I forgot to announce winners last week so this week there's a lot of winners! Congrats to:angelrulez19@ for winning Fingerlings Minisbcarasco@, momlh63@ and hoeyhooper@ for winning Sunny Day DVDsnowyday77@ for winning a Weighting Comforts Blanketastewart0120@ for winning Mighty MagnetsLshumack@ for winning Mystical Slymechevybelair1@ for winning Apollo & Wynn Hair Bowsdanaleedavis@ for winning a Rock Art Setluvlife4ever24@ for winning a Thermal Hunter BlasterBe sure to check out all of my current giveaways for more chances to win great prizes!
'A feast for anyone interested in the secrets of excellence.' Andre Agassi, winner of eight Grand Slam titles and bestselling author of Open For fans of Charles Duhig, Malcolm Gladwell and Nate Silver, a brilliant and buoyant investigation into the existence (or not) of hot streaks. For decades, psychologists and economists have studied the science of streaks to determine whether the 'hot hand' exists. Is there such a thing as being in the zone? Or it simply a case of seeing patterns in randomness? Genius scholars and Nobel Prize winners have dedicated years to answering this question. A substantial number of the decisions we make each day are rooted in two opposing beliefs: that if something happened before, it will happen again - or if it happened before, it probably won't happen again. The Hot Hand is an incredibly entertaining and provocative investigation into the seductive idea that streaks not only exist but can be created. Every day we look for patterns in coincidence, and coincidence in patterns. Is there a hidden logic that defies our basic understanding of probability? If we recognize someone has a hot hand, can we adjust to take advantage? If we mistakenly assume they have the hot hand, what are the costs? What happens when we're wrong - and what happens when maybe we were right all along? To answer these questions, Ben Cohen embarks on a kaleidoscopic investigation that ranges from the magical night that forever changed NBA's superstar Stephen Curry's life to a billionaire investor who made a fortune betting against streaks; the mystery of a missing World War II hero to the authentication of a lost Van Gogh painting; how Shakespeare's success was abetted by a flea to how Spotify had to make its shuffle feature less random to feel more random. The Hot Hand takes us to the jungles of the Amazon, a sugar-beet farm in the northern United States, and strip mall arcades to show us how recognition of patterns can be both fruitful - and disastrous.
A reading list of some of the best novels of the past fifty years – all nominees and winners of the most prestigious prize in literature.
Mogens Pedersen Denmark & Oregon In 1928, Sigrid Undset became the first Norwegian woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature. She is one of only three Norwegian prize winners. She had just completed...
** SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2023 ** CHOSEN AS A BEST BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL, FINANCIAL TIMES AND IRISH TIMES ** 'A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces' - Madeline Miller 'A shining tour de force' - Ali Smith, Guardian Summer Reading 'An intimate study of the ties that bind us' - Stylist _______________ A dazzling new novel of friendship, identity and the unknowability of other people - from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction Sometimes it was as though the forty years of friendship between them was just a lesson in the unknowability of other people… Maryam and Zahra. In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan's dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities. Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party. That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome. Zahra and Maryam. In present-day London, two influential women remain bound together by loyalties, disloyalties, and the memory of that night, which echoes through the present in unexpected ways. Now both have power; and both have very different ideas of how to wield it… Their friendship has always felt unbreakable; can it be undone by one decision? _______________ 'A new Kamila Shamsie novel is always worth celebrating, but Best of Friends is something else: an epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship, the possibility of escape, the way the political world intrudes into the personal, all through the lens of two sharply drawn protagonists' - Observer, Books of the Year 2022
The Dark Within Us brings an inventive, funny and quirky reimagining of a modern version of hell. When homeless schoolgirl, Jenny, meets demon, Luc, they make a dangerous pact. Both have been scarred by the same childhood event - the day Jenny's soul was stolen by Luc's father. Now Luc has promised to return it, but can a demon be trusted? Jenny must find the courage to follow Luc into Hell and save him from the darkness that waits. The stunning debut novel from the Times/Chicken House Children's Competition 2022 Chairman's Choice Prize winner, Jess Popplewell. Draws on the author's own experience of homelessness, making this a powerful authentic story. Dante's Inferno meets Euphoria in this fresh contemporary YA.
About Ravelstein In time for the centennial of his birth, the Nobel Prize winner’s moving final novel A Penguin Classic Deeply insightful, Saul Bellow’s moving last novel is a journey through love and memory, an elegy to friendship, and a poignant meditation on death. Told in memoir form, it follows two university professors, one of whom is succumbing to AIDS, as they share thoughts on philosophy and history, loves and friends, mortality and art. This Penguin Classics edition commemorates the fifteenth anniversary of Viking’s first publication of Ravelstein . Featuring a new introduction by Gary Shteyngart, it rounds out the entirety of Bellow’s major works in Penguin Classics black spine. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
The visit to the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, the capital of Norway, has enriched me as a person. While I was going through different works of so many Nobel peace prize winners, I was astonished.
1. The winner of 2011 Ig Nobel Peace Prize was Arturas Zuokas, the mayor of Vilnius, Lithuania, for demonstrating that the problem of illegally parked luxury cars can be solved by running them over with an armored tank.
About No Exit and Three Other Plays NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • Four seminal plays by one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. An existential portrayal of Hell in Sartre’s best-known play, as well as three other brilliant, thought-provoking works: the reworking of the Electra-Orestes story, the conflict of a young intellectual torn between theory and conflict, and an arresting attack on American racism.
This year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize presents us with themes of mortality, memory, and the broadening bandwidths of identity today. To find out exactly what portraiture means for the world today, we chat with Magda Keaney, the prize’s curator, on the judging process and the magic of portraiture.
Who is Marie Curie? The genius scientist who won two Nobel Prizes, in two separate fields for her discoveries about radioactive elements. Kids can learn more in these fabulous books and short videos!
About Pan The Nobel Prize winner’s lyrical and disturbing portrait of love and the dark recesses of the human psyche A Penguin Classic A lone hunter accompanied only by his faithful dog, Aesop, Thomas Glahn roams Norway’s northernmost wilds. Living out of a rude hut at the edge of a vast forest, Glahn pursues his solitary existence, hunting and fishing, until the strange girl Edvarda comes into his life. Sverre Lyngstad’s superb translation of Hamsun’s 1894 novel restores the power and virtuosity of Hamsun’s original and includes an illuminating introduction and explanatory notes. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,800 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
On many occasions I have blogged about the importance of believing you can win a prize in the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes. I know from our Prize Patrol visits to over a thousand winners that without belief and faith these people would not have entered our contests or – heaven forbid! – have won Big Checks […]
Alice Munro’s Nobel Prize win for literature on Thursday is a long-awaited triumph not only for Canada, but for the short story, a form which causes...
13 Past Nobel Literature Winners You Must Read
About Napoleon The definitive biography of the great soldier-statesman by the acclaimed author of Churchill and The Last King of America —winner of the LA Times Book prize, finalist for the Plutarch prize, winner of the Fondation Napoleon prize and a New York Times bestseller “A thrilling tale of military and political genius… Roberts is an uncommonly gifted writer.” — The Washington Post Austerlitz, Borodino, Waterloo: his battles are among the greatest in history, but Napoleon Bonaparte was far more than a military genius and astute leader of men. Like George Washington and his own hero Julius Caesar, he was one of the greatest soldier-statesmen of all times. Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon is the first one-volume biography to take advantage of the recent publication of Napoleon’s thirty-three thousand letters, which radically transform our understanding of his character and motivation. At last we see him as he was: protean multitasker, decisive, surprisingly willing to forgive his enemies and his errant wife Josephine. Like Churchill, he understood the strategic importance of telling his own story, and his memoirs, dictated from exile on St. Helena, became the single bestselling book of the nineteenth century. An award-winning historian, Roberts traveled to fifty-three of Napoleon’s sixty battle sites, discovered crucial new documents in archives, and even made the long trip by boat to St. Helena. He is as acute in his understanding of politics as he is of military history. Here at last is a biography worthy of its subject: magisterial, insightful, beautifully written, by one of our foremost historians.
For every female scientist whose work has been recognized and celebrated, there are thousands who have been accidentally or purposefully forgotten.
WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2021 A GUARDIAN and THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'This slight book is an extraordinarily powerful exploration of what happens to the souls of men sent to kill and be killed' -- The Times, Historical Fiction Books of the Year 'Extraordinary... full of sadness, rage and beauty' Sarah Waters Alfa and Mademba are two of the many Senegalese soldiers fighting in the Great War. Together they climb dutifully out of their trenches to attack France's German enemies whenever the whistle blows, until Mademba is wounded, and dies in a shell hole with his belly torn open. Without his more-than-brother, Alfa is alone and lost amidst the savagery of the conflict. He devotes himself to the war, to violence and death, but soon begins to frighten even his own comrades in arms. How far will Alfa go to make amends to his dead friend? At Night All Blood is Black is a hypnotic, heartbreaking rendering of a mind hurtling towards madness.
How a deplored “tradesman of death” brought to life the highest accolade of human achievement.
About The Great Believers PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER ALA CARNEGIE MEDAL WINNER THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER Soon to Be a Major Television Event, optioned by Amy Poehler “A page turner . . . An absorbing and emotionally riveting story about what it’s like to live during times of crisis.” —The New York Times Book Review A dazzling novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris In 1985, Yale Tishman, the development director for an art gallery in Chicago, is about to pull off an amazing coup, bringing in an extraordinary collection of 1920s paintings as a gift to the gallery. Yet as his career begins to flourish, the carnage of the AIDS epidemic grows around him. One by one, his friends are dying and after his friend Nico’s funeral, the virus circles closer and closer to Yale himself. Soon the only person he has left is Fiona, Nico’s little sister. Thirty years later, Fiona is in Paris tracking down her estranged daughter who disappeared into a cult. While staying with an old friend, a famous photographer who documented the Chicago crisis, she finds herself finally grappling with the devastating ways AIDS affected her life and her relationship with her daughter. The two intertwining stories take us through the heartbreak of the eighties and the chaos of the modern world, as both Yale and Fiona struggle to find goodness in the midst of disaster. Named a Best Book of 2018 by The New York Times Book Review , The Washington Post , NPR , San Francisco Chronicle , The Boston Globe , Entertainment Weekly , Buzzfeed , The Seattle Times , Bustle , Newsday , AM New York , BookPage , St. Louis Post-Dispatch , Lit Hub , Publishers Weekly , Kirkus Reviews , New York Public Library and Chicago Public Library
Today's guest post is from writer Joe Bunting, who blogs at The Write Practice. We all know there are novels and then there are "literary" novels. When
“In Mr. Wilson ants have found not only their Darwin but also their Homer.” —Economist In Tales from the Ant World, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward O. Wilson takes us on a thrilling myrmecological tour across continents and through time, inviting us into his decades-long scientific obsession with ants. Animating his observations with personal stories, Wilson hones in on twenty-five ant species to explain how these creatures talk, smell, taste, and crucially, how they fight to determine dominance. Richly illustrated throughout with depictions of ant species and photos from Wilson’s own expeditions, Tales from the Ant World is a fascinating personal account from one of our greatest scientists—and a necessary volume for any lover of the natural world. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781324091097 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation Publication Date: 10-05-2021 Pages: 240 Product Dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)About the Author Edward O. Wilson (1929-2021) was the author of more than thirty books, including Anthill, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Conquest of Nature. The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Wilson was a professor emeritus at Harvard University and lived with his wife in Lexington, Massachusetts.Table of Contents Table of Contents Introduction: Ants Rule 9 1 Of Ants and Men: Morality and Triumph 15 2 The Making of a Naturalist 19 3 The Right Species 27 4 Army Ants 35 5 Fire Ants 43 6 How Fire Ants Made Environmental History 49 7 Ants Defeat the Conquistadors 59 8 The Fiercest Ants in the World, and Why 63 9 The Benevolent Matriarchy 73 10 Ants Talk with Smell and Taste 79 11 How We Broke the Pheromone Code 87 12 Speaking Formic 97 13 Ants Are Everywhere (Almost) 101 14 Homeward Bound 113 15 Adventures in Myrmecology 123 16 The Fastest Ants in the World, and the Slowest 129 17 Social Parasites Are Colony Engineers 137 18 The Matabele, Warrior Ants of Africa 143 19 War and Slavery among the Ants 149 20 The Walking Dead 155 21 Tiny Cattle Ranchers of Africa 159 22 Trapjaws versus Springtails 163 23 Searching for the Rare 175 24 An Endangered Species 183 25 Leafcutters, the Ultimate Superorganisms 193 26 Ants That Lived with the Dinosaurs 205 Acknowledgments 211 References 213 Index 217 Show More
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.” “Powerful.... A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times Product DetailsISBN-13: 9780307594174 Media Type: Hardcover Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Publication Date: 04-21-2015 Pages: 192 Product Dimensions: 5.70(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)About the Author TONI MORRISON is the author of eleven novels and three essay collections. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt Sweetness (Continues…) Excerpted from "God Help the Child" by . Copyright © 2015 Toni Morrison. Excerpted by permission of Diversified Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Reading Group Guide Reading Group Guide The questions and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of God Help the Child. 1. Morrison opens God Help the Child with a character insisting, “It’s not my fault. So you can’t blame me.” How does this set up what follows? 2. Multiple themes weave through the novel: childhood trauma, racism, skin color, social class, freedom. What would you say is the primary theme, and why? 3. Kirkus Reviews said of the book, “As in the darkest fairy tales, there will be fire and death.” In what other ways is God Help the Child like a fairy tale? 4. Over the course of an otherwise realistic novel, Bride’s body reverts from a curvy woman to an undeveloped girl. What’s going on there? 5. Several of the primary characters have different names from the ones they received at birth: Bride, Sweetness, Rain. What do these new names tell us about the characters? 6. At different points in the novel, Morrison switches from individual characters’ voices to third-person narration. How does this affect the reader’s understanding of what’s happening? 7. Why is Bride so uninterested in digging below the surface with Booker? 8. Discuss Bride’s friendship with Brooklyn. Over and over, Bride says how much she trusts Brooklyn, and what a good friend she is. What do these assertions tell us about Bride’s character? Does it matter that Brooklyn is white and wears dreadlocks? 9. For as much as Sweetness hated Bride’s skin color, Bride turned it into an asset—as Jeri says on page 36, “Black sells. It’s the hottest commodity in the civilized world.” What changed from the time Bride was born until now? Have things really changed, or changed only on the surface? 10. Bride testified against Sofia to please her mother. On page 42 Sweetness recalls, “After Lula Ann’s performance in that court and on the stand I was so proud of her, we walked the streets hand in hand.” Why did Sweetness care so much about this trial? 11. On page 56, after Bride tells Booker about what she witnessed her landlord doing when she was a child, he says, “Correct what you can; learn from what you can’t. . . No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.” What does he mean by that? 12. The reader’s understanding of Booker is shaped by Bride’s recollection of his saying, “You not the woman I want,” her limited insights about him, and Brooklyn’s descriptions of him as a shady character. But in Part III we learn that he’s quite different from what we’ve imagined. What point is Morrison making here? 13. Bride holds on to Booker’s shaving brush, and Sofia keeps Bride’s earring. Why are these tokens important? 14. When Bride is taken in by the white hippies, she is cut off from the world for weeks. How does this change her? 15. Why does Rain form such a special bond with Bride? 16. How did Adam’s death change Booker? Why did it affect him more than the rest of his family? 17. Discuss Bride’s sojourn with Queen. How does their relationship develop so quickly? 18. Although Queen has had many children, she has no close contact with any of them. What does this tell us about her? Why is she still a sympathetic character? 19. After Bride reads Booker’s writing about her, how does it change her impression of him? 20. What does it symbolize when Booker throws his trumpet into the stream with Queen’s ashes? 21. On page 180, Morrison describes Bride and Booker’s thoughts about the future: “A child. New life. Immune to evil or illness, protected from kidnap, beatings, rape, racism, insult, hurt, self-loathing, abandonment. Error-free. All goodness. Minus wrath. So they believe.” What do those last three words mean? 22. The novel begins and ends with Sweetness. Why do you think this is? 23. Nearly every main character has had a brush with child sexual abuse. What is the cumulative effect? 24. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Morrison said: “There is no such thing as race. . . . Racism is a construct, a social construct. And it has benefits. Money can be made off of it. People who don’t like themselves can feel better because of it. It can describe certain kinds of behavior that are wrong or misleading. So [racism] has a social function. But race can only be defined as a human being.” In the novel, Booker says similar things. Sweetness raised Bride the way she did because of Bride’s dark skin. How does this all tie together? Show More
Brief biographies of women who won the Nobel Prize in Literature from the most recent, to Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win in 1909.
About American Prometheus THE INSPIRATION FOR THE ACADEMY AWARD®-WINNING MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OPPENHEIMER • “A riveting account of one of history’s most essential and paradoxical figures.”—Christopher Nolan #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative. “A masterful account of Oppenheimer’s rise and fall, set in the context of the turbulent decades of America’s own transformation. It is a tour de force.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review “A work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer’s essential nature…. It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging, self-contradictory behavior.” — The New York Times
“Michael Farquhar doesn’t write about history the way, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin does. He writes about history the way Doris Kearns Goodwin’s smart-ass, reprobate kid brother might. I,...
Notes From Black ReadsA novel that tackles the inner lives of multiple generations of Black women, Secret Lives of Church Ladies is a collection of stories that are complex, touching, sad, funny and, at times, steamy all at once. The nine stories are lovingly crafted from an author clearly at the top of her game. *FINALIST for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction* *WINNER of the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award* *WINNER of the 2020 Story Prize* *WINNER of the 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize, Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction* “Beguiling.” —The New Yorker “Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak inside you and take root.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Triumphant.” —Publishers Weekly “Cheeky, insightful, and irresistible.” —Ms. Magazine “This collection marks the emergence of a bona fide literary treasure.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Full of lived-in humanity, warmth, and compassion.” —Pittsburgh Current The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church’s double standards and their own needs and passions. There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher’s wife. At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta’s “same time next year” arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in each other. With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781949199734 Media Type: Paperback(1st Edition) Publisher: West Virginia University Press Publication Date: 09-01-2020 Pages: 192 Product Dimensions: 4.70(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.70(d)About the Author Deesha Philyaw’s writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, McSweeney’s, the Rumpus, Brevity, TueNight, and elsewhere. Originally from Jacksonville, Florida, she currently lives in Pittsburgh with her daughters.Read an Excerpt Read an Excerpt How to Make Love to a Physicist [excerpted] How do you make love to a physicist? You do it on Pi Day—pi is a constant, also irrational—but the groundwork is laid months in advance. First you must meet him in passing at a STEAM conference. As a middle school art teacher, you are there to ensure the A(rts) are truly represented and not lost amid the giants of Science, Technology, Engineering, Math. But as a Black woman, you are there playing Count the Negroes, as you do at every conference. He is number twelve, at a conference of hundreds. On the first day of the conference, you notice him coming down the convention center escalator as you ride up. You try to guess which letter of the acronym he is there to represent. His face and baby dreads give you equal parts “poet” and “high school math teacher.” On the second day of the conference, you see him again at a breakout session, “Arts Integration and Global Citizenry.” He’s chatting with the presenter—a sista, number thirteen—before the session begins. From what you overhear, you glean that they know each other from their undergrad days in Atlanta in the early nineties. The have a lot of people in common at their respective alma maters. They promise to catch up again before the conference is over. You notice she’s wearing a wedding ring, and he is not. As you’re leaving the breakout session, he notices you noticing him. His smile is brilliant; you smile back. He falls in step with you, extends his hand, and introduces himself. He says “Eric Turman,” but you hear “Erick Sermon.” And your eyes widen and then narrow because you think he’s joking, in a weirdly esoteric way. “No, Eric Turman,” he says again, laughing. “Not the guy from EPMD.” “Got it,” you say. “I’m Lyra James. Not to be confused with Rick James.” Eric chuckles. “But often confused with Lyra, home to one of the brightest stars in the night sky.” The compliment takes you by surprise, and you’re probably doing a shitty job of hiding it. “So you’re . . . a science teacher?” He is not a science teacher, nor is he a poet. He’s a physicist and chair of the education programs committee for the American Physics Society. You make small talk about “Arts Integration and Global Citizenry.” He asks what brings you to the conference and you tell him you teach middle school art—sculpting, printmaking, painting, fiber arts, ceramics. He asks if you will tell him more over lunch. And you do. And then the conversation continues over dinner—you learn what the chair of the education programs committee for the American Physics Society does—and then in the bar of the conference hotel, over drinks. And then on a sofa in the lobby. You each share your top five MCs. You debate Scarface vs. Rakim for number one. You notice his thick eyelashes, large hands, and a little scar next to his right eyebrow. When he lifts his newsboy cap a few times to scratch his head, you see the baby dreads are neat and well moisturized. He tells you about his job, the one that pays the bills, where he develops astrophysics and cosmology theories, and conducts research to test those theories. “I aspire to be an astronaut as a side hustle, but NASA won’t return a brotha’s calls.” He shrugs. “What about you?” “Me?” you say. “Oh, I just have the one job.” “And your aspirations?” You take a deep breath and spill your dreams. “You know that school LeBron James started? I want to start one like that. A bunch of them, actually, all over the country. But I’ll start with one, serving entire families. That’s really the key, you know?” He knows. And then before you know it, it’s after midnight, and you’re both still wearing your conference lanyards, and together, you are solving all of public education’s problems, but for want of an end to systemic racism, abolishment of the current system of school funding, and a few billion dollars. Eric has pulled out his phone, made a few calculations, recorded the recommendations you’ve given him—of artists, works of art, books, public school advocacy programs. He is curious and he’s listening. At 2:13 a.m., he says, “Well, you are refreshing.” And you feel anything but, because those French 75s you had at the bar have made you drowsy. And because it’s 2:13. But you want him to keep talking, to keep listening. Maybe invite him to come up? No, too soon. You don’t think he’s a serial killer; that’s not it. It’s that you don’t want him to think you’re that kind of woman. The kind your mother warned you not to be, so you have not been. You are forty-two. Maybe ask him to meet for breakfast in the morning, then? No, too presumptuous. Your eyes must’ve glazed over as you debated yourself, because he says, “I better let you get some rest. I’ve really enjoyed talking to you.” And you both stand and stretch. But then you just stand there, looking at each other, not leaving. “I hope I’m not being too presumptuous,” he begins, “but would you like to meet for breakfast?” * How do you make love to a physicist? On the flight home from the conference, you tally all the things you have in common: · You’re tired of people asking why you’re still single. · You care about children, but don’t want any of your own. · Fall is your favorite season. · You’re not a fan of Tyler Perry, and you’re tired of people insisting you become one. · You both have terrible vision and had to navigate your childhood being teased. (“Your glasses so thick, you can see the future” was a perennial favorite.) · The first Aunt Viv is your favorite. · In the case of Prince vs. Michael Jackson, you got Prince. You took all your meals with him for the rest of the conference and talked for hours and hours but left so many things unsaid. Like how you had a high school sweetheart and a college sweetheart and a grad school sweetheart. How men chose you, and you devoted years to the relationships, but never quite felt at home in your body with them—an understanding your therapist has helped you to articulate. You didn’t tell him how you stayed until those men decided to leave you for women more at home in their bodies, more sure of themselves, prettier. You didn’t tell him that, as corny and clichéd as it sounds, you’re more accustomed to speaking through your art. Paintings and sketches you framed and gave as gifts, or framed and hung in your own house. But these days, you mostly just pour yourself into your students. It’s safer that way. You didn’t tell him how, one by one over the decades, you’d lost all your good girlfriends to marriage and motherhood, your friendships reduced to children’s birthday parties and the rare Girls’ Night Out. You didn’t tell him that aside from the occasional online dating fling, plus some fumbling around with a childhood friend when he’s between women he would actually date, you’re celibate for months at a time. Later your therapist will ask why any of those things needed to be said to a man you just met. You know she has a point, but you have no answer other than that maybe you’re the kind of woman who should come with a warning, a disclaimer. If Eric had withheld even a fraction of the things you withheld, that would be a lot of stuff. By the time your plane touches down, you’ve resolved that you will never know the real him, or if he was even sincere. At baggage claim, you’ll decide that it had just been the excitement of the moment, that he’d get back to his life and forget all about you. And you should try to do the same. So you de
Brief biographies of women who won the Nobel Prize in Literature from the most recent, to Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win in 1909.
PHOTOS: All 16 Nobel-Winning Women Scientists
Brief biographies of women who won the Nobel Prize in Literature from the most recent, to Selma Lagerlöf, the first woman to win in 1909.