This Is Your Brain on Music
The power of a playlist can affect productivity and happiness
By Aspen Matis
Columbia University psychiatry professor Galina Mindlin, MD, PhD, studies neuron connections and how such brain links can be strengthened by listening to the right music. Her new book, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life (co-authored by Joseph Cardillo and Don DuRousseau), distills her brain-training findings into playlists for the mood you want to be in. Read more
Of Golightly and Mazursky
By Mark Peikert
Film writer Sam Wasson has made a name for himself with books that shed new light on familiar subjects. After chronicling the films of director Blake Edwards in A Splurch in the Kisser, Wasson narrowed his sights to a single Edwards film: Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The result was last summer’s buzziest book, the New York Times bestselling Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.
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Teaching by the Book
Some local students are learning the story behind the books.
Behind the Book, based on the Upper West Side, is a nonprofit that brings local authors and illustrators to underserved classrooms throughout the five boroughs. The eight-year-old organization’s goal is motivating kids, Pre-K to 12th grade, to read and write.
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The Summer of Cash
By Mark Peikert
Any discussion of Rosanne Cash these days must include some reference to her lively, busy Twitter page, which details everything from the new shoes she bought to the things she worries about at three in the morning. This being Cash, however, her 3 a.m. fears aren’t the usual insomniac’s. Instead of mortality, she wondered on Twitter “What if there’s a sprinkler & it goes off when I’m sleeping & my red hair color gets on the pillow & someone thinks it’s blood.” Cash saves her dark nights of the soul for her music.
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Luxembourg House Saga in 3 Chapters
New book tells the story of 17 Beekman Place’s illustrious life
Echoes of Irving Berlin music floated out of the Luxembourg House and on to the East River as a packed house gathered recently for a signing of the book The Luxembourg House on Beekman Place: Three Portraits in Time.
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Favorite Neighborhood Reads
We asked the experts what their favorite Upper East Side reads were. Here was what they had to say.
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Wolitzer Finds Map for Novels in UES
Meg Wolitzer, Upper East Side mom and New York Times bestselling author, decided to draw inspiration from her experiences in the neighborhood when writing her 2008 novel The Ten-Year Nap. The popular book focuses on a group of young moms facing personal, vocational, and familial conflicts.
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Reading Upper East Side
For the sidebars, please go to:
Favorite Neighborhood Reads
Wolitzer Finds Map for Novels in UES
Why the neighborhood continues to inspire authors, and some of the great reads (old and new) that are set just outside your door
By Beth Mellow
Hundreds of dead butterflies fell onto party attendees at the most highly anticipated fête of the year. At the stroke of midnight, in the ballroom of a grand Fifth Avenue penthouse, Chilean butterflies danced underneath luminous spotlights to the delight of the partiers. However, the light proved too strong for the insects and the electricity blew out, resulting in darkness, pandemonium and a rainfall of butterfly carcasses. Guests sustained broken bones and bruises as they rushed for the exits.
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EAST SIDE AUTHOR TELLS NO LIES
By Lisa Chen
By day, Cathi Stoler works as a successful advertising executive—but by night, she writes mystery novels. A native New Yorker who has lived on the Upper East Side for 37 years, Stoler recently published her first novel, Telling Lies, a mystery set in New York and Italy, and will soon embark on a book tour.
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East Sider’s Silk Road “Song”
Upper East Side author Mingmei Yip is a busy woman. In addition to being a celebrated writer whose third novel, Song of the Silk Road, was recently released, Yip is a master calligrapher and is classically trained on the Qin, a traditional Chinese instrument, which she plays in concert several times a year.
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