Book of the Day: The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

 

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This one sounds very interesting. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern tells the story of On the Nature of Things by the Roman poet/philosopher Lucretius. The ancient poem, lost for centuries, is discovered on a library shelf and immediately it is clear why it's been "forgotten" for it declares that the universe functions without the aid of gods, that religious fear is damaging to human life, and that matter is made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.

Stephen Greenblatt, who also gave us Will in the World, tells us how the copying and translation of this ancient book fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; how it shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and how it had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare.

Book of the Day: Marina Endicott's The Little Shadows

Marina Endicott is back with The Little Shadows, a novel that tells the story of three sisters who take to the vaudeville stage after the untimely death of their father. Endicott's first novel, Open Arms, was well received when it released in 2001. But she leapt onto the radars of Canadian readers with her second novel, Good to a Fault, which was nominated for the Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book (Canada and Caribbean).

The Little Shadows has hit the ground running with several good reviews and has just been named to the Governor General's Shortlist for Fiction. Marina Endicott reads at our Winnipeg Store on Tuesday Oct 18 at 7:00 pm, in the Atrium.

More Highly Anticipated October Releases

As Head Book Buyer for McNally Robinson Booksellers I get to learn about a lot of books in advance of their release. Here are a couple more October releases I'm looking forward to reading.

Ron MacLean, the long suffering sidekick of Don Cherry, finally takes his moment in the spotlight with Cornered, a book of tales from the hockey world. Always a great storyteller on air, MacLean's book should provide many moments of amusement for those long evenings between Jets games.

I haven't read nearly enough Haruki Murakami, according to the many rabid fans of the Japanese author, and what I have read makes me agree. The author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore is back with his latest, 1Q84, his take on George Orwell's 1984. Get ready for another wild ride with this McNally Robinson favorite.

Book of the Day: The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker, the highly respected professor of psychology at Harvard University, has been on our radar since The Language Instinct back in 1994. Since then we've been just as impressed with How the Mind Works, The Stuff of Thought, and The Blank Slate.

The bestselling cognitive scientist is now back with The Better Angels of Our Nature in which he sets out to combat the prevalent perception that our world is becoming more dangerous and violent. He shows how the world of the past was much, much worse and presents statistics that show how much less murder, warfare, sadistic punishment, slavery, and other horrors we live with now.