Andrew Ellson, Personal Finance Editor at the Times (London), named a critic's chart of books on "cash crashes."Collapse by Jared DiamondRead about the other books on Ellson's chart.
Fascinating insight into the demise of former civilisations and the lessons for our future.
Tana French's first novel, In the Woods, won a Mystery Writers of America Edgar award earlier this year, and her second, The Likeness, has just been published.The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia HighsmithRead about all ten titles on French's list.Tom Ripley, broke and living by his wits, is sent to Italy to convince rich boy Dickie Greenleaf to come home. Instead, he kills Dickie and steals his identity. The book positions us with the murderer, not the investigator. We see the whole train of events through Tom Ripley's eyes, and we're seduced into being on his side. Usually the great payoff moment of a mystery book, the one you look forward to, is the moment when the killer is revealed. Highsmith turns that upside down: when Ripley is on the verge of getting caught, you're on the edge of your seat hoping that he'll escape, that that big payoff won't happen.
"Genre is all very well, but it's a cage as much as a support. Who knows how many books a person who won't touch women's fiction or only reads sci fi is missing out on that they'd otherwise love? But for a writer, the effect is more insidious. A work of art needs to be complete on its own terms: it needs to ring with internal rightness, never mind whether it makes sense in terms of genre. A writer who forces a trope in or leaves an idea out because they're worried about genre categories has mutilated their book. TheRead about the other nine titles on the list.best novels are those that are so effective in themselves that they let genre go hang: use what works, leave out what doesn't, and come up with whatever's fresh and vivid that serves the story you're trying to tell."
1. Beloved by Toni Morrison
One of those books that's worth including on almost any list because it's one of the best books in the world, and a book so strong that genre becomes irrelevant. It's a literary classic, but also, technically, a political fable, an historical novel, a ghost story, an allegory and even an anatomy of a murder - but none of that really matters, because Beloved is just Beloved. There's no other book like it; it's unique, individual, perfect. It doesn't contain a ghost because it's a ghost story, for instance: everything is there because it couldn't be any other way. It's the ideal of literature: a highly cultured and informed book, that in the end is still only answerable to itself.
George Pelecanos is the author of many crime novels set in and around Washington, D.C.: A Firing Offense, Nick's Trip, Shoedog, Down By the River Where the Dead Men Go, The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman, The Sweet Forever, Shame the Devil, Right as Rain, Hell to Pay, Soul Circus, Hard Revolution, Drama City, and The Night Gardener."Clockers" by Richard Price.Read more about Pelecanos' most important crime novels.
My generation's "Grapes of Wrath."
Read the interview from which this list is drawn.Five books that I think provide the best and simplest examples of how to structure a novel.
The Long Valley by Steinbeck
The Centaur by Updike
The Red Badge of Courage by Crane
The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway
The Fires of Spring by Michener
Satan from Paradise Lost, by John MiltonRead about all 50 villains.
There's a school of thought that the villain of Paradise Lost is actually God. But Milton wouldn't, at least consciously, have subscribed. Satan is the rebel's rebel, the villain's villain - "Hell within him for within him Hell/ He brings..." Easily clinches the top spot in our evil-dude hit parade.
David Lodge is the author of Changing Places, Nice Work, and other novels, including the newly released Deaf Sentence.KippsRead about all five titles on Lodge's list.
by H.G.Wells
Macmillan, 1905No one knew the gradations of the English class system better than H.G. Wells, whose parents were servants in a great country house and who himself rose from an apprenticeship in a draper's shop to being one of the most famous men in the world. Arthur Kipps is another oppressed draper's apprentice who is released from wage-slavery -- in his case by an unexpected legacy -- but because of his deficiencies of character and education is unable to master the elaborate code of manners that regulated genteel society in Edwardian England. His total bafflement and humiliation as a guest in a luxury London hotel (at dinner, "a fork in his inexperienced hand was an instrument of chase rather than capture") is one of the comic peaks of English fiction.
Prep by Curtis SittenfeldRead about all 25 titles on Ebner's list.
Curtis Sittenfeld's exceptional novel was turned down by 14 out of 15 publishers. They must have felt rather stupid when the book began climbing the New York Times best-seller list and was optioned by a major Hollywood studio. It's the story of scholarship girl, and misfit, Lee Fiora, and her time at an exclusive new England prep school. A fine coming of age tale.
* * *The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger
"Sleep tight, ya morons!" yells Holden Caulfield, as he leaves his prep school, and it's the start of one of the best books you will ever read. If you haven't read it for a while, do so again, as it just gets better with age!
If it's such a classic, you're probably asking, why this book only just squeezes onto the list. It's because, let's be honest, it's not really a boarding school book, is it?
One entry from Nuala Ní Chonchúir's literary top ten list at Pulp Net:My favourite novel that no-one else seems to have heard of:Nuala Ní Chonchúir is the author of two collections of short fiction and two poetry collections.
The Rack, by AE Ellis. A post-war novel about TB. Don’t be put off by that, it’s great: gritty, funny and human.
Angus Clarke, deputy editor of The Register and Letters at the Times (London), named a critic's chart of his favorite religious poets.Jalal al-DinRead about the other poets on Clarke's chart.
Limpid self-observation as the 13th-century Sufi mystic known as Rumi searches for the “eternal orchard which abides in the hearts of the perfect man”.
Merck Manual of Medical InformationRead about all five books on Altschiller's list.
Merck, 2003 (second ed.)
For more than a century, the drug-maker Merck & Co. has published a standard textbook for physicians known as the Merck Manual, but in 1997 the publisher issued its first home edition -- to the delight and edification of many families. Written and edited mostly by physicians and other health-care experts, this expanded and revised second edition includes 25 sections, lucidly written and handsomely illustrated, covering diseases and disorders, symptoms, common medical tests, and many other health topics. "A person whose nose bleeds, hurts, and is swollen after a blunt injury may have a broken nose," reads a typically practical entry. "Applying ice packs every 2 hours for 15 minutes at a time and sleeping with the head elevated help limit pain and swelling; however, medical attention is needed."
Esther Woolfson's book on natural history, Corvus is published by Granta in August, 2008. Her novel Piano Angel is published by Two Ravens Press October 2008.Spring in Washington by Louis J HalleRead about the other nine titles on Woolfson's list.
Halle was an extraordinary man, a naturalist and a member of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department. His books on birds are profound and informative. Spring in Washington, written about the spring of 1945, is an appreciation of the minutiae of life after the end of war, what Halle describes as "snatching the passing moment and examining it for signs ofeternity". Delightfully written, observant and wise, Halle places birds, his main preoccupation, magnificently in their settings.
"This again is fresh earth and fresh sky. Look up when you reach Washington's home at Mount Vernon and, like as not, you will see one or several American eagles soaring against the blue. They do duty for bronze eagles over Washington's tomb."
"Off East Potomac Park, two Bonaparte's gulls were flying away from me, flicking low over the water, showing the white flashes in their wings."
Reading this book makes me wonder what has changed in the natural landscape of Washington, what has been lost over the 60 odd years, what has diminished.
Richard Whitehead, deputy editor, Books, at the London Times, named a "critic's chart" of top sporting confessionals.Full Time by Tony CascarinoLearn about the other five books on Whitehead's chart.
Ireland footballer - now brilliant Times pundit - admits that he wasn't qualified to play for the country he represented 88 times.
The Perils of PeaceRead about all five books on Siegel's list.
by Thomas Fleming
Collins, 2007
The British might have been defeated at Yorktown in 1781, but America's success in the following years was hardly assured. As Thomas Fleming shows in his engaging "The Perils of Peace," the fledgling nation's future was imperiled in the 1780s by the absence of a strong executive. The exhausted and bankrupt U.S. government could have easily collapsed, not least because the series of men who served as "President of the United States in Congress Assembled" -- a nearly powerless leadership position created by the Articles of Confederation -- were unable to pay the country's increasingly mutinous army. Ben Franklin, facing outright hostility from his fellow Americans as he tried to negotiate a loan from France, warned that the British King George III, who saw Yorktown as only a minor setback, "hates us . . . and will be content with nothing short of our extirpation." Fortunately, Fleming explains, the British didn't realize how weak we were.
Five Books That Get Better Every Time You Read Them:Read the interview in which this list appears.
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter
Little Children by Tom Perrotta
Play It as It Lays by Joan Didion
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
Wesley Stace, a celebrated musician and songwriter who performs under the name John Wesley Harding, is the author of two novels, Misfortune and by George (which appeared at the Page 69 Test).Read about all ten books on Stace's list.A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
Children on their way back to England from Jamaica are kidnapped by pirates; this book is eerie, macabre, and unsettling in its depiction of the children's relationship with their kidnappers. Published in 1929, High Wind is Lord of The Flies before its time, or Moonfleet (see below) plus Freud. (It was also made into a film by Alexander MacKendrick, featuring the young Martin Amis in his only film appearance - he dies young.)
Joshua Ferris's first novel, Then We Came to the End, has sold in 20 countries and was shortlisted for the National Book Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award."Sylvester and the Magic Pebble" by William Steig.Read more about Ferris' 5 most important books.
My father read this to me until I was too old, around senior year of college.
What should be my [selection] principle here?A couple of titles to make Pullman's list:
Well, it had to be variety, of course. I also thought I should avoid too many obvious classics. Was there much point in recommending Middlemarch or Hamlet? I thought that people could be trusted to find their way to those without my help. Another constraint was that the books had to be in print, which ruled out any of the 16 novels of the, to my mind, inexplicably forgotten writer Macdonald Harris, an American who died in 1993, and whose The Balloonist, at least, should be available.[read on]
A PERFECT SPYRead about all forty titles.
by John le Carré
A perfect blend of form, subject, sensibility and moral power. Le Carré's best book, and one of the finest English novels of the 20th century.
* * *
THE ANCESTOR'S TALE
by Richard Dawkins
Dawkins at his very best: a beautiful clarity of exposition, and an unslaked sense of wonder at the grandeur, richness and complexity of nature.
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