Antonya Nelson: 5 most essential books

Antonya Nelson is the author of the newly published short story collection Nothing Right (Bloomsbury, 2009).

Her books include the short story collections Some Fun and In The Land Of Men, and three novels: Talking in Bed, Nobody’s Girl, and Living to Tell; and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, Redbook and many other magazines, as well as in anthologies.

She told Newsweek about her five most essential books. One title on the list:

A Passage to India by E. M. Forster.

Given a chance to speak with the dead, he'd be my choice. His heart is large and always vividly present in his work.

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

Writers Read: Antonya Nelson.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best examples of scars in fiction

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best examples of scars in fiction.

One scar on the list:

Every Man for Himself by Beryl Bainbridge

On board the Titanic, Bainbridge's protagonist and narrator, Morgan, discovers that a fellow passenger, Scurra, seems to know everyone's secrets. Scurra is marked for power by a strange scar, his bottom lip "scored through as though by a slash from a knife". He claims to have been attacked by a macaw in a Cape Town department store.

Read about all ten scars on Mullan's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten best valets in literature

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

One valet on the list:

Littimer

We know there is something deeply wrong with Steerforth, the object of the hero's devotion in Dickens's David Copperfield, when we encounter his manservant. Everything about him is "respectable". "Such a self-contained man I never saw. But in that quality, as in every other he possessed, he only seemed to be the more respectable." He helps Steerforth seduce Little Em'ly, and is ready to take possession of her when his master gets bored.

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

See also: Ten of the best butlers in literature.

David Copperfield appears among Elizabeth Gilbert's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best: books about the rise of conservatism

At the Wall Street Journal, David Frum, author of Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again, named a five best list of books about the rise of conservatism.

Number One on his list:

The Age of Federalism
by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick
Oxford, 1993

In their scholarly but lively account of the period from 1786 to 1801, Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick vividly detail the achievements of the Federalists -- who shaped and formed the new United States -- and the process by which their coalition eventually disintegrated and collapsed. James Madison, a co-author of the Federalist Papers, defected from the Federalist coalition to join his friend Thomas Jefferson in opposition. Alexander Hamilton split from John Adams over policy differences in a feud that wrecked both their careers. The Federalist program was simply too ambitious for the early U.S. It crashed and shattered, opening the way to the more decentralized, more demotic and more turbulent ascendancy of the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians.

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

--Marshal Zeringue

Eric Kraft's 5 most important books

Eric Kraft is the author of a series of novels chronicling the life of fictional character Peter Leroy. His latest title is Flying.

He told Newsweek about his five most important books.

One title on the list:

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez.

It plays elegant games that came to be called magical realism, but may be better called realism in the service of romance.

Read about all five books on Kraft's list.

One Hundred Years of Solitude also appears on James Patterson's five most important books list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 fictional coffee scenes

Benjamin Obler's debut novel Javascotia is out now in the UK and coming soon to North America.

For the Guardian, he named "his favourite significant appearances of coffee in literature."

One title on the list:

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Janie went down and the landlady made her drink some coffee with her because she said her husband was dead and it was bad to be having your morning coffee by yourself.

So clearly coffee is about companionship, and promotes healing. Coffee has a chameleon-like nature: though it's the consummate non-prescription upper, it's also a balm, a salve. It fosters community and the repair of sorrow. It is a bridge between the despairing and the hopeful. (This scene also contains, later on the page, the brilliant "sankled", a combination of ambled and sank: "Janie sankled back to her room.")

Read about the other nine work's on Obler's list.

Visit Benjamin Obler's website and blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best visits to the lavatory in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best visits to the lavatory in literature.

One book on the list:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

For Kundera, a visit to a nasty lav is emblematic of existential torment. The loo that Tereza visits in a Prague tower block is "broad, squat, and pitiful ... the enlarged end of a sewer pipe". Perching on the cold enamel rim she knows true humiliation. "As she voided her bowels, Tereza was overcome by a feeling of infinite grief and loneliness."

Read about the other entries on Mullan's list.

Lee Child called The Unbearable Lightness of Being "his private pick for the 20th–century novel that will live the longest."

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 most successul literary sequels ever

At the (London) Times Luke Leitch named "the most successful literary sequels ever."

Number One on his list:

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

Recently ranked Britain's second most loved book (after The Lord of The Rings) Pride and Prejudice was published in 1813, two years after Sense and Sensibility. Its original title was First Impressions.

Read about all ten titles on Leitch's list.

The Page 99 Test: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

Related: ten literary one-hit wonders and ten cursed second novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 20 most issued books in Norwegian libraries, 2008

Of the 20 most loaned books in Norway's libraries last year, 5 were Jo Nesbø novels.

One of the other fifteen:

Ut og stjæle hester [Out Stealing Horses] (Per Petterson)

Read about all 20 titles.

Read Ray Taras' review of Out Stealing Horses.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 cursed second novels

At the (London) Times Luke Leitch named ten "writers who couldn't quite match their initial success."

Number One on the list:

Something Happened- Joseph Heller

Thirteen years after Catch-22, Something Happened won critical acclaim but failed to capture the public imagination as its predecessor had.

Read about all ten authors on the list.

Related: 10 literary one-hit wonders.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best novels about the Great Depression

Peter Conn is Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. His publications include The Divided Mind: Ideology and Imagination in America, 1898-1917 (Cambridge University Press, 1983; paperback editions, 1988 and 2008), and Literature in America (Cambridge University Press, 1989), which was a main selection of Associated Book Clubs (UK). Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography (Cambridge, 1996; Paperback 1998), was chosen as a "New York Times Notable Book," was included among the five finalists for the National Book Critics Circle award in biography, and received the Athenaeum Award. His new book is The American 1930s: A Literary History.

Conn named a five best list of novels about the Great Depression for the Wall Street Journal.

Number One on his list:

Now in November
by Josephine Winslow Johnson
Simon & Schuster, 1934

A fictional account of one family's experience on the land, Josephine Winslow Johnson's best-selling novel won the Pulitzer Prize before sinking into undeserved obscurity. The Haldmarnes leave an unnamed city for the countryside when Father loses a good job in a lumber mill and with it any hope of financial security for his wife and their three daughters. The mortgaged farm to which the family moves yields little: The novel's central section is a day-by-day reckoning of the land's collapse into baked and cracking clay during the killing drought in the Great Plains of the 1930s. "Now in November" is one of the most convincing and hair-raising depictions of the Dust Bowl in the literature of the Depression. Unfortunately, history would find room for only one Dust Bowl novel, John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath."

Read about all five titles on Conn's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Laura Lippman's top 10 memorable memoirs

Since the publication of her first novel, Baltimore Blues, in 1997, Laura Lippman has won virtually every major award given to U.S. crime writings, including the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Agatha Award, Nero Wolfe Award, Shamus Award, and the Quill Award. What the Dead Know, published in 2007, was a New York Times bestseller and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by critics at the New York Times, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, People magazine, Village Voice, and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Her latest novel is Life Sentences.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten memoirs. Her prefatory remarks and one title from her list:

I love memoirs, although I have promised my family members that I will never try my hand at one. ("Can I get that in writing?" my sister asked.) However, I'm generally not drawn to the addiction/dysfunction stories that have been popular of late; I wanted no part of A Million Little Pieces even when it was masquerading as nonfiction. As a former reporter, I have a pesky allegiance to fact, although I recognize that the fragile nature of memory makes it difficult for most writers to produce uncontestable versions of their lives. I am drawn to stories about the quotidian – marriage, friendship, childhood, work, life, death.
* * *
Great With Child by Beth Ann Fennelly

When Fennelly, an award-winning poet, was pregnant with her first child and about to move to a new, remote town, she made an interesting promise to a friend. She would write her letters, actual letters, about her experiences as a mother and a wife, to the novelist Tom Franklin. Given that I have profound doubts about writers marrying, I particularly enjoyed this passage about the day Fennelly and Franklin decided to combine their book collections: "About two years into our relationship, Tommy and I made one of the biggest commitment two writers can make... We were sitting on the floor in front of the couch, figuring out how to make the rent. It had been another night of lentils and rice. All around us were bookcases – our separate bookcases. We hadn't merged our books, on the silent assumption that when we'd split up we'd both want our books back. But gradually we were realising that there would be no splitting up."

Read about all ten titles on Lippman's list.

The Page 69 Test: Great With Child.

--Marshal Zeringue