Appearance vs. Authenticity

Many employees are encouraged to "just be yourself," only to find their authenticity -- and their career ambitions -- constrained by unwritten office rules about appearance, speech and behavior. Professionals of color, especially, find there is a much narrower band of acceptance, and the constraints bite harder. Because senior leaders are overwhelmingly "pale and male" -- professionals of color hold only 11 percent of executive positions in corporate America -- upcoming professionals of color often feel they have to scrub themselves of the ethnic, religious, racial, socioeconomic and educational identifiers that make them who they really are.



One such long-simmering identifier that recently exploded into the public eye: hair.



When Today co-host Tamron Hall recently appeared with unprocessed hair, her natural-style sparked a firestorm on the blogosphere. Three months earlier, the U.S. Army announced an updated grooming policy that prohibited certain natural-hair styles, such as cornrows, braids, two-strand twists and dreadlocks. Some soldiers and members of the Congressional Black Caucus claimed that the new regulations targeted African-Americans serving in the military.



This is no tempest in a teapot. As Erin C.J. Robertson explained in a recent blog,

"... in America, black hair has been and remains highly political. It has been used as a yardstick, for blacks and whites alike, to measure beauty, respectability and worth."



Although rarely fought in such a public forum, skirmishes over appearance versus authenticity flare up almost daily in the corporate arena, where how you look is a key element in executive presence (EP). As I explain in my new book, Executive Presence: The Missing Link between Merit and Success , performance, hard work and sponsors may get top talent recognized and promoted, but "leadership potential" alone isn't enough to boost even the most qualified men and women into top jobs and prime opportunities. Moving up in an organization depends on looking and acting like a leader, on being perceived as having "executive presence." According to research from the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI), EP constitutes 26 percent of what senior leaders say it takes to get that next promotion.



EP rests on three pillars: gravitas, communications skills and appearance. And while most senior executives (and coworkers) see appearance as unimportant in the long run -- think of Mark Zuckerberg's signature hoody -- the fact is, it is a critical first filter through which gravitas and communication skills are evaluated. That explains why high-performing junior executives often get knocked out of contention for key roles and promotions: Get appearance wrong and you're struck off the list. Conversely, cracking the appearance code opens doors and puts you in play.



But what if conforming to your organization's definition of EP clashes with your sense of self?



CTI research found that 41 percent of professionals of color feel they need to compromise their authenticity in order to conform to EP standards at their company, 37 percent more than their Caucasian counterparts. More than 30 percent of African-American women reported having experienced style-compliance issues.



Such statistics are a call for change. CTI research shows that when people feel they cannot bring their whole selves to work, they feel disengaged and unmotivated. They burn out or leave. No organization -- whether it's a corporation or the U.S. Army -- can afford to lose the contributions of any group of talent, especially over something as trivial as a hairstyle.



As our economy grows ever more globalized, and competition for market share intensifies, companies are under ever-greater pressure to innovate -- both to retain market share and to capture new markets in emerging economies and underserved markets. New CTI research shows that an inherently diverse team -- one that includes members who are female, nonwhite or of non-European origin, or LGBT -- boosts the team's innovative potential by providing critical insights into the unmet needs and wants of overlooked or underserved end users like themselves. In other words, your inherent difference can make you a valuable asset to teams -- and leaders -- who can benefit from the unique perspective that difference confers.



Ultimately, the authenticity conundrum can be solved by enabling others to recognize the value that difference brings. In today's hyper-competitive world, the organization absolutely needs you to bring your whole self to work.



At the same time, there's no doubt that we still have a long way to go. Tell us what you think: If you want to be perceived as leadership material, do you suppress your difference or embrace it? Is assimilation a smart career strategy or a sell-out, a compromise to your authenticity or just a compromise?

The Story That Won't Go Away: The Making of the Atomic Bomb

A wave of new books and shows has washed into the summer of 2014, all built around the theme of the greatest secret of World War II: the making of the atomic bomb. Why do we keep returning to the scientific breakthrough that took us into the atomic age?



Sixty years after the world's first atomic bomb was unleashed, we are in the midst of an explosion not just of books but a musical and a television series, all focused on the making of the world's first weapon of mass destruction. And no wonder. The story has the perfect plot: a struggle between good and evil on a global scale with a cast of heroes -- brilliant young scientists and the women they loved. A race against the villains from without (Hitler) and, after the race was won, within (Joe McCarthy.) Also a spectacularly cinematic setting in the high desert of New Mexico: a secret city built on a mesa surrounded by a mountain wilderness.



The action takes place in the years when World War II was far from won. Six decades later, as that war fades from living memory, we are reminded again, by new books, an Off Broadway musical titled Atomic playing in New York, as well as a new cable television series called Manhattan which debuted on July 27. (The Manhattan Project was the overall name for the effort that produced the first atomic bombs.)



The revival began last year with the non-fiction The Girls of Atomic City about the women who worked at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee site. Next up was An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer's Life , the book I co-authored with Patricia Klaus, the result of 10 years of research centering on the man known as the "father" of the a-bomb, and the women he loved. Then came The Wives of Los Alamos , a novel set at the secret New Mexico site where the bomb was actually built, where the average age of the scientists and their wives was 26.



Coming attractions: another novel titled The Atomic Weight of Love described as "the story of modern feminism through the eyes of a woman in Los Alamos." Also underway: a non-fiction book called The General and the Genius about the excessively cranky General Leslie Groves who was in charge of the project for the Army and, of course, Robert Oppenheimer, the genius at its core. The man who was described by one friend as "brilliantly endowed intellectually" with "good wit and gaiety and high spirits."



And another added: "His mere physical appearance, his voice, and his manners made people fall in love with him -- male, female, almost everybody." Elegant, handsome, wealthy, complex -- Robert Oppenheimer was the perfect central character, the romantic leading man, around which the story of the building of the bomb could be told. And retold by an emerging phalanx of writers who cannot resist the inherent drama of a time, a place and a task that would propel the world into the dangerous new era that haunts us still. Witness North Korea and Iran. We return to the beginning, perhaps, in an attempt to divine the future.







Since the publication of our book last September, Patricia and I have been speaking to groups large and small, in bookstores, libraries, homes. Our first event was co-sponsored by a YMCA near Berkeley, where initial work on the Bomb was done. That's when we learned what a draw Robert Oppenheimer remains. The room was packed, and included a contingent of physicists who had stories to tell, almost always about Robert.



Often they offered private glimpses of the man, passed down by a teacher who knew Robert: about his intellect, his curiosity, his concern for the human condition. A woman in her 90s remembered a story he told at a cocktail party in the 1940s. And so his legend grows.



Patricia is a historian, I am a writer. In the years when we were reading everything we could find about our subjects, our first big decision was critical: We started by assuming we would do a non-fiction book, which meant we would have to do original research, turn up new material. The problem was not Robert Oppenheimer -- there were reams of material about him. But we were approaching him through the women he loved, and initially we had very little to go on.



In the case of Jean Tatlock, whom Robert had hoped to marry, we had only one memorial letter, written by a friend of the family. There was somewhat more about Ruth Tolman, because her husband had been an important physicist, and the CalTech archives had a few of her letters in its Tolman file.



And as for Robert's wife Kitty, the major Oppenheimer bios had more information on her, almost all of it negative, and most of it provided by two women who had good reason to detest her. Their acid testimony seemed to have defined Kitty's legacy. If we couldn't find a lot more on these three women, we would have to call our book a "novel," another word for fiction. Neither of us wanted to do that, so it meant we were going to have to do some prodigious digging. That's when the fun began.



We followed the most elusive leads: Patricia found a small footnote which linked Jean Tatlock to the poet May Sarton, In the Sarton archive in the New York City library, we found a cache of letters from Jean to her best friend in high school, letters that made Robert's first love come to life for us.



Our search led us to Ruth Tolman's nieces in Berkeley, Jean's nephews in New York City, Kitty's great nephew in Germany. And we were able to track down the daughters of Kitty's first husband, (a marriage that had been annulled) and found ourselves with an altogether different account than the one Kitty had offered. We tracked down some surprising sources for gossip, found a ship's log that explained a suicide at sea. Pieces of the puzzle dropped into place; clearly, others are swirling around out there, in the cities of the Manhattan project, revealing the lives of the men and women who were a part of that time and its secret places.



Next month we are heading for the library in the town of Livermore, California, home to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, built after the war by some of the men who had been at Los Alamos with Robert. We feel sure that a few scientists will be there to tell us a story we haven't heard.

Maisie Williams Calls Out 'Snobby' 'Game Of Thrones' Book Readers

A serious reality check is coming.



While talking with TVLine about her new movie, "Heatstroke," Maisie Williams completely called out hardcore "Game of Thrones" book readers. Asked about the omission of Lady Stoneheart from Season 4 of the HBO show, the actress said:

That was a massive deal, but honestly, I really like it. I’m so sick of going on the Internet and seeing all the book readers being snobby, spoiling it for other people, then saying, 'Well, it’s not a spoiler. The books have been out for years.' Like, couldn’t you just stop being mad for a second and let other people enjoy the show?

Ouch. Maisie must be listening to Jon Snow because she definitely just stuck haters with the pointy end.



Williams went on to say that book readers have a right to feel an attachment to the original story, but they don't need to deride the show or its fans because it is different. She also said that insecurities about "not knowing what will happen next" may be the cause of their hostility.



It looks like some people should definitely be careful, or Arya may be adding a few more names to her bedtime list.







[h/t Uproxx]

Best novels and fiction books of 2014

The must-read novels and short story collections released in 2014 so far. Updated weekly





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Hey, Whiny British Authors... You Want Fries (Ahem, Chips) with That?

Whatever happened to that steely British resolve, that famous Churchillian stiff upper lip? When did the English become as whiny as we Americans?



Evidence has arrived in the form of an article in the Guardian, a leading British newspaper, that British authors are earning Dickensian starvation wages, and that such a state of affairs isn't, as a writers organization leader puts it, "fair."



According to a new survey, British authors today earn a mere £11,000, about $18,850, down 29 percent since 2005.



Which is less than they'd make if they went to work at McDonald's, making fries, or chips, as the British call them.



At the same time, the Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society, which surveyed authors to come up with the £11,000 figure, pointed out that creative arts actually contribute more than £71 billion to the British economy.



Worse, the survey says, publishers, bookstores, and agents take more of a cut than in the past, leaving less money for the poor, beleaguered authors.



"Authors need fair remuneration if they are to keep writing," the Guardian quoted Society of Authors chief executive Nicola Solomon.



You gotta be kidding.



Contrary to popular belief, at least in Britain, there's no job title called "author."



Solomon seems to be suggesting that society ought to pay people to write, the same way get paid to practice law or fry cooks get paid to... cook fries.



No.



The attitude of entitlement here irks me.



The authors seem to be saying, "We want to write books. So someone should pay us."



Again, no.



The unfortunate reality for authors today is that fewer people are buying books. The other unfortunate reality, which apparently neither British authors nor British authors' groups want to confront, is that writing is only half of an author's job.



The other is promoting what you write.



Maybe the British are more reticent than we bold American chaps. But you can't expect that someone is going to publish your work and also market it for you.



You could have expected that half a century ago. But not today.



Today, authors must be entrepreneurial.



They must see themselves not just as creators but as their own sales force.



Marketing and selling tools exist as never before: Amazon; print-on-demand publishing; eBooks; social media.



But most authors, apparently across the pond as here in the United States, want other people to do those things for them.



So they can just sit home and create.



It really sounds a lot like Father Mackenzie, the minister celebrated in the Beatles song Eleanor

Rigby, writing sermons that no one will hear.



Even to think of an author's annual income as a "salary" - as the British survey implies - indicates the out-of-date thinking going on here.



There's no such thing as a job called "author."



There is a place in the world, however, for subject matter experts who can turn their wisdom into information that others will pay for.



Those people earn far more than that measly £11,000.



But if that's the earnings of average authors, the next question is this: if average authors are only writing average books, why should they earn even that much?



Who wants to read an average book?



Don't get me wrong. I'm all for writers making all the money they can.



But rather than whinging (the British variant of whining) about how much money publishers are getting, writers should be focused on how they themselves can market what they write.



If they can do that, then they don't need to share anything, not even a farthing or a sixpence or a half crown or any of those other entertaining coin names, with a publisher.



British authors, like American authors, must face the new realities of the marketplace.



Writing is only half of what makes an author an author today.



The other half is selling what you write.



Whether you do the selling via Twitter, Amazon, or door-to-door.



That's the only way they can make more than the guy doing fries, or chips, at Mickey D's.



So Brits, learn from us spunky, entrepreneurial Americans.



Writing stuff and expecting a paycheck? That's so 1973.



Writing stuff and then selling the hell out of it?



Welcome to the brave new world.



Where writers can make a lot more than £11,000, only if they embrace their responsibility not just to write... but to sell.

The best history and war books of 2014

The must-read history books released in 2014 so far. Updated weekly





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Philly Writer George Lippard, a Friend of Edgar Allen Poe

Now that I've finished my book on Legendary Locals of Center City Philadelphia (the publication date is September 8th), I find my mind drifting back to a few of the most important people in the book.



One of them is 19th Century Philadelphia writer George Lippard. Not many people have heard of Lippard, unlike the multitudes who have heard of Edgar Allen Poe, who was a close friend of Lippard's. Lippard was born in Chester County, and received a haphazard education in a Methodist seminary at fifteen years old in upstate New York before deciding that he really didn't want to be a preacher. Lippard discontinued his studies and headed back to Pennsylvania but not, as it turns out, to live with his parents, who were very ill -- his mother had TB and his father was severely crippled -- but with his grandfather and two aunts in Germantown.



The young writer-to-be loved Germantown and the woods around the Wissahickon Creek, so it is likely that much of his time was spent hiking and exploring the area, especially the old Indian trails there. This idyllic interlude was cut short at his father's death in 1837, when Lippard was not given any part of the estate. The empty "last gesture" from his father caused young George to become penniless. Although he would work as a law assistant at various city law firms, the work was sporadic and not enough to support him, so he wound up on the streets of the city, a virtual vagabond, sleeping in the open, in abandoned buildings, under trees or along the banks of the Delaware. His life for a period of time was much like the lives of the aimless drifter types we see standing in front of convenience stores today offering to hold the door for you (for a tip), or the traffic panhandlers who carry cardboard "I am homeless" signs while parading through traffic lanes on Aramingo Avenue.



All of this happened during the horrible Depression of 1837-1844, but the experience provided Lippard with a sense of how poor people are treated by the very rich, and how difficult it is for poor people to "pull themselves up by their own bootstraps" when confronted with the biases and barriers set up by the wealthy ruling class.



Despite these difficulties, Lippard managed to find time to write a novel, Lady Annabel, which his friend Edgar Allen Poe read and didn't think half bad, despite Poe's somewhat condescending attitude towards his writer friend. Since writing novels rarely brings in a lot of cash, Lippard found a newspaper job at the (Philadelphia-based) Spirit of the Times newspaper, where he wrote satirical columns that attacked the rich and other writers. He also did crime reporting, something that appealed to his somewhat lurid imagination, since Philadelphia at the time had passed from her former Colonial glory to a much lower status, often described as a "place for murder and intrigue."



Lippard's writing courted a lot of controversy, although he soon became a best selling novelist, despite the fact that literary critics, those arbitrars of taste (librarians perhaps?) called much of his work "trashy." He also cut a daring personal figure because he resembled the young poet Lord Byron with his thick eyebrows almost connecting above the bridge of his nose, and his long straight hair framing an angular face which many were quick to describe as poetically dreamy and good looking. Lippard, as a columnist for "The Spirit," had plenty to say if only because homelessness had made him aware of the terrible treatment of the down and out in the City of Brotherly Love. This fact set him on a mission: to become a writer "for the masses."



While the so-called master of the macabre, Poe, may have condescended to Lippard as a "lesser version of himself," many readers today who have had a chance to read Lippard's novels and essays come away with the feeling that, "Lippard makes Poe look like Mother Goose." Appreciation for Lippard, in fact, has had a "sleeper" quality to it -- unlike Poe's meteoritic rise immediately after his death (he was especially praised and appreciated in France). To this day, Lippard is often referred to as "Poe's Philadelphia Friend," although many have come to appreciate his unique sensibility.



Lippard, in fact, wrote of the way that Poe was treated during his life in an essay published after his friend's death. "...One day, news came that the poet was dead. All at once the world found out his greatness. Literary hucksters who had lied about him, booksellers who had left him to starve, gentlemen of literature, who had seen him walk the hot streets of Philadelphia without food or shelter -- these all opened their floodgates of eulogy, and slavered with panegyric the man whom living they would have seen die in the next ditch without one effort to save him. This is the joke of the thing," Lippard concludes.



In his travels about the city, Lippard loved to wear colorful, flamboyant capes, under which he always carried a dagger or two. He also carried a cane in the shape of a sword and had a belt or brace of loaded pistols around his waist. Such shenanigans today would get him thrown into the back of a police wagon or sent to the psyche ward at Friends Hospital. But Lippard had no interest in writing for critics or for the upper classes -- or, if there had been a Free Library system when he was writing, in obtaining a speaker's slot in a literary lecture series. Lippard, in fact, had his eye set on the working class masses and put his energy into becoming an early labor union organizer, forming the Brotherhood of the Union in 1849, an organization that sought "the unity of all workers." By October 1850, there would be Brotherhood chapters in nineteen states.



As if the formerly homeless writer didn't have enough to do, he was also a newspaper publisher and editor, publishing the Quaker City weekly for some 15,000 readers, a publication that enhanced his reputation as a radical reformer against the elite.



A true romantic, he married his sweetheart, Rose Newman, 26, on a large rock overlooking Wissahickon Creek. The couple had one child but both Rose and the child died from TB in 1851 right around the time that his sister Harriet and her two children died from the same disease. Suddenly, life's tragedies became too much for the fearless writer. He found it hard to go on. It is said that in his despondent state he became suicidal and came very close to throwing himself off Niagara Falls but was talked out of it by friends.



Lippard's role as a "working class hero" did not preclude a talent for eloquent and powerful public speaking. When I read references to Lippard's talents as a speaker, I can only conclude that he spoke the King's English, meaning that he didn't cut corners or fall into a world of embarrassing grammatical and rhetorical blunders, such as saying youse for you.



He contributed much to the mythology of the city. For one thing, he gave Philadelphia its sobriquet, "The Quaker City," and his short story, "Ring, Grandfather, Ring," (published in 1847) details the doings of the Second Continental Congress at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and ends with a bit of fiction, or how the Signers of the Declaration rang the Liberty Bell atop Independence Hall so hard after the signing that the bell actually cracked.



Lippard's "how the Liberty Bell got its crack" story still fools people, but at the same time it is a testament to the power of Lippard's pen that fiction and myth has been allowed to override historical truth.



Lippard died at 31 years of age in 1854 of TB just like his wife, sister and child before him. His death came well before the start of the Civil War although it is said that his writings on slavery awakened Abraham Lincoln to the plight of slaves. Lippard's Gothic sensational style and his interest in esoteric spirituality give many of his works a prophetic ring. In his book, Monks of Monk Hall: A Romance of Philadelphia Life, Mystery, and Crime, Lippard wrote that it was his intention to write a book that "describes all the phases of a corrupt social system, as manifested in the City of Philadelphia."



Lippard writes: "To the young man or young woman who may read this book when I am dead, I have a word to say: Would to God that the evils recorded in these pages, were not based upon facts. Would to God that the experience of my life had not impressed me so vividly with the colossal vices and the terrible deformities, presented in the social system of this Large City, in the Nineteenth Century..."



These are damning words, enough to make one wonder if his criticism of the city perhaps helped to seal his fate when it came to the cultivation of his legacy by politicians and those same "elite" legacy-makers that he once railed against.



I thought of George Lippard recently when I came across a series of online articles about a July 2013 exhibit entitled Philadelphia Literary Legacy at the Philadelphia International Airport in Terminal A-East. The purpose of the exhibit was the celebration of 200 years of Philadelphia writers, past and present, and to display for one year photographs, book covers and biographies of 50 authors, playwrights and poets from the time of the Declaration of Independence.



Sounds like a great idea to boost the city's legacy, doesn't it?



The writers chosen to be part of the exhibit were picked by a number of librarians in the Philadelphia Free Library system. While the names of widely known historic authors, like Thomas Paine, are predictable shoo-ins, the exhibit's selection process slipped into dicey mode when it came to contemporary writers. Were authors chosen on the number of books they sold? Does a chick lit novelist or politically appointed city poet compare to an I.F. Stone (chosen) or to a Pearl S. Buck (chosen), or even to a George Lippard (chosen, thank God) or to an Agnes Repplier (chosen), once the leading essayist in the United States and often referred to as the Jane Austen of America?



Politics are always involved in selections of this nature, and that's why it gets dicey when city and governmental bodies get into the business of designating who is (and who's not) a literary cultural icon.



Think for a moment of the librarians who recommended what writers to include in the exhibit. Librarians are not writers or literary critics. If anything, they are book processing technicians who tend to skim books for shelving purposes. Yes, you read that correctly, they are book processing technicians. They may be experts on the latest abbreviated reviews (of books), and they may be opinionated as to what books they think are good or bad, but this is as related to authentic literary insight as a fly is related to a Wissahickon hiker.



Just ask George Lippard!

'Into The Woods' Trailer Makes A Wish

Yasssssss. Here's the first trailer for "Into the Woods," Rob Marshall's adaptation of the famed Stephen Sondheim musical. Meryl Streep, Anna Kendrick, Emily Blunt, Chris Pine, James Corden and Johnny Depp all star in what, we wish, will be a better movie musical than "Les Miserables." (Not that anyone would know it's a musical since no one sings in the trailer.) "Into the Woods" is out on Dec. 25.

Just When You Thought Rom-Coms Were Dead, Along Came Harry Potter

If a single year's romantic comedies were used to gauge the genre's welfare, 2014 would fail. There haven't been many to begin with, and the latest to hit theaters -- "And So It Goes" -- is downright disastrous. If this is what romance looks like in the 2010s, we're not interested. But wait! There may be hope. "What If" opens in limited release this weekend, and it's everything "And So It Goes" isn't: well-scripted, charming and fresh. Two of HuffPost's entertainment editors, Matthew Jacobs and Lauren Duca, debate why "And So It Goes" flounders while "What If" thrives, and what that means for the genre as a whole.



JACOBS: The rom-com is dead, says just about everyone receiving oxygen in 2014. Sadly, we now have proof in "And So It Goes," one of the few romantic comedies to hit theaters this year. Upon seeing it, all my fears were confirmed: It checks off so many of the genre's once-flourishing tropes, and yet it is unfunny, uncharming and ill-advised.



Maybe I was mostly bummed that its roster doesn't hold up. The movie stars Diane Keaton, who won an Oscar for the rom-com "Annie Hall" and was nominated just a decade ago for "Something's Gotta Give." It's directed by genre extraordinaire Rob Reiner, who made "The Sure Thing" and "When Harry Met Sally." And it plays like a cheap reboot of "As Good As It Gets," probably because it's written by Mark Andrus, who co-wrote "As Good As It Gets." Even with all those power players, not to mention Michael Douglas, the movie couldn't feel more tired.



And yet, Lauren, we found ourselves contrasting this movie to "What If," which leads me to ask: Does the genre have hope after all? What about "What If" made it sing while "And So It Goes" never actually goes anywhere?







DUCA: Going into "What If," I was convinced it had to do something radically different to even be a death rattle for the genre. Instead, it played into all the tropes. The whole thing functioned as a meditation on whether men and women (named things other than Harry or Sally) could be friends. There were activity dates. Heck, it started with a montage of aerial city shots. If there is a check list of traditional rom-com conceits, "What If" left few boxes empty, and yet there was something about it that made the format feel invigorated and new.



Part of that was the writing. Zoe Kazan's character (Chantry) is described as "banter-y" at one point, and that's how I would describe the majority of the dialogue. It's relentlessly witty, which alleviates the more situational humor that rom-coms often rely on. More so than that, though, I feel like it treated its characters as real people. Most rom-com leading ladies are defined by their prettiness, niceness and clumsiness. Chantry was more than a sum of her quirks.



In Kazan's hands, she played as vulnerable and confused, but also a bit selfish. Daniel Radcliffe (Wallace) also put forth an excellent performance as the earnest but self-pitying guy who'd "helplessly" fallen in love with someone who could only be his friend. There were no one-dimensional participants in this meet-cute. Sure, boy meets girl, but both boy and girl had major flaws that got sorted out across all those aforementioned activity dates.



JACOBS: You frame "What If" brilliantly, in part because your descriptions act as antithesis to everything "And So It Goes" offers. Keaton and Douglas' characters are too obviously written to oppose each other, rendering the meet-cute very un-cute. Keaton plays Lucy, the emotional widow with a huge heart, while Douglas is Oren, the crusty growler who lives next door and doesn't want anything to do with anyone who can't contribute to his professional gain. (Again, the "As Good As It Gets" sprinklings loom large.) Ultimately, I didn't want them to be together. Because they shouldn't be together.



The only reason Oren's Grinch-like heart softens is because Lucy steps up to help him care for his granddaughter after his estranged son, who used to be a heroin junkie, drops her off at his doorstep before serving a convoluted jail sentence unrelated to his former druggie ways. From the start, we're so forced to detest Oren that his slow build to regaining humanity and winning Leah's heart is everything you don't want to see. It works wonders for Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets" because his OCD and other neuroses made him interesting outside the confines of his romance with Helen Hunt. With Oren, the lack of charm is damning, and the granddaughter's presence feels like a flimsy ploy to convince Leah that this curmudgeon is worth a second glance.



You mention the "What If" characters being more than a sum of their quirks, which is the opposite of what exists here -- and, I think, the opposite of what the Kate Hudson/Jennifer Aniston/Sarah Jessica Parker/Katherine Heigl movies of the past decade have accomplished. Instead, the characters are their quirks. Except "quirky" isn't even a word I'd use to describe Reiner's take on the plot, so it doesn't even have that going for it. Instead, its characters are just made of building blocks.







DUCA: That idea of characters as "building blocks" fits perfectly with the way the genre has become tired. I think part of the rom-com's gradual extinction lies in its repetition of this same basic formula. Let's face it, the way two human beings fall in love despite an obstacle (deliberately conflicting personalities, etc.) is not enough to build a compelling story, seeing as that basic arc has already been executed by Kate Hudson/Jennifer Aniston/Sarah Jessica Parker/Katherine Heigl/etc.



"What If" tackles a question that's been asked before -- can men and women be friends? -- except it does so in a way that hones in on the potential immorality of non-platonic friendship. Wallace is doomed to the friend zone because Chantry is in a relationship. That arrangement also delves into the complications of emotional cheating and the pain of wondering about possibilities from the position of an otherwise satisfying relationship. I will say that it wrapped up a bit too neatly (and the conundrum could have been made more accessible if it treated Chantry's boyfriend as less of a caricature), but overall it had something to say.



The implicit campiness of rom-coms is part of what makes them wonderful. They take place in this para-reality where people fall in love after one is hired as expert to fix the other's life, they accidentally sleep with multiple members of the same family or form competing bets that lead them to realize they don't want to lose each other after a pre-determined period of 10 days. We know that 99.7 percent of the time they're going to end up together, except some bizarro, larger-than-life thing has to prevent them from doing so first. They are always, at least in spirit, going to be defined by the tropes that align with that slightly absurd realm where goofy sidekicks and mix tapes are available in droves. "What If" is a great example of how a rom-com can serve up many of those conventions and still manage to be about something beyond meeting and falling in love.



JACOBS: Exactly. After "Annie Hall" and "When Harry Met Sally" ushered the rom-com into the 1990s, everyone from Garry Marshall to the Farrelly brothers capitalized on those tropes while still crafting something fresh. The genre was also a star-maker (Molly Ringwald, Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan). It's not that the '80s' and '90s' rom-coms weren't conventional -- it's just that their schemes and sidekicks hadn't dried up because, ultimately, the genre was still about characters. Then, in the 2000s, thinking we'd grown comfortable with the "boy" and "girl" in so many boy-meets-girl stories, the genre skimped on characterization in favor of schemes and sidekicks more so than ever before (see: "Maid in Manhattan," "Rumor Has It," "Failure to Launch," "Fool's Gold," "27 Dresses," "The Accidental Husband," "Killers," etc.).



Now that we're so accustomed to the 2000s' rom-com prototype, "And So It Goes" is especially telling because it doesn't really have a scheme, per se, yet it doesn't make up for it with the characterization we desperately need. And what little characterization it does have is off-putting. If it exemplifies what rom-coms have become in the 2010s, it means we're fighting a lose-lose battle. But with "What If," maybe there's hope! Please let there be hope.



DUCA: There is hope, Matt! Of course, what we haven't addressed is the waning interest in mid-budget films, or comedies in general, given they're tougher to sequelize or translate into hits that can metastasize overseas. Part of this "death of the rom-com" discussion is talk of the broader trend in Hollywood's reorientation to mega-hits, which leaves the quieter, CGI-lacking films in the dust. Although, there's something exciting about this depressing reality which doesn't rely on all future rom-coms starring Optimus Prime. The big-budget re-focusing leaves room for an indie renaissance of the genre, something that has the potential to be fully geared up precisely when American audiences start longing for films that are simpler (and marketed to them, rather than so obviously gaming foreign markets). With no major studios looming over the process, I suspect there'll be room for that something new that the genre needs right now. At the very least, seeing the chemistry between Radcliffe and Kazan gives us room to ask: "What If" the rom-com isn't dead just yet?

David Sedaris? Who? Oh, you mean the local litter-picker

The US humorist has had a waste vehicle 'Pig Pen Sedaris' named after him in West Sussex. So is he flattered? Continue reading...

How did Boris Vian find time to write L'Ecume des Jours?

As the film adaptation, Mood Indigo, opens this week, John Dugdale looks at the short but busy life of the French polymath Continue reading...

Does a Tweet Make a Difference?

As I moderated #caedchat on June 8, I tipped over the 10K mark for tweets.



What?! 10K?



Ten years ago I never thought to myself that one day I would have sent out over 10,000 tweets. In fact, 10 years ago I wasn't even a part of social media. So here I am today, having created over 10,000 tweets and connected with thousands educators on Twitter and I have to ask myself:



Does a tweet make a difference?








Yes. Yes it does.



Why, you ask?




Becoming active on Twitter has impacted me in two very important ways:



1. I have learned more in the past two years (since I started tweeting) than I have in the past 10 years of teaching. It wasn't WHAT I was tweeting that impacted me the most, it was reading what others were sharing about their classrooms and schools.



2. Flip that. As I began to learn more and more, the direct effect of that was me beginning to share more and more about what I believe in and what was happening in my classroom. It is a two-way street. Being a connected educator does not only impact you, but you begin to impact others.



Perfect example:



The next day after that #caedchat and after reaching that unthinkable number of tweets I really began to ponder my question. Does what I do on Twitter really make a difference? Does anyone really read what I tweet about, follow the links I share, or even care about what I have to say?



As I was thinking over all of this, I received a tweet from Jason Seliskar. He let me know one of his graduate students happened to be participating in #caedchat for the very first time on the same night I hit the 10K tweets. This teacher blogged about how apprehensive they were to participate in the edchat and perfectly described that nervous feeling of hovering over the "tweet" button to jump into an edchat for the first time. But when this teacher finally hit "tweet," I responded to the tweet... unknowingly replying with words that helped that teacher to feel just a little bit more connected.



In some school cultures where teachers plan on their own and have little opportunities to collaborate with others, teaching can feel like a lonely place. But it doesn't have to feel that way. Get yourself connected, start lurking on Twitter, and even better... begin to share what you do in your classroom and at your school. Because a tweet does make a difference!



This was originally posted on AppEducation.com.

Lorde Is Writing A Song For 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay'

Just in from a place where great things happen: Lionsgate has announced that Lorde will write an original song for "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1." In addition to her music, Lorde will "curate" the film's soundtrack.

Grammy-winner @lordemusic to pen an original song & curate #Mockingjay Part 1 Soundtrack! http://t.co/GcpXaGcsrV http://ift.tt/1uKRPJS

— LIONSGATE MOVIES (@lionsgatemovies) July 31, 2014

"Curating the soundtrack for such a hotly-anticipated film was a challenge, but I jumped at the chance," Lorde said in a press release. "The cast and story are an inspiration for all musicians participating and, as someone with cinematic leanings, being privy to a different creative process has been a unique experience. I think the soundtrack is definitely going to surprise people."



Lorde teased the news on her Twitter account on Wednesday night.

something exciting is about to happen

— Lorde (@lordemusic) July 30, 2014

This isn't the first time Lorde has had an attachment to the blockbuster franchise. She covered "Everybody Wants To Rule the World" by Tears for Fears for the "Catching Fire" soundtrack.

Thomas Berger obituary

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What are YA books? And who is reading them?

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Libraries in fiction quiz - test your shelf knowledge

This week is the 50th anniversary of the Public Libraries Act, establishing a statutory obligation to provide this service, as beloved in fiction as it is in real life. In its honour, check out our quiz! Continue reading...

9 Decor Ideas For Your Coffee Table From Real-Life Homes

Coffee tables are one of those pieces of furniture that you find in almost every single home and unfortunately, most of them end up looking the same: covered with old magazines and whatever clutter was carried through the door that day.



The exception? The surfaces you see here. They don't just single-handedly prove that a couple bold books and carefully-chosen accents can go a long way, but they also remind us what a coffee table can (and should) look like as well. Check out the decor ideas that caught our eye in the stellar examples below.



1. A modern tray gives design structure while maintaining organization.





2. Fresh flowers provide a focal point of color and bring new life to the space.





3. Objects on books (on even more books) give dramatic depth to a basic base.





4. A tufted ottoman or pair of stools makes for a cozy coffee table alternative.





5. Metallic or monochromatic accents are the perfect way to fill those awkwardly blank spots.





6. Squares on circles -- or circles on squares -- create an eye-catching contrast.





7. The more you display, the more you add personality.





8. But keeping things minimal makes a strong statement.





9. Just don't forget to leave space for the most important part -- it is a "coffee" table, after all.





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This Cute Shirt Could Make Your Child Smarter

A new campaign from the early childhood initiative Too Small To Fail is using clever T-shirts to encourage parents to teach their young children new words by conversing more with them.



The cute kid-sized shirts list conversation topics that parents can use when chatting with their children. The campaign is designed to address the so-called "word gap" that exists between children from low-income families and those from more affluent families. According to research, affluent children have heard 30 million more words by age 3 than children from low-income families.



"One of the things that families told us is that they know they should be talking, reading and singing," Susan True of the Bay Area Council, an organization that collaborated on the campaign with Too Small To Fail, said in a promotional video for the campaign (above). "We also know that families are so overwhelmed that telling them what they should do is probably not that helpful."



True goes on to say, "So we thought, 'What about every time you put a T-shirt on a child, every time you take a bath, every time you put the child to bed, these are all times that families could take advantage of building their young child's brain."



The organization, which is based in Oakland, California, has even put up billboards that remind parents of ways they can talk to their child while sitting in traffic. Local hospitals and clinics have also agreed to distribute the clothing.



Too Small To Fail was launched last June by Hillary Clinton, in collaboration with the Clinton Foundation and Next Generation, a policy and communications organization.



"Our country's future depends on healthy kids and loving families. They're the building blocks of a strong and prosperous society," Clinton said last year in a video describing the initiative, according to The Associated Press.

Hans Christian Andersen's Heartbreaking Love Letters

A newly discovered Hans Christian Andersen letter reveals the fairy tale writer never got to have his own “happily ever after.”



The emotional letter, believed to be written in 1832 when Andersen was just 27-years-old, indicates the author of tales such as “The Little Mermaid” and “The Princess And The



Pea” never got over his first love.



The letter was sent to Christian Voigt, the brother of Riborg Voigt -- a woman he continued to love despite the fact she married another man. In it, he confessed that a number of his poems were inspired by his unrequited feelings for Riborg. But those feelings may not have been so unrequited.



Denmark’s leading Hans Christian Andersen expert told reporters, “If only he could have known that he was not alone in his infatuation. When Riborg Voigt died, the poems he had written for her were found along with a bouquet and a photograph of Andersen in a hidden compartment in her drawer.”



Andersen acted in a similar way. He carried a letter from Riborg in a purse that he wore around his neck until the day that he died in 1875, at age 70.



Andersen never dreamed that his letter would ever be discovered, in fact he asked Christian Voigt to burn the letter after reading. Clearly, he didn’t. After Riborg’s great-grandson died, Andersen’s letter was found among his belongings.



The letter has been donated to the Hans Christian Andersen Museum, who already has a number of letters between the poet and his lost love.



The poet once wrote, “If you looked down to the bottom of my soul, you would understand fully the source of my longing and – pity me. Even the open, transparent lake has its unknown depths, which no divers know.”



Not your normal fairy tale ending, but it was Andersen who also said “Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”

7 Ways J.K. Rowling Changed Childhood For A Whole Generation

Today, July 31, is J.K. Rowling’s birthday -- a birthday she famously shares with her most beloved character, Harry Potter. Though she’s long since turned her formidable storytelling skills toward the adult fiction world, most recently publishing two mystery novels under the pen name Robert Galbraith, we can’t deny that it’s through her megahit Harry Potter series that Rowling has most infiltrated our lives over the past 17 years.



Harry Potter, as we’ve so often heard, changed reading for an entire generation -- my generation. I was nine when the first book was first published, and 10 when I read it. Now, I wasn’t one of those kids who fell in love with reading because of Harry Potter. By fifth grade, when someone recommended Sorcerer’s Stone to me, I was already the type of girl who hid The Phantom Tollbooth inside my social studies textbook during quiet study time and hid behind Catherine, Called Birdy at recess. But that’s the true magic of Harry Potter -- it took socially awkward bookworms like me and book-averse social butterflies and united us all in a passionate reading experience. Childhood wasn’t the same for us kids; we were the Harry Potter generation.



Here are 7 ways JK Rowling changed childhood for those of us who grew up with Harry Potter:



She made reading a trend. One day everyone was collecting Pogs or Beanie Babies, the next, we were all deciding whether we were more like Harry or Ron, Hermione or Lavendar. For the first time, everyone seemed to have read the same books and had things to say about them. Though reading could be a solitary activity still, it didn’t need to be.



She made Y.A. literature a cultural event on the level of boy bands and "Titanic." Your friends all wanted to go to the Harry Potter midnight release parties with you, argue over the most crushable characters with you, and dress up as your favorites for Halloween.



She made reading something to be anticipated. Speaking of those midnight release parties: How about that anticipation-building? When did it become normal for kids to insist on staying up past their bedtime... to start the next book in their favorite series? By creating such a hot literary commodity with seven painfully spaced installments building toward an agonizingly mysterious conclusion, Rowling imbued reading with excitement and anticipation for kids everywhere.



She created a literary world that felt close enough to touch, but supernatural enough to thrill. In her deft blend of traditional fantasy elements and traditional British boarding school stories, she offers the perfect, intoxicating balance of familiarity and fantasy, comfort and thrill. You didn’t just want to read about Hogwarts; you really, really wanted to be there.



She made us believe magic could happen to us. Harry Potter was a regular kid, and not a particularly happy one, when an owl arrived with his Hogwarts acceptance letter and he found out he wasn’t a regular kid at all. How many of us secretly felt a pang as our 11th birthday passed without that letter? We knew it wasn’t real (probably), but Rowling made it feel so, so real.



She knew that words were the real magic, and she got us to feel that way too. Like some other incredible children’s book authors (Lemony Snicket immediately springs to mind), Rowling thinks words are fun, and it’s infectious. The clever wordplay hidden within her name choices, spell incantations, and general terminology ensures kids are learning some amount of linguistic history, if only by osmosis -- and for some of us, it helped spark a lifelong fascination with language and meaning.



She helped bring books for younger readers into a golden age. Rowling didn't invent young adult fiction or fantasy, nor was Harry Potter the first very successful book series for younger readers. But after the worldwide phenomenon that was Harry Potter, publishers couldn't ignore the potential of that market. Today, Y.A. is experiencing something of a golden age, and it's hard to say whether that would be true without the Harry Potter mania that opened the floodgates.

Siberia: a History of the People by Janet M Hartley, review: 'not the most colourful account'

Tom Payne enjoys rubbing shoulders with fur trappers and shamans in an expansive if colourless history of Siberia

















via Books and Author Interviews http://ift.tt/1pIlqLU

8 Books That Will Transport You To Old Hollywood

I spent one unforgettable afternoon in the home of Gene Kelly when I was thirteen. Ever since, I've loved Old Hollywood ferociously -- the glamour, the scandals, the movie stars, the movies themselves, the beauty and even the brutality of a city built too fast, too big, too grand for its own good. I long for a time machine to take me back to the Hollywood of the 1920s, 30s, or 40s. I want to meet those stars, watch those movies being filmed, press my own hands and feet into wet concrete outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre, feel the burn of the klieg lights on my skin, dance all night at Café Trocadero with Errol Flynn or Cary Grant.



In lieu of building an actual time machine (I was always terrible at science), I've collected some 200 titles on the golden days of this movie mecca, from coffee table books to anthologies of costume design to memoirs of directors/producers/writers, to biographies and autobiographies of stars and also the places they inhabited -- Ciro's, the Cocoanut Grove, Bullocks Wilshire Department Store, Hollywood itself. While I'd love to share all 200, here are eight of the best.

Harlow in Hollywood by Darrell Rooney and Mark A. Vieira

Jean Harlow was the first big-screen sex symbol, the Platinum Blonde, adored by everyone she worked with--from Clark Gable to Louis B. Mayer. Her mother babied her, many say controlled her. Her second husband, director Paul Bern, died mysteriously, and there were rumors that she killed him. Harlow herself died tragically and too soon, but this pictorial biography brings her to life again in gorgeous black and white. Featuring hundreds of rare photographs, including studio portraits and never-before-seen candids, Harlow has never been more platinum or more lovely. The photos themselves would be enough, but as a nice bonus the book also features a compelling biography of the star's charmed yet turbulent life, making it that rare coffee table book you want to look at and read from cover to cover.

My Wicked, Wicked Ways by Errol Flynn

Sexy. Wild. Epic. Tragic. Exciting. This is one of my desert island books because it's such terrific company. The swashbuckler Flynn played onscreen was nothing compared to the swashbuckler he was in real life. With humor and humility, swagger and sensitivity, he recounts his childhood in Tasmania, his soldier-of-fortune years in the South Seas, his stint as a Cuban newspaper correspondent alongside Fidel Castro's rebels, and the days he spent in glimmering, immoral Hollywood -- not to mention the ex-wives, love affairs, and that infamous rape trial of 1943. Flynn spills it all, and spins a few tales in the process, so that you never know whether what he's telling you is true or not. Either way, it's the best autobiography I've ever read, every bit as colorful and charismatic as Flynn himself.

Tinseltown by William J. Mann

Silent film director William Desmond Taylor was murdered in 1922. Powder burns indicated he was shot at close range, but the circumstances surrounding his death -- including who might have pulled the trigger--remain fuzzy. Anyone might have done it: the three young actresses who both used him and loved him, his devoted valet, an overprotective stage mother, a gang of criminals... The crime shook Hollywood, even as Adolph Zukor, Taylor's boss at Paramount Pictures, scrambled to cover it up. The author claims to have solved the crime here, but I, for one, am reading for the Roaring Twenties, and the scandal, ambition, and intrigue of a dangerous and glamorous young city.

MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, once the largest and most glamorous movie studio in the world, is now owned by Sony. The acres of famed backlots, left to decay and ruin in the 1970s, are gone. Spencer Tracy, who read the eulogy at studio chief Louis B. Mayer's funeral in 1957, said, "All the rest is history. The shining epoch of the industry passes with him." The only place now to see the glorious Metro of then is inside the pages of this book. MGM lives on in extraordinary photo after photo of the studio and its stars, as well as in the maps, engaging text -- including a forward by Debbie Reynolds -- and behind-the-scenes stories of some of your favorite motion pictures.

Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing by Lee Server

Ava Gardner was a North Carolina farm girl who was discovered by the movies when her brother-in-law displayed her photo in the window of his photography studio. Outspoken, temperamental, and uninhibited, Ava was never the best actress, but she was definitely one of the most dazzling. It wasn't just her beauty, it was the charismatic personality, the fact that she almost always stayed true to that farm girl self, whether it meant refusing to let MGM hide the cleft in her chin, or answering Howard Hughes' marriage proposal with a sock to the jaw. She was tumultuously married to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw, and -- by all accounts the love of her life -- Frank Sinatra. Author Lee Server, who also penned the wonderful Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don't Care, both informs and entertains as he recounts an epically exciting life.

The Story of Hollywood: An Illustrated History by Gregory Paul Williams

Featuring over 800 images from the author's own collection, this beautiful and comprehensive (to put it mildly) coffee table book traces the history of Hollywood from 1850 to the present. It's both a handy, quick reference and a fascinating in-depth record, depending on how much time you have to spend with it, and unlike most sweeping histories, there's plenty of detail to sink your teeth into. As Leonard Maltin says, "Other books have traced the history of moviemaking in Los Angeles and the cultural history of Hollywood, but this ambitious and handsome new volume is the most thorough examination of the town itself I've ever seen."

I, Fatty by Jerry Stahl

For those who don't know, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was one of the biggest (no pun intended) stars of the 1920s. As Booklist observes, his was a "rags-to-riches-to-rags story." That story gets a fictional retelling here, with Fatty as narrator, although the author sticks to the facts of the comedian's life -- the heroin addiction, the wild parties, and, most famously, the party that led to accusations of rape and murder, which resulted in the most sensational trial of the decade. Arbuckle was most likely innocent, but it ruined him and his career. I, Fatty takes us through the highs and lows of Hollywood and one man's journey there, and is at once poignant and bawdy, harrowing and heartbreaking.

My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin

There's a reason Chaplin has endured -- his genius is as recognized and appreciated now as it was when he was first making films in 1914. The Little Tramp came from hardscrabble roots to become the biggest star in the world. His autobiography was first published in 1964, and it's all in there: his impoverished childhood in Victorian England, his first appearance on a stage (at the age of five), the death of his alcoholic father, the struggles with his mentally ill mother, his early career in music halls, his many loves -- some more controversial than others -- and, of course, his work. Written with the same tough and lovely beauty that haunts his films, My Autobiography is much more than the title promises -- the honest, unapologetic, revealing story of one of the most gifted artists in cinema history.

Jennifer Niven is the author of American Blonde [Plume, $16.00].