Courtney Algeo

Sometimes it feels like morality has become a fluid concept. There are few beacons illuminating for us what exactly is always right to do, and what is explicitly wrong. Perhaps this is partly due to the disappearance of morality tales in this modern world. I, for one, appreciate greatly a few life lessons mixed in with my entertainment. After all, isn’t part of why we read (or choose to experience anything intentionally) to receive a selective set of instructions on how to live—falling in line of course after escapism, pleasure, and gaining general knowledge about the world around us? To help fill that social void, author Patrick M. Garry has put forth into the world his new novel The Price of Guilt (Kenric Books), a “modern morality tale” about the destructive repercussions of self-imposed martyrdom.

As if growing up wasn’t already hard enough, Lucia Greenhouse, author of fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science (Crown Press), grew up encased in a family that didn’t believe in illness. Think about that for a second. The family of Lucia Greenhouse, like many Christian Scientist families, did not believe in illness; rather, they believed that man, made in the perfect image of God, is without error, and that sickness is an illusion—the illusory manifestation of incorrect thinking. Having not known anything about Christian Science before reading Greenhouse’s book—aside from the presence of their reading rooms in just about every city I’ve ever been in—this aspect of the religion came as a complete surprise. To my dismay, I found that what was just shocking for me, was tragic for Lucia Greenhouse.

On Monday night I attended my very first Literary Punch Card eligible event (aside from the initial happy hour where I did, indeed, get “punched”). Craig Thompson, author and illustrator of the very popular graphic novel Blankets, has just published the highly anticipated Habibi, his first work since 2004’s Carnet de Voyage. Although Thompson didn’t give up too many plot details (“I don’t want to give any spoilers in case some of you haven’t read it yet,” was his refrain of the night), I gathered that the book follows two slave children through various, probably terrifying, experiences that are soothed in some cases by storytelling—Thompson cited One Thousand and One Nights as just one influence.

I’m married now, but when I was single and furiously looking for a boyfriend my friends were always explaining to me—imparting upon me the conservative wisdom of their parents—that maybe I just wanted it too much. While many of my friends are now married, or just not looking, many of them are jobless or underemployed and looking for their dream jobs, and now this is advice I want to toss right back to them, especially after a recent conversation I had with Chris Fischbach, the new executive director and publisher at Coffee House Press.