Wednesday, January 9, 2019

Top ten Quakers in fiction

Bridget Collins, an amateur bookbinder, actor and Quaker, is the author of The Binding and seven books for teenagers.

One of ten notable Quakers in fiction she tagged for the Guardian:
Captain Bildad in Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

A refreshing counter-example to the upstanding, idealistic Friends that feature elsewhere in this list, Captain Bildad is bitter, hard, avaricious and sanguinary, one of the “fighting Quakers … Quakers with a vengeance”. Opposed to bloodshed in principle, he has nonetheless spent his youth on the spillage of “tuns and tuns of leviathan gore” and retires to enjoy his substantial income.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Moby-Dick appears among John Boyne's six best books, Kate Christensen's best food scenes in fiction, Emily Temple's ten literary classics we're supposed to like...but don't, Sara Flannery Murphy's ten top stories of obsession, Harold Bloom's six favorite books that helped shape "the American Sublime,"  Charlotte Seager's five well-known literary monomaniacs who take things too far, Ann Leary's top ten books set in New England, Martin Seay's ten best long books, Ian McGuire's ten best adventure novels, Jeff Somers's five top books that will expand your vocabulary and entertain, Four books that changed Mary Norris, Tim Dee's ten best nature books, the Telegraph's fifteen best North American novels of all time, Nicole Hill's top ten best names in literature to give your dog, Horatio Clare's five favorite maritime novels, the Telegraph's ten great meals in literature, Brenda Wineapple's six favorite books, Scott Greenstone's top seven allegorical novels, Paul Wilson's top ten books about disability, Lynn Shepherd's ten top fictional drownings, Peter Murphy's top ten literary preachers, Penn Jillette's six favorite books, Peter F. Stevens's top ten nautical books, Katharine Quarmby's top ten disability stories, Jonathan Evison's six favorite books, Bella Bathurst's top 10 books on the sea, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best nightmares in literature and ten of the best tattoos in literature, 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