betrayal that destroyed her family, Hannah throws herself into her work at the German Library of Burned Books. Through the quiet power of books, she believes she can help counter the tide of fascism she sees rising across Europe and atone for her mistakes. But when a dear friend decides actions will speak louder than words, Hannah must decide what stories she is willing to live—or die—for.
New York 1944. Since her husband Edward was killed fighting the Nazis, Vivian Childs has been waging her own war: preventing a powerful senator’s attempts to censor the Armed Service Editions, portable paperbacks that are shipped by the millions to soldiers overseas. Viv knows just how much they mean to the men through the letters she receives—including the last one she got from Edward. She also knows the only way to win this battle is to counter the senator’s propaganda with a story of her own—at the heart of which lies the reclusive and mysterious woman tending the American Library of Nazi-Banned Books in Brooklyn.
As Viv unknowingly brings her censorship fight crashing into the secrets of the recent past, the fates of these three women will converge, changing all of them forever. Inspired by the true story of the Council of Books in Wartime—the WWII organization founded by booksellers, publishers, librarians, and authors to use books as “weapons in the war of ideas”—The Librarian of Burned Books is an unforgettable historical novel, a haunting love story, and a testament to the beauty, power, and goodness of the written word.
NOTE: Could there be a theme here? I have read lots and lots and lots of the current crop of "bookshop" novels; I'll put some of those up on the What To Read Next pages; many of them are based on "gimmicks"; we can talk about that. I think with this one I've picked one of the best.
First Lie Wins, Ashley Elston (348 pps.)
Amazon blurb (4.3 stars, 60K reviews, Editor's pick as best book of 2024, so far)
Evie Porter has everything a nice Southern girl could want: a doting boyfriend, a house with a white picket fence, a tight group of friends. The only catch: Evie Porter doesn’t exist. The identity comes first: Evie Porter. Once she’s given a name and location by her mysterious boss, Mr. Smith, she learns everything there is to know about the town and the people in it. Then the mark: Ryan Sumner. The last piece of the puzzle is the job.
Evie isn’t privy to Mr. Smith’s real identity, but she knows this job isn't like the others. Ryan has gotten under her skin, and she’s starting to envision a different sort of life for herself. But Evie can’t make any mistakes—especially after what happened last time. Evie Porter must stay one step ahead of her past while making sure there's still a future in front of her. The stakes couldn't be higher—but then, Evie has always liked a challenge. . . .
NOTE: Okay, this book is not like anything we've read previously. But I downloaded the sample, read to the end of that, and clicked on the button to download the entire novel and keep reading. And I'm not going to give you too much background; I want you to read it "cold," and then we'll talk about it. I have a particular "take" on it, but I want to know what you think.
Magnificent Lives of Marjorie Post, Allison Pataki (401 pps. 4.4*)
Amazon blurb:
“Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . " So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Growing up in the modest farmlands of Battle Creek, Michigan, Marjorie followed a few simple rules: always think for yourself, never take success for granted, and work hard—even when covered in diamonds. She had an insatiable drive to live, love, and give more than she got. From crawling through Moscow warehouses to rescue the Tsar’s treasures to outrunning the Nazis in London, from serving the homeless of the Great Depression to entertaining Roosevelts, Kennedys, and Hollywood’s biggest stars, Marjorie Merriweather Post lived an epic life few could imagine.
Her journey began gluing cereal boxes in her father’s barn as a young girl before C. W. Post’s cereal company grew into an empire that reshaped the American way of life, with Marjorie as heiress and leading lady. Not content with the prescribed roles of high-society wife, mother, and hostess, she dared to demand more. Before turning 30, she amassed millions, becoming the wealthiest woman in the US. But it was her life-force, advocacy, passion, and adventurous spirit that led to her stunning legacy.
And yet Marjorie’s story, set in palatial homes she built such as Mar-a-Lago, was equally marked by challenge and tumult. A wife four times over, Marjorie sought her happily-ever-after with the blue-blooded party boy who could not outrun his demons, the charismatic financier whose charm turned to betrayal, the international diplomat with a dark side, and the bon vivant whose shocking secrets would shake Marjorie and all of society.
Optional reading
Cemetery of Untold Stories, Julia Alvarez (227 pps., 4.1*)
Amazon blurb:
Literary icon and great American novelist Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of In the Time of the Butterflies and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, returns with a luminescent novel about storytelling that reads like an instant classic.
"Engaging and written in a playful, crystal-clear prose, this novel explores friendship, love, sisterhood, living between cultures, and how people can be haunted by the things they don’t finish . . .
Named a Most Anticipated Book by the New York Times, Washington Post, Today.com, Goodreads, B&N Reads, Literary Hub, HipLatina, BookPage, BBC.com, Zibby Mag, and more
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she decides to turn it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
She wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
The Cemetery of Untold Stories asks: Whose stories get to be told, and whose buried? Julia Alvarez reminds us that the stories of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
Choices for additional book
A Room Made of Leaves, Kate Grenville (319 pps, 4.2*)
Amazon blurb:
What if Elizabeth Macarthur—wife of the notorious John Macarthur, wool baron in the earliest days of Sydney—had written a shockingly frank secret memoir? And what if novelist Kate Grenville had miraculously found and published it?
That’s the starting point for A Room Made of Leaves, a playful dance of possibilities between the real and the invented. Marriage to a ruthless bully, the impulses of her heart, the search for power in a society that gave women none: this Elizabeth Macarthur manages her complicated life with spirit and passion, cunning and sly wit. Her memoir lets us hear—at last!—what one of those seemingly demure women from history might really have thought.
At the centre of A Room Made of Leaves is one of the most toxic issues of our own age: the seductive appeal of false stories. This book may be set in the past, but it’s just as much about the present, where secrets and lies have the dangerous power to shape reality.
Kate Grenville’s return to the territory of The Secret River is historical fiction turned inside out, a stunning sleight of hand by one of our most original writers.
People of the Book, Geraldine Brooks (396 pps, 4.4*)
Amazon blurb:
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of March, the journey of a rare illuminated manuscript through centuries of exile and war.
In 1996, Hanna Heath, an Australian rare-book expert, is offered the job of a lifetime: analysis and conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, which has been rescued from Serb shelling during the Bosnian war. Priceless and beautiful, the book is one of the earliest Jewish volumes ever to be illuminated with images. When Hanna, a caustic loner with a passion for her work, discovers a series of tiny artifacts in its ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries. The reader is ushered into an exquisitely detailed and atmospheric past, tracing the book’s journey from its salvation back to its creation.
The Briar Club, Kate Quinn (430 pps. 4.6 * on AMZ)
Amazon blurb:
New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.
Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?
Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.
The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles (394 pps)
from Wikipedia:
1969 postmodern historical fiction novel, the plot explores the fraught relationship of gentleman and amateur naturalist Charles Smithson and Sarah Woodruff, the former governess and independent woman with whom he falls in love. The novel builds on Fowles' familiarity with Victorian literature, both following and critiquing many of the conventions of period novels.
The book was the author's third, after The Collector (1963), and The Magus (1965). American Libraries magazine counted the novel among the "Notable Books of 1969"; soon after the initial publication, the novel was also treated extensively by scholars. It remains popular.
In 2005 Time chose the book as one of the 100 best English-language novels since the magazine began publication in 1923. Part of the novel's reputation concerns its postmodern literary qualities, such as metafiction, historiography, metahistory, Marxist criticism, and feminism. Stylistically and thematically, the novel has been described as historiographic metafiction. The contrast between the independent Sarah Woodruff and the more stereotypical male characters often earns the novel attention for its treatment of gender issues.
The novel was adapted into a film, with Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons, and received considerable critical acclaim.
Next Week: Sept. 4 and 5
Background on the Gilded Age and Edith Wharton
Week following: Sept. 11 and 12
Discussion of The House of Mirth