Top 10 graphic novels

One title from Lev Grossman's top ten graphic novels list at Time magazine:

It's way beyond cliché at this point to call Watchmen the greatest superhero comic ever written-slash-drawn. But it's true. In the world Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created, it's 1985, Nixon is still president, the Cold War is at absolute zero, and the nation's superheroes consist of a bunch of neurotic, washed-up has-beens, mostly without actual superpowers, mostly retired.

As the novel begins one of them, the Comedian, is murdered. What follows is an astoundingly dense, beautiful, sad story that begins as a noir mystery and ends with the destruction, or possibly the redemption, of the entire world as we know it. To tell this story Gibbons and Moore deployed about a dozen fugually interwoven plots and an intricate system of echoing visual motifs. The result is a masterpiece so powerful it caused the entire genre of superhero comics to immediately rethink its most sacred conventions.

Read about all ten titles on the list.

V For Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd appears on Malorie Blackman's list of the top ten of graphic novels for teenagers.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top 20 books of fiction of the '00s

The Millions assembled a panel to determine the best books of fiction of the last ten years. "It’s a bit early, of course, to pass definitive judgment on the literary legacy of the ’00s, or how it stacks up against that of the 1930s, or 1850s," goes the introduction. "Who knows what will be read 50 years from now? But, with the end of the decade just a few months away, it seemed to us [to be] a good time to pause and take stock...."

One book to make the Top 20:

#19: American Genius, A Comedy by Lynne Tillman

Read about all twenty books on the list.

Also see: The Page 69 Test: American Genius, A Comedy.

Lynne Tillman: Writers Read.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best: green stories in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best green stories in literature.

One novel on his list:

The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper

Cooper's characters are wooden, but his most famous novel made readers all over Europe thrill to the sublime wilderness of America. Endlessly escaping over vividly described mountains and lakes, braving the white water of unbridged torrents, Hawkeye and the Brits whom he helps are the ancestors of today's trekkers.

Read about all ten stories on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best novels that focus on mental disorders

Douwe Draaisma, the author of Disturbances of the Mind, teaches the theory and history of psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of novels that focus on mental disorders. One novel on the list:

Motherless Brooklyn
by Jonathan Lethem
Doubleday, 1999

Now that neurologists and psychiatrists tend to describe diseases rather than the case histories of individual patients, novelists have stepped in to fill the void. Many fictional characters these days suffer from syndromes and disorders, giving voice to the patient's perspective, often convincingly. In "Motherless Brooklyn," Jonathan Lethem introduces us to Lionel Essrog, also known as Freakshow, who is afflicted with a fierce case of Tourette syndrome. The thing is, he's a private eye, a challenging profession even without the twitching, barking and verbal tics that threaten to give him away. Lethem draws you inside a hectic Tourette mind, where the same compulsive urge to restore order also helps the detective to get to the bottom of a murder case.

Read about the other four novels on the list.

Motherless Brooklyn also figures in Phillip Lopate's literary guide to Brooklyn.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best tattoos in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best tattoos in literature.

One novel on his list:

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Ishmael, the narrator, finds himself sharing a bed at the whalers' inn with a Polynesian harpooneer whose face and body are covered with tattoos. These are the work of a "seer of his island" who has "written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth". Unfortunately, it is illegible to everyone, including Queequeg himself.

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

Moby-Dick also appears among Susan Cheever's five best books about obsession, Christopher Buckley's best books, Jane Yolen's five most important books, Chris Dodd's best books, Augusten Burroughs' five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, David Wroblewski's five most important books, Russell Banks' five most important books, and Philip Hoare's top ten books about whales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Jim James' best books

Jim James, the frontman of the Grammy-nominated American rock band My Morning Jacket, recently released a George Harrison tribute album.

And he told The Week magazine about his six best books.

One book to make the grade:

The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey (Harper Perennial, $15).

Monkey wrenchin’. Stickin’ it to the man. For his 1975 comic novel about a band of eco-saboteurs, Abbey invented some of the most memorable characters ever set into motion. High adventure in the great American West. Pure mental cinema. Great escape with a great message to boot.

Read about the other books on James' list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 books about the Cannes film festival

Earlier this year Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian's film critic, came up with a top 10 list of books "to help you imagine yourself" at the Cannes film festival.

One book on the list:

JG Ballard, Super-Cannes (2000)

This has to be Ballard's late masterpiece and is sometimes regarded as a companion piece to his (slightly inferior) novel Cocaine Nights. Ballard proposes a futuristic business park built in the hills above Cannes, a rational technopolis which, far from having "designed out" crime, has secretly designed in rage, anarchy and despair. There are some tart remarks about the festival, and the new Palais building – opened in 1983, in fact – and their faintly sinister aspect, gesturing at the unexamined neurotic dimension of cinema. Ballard's book offered cinephiles and francophiles a new, uncliched way of looking at the rackety side of Cannes, the endlessly rehearsed serious/trashy paradox and the seamy side of the business.

Read about the other books on Bradshaw's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Judith Martin's five favorite novels

Judith Martin is a syndicated columnist and the author of Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Freshly Updated.

In 2005 she named her five favorite novels for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on the list:

"Emma" by Jane Austen (1816).

Before the injunctions "Be yourself" and "Express yourself" inspired so much bad behavior and art, sophisticated novelists were examining the social selves we invent, as indeed we must to face the world. Little Miss Do-Gooder, the unlikely heroine of this novel, exhibits the philanthropist's fatal flaw of acting on theory rather than on observation. Most impressively, that sly Miss Austen manages to engage our sympathies for a Georgian version of Paris Hilton whose motto is Everyone Wants to Be Me. The faults of Elizabeth Bennet of "Pride and Prejudice" and Marianne Dashwood of "Sense and Sensibility" are merely taking laudable traits--self-respect and romantic passion, respectively--to excess. But Emma Woodhouse is a rich, spoiled young busybody who imagines that everyone aspires to her lifestyle and that she is conferring the greatest of favors by bossing others around. So why do we ache to see her happily married to that nice, innocent gentleman?

Read about the other four novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 best books about Poland during World War II

Ruth Franklin, a senior editor at The New Republic, is writing a book about Holocaust literature. For Newsweek, she named a ten best list of books about Poland during World War II.

One title on the list:

No Simple Victory: World War II in Europe, 1939–1945, by Norman Davies

Davies, the author of the two-volume definitive history of Poland, God’s Playground, turns his attention here to the war's Eastern front, which he argues is underplayed by most histories of the war. Seeking to give the Soviets as well as the Nazis their fair share of blame, he argues that the common term "Hitler's war" for the invasion is misleading, letting Stalin—whose war crimes are perhaps still underestimated—off the hook. Davies's Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw is also indispensable.

Read about the other nine books on Franklin's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best books written in prison

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best books written in prison.

One book on his list:

Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes

Cervantes was jailed two or three times, and he claims in his prologue to Don Quixote that his great mock-romance was "begotten in a prison". Confined to a cell, the author's imagination wanders with his crack-brained knight over the dusty roads of Spain.

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

Don Quixote is the second most popular book among prisoners at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay.

Paul Auster always returns to Don Quixote; Claire Messud hasn't read it.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 25 book to film adaptations

Melissa Katsoulis named "twenty-five films that made it from the book shelf to the box office with credibility intact" for the Daily Telegraph.

One title on the list:

WUTHERING HEIGHTS by EMILY BRONTË

Published: 1847

Film adaptation: 1939

Director: WILLIAM WYLER

Brontë’s gothic tale of moors madness gets the William Wyler treatment in this classic movie version starring Merle Oberon as Cathy and Laurence Olivier as Heathcliffe. None of the subsequent adaptations has matched the dark power of the brilliant Wyler’s. Not even the one with Cliff Richard.

Read about the other 24 adaptations on the list.

Wuthering Heights appears on Valerie Martin's list of novels about doomed marriages and Susan Cheever's list of the five best books about obsession.

The Page 99 Test: Wuthering Heights.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about obsession

Susan Cheever's books include five novels and the memoirs Note Found in a Bottle and Home Before Dark. Her work has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and won the Boston Globe Winship Medal. She applied the "page 69 test" to her 2006 book, American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work.

In 2008's Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction, she "explores the shifting boundaries between the feelings of passion and addiction, desire and need, and she raises provocative and important questions about who we love and why."

One of her five best books about obsession:

Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
1847

Obsession is a mischief maker, and its most common disguise is what romantics call true love. Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" is probably the bleakest, most intense novel about obsessive love ever written—Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, thrown into relief by the tale's setting on the desolate Yorkshire moors, have practically become synonymous with tempestuous passion. The two had seemed destined to be together since childhood, but then Catherine, despite her obsession, marries someone else, and Heathcliff's fury is unleashed. The mutual fixation ruins their own lives and the lives of those around them. "If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be," Catherine says, "and if all else remained and he were annihilated the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."

Read about the other four titles on Cheever's list.

Wuthering Heights appears on Valerie Martin's list of novels about doomed marriages.

The Page 99 Test: Wuthering Heights.

Visit Susan Cheever's official website and read the Page 69 Test results for American Bloomsbury.

--Marshal Zeringue

Best books: Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono is a musician and performance-art pioneer. Her new album is Between My Head and the Sky.

For The Week magazine, she named a best books list. One title on the list:

This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J. Levitin (Plume, $16).

This is a fascinating exploration of the relationship between music and the mind. Since our planet essentially moves to music, you might want to get to know a few things about music and its history.

Read about the other five books on Yoko Ono's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Mike Wallace's 5 best books on depression

In 2005 Mike Wallace, correspondent for CBS's 60 Minutes, named a five best list of books on depression for the Wall Street Journal.

One title on the list:

"Against Depression" by Peter D. Kramer (Viking, 2005).

Peter Kramer, the author of "Listening to Prozac," chronicles, with disapproval, the development of attitudes that portray depression as ennobling or "heroic." Melancholy, he notes, has been enshrined in the romantic imagination--witness the two great novels by men about women, "Anna Karenina" and "Madame Bovary," both of which end in the heroine's suicide. Such attitudes, he believes, and the prevalence of depression, have changed our culture, and not for the better. He considers depression an illness that must be fought. Toward that end, he provides breaking news from top research scientists about its causes and cures.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten Agatha Christie mysteries

John Curran lives in Dublin where he works for Dublin City Council. A lifelong Christie fan, for many years he edited the official Agatha Christie Newsletter. He acted as a consultant to the National Trust during the restoration of Greenway House, Dame Agatha’s Devon home. He is working with her grandson, Mathew Prichard, to establish an Agatha Christie Archive.

Curran's book Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks is now available in the UK.

For the Guardian, he selected a top ten list of Agatha Christie mysteries.

One book on his list:

And Then There Were None (1939)

Ten people are invited to an island for the weekend. Although they all harbour a secret, they remain unsuspecting until they begin to die, one by one, until eventually … there are none. Panic ensues when the diminishing group realises that one of their own number is the killer. A perfect combination of thriller and detective story, this much-copied plot is Christie's greatest technical achievement.

Read about the other nine titles on Curran's list.

Visit John Curran's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Roger Moore's six best books

Roger Moore will always be remembered for playing James Bond and as Simon Templar in the long-running 1960s TV series The Saint.

He named his six best books for the Daily Express. One book on his list:

THE KITE RUNNER
by Khaled Hosseini
Bloomsbury, £7.99

A story of fathers and sons, friendship and betrayal, and the casualties of fate. It’s set in Afghanistan during the Seventies and all 12-year-old Amir wants is to win the local kite-fighting tournament, along with his friend Hassan. But one seemingly ordinary afternoon the Russians invade and everything changes. A thought-provoking novel and a deserved bestseller.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best reformations

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best reformations in literature.

One reformed character on the list:

Hester Prynne

The protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter has sinned in the worst way a young woman in a Puritan community can: she has had a child outside wedlock. She is forced to wear a scarlet A to proclaim her sinfulness, but over the next seven years wins the community round by dedicating herself to charitable endeavours.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: Southern fiction

Elizabeth Spencer’s fiction includes the novels The Night Travellers and The Salt Line and the short-story collection The Southern Woman.

For the Wall Street Journal she named her favorite works of Southern fiction.

One book on the list:

On Agate Hill
by Lee Smith
Shannon Ravenel, 2006

Writing through the years, Lee Smith has shown us ­spirited, attractive young women taking their chances in life's strong currents. "On Agate Hill" takes place just after the Civil War, when an orphan named Molly Petree is sent to live with a North Carolina family that is blighted by death and poverty. The ­little girl finds a secret room in their great house on Agate Hill and from there spies down on the yard and listens through the chimney. Then a mysterious benefactor appears, enabling Molly to go out for schooling—followed by work, love, marriage and tragedy in a devastated land struggling to revive. The sturdy characters endure and eventually flourish. Lee Smith sticks close to the actual in her work; she can bring a story to life because it is life, however improbable, unpredictable, ­hilarious or grim. The girl in the secret room, seeing all and hearing all, could serve for the author herself.

Read about all five books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bamber Gascoigne's six best books

Bamber Gascoigne is best known in Britain for being the quizmaster on University Challenge, which he presented for 25 years. More recently he has devoted himself to writing HistoryWorld, an interactive history of the world on the internet at www.historyworld.net.

For the Daily Express he named his six best books. One title on the list:

Tristram Shandy
by Laurence Sterne

An amazing book, seeming like a modern experimental novel but written in the 18th century by an Anglican clergyman. You can dip in and out of it with constant pleasure.

Read about all six books on Gascoigne's list.

Tristram Shandy also appears among the top ten works of literature according to Peter Carey and Thomas C. Schelling's influential books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Maile Meloy's best books

Maile Meloy is the author of the story collection Half in Love, and the novels Liars and Saints, shortlisted for the 2005 Orange Prize, and A Family Daughter. Meloy’s stories have been published in The New Yorker, and she has received The Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2007, Meloy was chosen as one of Granta’s Best American Novelists under 35. Her new book is the story collection, Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

For The Week magazine, she named "six books that have changed her idea of 'what’s possible in fiction.'"

One title on her list:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (Random House, $15).

The nested, multiple narratives in Mitchell’s brilliant novel, each written in a different style—19th-century traveler’s journal, ’70s airport novel, sci-fi debriefing/celebrity interview—made me stop writing for a while, because I was so sure I couldn’t do that.

Read about all six books on Meloy's list.

Related: In praise of David Mitchell.

Visit Maile Meloy's website.

What is Maile Meloy reading?

The Page 69 Test: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

The Page 99 Test: Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It.

--Marshal Zeringue

Oprah's 6 great books for gardeners

Oprah and associates came up with six great books for gardeners.

One title on the list:

Gardening at the Dragon's Gate
By Wendy Johnson

Gardening, with all its trials and errors, is not for the faint-hearted—and neither is meditation, both of which Wendy Johnson practices at the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, north of San Francisco. Gardening at the Dragon's Gate (Bantam) is not only a wonder-filled celebration of nature, human and horticultural ("Every garden is unique, quirky, distinct and disobedient, just like every gardener"), but, with its practical hints and wide-ranging garden lore, a patch of paradise in an imperfect world.—Cathleen Medwick

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten literary landscapes

Margaret Drabble is the author of 17 novels, which have won numerous prizes including the John Llewellyn Rhys and James Tait Black awards. Her most recent works are the novel The Sea Lady, and a memoir, The Pattern in the Carpet.

For the Guardian, she named a top 10 list of literary landscapes--"her favourite places to go walking in the footsteps of great writers."

One landscape on her list:

Goredale Scar

Goredale Scar near Malham in North Yorkshire is a classic beauty spot, and none the less beautiful for that. It is at both sublime and romantic, and was celebrated by the poet Thomas Gray, and by me in my novel The Waterfall.

Read about the other landscapes on Drabble's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 46 essential rock reads

The writers at the LA Times "Jacket Copy" blog came up with forty-six books that will "rock your books off."

One title on the list:

David Hadju -- "Positively Fourth Street"

Read about the other 45 books on the list.

Related: David Hajdu: 5 most important books.

Also see: the ten best rock biographies, the four greatest rock ’n’ roll books, and Mark Hodkinson's critic's chart: rock music in fiction.

[h/t to escapegrace]

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books about working

Matthew Crawford is the author of Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work.

For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of books about working.

One book on his list:

The Mind at Work
by Mike Rose
Viking, 2004

You might consider getting a job waiting tables after reading Mike Rose's "The Mind at Work." Rose ­emphatically does not romanticize the workers he describes, who include electricians, welders and waitresses. Rather, he shows how mentally absorbing work can be for those who cultivate a particular skill, however narrow that skill might seem. A ­restaurant is both structured and chaotic. The busier it gets, the more "on" an experienced waitress tends to become, at once calmed and energized by an awareness of her own skillful ­performance. She moves in a circuit of heightened efficiency that gets smoother with each added demand. She does this while keeping the cook happy and the cranky customer docile, and ­playing you like a fiddle to get a bigger tip. She is a sort of ­entrepreneur. In this deeply humane book, Rose helps us see the human excellence on display all around us, in jobs that often go unnoticed.

Read about all five titles on Crawford's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best saints

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best saints in literature.

One saint on his list:

St Josephine

If you have not heard of this saint, it is because she exists only in Michèle Roberts's novel Impossible Saints. This narrates her life as a rather sexy rebel nun, but her story is far less incredible than those of the real saints whose stories are inserted at intervals.

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

Related: Ten of the best devils in literature

--Marshal Zeringue

David Rabe: best books

David Rabe is the award-winning author of the Tony Award-nominated plays Streamers, Hurlyburly, and Sticks and Bones, which won the award. His novel Dinosaurs on the Roof and his recent plays The Black Monk and The Dog Problem have just been released in paperback.

For The Week magazine he named his best books. One title on the list:

At Day’s Close by A. Roger Ekirch (Norton, $17)

It’s difficult for us to imagine a world without 24/7 access to electric light. Night is not night as it once was. Imagine a permanent blackout. Night after night. Ekirch brings that other midnight world with its dangers, phantoms, and illicit opportunities to detailed, researched life.

Read about the other books on Rabe's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

"Cheers" writer Rob Long's favorite TV books

In 2005 Cheers writer Rob Long named his five favorite TV books for the Wall Street Journal.

One tile on the list:

"Chuck Amuck" by Chuck Jones (Avon, 1989).

The reason that there is always something wonderful to watch on television is that Bugs Bunny cartoons are always running somewhere. He is still a great comic character, the original smart aleck, all ears and legs, bouncing around the screen like an electric charge. Watch a few of his classic cartoons and you'll see where recent funnymen get their comic chutzpah. When Jim Carrey twists his face into a mask of rage, or Will Ferrell bursts into shrieking hysterics, or Vince Vaughn and Bill Murray talk their way into (and out of) scrapes with hilarious cowardly charm, it's really Bugs they're channeling. In "Chuck Amuck," Bugs's creator, the late Chuck Jones, tells the story of his life and his work just the way it should be told: in words, pictures and products from the Acme corporation.

Read about all five books on Long's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Oprah's book club: favorite adaptations

Oprah's Book Club compiled a short list of books they liked that were adapted to movies they liked.

One book on the list:

The Deep End of the Ocean
by Jacquelyn Mitchard

In this 1999 film adaptation of Jacquelyn Mitchard's novel—and a 1996 Oprah's Book Club pick—Michelle Pfeiffer stars as Beth, a mother who struggles with depression after her son is kidnapped as a toddler. Years later, a boy who shows up and asks to mow the lawn turns to be Beth's kidnapped son. Co-starring Treat Williams and Whoopi Goldberg, the movie captures the pain and anguish Beth and her family go through as they struggle to deal with what their son's kidnapping has meant to their lives.

Read about more books on the list.

Related: The Page 69 Test: Jacquelyn Mitchard's Still Summer.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books on Lenin

Helen Rappaport is an historian and Russianist with a specialization in the Victorians and revolutionary Russia. Her books include Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs and No Place for Ladies: The Untold Story of Women in the Crimean War.

Her latest book, Conspirator: Lenin in Exile, which reconstructs Lenin's years in exile, moving from city to city across Europe fomenting revolution, is just out in the UK.

For the Guardian, she named a top ten list of books on Lenin.

One tile on the list:

Lenin: Life and Legacy by Dmitri Volkogonov [also published as Lenin: A New Biography]

The best post-Soviet book by a Russian available in English. Volkogonov is as unequivocally critical of Lenin as he is of Stalin in his companion biography. Contains some interesting revelations from the newly opened Soviet archives to which Volkogonov had exclusive access, particularly about German financial support for the Bolsheviks in 1917, and clearly shows the roots of Stalinism in Lenin's policies.

Read about the other nine books on Rappaport's list.

Visit Helen Rappaport's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

What the Internet means for business: 5 best books

In 2005 Dow Jones executive L. Gordon Crovitz named a five best list of books on what the Internet means for business.

One book on his list:

"Electric Universe" by David Bodanis (Crown, 2005).

While we overestimate the effect of technological change in the short term, we underestimate its effect in the long. Consider electricity. This book recounts the inventing lives of Michael Faraday, Samuel Morse and Alan Turing--and reminds us that copper coils led to a wired world in just a few generations, with great business drama along the way. (At one point a worried Western Union hired Thomas Edison to reverse-engineer Alexander Graham Bell's invention, hoping to steal the patent to the phone.) We now take electricity for granted; business managers should see that the Web is also becoming second nature. We'll no longer say we're "going online" just as we no longer think of ourselves "accessing the electric grid" when we turn on a light.

Read about the other four books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue