Five top books on sex and society

Eric Berkowitz is a writer, lawyer and journalist. He has a degree in print journalism from University of Southern California and has published in The Los Angeles Times and The Los Angeles Weekly, and for the Associated Press.

His new book is Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire.

One of Berkowitz's five top books on sex and society, as discussed with Lindsey Ford of The Browser:

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee

...To Kill a Mockingbird, also deals with themes of rape and violent retribution.

This is another standard that everybody read when they were 14. What I think it really shows is the myth, at least in white America, of the black man as sexual predator – which still exists. The defendant in the case, Tom Robinson, is essentially a cripple. The case, which we tend to forget, was about the rape of a poor white woman. It turns out she was probably raped by her own father. Most rape cases in the United States, for a very long period of time, were against black men. Something like eight out of 10 of those cases ended up in convictions. Quite often, castration was the punishment.

In this case it’s critical to bring up the notion that permeated To Kill a Mockingbird of any black man being a potential sexual predator. As one court put it, any sexual encounter between a white woman and a black man had to be rape, because “no black man could assume that a white woman would consent to his lustful embraces”. We’ve come a long way from that, but I think that is really at the bottom of the case. Let’s not forget that for most of American history there was no such thing as rape of a black woman – especially black women who were owned by their masters. Part of the benefits of slave ownership was to take sexual advantage of your slaves. There was clearly a double standard.

So the case is about racism, but it’s also about white sexual fear of the black man, and the failed effort of white America to stop intermixing. I think the notion of the scary black man still permeates the American justice system today. Some people are rethinking this book, saying it’s a racist novel, it’s patronising, et cetera. I don’t think To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the greatest pieces of literature ever. I think it’s been overrated over the years. But it is a very good window into the ingrained sexual fear that permeated at least the southern American justice system.

Read about the other books Berkowitz tagged at The Browser.

To Kill a Mockingbird made Sissy Spacek's six favorite books list, Kathryn Erskine's top ten list of first person narratives, Julia Donaldson's six best books list, TIME magazine's top 10 list of books you were forced to read in school, John Mullan's list of ten of the best lawyers in literature, John Cusack's list of books that made a difference to him, Lisa Scottoline's top ten list of books about justice, and Luke Leitch's list of ten literary one-hit wonders. It is one of Sanjeev Bhaskar's six best books and one of Alexandra Styron's five best stories of fathers and daughters.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best horse races in literature

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

One entry on the list:

Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

A novel dedicated to the workings of chance features a godly protagonist who is inducted into the delights of the races while an undergraduate at Oxford. Oscar appears an innocent, but has a gift for predicting winners. At every racecourse in the south of England he discovers that Providence is at work.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Oscar and Lucinda also appears on Mullan's lists of ten of the best fossils in literature, ten of the best thin men in literature and ten of the best card games in literature, the Guardian's list of ten of the best unconsummated passions in fiction, and Elise Valmorbida's top ten list of books on the migrant experience.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten fairy fictions

Graham Joyce, a winner of the O. Henry Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award, lives in Leicester, England, with his family. His books include The Silent Land, Smoking Poppy, Indigo (a New York Times Notable Book of 2000), The Tooth Fairy (a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998), and Requiem, among others.

Joyce's new novel is Some Kind of Fairy Tale.

For the Guardian, he named his ten "favourite books in which the Fair Folk find themselves in fresh landscapes," including:

The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw

This is a novel that draws on the great tradition of European fairytales but which offers us a shimmering romance for our modern world. A luminous work, about a girl's transformation into glass.

Read about the other entries on Joyce's list.

The Page 69 Test: Ali Shaw's The Girl with Glass Feet.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten bedtime stories

Jasper Fforde has been writing in the comedy/fantasy genre since 2001 when his novel The Eyre Affair debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. Since then he has published more books, several of them bestsellers, and counts his sales in millions. He lives and works in Wales.

One of his top ten bedtime stories, as told to the Guardian:

Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl

Almost anything by Roald Dahl would be the last of my choices, and it's difficult to pick out a book that defines an oeuvre that is at all times charming, mildly seditious, full of wicked adults, savvy kids and fools getting their comeuppance – a winning combination if ever there was one. Fantastic Mr Fox is as good a place to start as any. The wonderful things about Dahl books is the simplicity of the prose, the ease of reading aloud (not always as easy a task as one might imagine) and their dark humour. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would be a good follow-up, followed by The BFG and eventually, when your teenagers are reading on their own, a copy of Tales of the Unexpected left in clear view by their bedside. It will be devoured as eagerly as Matilda.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert Goolrick's six favorite books about childhood

In addition to the novel A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick is the author of the acclaimed memoir The End of the World as We Know It. He lives in a small Virginia town.

His new novel is Heading Out to Wonderful.

One of Goolrick's six favorite books about childhood, as told to The Week magazine:

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

No one has spun more gold out of the dross of a dubious childhood than Sedaris, and he has done it hilariously. Overweight, gay, odd — he once asked for a vacuum cleaner for Christmas — here Sedaris writes masterfully about the fact that it's okay just to be who you are.

Read about the other books on the list.

Visit Robert Goolrick's website.

The Page 69 Test: Heading Out to Wonderful.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joss Ackland's six favorite books

Joss Ackland, distinguished English actor who has appeared in over 100 movies, played Andrei Lysenko in The Hunt for Red October and Arjen Rudd in Lethal Weapon 2.

One of his six favorite books, as told to the Daily Express:

THE HONOURABLE SCHOOLBOY
by John Le Carré

My favourite novel of John le Carré’s and his most moving. There’s a touch of Graham Greene about his writing.

I did Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on television and we were going to make this about the character I’d played but they couldn’t afford to. It involved going to seven countries.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Honourable Schoolboy appears among Jeffrey Archer's top ten romans-fleuves.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about hurricanes

In 2011 the writers at The Daily Beast came up with a list of "good book[s] about people enduring hurricanes and other aquatic misadventures," including:

Typhoon
by Joseph Conrad

Sure, he could find the moral or ethical dilemma in a bowline or a sheepshank, but Conrad was a seaman before he was a novelist, and his descriptions of life on the water are unmatched. In this novella, he describes a South Seas steamer, the Nan Shan, surviving a storm and does it so well you’ll swear the pages are wet. A bonus: the best name for a ship’s commander ever: Capt. MacWhirr.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best museums in literature

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

One entry on the list:

The Murder Room by PD James

A perfect, suitably gothic, scene for murder, the Dupayne is small, family-owned museum on the edge of Hampstead Heath, threatened with closure. It is devoted to memorabilia of England between the wars. Its "murder room" is devoted to the most famous murders of the period, and soon characters are being bumped off in ways that echo some of these cases.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten passionate women writers

In 2006 Pamela Norris published Words of Love: Passionate Women from Heloise to Sylvia Plath...and named her ten favorite women from the book.

One writer on the list:

Christine de Pizan (1364-1430)

Christine de Pizan was one of the first women to live by her pen in medieval Europe. Widowed early, she was left with a family of young children, a niece and a mother to support. She began by writing enchanting love poems, perhaps inspired by memories of her own happy courtship and marriage. Always passionate about women's abilities, Christine celebrated their talents and achievements in The Book of the City of Ladies, dreamed up in her study while her mother was preparing supper downstairs.

As her confidence grew, she even dared to challenge the courtly code which favoured clandestine affairs between married women and gallants anxious to win their spurs in the bedroom as well as on the battlefield. Her verse-novel, The Book of the Duke of True Lovers, is a bold exposé of a young wife's unhappiness when she agrees to a secret affair with a pressing suitor. Christine's sympathy with her heroine reveals her sensitivity to the temptations and torments of woman's desire.

Read about the other writers Norris tagged for the Guardian.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on religion and politics

Stephen Prothero is a professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University and the author of numerous books, including God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter, the New York Times bestseller Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know, and, most recently The American Bible: How Our Words Unite, Divide, and Define a Nation.

One of his five best books on religion and politics, as told to the Wall Street Journal:

The Politics of American Religious Identity
by Kathleen Flake (2003)

Between 1904 and 1907, the U.S. Senate held hearings on whether to oust Reed Smoot, a newly elected senator from Utah and a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But Mormonism and its practice of polygamy were the real defendants. Kathleen Flake, a civil-rights attorney turned church historian, tells this story in clear, persuasive prose. The book's real virtue, however, is its close historical examination of a perennial challenge for all religious organizations (and political candidates): how to change while remaining true to yourself. In this high-stakes game of political poker, at the end of which Smoot was narrowly allowed to keep his seat, Mormons took home some hard-earned respectability. Prompted by Smoot's ordeal, they gave up in deed the sacrament—polygamy—that they had previously abandoned in words only. They also exchanged communalism for capitalism and theocracy for republicanism, and learned in the process to locate their distinctiveness in more self-evidently "religious" arenas, such as their founder's early revelations. "Gentiles" (as Mormons used to call the rest of us) did some compromising too, expanding the scope of religious liberty to include a faith then widely considered to be beyond the pale.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

88 books that shaped America

The "Books That Shaped America" exhibition at the Library of Congress opens on June 25.

About the exhibition, from Librarian of Congress James H. Billington:

This list of ‘Books That Shaped America’ is a starting point. It is not a register of the ‘best’ American books--although many of them fit that description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this initial list or not. We hope people will view the list and then nominate other titles. Finally, we hope people will choose to read and discuss some of the books on this list, reflecting our nation’s unique and extraordinary literary heritage, which the Library of Congress makes available to the world.

One title on the list:

Red Harvest

Dashiell Hammett’s first novel introduced a wide audience to the so-called “hard-boiled” detective thriller with its depiction of crime and violence without any hint of sentimentality. The creator of classics such as “The Maltese Falcon” and “The Thin Man,” shocked readers with such dialogue as “We bumped over dead Hank O’Meara’s legs and headed for home.”

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books featuring pariahs

Richard Zimler's novels include The Seventh Gate and The Warsaw Anagrams.

One of his five best books featuring pariahs, as told to the Wall Street Journal:

I Married a Communist
by Philip Roth (1998)

Starting in the 1990s, Philip Roth began to shed his standard plot—centered on a sexually adventurous and maddeningly witty, bookish Jewish-American protagonist—and to explore instead the fall from grace of protagonists who run afoul of American mores and politics. In "I Married a Communist," he brilliantly explores the chilling effect of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist crusade on America's insecure Jewish community and others. The story focuses on radio star Ira Ringold, who is accused of inserting pinko propaganda into the scripts of his dramatic series. Every time we think we've reached the truth about Ringold's alleged anti-American conspiring—and about his tumultuous relationship with his wife, an actress who ends up betraying him and sealing his doom—Roth peels away another layer of the story and shows us that we've been mistaken. The sleight-of-hand plotting is deft, and the author's newfound confidence in his reader—we don't need to be entertained by sexual acrobatics or clever banter to keep us reading insightful prose—gives this work memorable force.

Read about the other books on the list.

Writers Read: Richard Zimler (August 2007).

--Marshal Zeringue