Fifteen notable works on lust

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Kathryn Williams came up with a list of fifteen notable works on lust. One book she tagged:

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

The most disturbing thing isn’t Humbert’s deviant lechery, but that he convinces himself—almost, even, the reader—that his pubescent paramour is as guilty as he is.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Lolita appears on Boris Kachka's six favorite books list, Fiona Maazel's list of the ten worst fathers in books, Jennifer Gilmore's list of the ten worst mothers in books, Steven Amsterdam's list of five top books that have anxiety at their heart, John Banville's five best list of books on early love and infatuation, Kathryn Harrison's list of favorite books with parentless protagonists, Emily Temple's list of ten of the greatest kisses in literature, John Mullan's list of ten of the best lakes in literature, Dan Vyleta's top ten list of books in second languages, Rowan Somerville's top ten list of books of good sex in fiction, Henry Sutton's top ten list of unreliable narrators, Adam Leith Gollner's top ten list of fruit scenes in literature, Laura Hird's literary top ten list, Monica Ali's ten favorite books list, Laura Lippman's 5 most important books list, Mohsin Hamid's 10 favorite books list, and Dani Shapiro's 10 favorite books list. It is Lena Dunham's favorite book.

Nabokov is on Thomas Flynn's list of 16 great writers snubbed by the Nobel Prize and Ben Frederick's list of ten influential authors who came to the US as immigrants.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top maritime novels

Horatio Clare (1973 - ) is a writer, radio producer and journalist. His latest book is Down to the Sea in Ships.

One of his five favorite maritime novels, as shared with the Telegraph:

The second-best thing about writing a book about travels at sea, after circling the globe on giant container ships, is the research. One inspiration was Alistair MacLean’s HMS Ulysses (1955). MacLean survived two Arctic convoys. The product is a gripping, shivering story of endurance in hell.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see: Bella Bathurst's top ten books on the sea.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six memorable marriage proposals in literature

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Jill Boyd tagged six memorable marriage proposals in literature. One entry on the list:

THE COP OUT

Charles’ proposal to Emma (Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert)

Actually, that should say “Charles’ proposal to Emma’s father.” Or, to be more accurate, his non-proposal to her father. Charles stammers as he attempts to ask Monsieur Rouault for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The old man, anticipating what Charles is going to say, tells him that while he is sure “the little one” will be agreeable, he will still go ask her opinion on the matter (gee, what a guy). Monsieur Rouault is not surprised by Charles’ matrimonial overtures, as he previously “perceived that Charles’s cheeks grew red if near his daughter.” (Please note that red cheeks don’t always spell an impending proposal, as one can learn the hard way when awaiting a “will you marry me?” from someone with rosacea.)

Yes, the proposal was a little lackluster, but what does it matter? I’ll admit that I never actually finished Madame Bovary, but I’m sure it all turns out well and Emma and Charles live happily ever after, right?

Read about the other entries on the list.

Madame Bovary is on Julia Sawalha's six best books list, Jennifer Gilmore's list of the ten worst mothers in books, Amy Sohn's list of six favorite books, Sue Townsend's 6 best books list, Helena Frith Powell's list of ten of the best sexy French books, the Christian Science Monitor's list of six novels about grand passions, John Mullan's lists of ten landmark coach rides in literature, ten of the best cathedrals in literature, ten of the best balls in literature, ten of the best bad lawyers in literature, ten of the best lotharios in literature, and ten of the best bad doctors in fiction, Valerie Martin's list of six novels about doomed marriages, and Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers. It tops Peter Carey's list of the top ten works of literature and was second on a top ten works of literature list selected by leading writers from Britain, America and Australia in 2007. It is one of John Bowe's six favorite books on love.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top ten locked-room mysteries

Adrian McKinty's novels include Dead I Well May Be, Fifty Grand, Falling Glass, and the Detective Sean Duffy novels:The Cold Cold Ground, I Hear the Sirens in the Street), and the newly released In the Morning I'll Be Gone. Born and raised in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland, McKinty was called "the best of the new generation of Irish crime novelists" in the Glasgow Herald.

He named his top ten locked-room mysteries for the Guardian, including:

The King Is Dead by Ellery Queen (1951)

King Bendigo, a wealthy munitions magnate, has been threatened by his brother Judah, who announces that he will shoot King at midnight at his private island residence. King locks himself in a hermetically sealed office accompanied only by his wife, Karla. Judah is under Ellery Queen's constant observation. At midnight, Judah lifts an empty gun and pulls the trigger and at the same moment, in the sealed room, King falls back, wounded with a bullet. No gun is found anywhere in the sealed room and the bullet that wounds King came from Judah's gun – which didn't actually fire. Good, huh?

Read about the other entries on the list.

Visit Adrian McKinty's blog.

See McKinty's list of the 10 best lady detectives.

The Page 69 Test: Fifty Grand.

--Marshal Zeringue

The top seven bromances in literature

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Becky Ferreira tagged her top seven bromances in literature, including:

Aramis, Porthos, Athos, and D’Artagnan, of Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers

Who says bromances have to be duos? The swashbuckling shenanigans of these bros show that quartets are double the fun as far as male bonding is concerned. This group of rogue warriors laugh, weep, and party together—when they’re not taking down the most powerful man in the land, that is. It’s no wonder they sum up their deep friendship with the iconic motto, “All for one, and one for all.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Three Musketeers also appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best cardinals in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top contemporary war novels

Adrian Bonenberger is a combat veteran who writes essays on military topics. His new memoir is Afghan Post.

At Publishers Weekly Bonenberger shared his list of ten of the best contemporary war novels, including:

Sand Queen by Helen Benedict

The only compelling fictional account I’ve read of a woman in combat, Benedict’s writing is impressive, passionate, and visceral. I never visited Iraq, and I’m not a woman, but I felt like I understood what it was like to experience the trials of a deployment as a female through her main character’s eyes. Reading this book is the best literary path to understanding the particular challenges of being female in the military during warfare.

Read about the other entries on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Sand Queen.

The Page 69 Test: Sand Queen.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine of the best last lines in literature

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Chrissie Gruebel tagged nine of the best last lines in literature, including:

“I should hope, then, that by the time of my employer’s return, I shall be in a position to pleasantly surprise him.”
—Mr. Stevens, The Remains of the Day

Why it tears us up: Stevens has totally nailed being a butler for his whole entire life—to his emotional detriment, let’s face it—and now, on top of everything else, he’s gotta learn how to banter? He’s been listening to other people talk so he can learn how to joke around?! It’s heartbreaking and he doesn’t even know it! Stevens—just Thelma and Louise it off a damn cliff. No wait, don’t. We love you.

Read about the other lines on the list.

The Remains of the Day is among Lucy Lethbridge's ten top books about servants and Tim Vine's six best books.

Also see Robert McCrum's list of ten of the best closing lines of novels and the American Book Review's list of the 100 best last lines from novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books about amusement parks

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Nicole Pasulka tagged six great amusement parks in books, including:

Mermaids on the Moon, by Elizabeth Stuckey-French

Who doesn’t secretly wish that mermaids were real? Inspired by the mermaid shows at Weeki Wachee Springs, Stuckey-French’s novel takes place in Mermaid City, home of the Mermaid Springs underwater show. When protagonist France’s mother, a former mermaid, goes missing, France attempts to track her down among the “merhags” from her past.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Visit Elizabeth Stuckey-French's website.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Stuckey-French (March 2011).

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven+ of the best Manic Pixie Dream Girls in fiction

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Lauren Passell tagged at least eleven of the best Manic Pixie Dream Girls [Passell explains the term: "In 2005, film critic Nathan Rabin coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl after seeing Kirsten Dunst in Elizabethtown, calling her 'that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.'"] in fiction, including:

Sam (The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky)

Common in many MPDG meet-cutes, it’s love at first sight when protagonist Charlie meets Sam. (Also common in many YA novels: she has hypnotizing green eyes.) We learn (from Charlie) that she’s nice, nonjudgmental, humble enough to hang with Charlie (who’s younger than she is), has life-changing music taste, used to be promiscuous, has a hot studmuffin of a boyfriend, and has dabbled in illegal drugs. So she’s a badass with a soft side. But that’s what Charlie tells us: the description we get of an MPDG from the MPDG’s victim is usually delivered through rose-tinted glasses.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The three best books on the Philippines

At the Guardian, Pushpinder Khaneka named three of the best books on the Philippines. One title on the list:

Dusk by F Sionil José

Dusk is the first novel in José's acclaimed Rosales Saga, five books that follow the fortunes of one family through 100 years of Philippine history.

The story begins during the last days of Spanish rule and ends with the entry of America as the new colonial master. It recounts the lives and hardships of the Samsons as Spanish rough justice drives them off their land and forces them to flee their village.

On their long and arduous journey to find new land to farm, the extended family are harried by other ethnic groups, bandits and the colonial Guardia Civil. They finally settle in what becomes Rosales.

The main character, Eustaquio (Istak) Samson, although a farmer's son, is taken under the wing of a liberal Spanish priest for a time and learns Spanish and Latin. Eventually, his educated status obliges him to play a role in the struggle for independence, transforming him from poor farmer and would-be seminarian into rebel fighter.

José's engaging and sympathetic storytelling puts the reader right alongside the protagonists as they struggle for a better life. The novel vividly captures the oppression and smouldering discontent of Filipinos under colonial rule, showing how the unifying struggle against imperialism forges Philippine identity.

José is one of the most widely read Filipino authors. The Rosales novels, set in his home town, are bestsellers in the Philippines.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five pyromaniacal books

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Alexandra Silverman tagged five books for a pyromaniac's reading list, including:

Firestarter, by Stephen King

With this now classic 1980 release, King begat the term “pyrokinesis,” which—for those poor souls who haven’t come across the term in one fictional universe or another—is the ability to generate and manipulate fire WITH YOUR BRAIN. How cool is that? Very. And very dangerous. King’s young pyrokinetic protagonist, Charlie, may be able to melt bullets midair, but she’s relentlessly pursued by the evil government agency that experimented on her parents. If you haven’t read/seen it, I’ll just say this: don’t mess with a firestarter unless you wanna get burrrrrrrrned (or exploded).

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven great YA titles that take place on the road

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Dahlia Adler tagged seven great YA titles that take place on the road, including:

Just One Day, by Gayle Forman

One of the best parts of traveling is stepping outside the comfort zone of the home you know, and seeing how that colors not only your experiences but your actions and decisions. Not that running off to a foreign country with a strange boy is a universally wise idea, but for Allyson, spontaneously joining Willem on a train to Paris truly is the beginning of the rest of her life. Forman is a master of beautiful writing on the art of self-discovery, and this stands up there with her best.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Writers Read: Gayle Forman (April 2011).

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top crime novels in translation

Ann Cleeves's books have been translated into twenty languages. She's a bestseller in Scandinavia and Germany. Her novels sell widely and to critical acclaim in the United States. Raven Black was shortlisted for the Martin Beck award for best translated crime novel in Sweden in 2007. It has been adapted for radio in Germany - and in the UK where it was a Radio Times pick of the day when it was first broadcast Radio adaptations of Raven Black and White Nights have both been repeated, and a television adaptation of Red Bones will be followed by three more two part adaptations of Cleeves's Shetland novels.

Three series of Vera, the ITV adaptation starring Brenda Blethyn and David Leon, have been broadcast in the UK, and sold worldwide. A fourth series is forthcoming.

Cleeves's latest book is a Vera Stanhope novel, Harbour Street.

One of her ten top crime novels in translation, as shared with Guardian readers:

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre (translated by Frank Wynne)

Alex was a sensation last year and joint winner of the CWA International Dagger. Again set mostly in Paris, the book challenges expectations about aggression, gender and the conventions of crime fiction itself. It features Commandant Verhoeven, short, stubborn, and set to become a hero as popular as Adamsberg. This is a book for people who are looking for pace, and aren't upset by graphic violence. The early scenes are gruelling and seem predictable thriller fare until the story twists so dramatically that it leaves the reader breathless.

Learn about the other entries on the list.

Visit Ann Cleeves's website and online diary.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on winter escapes

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on winter escapes:

Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach
by Colin Cotterill

Crime beat reporter Jimm Juree returns home to discover a murder on Thailand's shore, draws the ire of a corrupt charity, and begins a suspenseful adventure recalling the witty capers of Wooster and Jeeves. Peter Lewis calls Juree "a young woman of brains and journalistic ambition" and adds that "her sass and bravado are all about dignity and honesty, traits as rare and chromatic as the local sapphires and rubies."

Read about the other entries on the list.

Grandad, There's a Head on the Beach is the sequel to Killed at the Whim of a Hat.

The Page 69 Test: Killed at the Whim of a Hat.

My Book, The Movie: Killed at the Whim of a Hat.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top Jack the Ripper–inspired reads

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Kat Rosenfield tagged five top Jack the Ripper–inspired reads, including:

The Whitechapel Conspiracy, by Anne Perry

After writing twenty novels featuring Victorian husband-and-wife crimefighting team Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, it’s amazing that it took Perry so long to set one of their stories against the backdrop of the Ripper murders. In this book, four years have passed since the last of the slayings in Whitechapel—but as the Pitts discover, the reign of terror of Jack the Ripper is far from over.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen of the most depressing books

One title on The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

A novel about slavery is never likely to warm the heart but this tale of a woman who kills her own child rather than have her become a slave – a crime for which she is forever haunted – is chilling. Of all the crimes committed by the slave owners, none is so awful as the iron bit that traps the tongue of Paul D. He recalls “The wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back.” A depressing book but perhaps necessarily so.

Learn about the other books on the list.

Beloved also appears on Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine top works of supernatural alternate history

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Nicole Hill tagged nine awesome works of supernatural alternate history, including:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, by Seth Grahame-Smith

Never judge a book by its subpar movie adaptation. The untold story of our 16th president (and his monolithic badassery) is popcorn-munching, engrossing fun. It inspired in me a desire for an entire U.S. presidents series, or at least a tag-team effort from Grahame-Smith and Doris Kearns Goodwin to recast Team of Rivals.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Sixteen book-to-movie adaptations that Oscar loved

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Joel Cunningham tagged sixteen book-to-movie adaptations that won Academy Awards, including:

The English Patient (1996)

For some reason, Anthony Minghella’s Best Picture winner is regarded as a bit of a joke these days (I blame Elaine from Seinfeld), but I still think it’s about as successful a streamlining of Michael Ondaatje’s glorious novel (one of my all-time favorites) as we were ever likely to see.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The English Patient also made Pico Iyer's top five list of books on crossing cultures, John Mullan's list of ten of the best deserts in literature and Jane Ciabattari's list of five masterpiece stories that worked as films.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about Martin Luther King, Jr.

In 2012 the staff of the Christian Science Monitor came up with ten of the best books about Martin Luther King, Jr., including:

Let The Trumpet Sound, by Stephen B. Oates

Oates' book won both the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award and the Christopher Award for its retelling of important events in King's life. The book also examines the leader's misgivings and worries over the movement and American events, making the historical figure a real person.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see: the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books for young readers that bring African-American history alive.

--Marshal Zeringue

Keith Ellison's six favorite books

Keith Ellison is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He is the first Black Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress and the first African American elected to the House from Minnesota. He is also the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and one of the organizers behind the 1995 Million Man March. Ellison's new book is My Country, 'Tis of Thee: My Faith, My Family, Our Future.

One of his six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup

The amazing story of a free New Yorker who was tricked, drugged, and kidnapped into slavery in Louisiana. Northup's gripping account also describes his effort to hold his kidnappers accountable even though a law prohibited blacks from testifying in court against white people.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight great LGBTQ characters in Young Adult lit

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Dahlia Adler tagged eight top lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning characters in YA literature, including:

Oliver from The Art of Wishing, by Lindsay Ribar

The genie love interest in Ribar’s debut definitely has a more interesting and colorful past than most teen boys…especially given just how long he’s been a teen. I’m not sure what’s rarer in YA, a love interest who can grant wishes or one who’s bisexual, but either way, Oliver’s definitely near the top of my list of faves, and he only gets better when he rocks the gender-bend in the upcoming sequel, The Fourth Wish.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about houses

Ben Highmore is the author of The Great Indoors: At Home in the Modern British House. At the Guardian he tagged ten top books about houses, including:

The House of Stairs by Barbara Vine

Ruth Rendell writing as Barbara Vine is brilliant at capturing the uncanniness of some houses. Freud wrote a famous essay on the uncanny and reminded us that the German word for the uncanny is literally translated as un-homely. For him what is unnerving about the uncanny is that this is strangeness found in familiar places. If you want a sense of that experience then read The House of Stairs.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen great YA novels with male protagonists

Claire Zulkey is a writer who lives in Chicago.  Her books include the novel An Off Year. She also edits the aptly named website, Zulkey.com.

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Zulkey tagged thirteen great YA novels with male protagonists, including:

The Compound, by S.A. Bodeen

I adored disaster books when I was a youngster, like Hatchet and Z for Zachariah; there was something thrilling about vicariously preparing oneself for the worst-case scenario while appreciating the relative safe and soundness of real life. In The Compound, a 15-year-old-boy contemplates taking his chances on the outside after six years locked inside a radiation-proof compound after a nuclear attack, as his family’s situation begins to look grimmer than what might be waiting outside.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best fictional clichés

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Molly Schoemann-McCann tagged five of the best--and more familiar--tropes in fiction, including:

The Love Triangle

Lack of hoverboards aside, one of the great failures of modern science is our continued inability to combine two different yet equally compelling individuals to form one perfect superperson. (On the day we are finally able to do this, I look forward to getting better acquainted with a combination of my husband and Tom Hardy cuddling this pitbull puppy.) The cliché of having to choose between two dashing romantic partners is well-represented in fiction, and it’s been around even longer than Archie’s perennial Betty vs. Veronica conundrum. In the turn of the century New York society of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, Newland Archer was forced to choose between the bland but lovely (and socially approved) May Welland and the fiery, provocative Countess Olenska. These days, we have Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games vacillating between thrilling risk-taker Gale and doggedly devoted Peeta. And don’t even get me started on Bella Swan’s dilemma between hothead Jacob and cold-blooded Edward in Twilight. These kinds of impossible choices keep readers guessing and also keep them invested in the story—and who hasn’t had to make a similarly difficult decision at some point in their lives? Although for me it’s usually “Coke or Sprite?” and not “Dreamy vampire or sexy werewolf?” Oh, well.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books that might change the way you understand the mind

At io9 Annalee Newitz named ten books that might change the way you will understand the mind, including:

Queen City Jazz, Kathleen Ann Goonan

Goonan's 1990s Nanotech Quartet series begins with Queen City Jazz, which imagines a very different nanotech apocalypse from Bear's Blood Music. In Goonan's future, the city of Cincinnati has become what today we'd call a "smart city," with every building and piece of infrastructure wired together using a nano/biological system of heavily-modified "flowers" and "bees." But when the city malfunctions, it consumes every life form and piece of architecture, remolding them into Jazz Age Cincinnati. Every human in the city becomes an aspect of the city's broken, crashing mind, forced to act out historical fantasies and searching desperately for a way to escape.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Nanotech Quartet also is among Newitz's twenty essential books about the next step in human evolution.

Writers Read: Kathleen Ann Goonan (August 2011).

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books about the civil rights movement

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on the civil rights movement:

March: Book One
by John Lewis

Georgia congressman John Lewis’s contributions to the struggle for American civil rights are fittingly retold in comic book form – a genre that traditionally highlights superheroes fighting for the common good, often spurned by the very society they use their powers to uplift. The first of a planned series, March details Lewis’ civic battles, from the lunch counters of Greensboro to the pivotal 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery, with evocative illustrations by comics vet Nate Powell.

Read about the other books on the list.

In 2012 the Barnes & Noble Review had a slightly different list on the same topic.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top expressions of sloth in literature

"Sloth is the least human and most destructive of all the deadly sins," argues Alexandra Silverman at The Barnes & Noble Book Blog. She tagged eight top examples of the sin in literature, including:

Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov

This guy. The titular character in Goncharov’s novel has an almost completely horizontal life (not in the Chelsea Handler way). Oblomov barely leaves his bed, and if he does, he’s usually headed for the couch. He doesn’t work or worry, and is pleased if his days pass quickly and without incident, foul or fair. Neither romance nor the deterioration of his finances rouses Oblomov from his slothful stupor. His sloth is like a sickness, and a clever, if slightly hyperbolic, metaphor for the ills of the privileged classes in nineteenth-century Russia.

Read about the other entries on the list. 

Oblomov is among Francine du Plessix Gray's five favorite fictional portraits of idleness and lassitude and Emrys Westacott's five best books on bad habits.

The Page 69 Test: Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen top epigraphs from literature

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Hanna McGrath tagged fifteen epic epigraphs, including:

Vengence is mine; I will repay. –Romans 12:19 (Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy)

Read about the other entries on the list.

Anna Karenina also appears on Amelia Schonbek's list of three classic novels that pass the Bechdel test, Rachel Thompson's top ten list of the greatest deaths in fiction, Melissa Albert's recommended reading list for eight villains, Alison MacLeod's top ten list of stories about infidelity, David Denby's six favorite books list, Howard Jacobson's list of his five favorite literary heroines, Eleanor Birne's top ten list of books on motherhood, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, Chika Unigwe's six favorite books list, Elizabeth Kostova's list of favorite books, James Gray's list of best books, Marie Arana's list of the best books about love, Ha Jin's most important books list, Tom Perrotta's ten favorite books list, Claire Messud's list of her five most important books, Alexander McCall Smith's list of his five most important books, Mohsin Hamid's list of his ten favorite books, Louis Begley's list of favorite novels about cheating lovers, and among the top ten works of literature according to Peter Carey and Norman Mailer. John Mullan put it on his lists of ten of the best erotic dreams in literature, ten of the best coups de foudre in literature, ten of the best births in literature, ten of the best ice-skating episodes in literature, and ten of the best balls in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Julia Sawalha's six best books

Julia Sawalha is an English actor who played Lydia Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (the 1995 mini-series starring Colin Firth).

One of Sawalha's six best books, as told to the Daily Express:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The most moving love story I’ve ever read.

It’s the underlying frustration of the delay in resolution which makes it a page-turner and the resolution is so worth it.

When Mr Rochester says: “Is it Jane?” And she says: “God bless you, Sir. I’m glad to be so near again...”, I burst into tears. Exquisite.

Read about the other books on the list.

Jane Eyre also made Honeysuckle Weeks's six best books list, Kathryn Harrison's list of six favorite books with parentless protagonists, Megan Abbott's top ten list of novels of teenage friendship, a list of Bettany Hughes's six best books, the Guardian's top 10 lists of "outsider books" and "romantic fiction;" it appears on Lorraine Kelly's six best books list, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, and Jessica Duchen's top ten list of literary Gypsies, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best governesses in literature, ten of the best men dressed as women, ten of the best weddings in literature, ten of the best locked rooms in literature, ten of the best pianos in literature, ten of the best breakfasts in literature, ten of the best smokes in fiction, and ten of the best cases of blindness in literature. It is one of Kate Kellaway's ten best love stories in fiction.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Eyre.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books on difference and the power of otherness

Hilton Als is The New Yorker's theatre critic. His new book, White Girls, considers a variety of cultural celebrities who derived power from their otherness.

One of his six favorite "works that serve as meditations on difference and the power of otherness" as shared with The Week magazine:

My Sister's Hand in Mine by Jane Bowles

The playwright Jane Bowles produced relatively little during her brief career, but this volume of collected works proves that what she wrote was mighty. Her women are verbally pointed but emotionally lost. They remain unfulfilled because their trappings of normalcy — marriage, a "nice" home, etc. — do nothing to eradicate their feelings of alienation.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top addictive reads

Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling writer of psychological crime fiction.

At the Guardian she tagged ten top addictive reads, including:

Broken Harbour by Tana French

The most gripping crime novel I have read for a long time. So richly imagined, so intriguing – I was bereft when I finished it and realised I would have to wait a year for the next Tana French book. A family is found dead in a house on a ghost estate in Ireland, and there are strange holes in the walls and ceilings of their house, and cameras set up as if to film the holes. What can possibly be going on? I was so desperate to learn the answer that I was glued to this novel from start to finish. French is an addictive storyteller and creates a vividly complete fictional universe that lives on in your mind long after you've finished reading. All four of her novels are brilliant, but this one is the best.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten novellas about love

Rosa Rankin-Gee is the author of The Last Kings of Sark.

She named ten top novellas about love for the Guardian, including:

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Someone borrowed my copy of The Virgin Suicides and hasn't given it back. When I find them, I will kill them, for this is as close to a perfect book as I've ever read. The story of five sisters who commit suicide over the course of one year in 1970s Michigan is narrated in haunting first-person plural by the neighbourhood boys who came to love them. OK, so the New York Times says it's "almost novella-length" but it must be mentioned. It is extraordinary, given its modest word count, how full and devastating a world is created.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Virgin Suicides is among Kate Finnigan's top ten fictional fashion icons, Patrick Ness's top ten "unsuitable" books for teenagers, Cathy Cassidy's top ten stories about sisters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top heart-breaking YA books

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Melissa Albert highlighted five of her favorite YA books that might make one cry. One entry on the list:

Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott

It’s been 20 years since I last read Little Women (a YA book before the genre existed), and I can still quote the saddest line from memory: “In the dark hour before dawn, on the bosom where she had drawn her first breath, she quietly drew her last.” Thus died the sweetest of the March sisters, too good for this world.

Read about the other books on the list.

Little Women also appears among Anjelica Huston's seven favorite coming-of-age books, Bidisha's ten top books about women, Katherine Rundell's top ten descriptions of food in fiction, Gwyneth Rees's ten top books about siblings, Maya Angelou's 6 favorite books, Tim Lewis's ten best Christmas lunches in literature, and on the Observer's list of the ten best fictional mothers, Eleanor Birne's top ten list of books on motherhood, Erin Blakemore's list of five gutsy heroines to channel on an off day, Kate Saunders' critic's chart of mothers and daughters in literature, and Zoë Heller's list of five memorable portraits of sisters. It is a book that disappointed Geraldine Brooks on re-reading.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on the very cold

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on the very cold:

Alone on the Ice
by David Roberts

We’ll let Peter Lewis set the scene: “Imagine being in the Australian polar explorer Douglas Mawson's boots late one Antarctic night. Better yet, image sliding your weary, cold-cracked bones into his wet, stinking reindeer fur sleeping bag, which is shedding hair as if in chemotherapy. Outside the tent -- if this pathetic, jerry-rigged shamble of cotton and sledge runners can be called a tent -- the wind shrieks and sobs, all is dark, and the mercury huddles in the bulb at the bottom of the thermometer, with nowhere lower to go. “ Fireside reading in its most ideal form.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Bill Streever's five best books about extreme cold.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven books that may be on Beyoncé’s bookshelf

Claire Zulkey is a writer who lives in Chicago.  Her books include the novel An Off Year. She also edits the aptly named website, Zulkey.com.

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Zulkey tagged seven books that may well be on Beyoncé’s bookshelf, including:

Diana Ross: Going Back, by Diana Ross

The hair. The voice. The dresses. The LEGEND. A lot of divas paved the way for Beyoncé, but few seem to play the role of fairy godmother like Ross. When Bey is feeling low, it’s easy to imagine her picking up this colorful scrapbook from Ross’s life and feeling perked up and inspired by her storied career.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books featuring long winters

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Joel Cunningham tagged seven top books featuring long winters, including:

The Shining, by Stephen King

After just a few days trapped in the house, my whole family is feeling a bit stir-crazy, so I imagine we’d fare little better at the Overlook than Jack Torrance, who goes mad while wintering in the isolated, snowbound hotel and tries to murder his wife and young son. I haven’t quite reached that point, but while Jack may have had to face actual ghosts, he didn’t have to entertain a toddler, so probably the stress all evens out.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Shining is among Ashley Brooke Roberts's seven best haunted house books, Jake Kerridge's top ten Stephen King books, Amanda Yesilbas and Charlie Jane Anders's top ten horror novels that are scarier than most movies, Charlie Higson's top ten horror books, and Monica Ali's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven of the best books on envy

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Sara Jonsson tagged seven of the best literary treatments of envy, including:

The Quiet American, by Graham Greene

Another novel that takes place during a war, this time Vietnam, that leaves people empty, lost, and envious of anyone who remembers their purpose. Thomas Fowler, a British journalist, meets Alden Pyle, an American CIA agent who is intellectual, quiet, and extremely idealistic. Pyle is well liked by everyone except Fowler, who, cynical and experienced, thinks Pyle’s ideas are naive, and his confidence misplaced. When Fowler’s lover leaves him for Pyle, his hatred is no longer unfounded. In the end, Fowler’s envy and mistrust uncovers something dangerous about Pyle that no one else was able to see.

Read about the other works on the list.

The Quiet American is among Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's top ten classic spy novels, Tom Rachman's top ten journalist's tales, John Mullan's ten best journalists in literature, Charles Glass's five best books on Americans abroad, Robert McCrum's books to inspire busy public figures, Malcolm Pryce's top ten expatriate tales, Catherine Sampson's top ten Asian crime fiction, and Pauline Melville's top 10 revolutionary tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten war books for children

Sam Angus is the author of Soldier Dog and A Horse Called Hero. At the Guardian she shared a list of her favorite novels and diaries from the two world wars, including:

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne

A terrific story from the other side, about the son of an Auschwitz prison commandant. Vivid, shocking and disturbing, this powerful, unsettling book is a sparse and elegant fable written from the point of view of the nine year old Bruno. Isolated and bored in his new home, he is told by his Father that the people he can see on the other side of a wire fence are not really people. Through Bruno's eyes we come to understand both man's capacity for inhumanity and for friendship.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best fictional musicians

Dorian Lynskey is a music writer for the Guardian and Observer as well as magazines including Q, GQ and Mojo. He is the author of 33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs.

One of his ten best fictional musicians, as shared with Guardian readers:

Richard Katz
Freedom, 2010

Literary novelists are drawn to intense, uncompromising poet-prophets whose music is just too damn pure for this dirty business – think Don DeLillo’s Bucky Wunderlick in Great Jones Street or Jennifer Egan’s Scotty Hausmann in A Visit From the Goon Squad. None is as instantly familiar as Jonathan Franzen’s ageing maverick Richard Katz. The name of his band Walnut Surprise may sound like a joke dessert (“What’s the surprise?” “There are no walnuts in it”) but you can practically hear the music: rootsy Americana destined for a glowing profile in Uncut magazine and a slot on a Springsteen tribute album.

Learn about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Three classic novels that pass the Bechdel Test

The Bechdel Test asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. For The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Amelia Schonbek came up with three classic novels that pass the Bechdel Test, including:

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

Jane Eyre is another book that is, on the surface, a love story—between Jane, a governess, and her employer, Mr. Rochester—but it gets much more interesting on a closer look. Jane is a gutsy and outspoken character from the beginning, and Brontë’s writing pays constant attention to how the balance of power swings back and forth between her and Rochester. Jane’s female friendships are another constant, from the moment she meets Helen Burns as a child. Later, when Jane runs away from Rochester and is homeless, she survives mainly because of her friendships with Diana and Mary Rivers. Diana and Mary nurse Jane back to health and lend her books, which the three spend long evenings discussing. Jane’s relationships with with Diana and Mary may be as important to her eventual happiness as her relationship with Rochester.

Charlotte wasn’t the only Brontë sister who wrote novels with interesting, unique female characters, by the way. Another good bet is Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, in which the courageous main character, sick of mistreatment at the hands of her alcoholic husband, leaves him. It caused a scandal when it was published in 1848.

Read about the other books on the list.

Jane Eyre also made Molly Schoemann-McCann's list of five of the lamest boyfriends in fiction, Janice Clark's top seven list of timeless coming-of-age novels, Lauren Passell's list of 20 peanut butter & jelly reads, Rebecca Jane Stokes's list of the ten hottest men in required reading, Honeysuckle Weeks's six best books list, Kathryn Harrison's list of six favorite books with parentless protagonists, Megan Abbott's top ten list of novels of teenage friendship, a list of Bettany Hughes's six best books, the Guardian's top 10 lists of "outsider books" and "romantic fiction;" it appears on Lorraine Kelly's six best books list, Esther Freud's top ten list of love stories, and Jessica Duchen's top ten list of literary Gypsies, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best governesses in literature, ten of the best men dressed as women, ten of the best weddings in literature, ten of the best locked rooms in literature, ten of the best pianos in literature, ten of the best breakfasts in literature, ten of the best smokes in fiction, and ten of the best cases of blindness in literature. It is one of Kate Kellaway's ten best love stories in fiction.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Eyre.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about the Crusades

Justin Cartwright's novels include the Booker-shortlisted In Every Face I Meet, the Whitbread Novel Award-winner Leading the Cheers and the acclaimed White Lightning, shortlisted for the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award, The Promise of Happiness, winner of the 2005 Hawthorden Prize and the acclaimed The Song Before It Is Sung. His Other People’s Money was named Spear’s Book Award Novel of the Year and included in Kirkus Reviews’ Best of Fiction Top 25. Cartwright's new novel is Lion Heart.

For the Telegraph, he named his five best books about the Crusades, including:

In The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (1986), Amin Maalouf gives a brief but very interesting account of the Crusades from the Muslim side, often from within Saladin’s camp. While most of the Christian reporters had a religious motive in their accounts, many of the Arabs were more pragmatic. One chronicler even explained why Richard had 30,000 Muslims massacred after the fall of Acre.

Read about the other books on Cartwright's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five great YA books outside the contemporary genre

Dahlia Adler usually prefers her novels realistic and contemporary--ie, fiction grounded in the here and now. But sometimes she steps outside her comfort zone and tests novels in other categories.

One title on Adler's list of five great YA books outside the contemporary genre as shared on The Barnes & Noble Book Blog:

The Art of Wishing, by Lindsay Ribar

On a lighter note, this paranormal debut surprised the hell out of me by being so utterly unputdownable that it found its place among my favorites of 2013. It definitely has a major contemporary feel, being set in high school (and with a musical-theater theme to boot), but it’s also got a hot teen genie, an epic villain, and an ending that’ll have you demanding the sequel’s instant release.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The six most memorable pets in fiction

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Sara Jonsson tagged the six most memorable pets in fiction, including:

The Black Stallion

This is just me, but if, for some reason, you asked me make a list of animals I would prefer to experience a shipwreck with, I would never put “horse” on that list. Tiger, sure, but horse? They are flighty creatures. Luckily, when teenaged Alec Ramsay’s ship sinks and he’s stranded on a desert island with a beautiful black stallion, it results in the most important relationship of his life. Boy and horse develop an amazing bond as they learn to love, trust, and depend on each other for survival. Not so amazingly, after their rescue it becomes clear that the stallion is an incredibly gifted racehorse with superior breeding. These books are responsible for jumpstarting most 8-year-olds’ horse obsessions.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Black Stallion is one of Belinda Rapley's top 10 horse books.

Also see Maria Popova's top nine list of 2013’s best books about pets and animals and Adam Thorpe's top five list of memorable pets in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten literary diarists

Travis Elborough is co-editor of A London Year: 365 Days of City Life in Diaries, Journals and Letters.

For the Guardian he named a top ten list of literary diarists, including:

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

The leading figure in the Bloomsbury movement, Virginia Woolf kept diaries for much of her life. A multi-volume selection, beginning in 1915 and ending with her suicide by drowning in 1941, was edited by her nephew, Quentin Bell, and his wife, and published in the 1970s and 1980s. The diaries provide a window on life among the literary elite in the interwar years.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable cook books

Liz Crain is the author of Food Lover's Guide to Portland. A longtime writer on Pacific Northwest food and drink, her writing has appeared in Cooking Light, Budget Travel, VIA Magazine, The Sun Magazine, The Progressive, Portland Monthly, and Culinate. She is also an editor and publicity director at Hawthorne Books, an independent literary fiction and non-fiction house in Portland.

John Gorham is a four-time James Beard nominee. He is the chef and owner of Portland’s beloved Toro Bravo and Tasty N Sons.

Crain and Gorham are the authors of Toro Bravo: Stories. Recipes. No Bull.

One of their favorite cookbooks, as shared with The Daily Beast:

Ma Gastronomie by Fernand Point

This book can give the most burnt out chef a fresh look at the kitchen. My [Gorham] favorite part is Fernand Point’s notebook. It’s an inside look at a master chef’s thoughts and beliefs. One of my favorite quotes from the book: “If the divine creator has taken pains to give us delicious and exquisite things to eat, the least we can do is prepare them well and serve them with ceremony.”

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue