Six great female short story writers

Sarah Crown is the editor of guardian.co.uk/books. One of the six female short story writers she recently profiled:

Helen Simpson

Simpson's work exhibits a profound fascination with the modern domestic sphere: how we organise it; how we arrange ourselves within it. Childbirth is considered from every angle (an over-due mother is described as "a bulbous bottle, unreliably stoppered"); the grind and elation of motherhood is anatomised; marital compromises, compensations and indignities are dissected in razor-sharp prose that veers between unbearable poignancy and side-splitting wit, often in the same sentence. The British writer has won several awards for her short fiction; her next collection, In-Flight Entertainment, is due out next year.

Three to read: Dear George and Heavy Weather (both from Dear George), Cafe Society (from Hey Yeah Right Get A Life).

Read about the other writers in Crown's feature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Books that made a difference to Rachel McAdams

The actor Rachel McAdams told O, The Oprah Magazine about a few books that made a difference to her.

One book on her list:

David Boring
by Daniel Clowes

David Boring opened me up to the world of graphic novels. Clowes creates quirky characters who are ordinary and flawed. They get themselves into the most extraordinary and bizarre predicaments. The main character is seeking the perfect woman, and there are many mishaps along the way. I still can't believe how deeply you can fall into these novels, which I had, sadly, dismissed as picture books. The emotion conveyed in the illustrations is so intense—the experience is a whole new way of reading.

Read about the other books on McAdams' list.

Adam Gittlin could see McAdams in an adaptation of his novel The Deal. For her "mix of beauty, intelligence and something that edges close to shyness, something that might be surprising," Andrea MacPherson's might cast McAdams in a movie based on her novel Beyond the Blue. Because McAdams "can cover the sarcastic angle and can also play frazzled when necessary, which is important," Wendy French would consider her in the film version of Full of It.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five most influential sports books of the decade

One title on Sports Illustrated's list of the most influential sports books of the decade:

How Soccer Explains the World (2004)

New Republic editor Franklin Foer uses soccer's many-sided role in various cultures as a metaphor to explain the effects of globalization. Tireless reporting, memorable characters and countless colorful anecdotes make Foer's book a compelling read for soccer junkies and neophytes alike -- even if you disagree with the overreaching thesis.

Read about the other four books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Carol Drinkwater's six best books

Carol Drinkwater starred in BBC1’s All Creatures Great And Small before becoming an author. She lives in the south of France with her film-maker husband Michel. Her books include The Olive Tree: A Personal Journey Through Mediterranean Olive Groves.

She named her six best books for the Daily Express. One title on the list:

SUPER-CANNES
by JG Ballard

I like most of Ballard’s books but this is set in my neck of the woods and is the one I wish I’d written. It’s a very visionary book and his images pierce your skin. His prose is perceptive and searing, too, and one of his greatest talents was the ability to go right to the heart of a person.

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

Super-Cannes also appears on Peter Bradshaw's top 10 list of books "to help you imagine yourself" at the Cannes film festival.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alan Cheuse: books to warm a winter's night

For NPR, Alan Cheuse named a short list of books to warm a winter's night.

One title on the list:

Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son, by Michael Chabon, hardcover, 320 pages, Harper, list price: $25.99

Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon's essays in Manhood for Amateurs — on the realities of coming of age, marriage and fatherhood — were originally published in Details magazine. And it's in the details that the truth of these essays lies, as you'll find out when you read these seemingly offhand pieces in which he employs an insouciant, confessional style.

Whether it's having an affair as a teenager with his mother's best friend, or talking to his kids about drugs, or helping his wife get through the hardest times, or musing on what he calls "the fundamental axioms of masculine self-regard," he often stands naked before the reader. Or at least he makes you believe that he's revealing a lot. Which is a kind of genius in itself and, on the subjects that he chooses here, enormously rewarding. (Read Michael Chabon's essay about meeting his (first) father-in-law.)

Read about the other books on Cheuse's list.

Learn about Michael Chabon's 12 favorite works of adventure fiction.

See the Independent's list of the fifty best winter reads.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about chocolate

One book from the Barnes and Noble Review mini-feature, five books about chocolate:

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
by Roald Dahl

If you've only seen the movie versions, you've yet to taste the real magic in Roald Dahl’s irresistible story. With his legendary amalgam of zany energy and arch wit, the author takes the wide-eyed child in everyone on a hilarious ride through Willy Wonka’s mysterious factory. Charlie Bucket is the hero, but of course the real treats from the reader are the fates delivered to the ill-mannered children who accompany him -- just deserts indeed.

Read about the other books on the list.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory appears on Meghan Cox Gurdon's five best list of "children's books that are especially enthralling when read aloud."

--Marshal Zeringue

Michael Aspel: best books

Michael Aspel has presented British TV shows such as Crackerjack, This Is Your Life, and Antiques Roadshow in a showbiz career that has spanned nearly 50 years.

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

THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE
by Robert Evans

A brilliant Hollywood memoir by the one-time pretty boy turned seven-times married Hollywood producer, which charts his relationship with the actress Ali McGraw and his drug habit among other things in an action-packed life. It was later made into a movie but the book is even better.

Read about the other books on Aspel's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten bite-size books

Tim Key is the author of Instructions, Guidelines, Tuteledge, Suggestions, Other Suggestions, and Examples Etc: An Attempted Book.

For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of bite-size books. One title on the list:

Elephant by Raymond Carver

Just short stories. But the best short stories ever written. Carver's a master of the genre. Carver writes with incredible economy. Nothing much happens. And yet we watch the character's lives change irreparably before our eyes. American, too, so he uses phrases like "he fed it some gas". Nice.

Read about the other books on Key's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best debut novels of the decade

Brian DeLeeuw named a "five best debut novels of the decade" list for the Tin House Blog.

One title to make the grade:

The Horned Man — James Lasdun (W.W. Norton, 2002)

Does it count as a “debut” if you’ve already published three collections of poetry and three more collections of short stories? “First” novel might be more accurate, but in any case, this is a coolly brilliant work of paranoia and psychological shell-games, which also manages to deftly satirize the sexual politics of academia.

Learn about the book that changed James Lasdun's life.

Read about the other books on DeLeeuw's list.

Brian DeLeeuw is an editor at Tin House magazine and a contributor to the website ThisRecording.com. He received his BA from Princeton University and his MFA from The New School. He now lives in New York City, where he was born and raised. In This Way I Was Saved, his debut novel, was published in 2009.

Read an excerpt from In This Way I Was Saved, and learn more about the book and author at Brian DeLeeuw's website.

The Page 69 Test: In This Way I Was Saved.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best child narrators

For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best child narrators in literature.

One book on the list:

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Finn is 13 and a brilliantly imagined mixture of wiliness and innocence. On the run from his drunken father and the stern Widow Douglas ("she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me"), he travels down the Mississippi with escaped slave Jim, encountering various feuding or thieving adults along the way. The story is told in his own colloquial manner.

Read about the other child narrators on the list.

Huckleberry Finn is among Katie Couric's favorite books, and is one of James Gray's six best books. It is one of Stephen King's top ten works of literature. Director Spike Jonze and the Where the Wild Things Are film team tagged Huckleberry Finn on their list of the top 10 rascals in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books that made a difference to Jay-Z

Musician-mogul Jay-Z told O, The Oprah Magazine about a few books that made a difference to him.

One book on his list:

Nigger
by Dick Gregory

I don't know who turned me on to this autobiography, but his sense of humor and the hardships he went through stayed with me—especially the scene where he started running home from school. It led to his joining thetrack team, which led to a scholarship to college. Running opened up a whole world for him.

Read about the other books on Jay-Z's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The Financial Times' books of the year, 2009

The critics at the Financial Times picked their best books of 2009.

One title on the list:

The Match King: Ivar Kreuger and the Financial Scandal of the Century
by Frank Partnoy

Partnoy recreates the Wall Street of the 1920s to tell the story of the Swedish magnate whose death precipitated the “Kreuger crash” of 1932. A powerful reminder that today’s scandals had even more destructive predecessors. And that greed and corruption are a permanent factor in finance. Shortlisted for the 2009 FT/Goldman Sachs business book of the year.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: The Match King.

--Marshal Zeringue

Quentin Blake's six best books

Quentin Blake, the artist and author best known for his illustrations of Roald Dahl’s children’s books, recently collaborated with author David Walliams on The Boy in the Dress, a children’s novel.

For The Week magazine, Blake named his six best books.

One title on the list:

Walter Sickert: The Complete Writings on Art edited by Anna Gruetzner Robins (Oxford, $140).

This is an extraordinarily rich kind of bedside book; it’s almost as though you were ­listening to this intelligent and extremely articulate painter. Sickert is undervalued, no doubt because many of his opinions are “wrong” according to contemp­orary critical orthodoxy, but all the more interesting for that.

Read about the other books on Blake's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Salon.com's best nonfiction books of 2009

Salon.com's Laura Miller named her five best nonfiction books of 2009. One title on the list:

"Tall Man: The Death of Doomadgee" By Chloe Hooper

An utterly riveting combination of true crime, courtroom drama and social exposé, Hooper's exquisitely written book details the 2004 death of an aboriginal man while in the custody of Australian police, and that tragedy's harrowing aftermath. The setting is Palm Island on the Great Barrier Reef, a one-time paradise that for 50 years was Australia's Australia, a "tropical gulag" where uppity Aborigines were sent when they objected to the appalling treatment they received at the hands of the state. With spare, sure strokes, Hooper paints a situation that is anything but clear-cut: The material evidence was damning, but the cop accused was known for his services to the community, and many of the witnesses against him were drunk and susceptible to social pressures. Hooper, a novelist enlisted by the dead man's family and their crusading lawyer, had only the sketchiest knowledge of her nation's treatment of its indigenous people when she began the book; for an American, reading about it is a lot like looking at our own country's troubled racial history through a refracted, yet illuminating lens.

Read about the other books on Miller's list.

See Matilda's roundup of reviews of The Tall Man.

Check out: Salon.com's best fiction books of 2009.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 25 greatest Gen X books of all time

The editors at Details developed a list of the 25 greatest Gen X books of all time.

One work of nonfiction on their list:

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, Philip Gourevitch

The misery suffered by many Africans is one of the unrelenting realities of our times. In this book, Gourevitch adroitly chronicles the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which 800,000 people were killed in just over three months.

Read about the other 24 books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

TIME: top ten fiction books of 2009

Lev Grossman is Time magazine's book critic as well as the author of the new novel, The Magicians.

He named Time's top ten fiction books of 2009. Number One on his list:

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

The year's most powerful novel has a demanding premise: it's the story of Thomas Cromwell, a badass political fixer in 16th century England, a time and a place where modern realpolitik was slouching its way toward us to be born and where "man is wolf to man." The son of a blacksmith, Cromwell served under Henry VIII, who was busily seeking to sever himself from Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, in the hope of producing a male heir. He needed an omnicompetent and thoroughly hard-boiled man to help him do it, and that was Cromwell. Through Cromwell's eyes, Hilary Mantel strips away any scrap of romantic period glamour, laying bare the vain, cynical souls of some of English history's most familiar figures. The tragedy of Cromwell is that he's human enough to understand the cost of what he does, but he's too smart not to do it — yet still he hangs on to his vision of a more enlightened political future for England. Watching the King and Queen take the stand against each other in court, one doesn't know whom to believe. "Hush," Cromwell tells us. "Believe nobody."

Read about the other books on Grossman's list.

Also see Grossman's list of the "six greatest fantasy books of all time."

--Marshal Zeringue

Stick list: 5 books we'll still be talking about in 2020

Sam Anderson of New York magazine picked the books "that we'll still be talking about in ten years."

One novel on the list:

The Road: Cormac McCarthy’s own personal The Old Man and the Sea — a slim late-career fable that popularized a difficult writer (and apocalyptic lit in general).

Read about the other books on the list.

The Road appears on Liz Jensen's top 10 list of environmental disaster stories, the Guardian's list of books to change the climate, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and the Times (of London) list of the 100 best books of the decade.

Fans of The Road include Paulette Jiles, Joshua Clark, David Dobbs, Andrew Pyper, Dan Rather, Jim Lehrer, Michael J. Fox, Mark McGurl, and this guy.

--Marshal Zeringue

Tracy Chevalier's best books

Tracy Chevalier is the best-selling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring and other books.

For The Week magazine, she named her six best books. One title on the list.

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (Vintage, $15).

I read this novel when I was a college student, and it has stayed with me. It’s about the black experience in America, and coming to terms with a past steeped in slavery. It sounds heavy, but Morrison throws magic realism into the mix, as well as striking prose. Twenty-six years later, I still remember some of the descriptions from Song of Solomon—they’re that powerful.

Read about the other books on Chevalier's list.

Song of Solomon is one of Jodie Foster's favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Salon: best fiction books of 2009

Salon.com's Laura Miller named her five best nonfiction books of 2009. One title on the list:

"Chronic City" by Jonathan Lethem

A great New York novel should aim for the universal by way of the parochial. The Manhattanites in Lethem's near-future/alternative-now metropolis experience all the crises and travails of 21st-century life in a slightly more concentrated form. (It takes a novelist of exceptional talent and nerve to make you believe that matters of moment can hang on the outcome of an eBay auction.) A former child star coasting on his fading fame, a brilliant but terminally eccentric rock critic, a sarcastic ghostwriter and an activist turned municipal bureaucrat stumble through a city riddled with unreliable rumors, insufficiently explained disasters, dilettante millionaires, imperious celebrities and other signs and wonders. What they -- what all of us -- yearn for in a world full of engineered appearances and emotions is the truly beautiful and the truly moving. Can they find it, and will they even recognize it when they do? On this you can count: "Chronic City" is the real thing.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best lawyers in fiction

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

One lawyer on the list:

Euan MacIntyre

It is unlikely a wealthy young lawyer and racehorse owner should be a good egg, but in AS Byatt's Possession that's just what he is. Euan's legal knowhow is instrumental in wresting the Ash/LaMotte letters from the nefarious Mortimer Cropper, and he sportingly seduces the hero's girlfriend, allowing him to go off with the heroine, Maud.

Read about all ten lawyers on the list.

Possession also appears on Mullan's lists of ten of the best locks of hair in fiction and ten of the best graveyard scenes in fiction, and on Christina Koning's top six romances critic's chart.

--Marshal Zeringue

Henry Winkler's best books

Henry Winkler, 64, is best known for playing The Fonz in the cult Seventies American sitcom Happy Days.

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

Cold Mountain
by Charles Frazier

Thrillers might be my great love but I was blown away by this moving historical novel about a wounded deserter in the Confederate Army who walks for months in a bid to track down the great love of his life. The film’s good but the book’s even better.

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

Cold Mountain also appears on Tunku Varadarajan's five best list of the most delectable combinations of fiction and food.

--Marshal Zeringue

The Economist: books of the year, 2009

The Economist named its best books of the year.

One title on the list:

The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One. By David Kilcullen.

General David Petraeus’s adviser on counter-insurgency advocates mixing military theory with a deep knowledge of culture and tradition among tribal peoples to try and win the “war on terror”.

Read about the other books on the list.

Learn more about The Accidental Guerrilla.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 science fiction & fantasy books

The editors at Amazon came up with their Best of 2009 top 10 list for Science Fiction & Fantasy.

One book on the list:

The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart
Jesse Bullington

About the book, from the publisher:

Hegel and Manfried Grossbart may not consider themselves bad men - but death still stalks them through the dark woods of medieval Europe.

The year is 1364, and the brothers Grossbart have embarked on a naïve quest for fortune. Descended from a long line of graverobbers, they are determined to follow their family's footsteps to the fabled crypts of Gyptland. To get there, they will have to brave dangerous and unknown lands and keep company with all manner of desperate travelers-merchants, priests, and scoundrels alike. For theirs is a world both familiar and distant; a world of living saints and livelier demons, of monsters and madmen.

The Brothers Grossbart are about to discover that all legends have their truths, and worse fates than death await those who would take the red road of villainy.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 best cookbooks of 2009

T. Susan Chang is a New England-based freelance writer and a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow. She also is the Boston Globe's regular cookbook reviewer, and her articles on cooking, gardening and nutrition appear in a variety of national and regional publications. For NPR, she came up with a ten best list of 2009 cookbooks.

One title on the list:

The Pleasures of Cooking for One, by Judith Jones, hardcover, 288 pages, Knopf, list price: $27.95

Cooking when you're on your own can be a challenge. Who wants to slave over a single serving? And guess who's going to do the dishes? Often we just solve the problem with takeout or pizza. Thank goodness for Judith Jones! Widowed 13 years ago, the redoubtable magazine editor conclusively demonstrates that the joie de manger belongs to everyone, not just breeders, honeymooners and clans.

There are easy recipes, like Linguine with Smoked Salmon Sauce for nights when you come home late to a dark apartment and a howling cat. And there are slower recipes — even "A Small Cassoulet" — for lazy Saturdays when you are the envy of soccer moms everywhere and have all the time in the world to browse at the farmers market. Jones has a sure sense of portioning, and she provides recipes for leftovers. She labels them "Second Round" or even "Third Round" — mashups that can make too much of a good thing, well, still a good thing. Warning: Jones' lovingly photographed collection of single-serving gratin dishes and adorable lidded casseroles will have you nursing a cookware jones even if you're feeding a family of five. Ask me how I know.

Read about the other books on Chang's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Telegraph: best crime books of 2009

At the Telegraph (U.K.), Jake Kerridge pronounces on the best crime books of the year.

One title to make the grade:

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell (Heinemann, £12.99) is a black comedy in which a dying gangster demands that doctor Peter Brown keep him alive or he will reveal Brown’s whereabouts to some very dangerous characters: Brown, it turns out, is a former mafia hitman. This is the second funniest health care-based fiction to come out of the United States this year after the Republican Party’s descriptions of the NHS.

Read about the other 2009 crime books Kerridge likes.

Learn more about the book and Josh Bazell at the Beat the Reaper website.

The Page 69 Test: Beat the Reaper.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books about reporting

Harold Evans is The Week’s editor-at-large and author of The American Century. His autobiography, My Paper Chase, is new in bookstores.

For the Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of books about reporting. One title on the list:

A Bright Shining Lie
by Neil Sheehan
Random House, 1988

This Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece is a sophisticated yet spellbinding mix of history and biography: the story of the Vietnam War seen from the perspective of a military hero. John Paul Vann, who had fought in Korea, arrived in Saigon in 1962 as a U.S. military adviser to the South Vietnamese army. Soon perceiving that the war was being badly prosecuted, he developed ideas for countering guerrilla warfare, including the use of small-unit strikes instead of massive amounts of firepower and personnel. Vann dared to question the received wisdom, though, and suffered as a result—just as pilot Col. Billy Mitchell's career was wrecked during the 1920s in part by his insistent warnings that the Japanese might bomb Pearl Harbor. Neil Sheehan, who had been a correspondent in Vietnam, took 16 years to write his 800 pages, but the narrative moves fast, impelled by a passion for authenticity and truth.

Learn about the other books on Evans' list.

Read about Evans' six favorite­ bio­graphies and memoirs.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best: deathbed scenes in literature

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

One book on the list:

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Everyone, it seems, is waiting for the death of the misanthropic miser Peter Featherstone. In his bedchamber he plots to torment those who hope for some share of his wealth, but, tended by the stalwart Mary Garth, still dies in fear and bitterness. A lesson to us.

Read about the other deathbed scenes on Mullan's list.

Middlemarch also made John Mullan's lists of ten of the best marital rows, ten of the best examples of unrequited love, and ten of the best funerals in literature, as well as Tina Brown's five best list of books on reputation. While it is one of Miss Manners' favorite novels, John Banville and Nick Hornby have not read it.

--Marshal Zeringue

Al Roker's best crime books

Today show weatherman Al Roker's debut novel is The Morning Show Murders, a mystery co-authored by Dick Lochte.

For The Week magazine, he named six of his favorite works of crime fiction. One novel on the list:

Tell No One by Harlan Coben (Dell, $10).

The first chapter of this book grabs you and doesn’t let you go. When a man finds a webcam video that seems to show that his murdered wife is not in fact dead, the reader can’t help but be freaked out. Coben is a master of grabbing the social zeitgeist and ramping it up to a new level of paranoia.

Read about the other five novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 39 Arabic authors under 39

For Beirut39, "39 authors under 39" were chosen by a jury of four well-known and respected Arab writers, academics and journalists: Abdo Wazen, Lebanese poet and cultural editor of the international daily Al-Hayat newspaper; Alawiya Sobh, Lebanese writer; Saif Al Rahbi, Omani poet and editor-in-chief of the cultural magazine Nazwa; and Dr. Gaber Asfour, Egyptian literary critic and Honorary President of the judging panel.

One author on the list:

Abdelkader BENALI (Morocco/Netherlands)

Abdelkader Benali was born in The Netherlands in 1975, of Moroccan origins. Benali published his first novel Bruiloft aan zee ('Wedding by the Sea') in 1996, which received the Geertjan Lubberhuizen Prize. For his second novel, De langverwachte ('The Long-Awaited', 2002), Benali was awarded the Libris Literature Prize. He has since published the novels Laat het morgen mooi weer zijn ('Let Tomorrow Be Fine', 2005) and Feldman en ik ('Feldman and I', 2006). He also writes plays and occasionally works in the field of journalism. In 2005, together with the historian Herman Obdeijn, he published Marokko door Nederlandse ogen 1605-2005 ('Morocco Through Dutch Eyes 1605-2005').

Read about the other writers on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 US crime novelists who "own" their territory

Edgar Award-winning author C. J. Box's novels include the Joe Pickett series. He’s also won the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, and the Barry Award. For the Guardian, he named a top ten list of US crime novelists who own their home turf.

One novelist on his list:

Louisiana / James Lee Burke

Burke incorporates the sights, smells, weather, politics, villains, and multiple histories and tangled racial storylines of south Louisiana into a world of its own that would be otherwise impenetrable. You'll find yourself sweating and smelling swamp water along with flawed hero Dave Robicheaux.

Suggested titles: Purple Cane Road, Tin Roof Blowdown.

Read about all ten novelists on Box's list.

The Page 69 Test: The Tin Roof Blowdown.

--Marshal Zeringue

Natalie Angier's 6 best books

New York Times science writer Natalie Angier won a Pulitzer prize in the category of beat reporting, for a series of 10 feature articles on a wide array of scientific topics. She is the author of Woman: An Intimate Geography and The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science.

She told The Week magazine about her six best books.

One title on the list:

Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary ­Origins of Mutual Understanding by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy.

Hrdy is one of the most original thinkers in evolutionary biology, and this far-ranging exploration of why humans are the empaths among apes will make any reader feel like a genius.

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

--Marshal Zeringue