Six greatest fantasy books of all time

Lev Grossman is Time magazine's book critic as well as one of its lead technology writers. The New York Times says he's “among this country's smartest and most reliable critics.”

He published his first novel, Warp, in 1997. His second novel, Codex, came out in 2004 and became an international bestseller.

His new novel is The Magicians.

For The Week magazine, Grossman named the "six greatest fantasy books of all time."

One book to make the grade:

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (HarperCollins, $7).

A shoo-in. Whether you’re young or old, Christian or whatever, Lewis’ tale of children crossing from one world to another—and discovering their power there—is pure Turkish Delight: The more you read, the more you want.

Read about the other five books on Grossman's list.

Read an excerpt from The Magicians, and learn more about the book and author at Lev Grossman's website and The Magicians website.

The Page 69 Test: The Magicians by Lev Grossman.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best instances of invisibility in literature

For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best instances of invisibility in literature.

One novel on the list:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

There is, of course, the traditional "invisibility field". But a much cheaper alternative is the SEP field. When somebody, or something, is surrounded by an SEP field, the human brain perceives it as "somebody else's problem", and will therefore be incapable of seeing it.

Read about the other nine entries on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books that evoke time and place

Penelope Lively is the author of many prize-winning novels and short story collections for both adults and children. She has twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; once in 1977 for her first novel, The Road to Lichfield, and again in 1984 for According to Mark. She later won the 1987 Booker Prize for her highly acclaimed novel Moon Tiger. Her novels include Passing On, shortlisted for the 1989 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award, City of the Mind, Cleopatra's Sister and Heat Wave. Her new novel is Family Album.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of books that evoke time and place. One title on her list:

The Boys' Crusade
by Paul Fussell
Modern Library, 2003

In 1944, during the run-up to D-Day, two million young American men were given 17 weeks of basic training and shipped to Europe. Over the course of 11 months, from the Normandy landings to Germany's surrender, 135,000 U.S. infantrymen were killed and half a million wounded. Paul Fussell was among the soldiers who came home. He offers a brief, selective and forceful account of that period in "The Boys' Crusade"— and boys is what they largely were. The jacket of my copy shows the face of what one can only see as a child, swamped by his helmet. The book makes liberal use of eye-witness quotation—one soldier describes finding German corpses, "gray teeth, gray hands, worn boots, no identities ... dead meat, nothing to grieve," and being "stupefied by the death we'd breathed"—an effect that plunges the reader into specific actions and the day-by-day routines of combat. But "The Boys' Crusade" also evokes the outlook of those teenagers—their blithe fidelity to the idea of America as the best and only modern country in the world, and their rapid exposure to the grim realities of an annihilating war.

Read about the other four books on Lively's list.

Learn about the book that changed Penelope Lively's life.

--Marshal Zeringue

Publishers Weekly's 10 best books of 2009

Publishers Weekly named its top ten books of 2009. One title on the list:

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann (Doubleday)

In this classic adventure tale, New Yorker writer Grann—who gets winded climbing the stairs of his New York City walkup—follows in the footsteps of early–20th-century Amazon jungle explorer Percy Fawcett, who disappeared along with his son on a 1925 expedition. Grann expertly and energetically weaves the story of Fawcett's explorations with that of his own.

Learn more about The Lost City of Z.

Read about the other nine titles on Publishers Weekly's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books that teach us about southern Africa

Ian Holding is the author of Unfeeling, his (debut) novel set against the backdrop of a post-independent African country during the notorious farm attacks.

In 2005 at the Guardian, he named a top 10 list of books that teach us something about southern Africa.

One title on the list:

Disgrace by JM Coetzee

No other novelist renders the inner truths of man more palpably than Coetzee, and here the story of a fallen university professor turns into deft allegory, the everyman for an entire nation struggling to comprehend changes to its national identity.

Read about the other books on Holding's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 novels of sexual jealousy

"Tales of innocence and wonderment leave me cold," writes Howard Jacobson at the Guardian. Black obsessiveness is what the novel does best. And jealousy is its natural domain."

One title from his top ten list of novels of sexual jealousy:

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Sexual jealousy is not normally what we think of as Jane Austen's terrain. But her novels are full of jealousy's tragic potential. If it weren't for her intervention, her heroines would be forever losing men to more moneyed or vivacious rivals. In Persuasion she colludes with her heroine to the extent of throwing the other woman off a sea wall. Almost as murderous in its vengefulness as Tolstoy.

Read about the other novels on Jacobson's list.

Persuasion is among Elizabeth Buchan's top 10 books guaranteed to give comfort during the ending of a relationship and appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best concerts in literature.

The Page 99 Test: Persuasion.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on women's suffrage

Sally McMillen is the Mary Reynolds Babcock Professor of History and Department Chair at Davidson College. She specializes in Southern and women's history, with an emphasis on the nineteenth century. Among her publications are Motherhood in the Old South: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infant Rearing, Southern Women: Black and White in the Old South, and To Raise Up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915.

Her latest book is Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement.

For the Wall Street Journal she named a five best list of books on women's suffrage. One title on the list:

In Her Own Right
by Elisabeth Griffith
Oxford, 1984

This absorbing biography does full justice to Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), a pivotal figure in the women's suffrage movement during the 19th century. Elizabeth Griffith details Stanton's long, fascinating life and close collaboration with fellow women's-rights campaigner Susan B. Anthony. "In Her Own Right" examines the attributes as well as the shortcomings of a woman who was uncompromising in her pursuit of radical demands, not just for the right to vote but also for divorce-law reform, marital property rights and equal wages. Toward the end of her life, Stanton produced the two-volume "Woman's Bible," which offered commentaries on the Good Book's negative attitude toward women. (Stanton had long blamed ministers as a major obstacle to women's advancement.) Griffith re-establishes Stanton's vital role among early suffragists—she was, after all, one of the principal organizers in 1848 of the groundbreaking Seneca Falls Convention, a catalyst for much that followed.

Read about the other books on McMillen's list.

See the Page 99 Test: Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women’s Rights Movement by Sally McMillen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Matt Dawson's six best books

Ex-England rugby captain and World Cup winner Matt Dawson named his six best books for the Daily Express.

One title on the list:

MY BOOKY WOOK
by Russell Brand

A fascinating memoir. He stumbled into acting, found he was quite good and thought it was something he wouldn't get told off for doing... ironically. My vocabulary - as my father always told me - is not good enough. Russell's is so intelligent you need a dictionary for his! Achingly funny.

Read about the other five books on Dawson's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best rats in fiction

At the Guardian, John Mullan compiled a list of ten of the best rats in literature.

One novel on the list:

La Peste by Albert Camus

Rats are victims too. One day, in the Algerian port of Oran, Dr Bernard Rieux sees a dead rat. Soon the city's inhabitants begin to notice the increasing number of dead or dying rats, and their fears turn to panic. The authorities organise the collection and burning of the rats, which merely helps spread the disease. It is an allegory, but of what?

Read about all of the rats on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 vampire novels

Kevin Jackson's childhood ambition was to be a vampire (“you’d get to live in a castle – how cool is that!”) but instead he became the last living polymath. His colossal expertise ranges from Seneca to Sugababes, with a special interest in the occult, Ruskin, take-away food, Dante’s Inferno and the moose. He is the author of numerous books on numerous subjects, including Fast: Feasting on the Streets of London (Portobello 2006), and reviews regularly for the Sunday Times. His new book is Bite: A Vampire Handbook.

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of vampire novels.

One title on the list:

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

No one who has seen the justly acclaimed film version of Lindqvist's bleak but unexpectedly humane novel will need much encouragement to seek out the original, where much that is cryptic about the on-screen story becomes clarified. The heart of the narrative remains the same – a story of friendship and love between Oskar – a lonely, sad, bullied boy – and Eli, the girl (or is she?) vampire who comes to be his protector. But the book encompasses other tales too, and makes explicit the fact that Eli's older male companion is in fact a paedophile as well as a killer. Harsh, and uncomfortable, but compelling.

Read about all ten novels on Jackson's list.

Also see Lisa Tuttle's top six vampire books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Harold Evans' six favorite­ bio­graphies and memoirs

Harold Evans is The Week’s editor-at-large and author of The American Century. His autobiography, My Paper Chase, will be released in the coming week.

For The Week, he named his six favorite­ bio­graphies and memoirs.

One title on the list:

Journal of a Disappointed Man by W.N.P. Barbellion (Cornell, $24).

A literary sensation in 1919, this vivid memoir-diary has just been reissued. A witty and observant naturalist, its author learned on the day he was declared unfit for service in World War I’s trenches that he was already fatally ill. His diary assumes a dramatic intensity and becomes an uplifting journey.

Read about the other five books on Evans' list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sandi Toksvig's top 10 unsung heroines

Sandi Toksvig is a Danish-born English comedian, author and presenter on radio and television. Her many books for children include Hitler's Canary, based upon her family's experiences in Nazi-occupied Denmark, and Girls Are Best, a look at the overlooked achievements of women down the ages.

For the Guardian, she named a top ten list of unsung heroines. Her spur to thought:

"When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding up a picture of a bone with 28 incisions carved in it. "This is often considered to be man's first attempt at a calendar" she explained. She paused as we dutifully wrote this down. 'My question to you is this – what man needs to mark 28 days? I would suggest to you that this is woman's first attempt at a calendar.'

"It was a moment that changed my life. In that second I stopped to question almost everything I had been taught about the past. How often had I overlooked women's contributions? How often had I sped past them as I learned of male achievement and men's place in the history books? Then I read Rosalind Miles's book The Women's History of the World (recently republished as Who Cooked the Last Supper?) and I knew I needed to look again. History is full of fabulous females who have been systematically ignored, forgotten or simply written out of the records. They're not all saints, they're not all geniuses, but they do deserve remembering."

One woman on Toksvig's list:

Catherine Littlefield Greene (1755-1814)

As a child growing up in the United States I was taught that a man called Eli Whitney changed the face of the American economy with the invention in 1793 of the cotton gin, a machine that mechanised the cleaning of cotton. In fact it was Catherine's idea but in those days women didn't take out patents.

Read about the other women on Toksvig's list.

--Marshal Zeringue