The ten best boarding school books

James Browning is a spokesman and chief strategist for Common Cause, a government watchdog group. He attended Brown University and has an M.A from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. His new novel is The Fracking King.

One of the author's ten best boarding school books, as shared at Publishers Weekly:

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The word cloud for this brilliant, subtle, and subversive novel could fool you into thinking the whole thing was a bland student handbook or the Hailsham School’s novel-length appeal for money from its alumni. Narrator Kathy H. (the possibility that “H.” may be her entire last name is an early clue to the school’s true purpose) talks lovingly of the “donations” made by her friends and, without irony, says that a student giving his life in service of the school is “completing.” One of the best books I’ve ever read, a 1984 for the bioengineering age.

Read about the other entries on the list.
 
Never Let Me Go is on Jason Allen Ashlock and Mink Choi's top ten list of tragic love stories, Allegra Frazier's list of seven characters whose jobs are worse than yours, Shani Boianjiu's list of five top novels about coming of age, Karen Thompson Walker's list of five top "What If?" books, Lloyd Shepherd's top ten list of weird histories, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best men writing as women in literature and ten of the best sentences as titles.

Also see Robin Stevens's top ten boarding school stories.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven great books about soccer

At The Daily Beast Robert Birnbaum tagged 11 great books about soccer, including:

Among the Thugs
by Bill Buford.

There is a truism bandied about that more people like to read about baseball than watch it. Perhaps that’s true of soccer as well, especially as there are long stretches during matches when men in shorts are running willy-nilly around a field. In addition to [Soccer in Sun and Shadow] by Eduardo Galeano, Bill Buford’s Among the Thugs rates mention as Buford gives a smart account of the sociopathic underclass that afflicts soccer (at least in England).

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see: Mihir Bose's top ten soccer books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Nine notable unsung heroines

Fanny Price, the heroine of Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, has been unfairly dismissed by readers and critics, says the Guardian. So to mark the novel's 200th anniversary, the paper collected nine writers' celebrations of "literary leading ladies who have been overshadowed by their showier sisters," including:

Tessa Hadley on Lucy Snowe
Villette by Charlotte Brontë

It isn't easy to like Lucy Snowe – she doesn't even want us to like her. She certainly doesn't want us to think she's attractive, describing herself as "thin, haggard, and hollow-eyed; like a sitter-up at night, like an overwrought servant, or a placeless person in debt". The young heroine of Charlotte Brontë's last novel, Villette, set mostly at a girls' school in Brussels, is more or less invisible to others: they don't notice her any more than if she were a serviceable piece of furniture in a room. Lucy only hints at whatever sad family history has left her destitute and friendless and somewhere on the social margins, neither a working-class servant nor a lady. Behind her invisibility, though, passion rages; she's a fascinating mixture of abjection with appetite. All by herself she travels to the continent, and finds work as a teacher. The novel's love stories and dramas happen mostly to the pretty, lucky people; Lucy's interest in them verges on voyeurism. Yet her sheer intensity intrudes all the time into the foreground, insisting we attend to the life of her extraordinary mind, to her visions and longings. The sensibility is so English, so self-righteously Protestant - and yet it is almost Dostoevskian, too, in its tormented obsession.

Would this clumsy, extravagant, eccentric and magnificent novel ever have been published, I wonder, if it hadn't been for the success of Jane Eyre? Jane Eyre had seemed to hold out a hope of happiness to the thousands of invisible women ground small in mid-Victorian England by gentility, poverty and exclusion; if there is one spark of hope in Villette, then it is snuffed out on the last page. Brontë was writing after the early deaths of all her siblings. Lucy is brutally realistic about her own prospects – the worst will probably happen. She's my heroine because she won't resign herself to it, or be at peace.

Read about the other entries on the list. 

Villette also appears on Mullan's lists of ten of the best cases of seasickness in literature, ten of the best teachers in literature, and ten of the best priests in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Seven top books that show the real lives of lawyers

Alafair Burke's novels include the thriller Long Gone and the Ellie Hatcher series: 212, Angel's Tip, Dead Connection, Never Tell, and the newly released All Day and a Night. A former prosecutor, she now teaches criminal law and lives in Manhattan.

For Omnivoracious, Burke tagged her favorite "Lawyers are People Too" books. One title on the list:

The Firm, John Grisham

Though Grisham’s A Time To Kill is one of the best courtroom novels I’ve read, The Firm captures an altogether different world, expertly portraying the pressures placed upon a junior associate at an elite law firm.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top Gothic novels

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Lauren Passell tagged five top Gothic novels, including:

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë

Brontë’s classic tells the story of Jane, an orphan raised by her cruel and wealthy aunt and eventually shipped off to boarding school. Later, she becomes a governess for the ward of the rich Mr. Rochester, who she falls in love with after saving him from a fire. They part ways until another fire eats up his home, Thornfield, this time, taking Rochester’s sight and one hand. Jane returns to Rochester because…love. Just like any great gothic novel, this book features a creepy attic, and you wouldn’t believe what’s in this one even if I told you.

Breakdown:
Creepy houses: 1
Unpleasant attics: 1
Mysterious relatives: 1
Illness/physical impairments: 1
Deaths: 0
Poisonings: 0
Orphans: 1
Falling down the stairs: 0
Destructive fires: 2
Twisty secrets: 1
Total: 8

Read about the other entries on the list.

Jane Eyre also made Molly Schoemann-McCann's lists of ten fictional men who have ruined real live romance and five of the best--and more familiar--tropes in fiction, Becky Ferreira's lists of seven of the best fictional depictions of female friendship and the top six most momentous weddings in fiction, Julia Sawalha's six best books list, 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

Top ten stories about Indian families

Losing Touch, Sandra Hunter's first novel, originated from a short story that won the 2005 Glimmer Train Short Short Fiction Award.

At the Guardian, Hunter tagged a top ten list of stories about Indian families, including:

The In Between World of Vikram Lall by MG Vassanji

This begins with escalating tensions with Lall's family, third-generation Indians living in Kenya. Bad Things Are Going To Happen in this study of what happens when the family is suspended between two mutually suspicious cultures. Vassanji is an expert at capturing the family's confusion and shifting identities during the corruption and power-crazy period of Jomo Kenyatta's post-independence presidency.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The fifteen best North American novels of all time

One title on the Telegraph's list of the fifteen best North American novels of all time:

Independence Day
Richard Ford (1995)

The second book in Ford’s trilogy about Frank Bascombe – sportswriter turned realtor. Coiner of such quirky phrases as “happy as goats” and “solitary as Siberia” Bascombe’s been described as “America’s most convincing everyman”. Ford says he’s “asleep at the switch”.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Frank Bascombe made Aifric Campbell's top ten list of favorite jobs in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top imaginary castles in fiction

At The Daily Beast, novelist Johanna Lane tagged "several favorite moated-and-turreted locations that only ever existed in the authors’ minds," including:

Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh

I chose this because it’s the novel from which I took the epigraph for my book: Charles Ryder, the narrator of Brideshead Revisited, says “I regarded men as something much less than the buildings they made and inhabited, as mere lodgers and short-term sub-lessees of small importance in the long, fruitful life of their homes.” I love this sentiment because it articulates how ironic it is that families create these great houses to demonstrate their own importance, but their houses almost always outlive them—and their family line.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Brideshead Revisited is one of John Mullan's ten of the most memorable hunting scenes in literature, Robert Irwin's top ten quest narratives, Val McDermid's top ten Oxford novels, and Christopher Buckley's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten worst dads in literature

One father in the Telegraph's collection of the ten worst dads in literature:

Vito Corleone in Mario Puzo’s The Godfather

Patriarch of the Corleone crime family and Mafia empire, Don Corleone ... is a family man through and through. His assertion that “a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man" is sound parenting advice. Yet his mafia affinity with organised crime and corruption places his children in danger and results in two of their deaths.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Godfather is one of Jackie Collins' six best books and five best literary guilty pleasures. It appears on Alice-Azania Jarvis's reading list on the Mafia and Will Dean's brief reading list on family dynasties.

Also see: the ten worst fathers in books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Roxane Gay's six favorite books

Roxane Gay's highly acclaimed debut novel is An Untamed State.

She tagged her six favorite books at The Week magazine. One title on her list:

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

The scope and intensity of Coetzee's award-winning novel leave an indelible impression. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, this breathtaking book about a professor banished for seducing a student examines the nation's legacy of inhumanity, middle-aged men behaving badly, and the unexpected intimacy that arises between a father and daughter as they seek mutual understanding.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Disgrace also appears on Adam Ross's five best list of books on cruelty in fact and fiction, Ian Holding's top ten list of books that teach us about southern Africa and among Yann Martel's five favorite books and T.C. Boyle's four favorite books to turn to for comfort; it is one of Vendela Vida's favorite books of the last ten years.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten greatest Indian novels

Sunil Seth is a journalist, author and television presenter. He named the ten greatest Indian novels for the Hindustan Times, including:

Two Indian-American writers stand out for their forays in fiction, given that writing remains their secondary vocation. Manil Suri, a maths professor, embarked on a trilogy in the 1990s, the first being The Death of Vishnu (2001) an unusually observant and controlled account of a man who lives and dies on the landing of an apartment building in Bombay, coloured by the lives of the building's inhabitants. And if the purpose of fiction is to take us deep into the lives of others, and to other places, then Cutting for Stone (2009) by the physician-author Abraham Verghese is a magic-tinted story of twin brothers set in Ethiopia and America---of estrangement, reconciliation and the redemptive power of love. In particular Verghese's narrative power derives from his description of medical practice. He achieves the astonishing feat of turning surgical operations into convincing and absorbing dramatic action.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about cocktails

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

Imbibe!
by David Wondrich

Jerry Thomas was a nineteenth-century pioneer of the American bar, creating cocktails, punches, sours, and toddies that lived long after the publication of his 1862 Bartender's Guide. In this James Beard Award-winning book, the foremost historian of the American cocktail pours out Thomas's story in a lively style ballasted by deep research -- and topped off with a sparkling selection of recipes old and new. (To follow Wondrich on his further excursions into the deep past of convivial drinking, you'll want to read his equally intoxicating Punch.)

Read about the other titles on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue