Six top books with strong-willed female protagonists

Curtis Sittenfeld's new book, You Think It, I'll Say It, is her first short-story collection. One of her six favorite books with strong-willed female protagonists, as shared at The Week magazine:

Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

Jones' justly acclaimed An American Marriage is a recent Oprah's Book Club pick; this 2011 novel is equally wonderful. Its teenage narrators are half sisters whose father is a bigamist, a situation Jones makes complex. She also magnificently captures details of teenage girlhood that are at once universal and specific to 1980s Atlanta.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Silver Sparrow is among Kyle Minor fifteen hottest affairs in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five inspiringly badass YA women

Adrienne Young is a born and bred Texan turned California girl. She is a foodie with a deep love of history and travel and a shameless addiction to coffee. When she’s not writing, you can find her on her yoga mat, scouring antique fairs for old books, sipping wine over long dinners, or disappearing into her favorite art museums. She lives with her documentary filmmaker husband and their four little wildlings beneath the West Coast sun.

Young's new novel is Sky in the Deep.

One of her five favorite inspiringly badass YA women, as shared at the BN Teen blog:

Inej (Six of Crows, by Leigh Bardugo)

My favorite thing about this little spider wraith is that she’s incredibly fierce but doesn’t need to prove it. And although she’s had her fair share of pain and suffering, she hasn’t let it control her. All of that, and she scales up the sides of buildings and bridges, disappears in the dark, and names her many knives after Saints. Her loyalty, bravery, and humanity make her one of my absolute favorite YA characters.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five stories that celebrate the everyday in science fiction

Jack McDevitt is the Nebula Award–winning author of The Academy series, including The Long Sunset. He went to La Salle University, then joined the Navy, drove a cab, became an English teacher, took a customs inspector’s job on the northern border, and didn’t write another word for a quarter-century. He received a master’s degree in literature from Wesleyan University in 1971. He returned to writing when his wife, Maureen, encouraged him to try his hand at it in 1980. Along with winning the Nebula Award in 2006, he has also been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. In 2015 he was awarded the Robert A. Heinlein Award for Lifetime Achievement.

At Tor.com McDevitt tagged "five stories, from the heart, about science fiction and everyday life," including:

I’ve had a passion for space ships since I was four years old, when my father took me to our local movie theater to watch the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials. I’ve also had an intense interest in archeology all my life. I don’t know where it came from, but I suspect it arrived on the day I read Ray Bradbury’s “The Million-Year Picnic,” in which a family living on Mars approach the edge of one of the canals. The kids want to know where the Martians are. Mom and Dad had promised they’d see Martians.

Dad points at the water. “There they are,” he says. The kids look down but see only their own reflections. And then they realize they are the Martians.

After that I was never able to walk away from the glories of lost civilizations.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Writers Read: Jack McDevitt (April 2018).

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten stories that end their apocalypses on a beach

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Ceridwen Christensen tagged "nine (and possibly 10) novels that find themselves on the beach at the finale." One title on the list:

The Space Between the Stars, by Anne Corlett

At the opening of The Space Between the Stars, we find Jamie Allenby shivering out the last fevers of a lethal plague that has annihilated 99.9 percent and then some of a human race far flung over dozens of inhabited planets. Jamie sets out on a journey through empty worlds, attempting to get home to the Northumbrian coast of England, where she hopes her estranged lover still lives. The image of seaglass, tumbled smooth through the action of water and tides, wends its way through the novel, a metaphor for the grinding action of trauma and recovery on our protagonists, and everyone else left. The novel ends quite literally on a beach, alongside people quietly rock-picking their way through the end—and then on to a tentative beginning, putting together the broken pieces of the world.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about public housing

John Boughton is the author of Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing. At the Guardian, he tagged a (UK-centric) top ten list of books about public housing, including:

Garden Suburbs of Tomorrow? A New Future for the Cottage Estates by Martin Crookston

While tower blocks loom large, so-called cottage estates – “corporation suburbia”, in the author’s phrase – have been received little attention, despite making up around one-sixth of England’s homes and 40% of the country’s remaining socially owned housing. Crookston provides a useful history and typology of these estates, but he is most concerned with their future. Some – the more sprawling, isolated and economically depressed – have their problems; often, ironically, the kind of problems held to characterise high-rise estates by reason of their design. Crookston’s thoughtful, empathetic study of these estates suggests how residents and councils might together renew the promise they once held.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty-four swoonworthy novels inspired by Ireland

At B&N Reads Tara Sonin tagged twenty-four swoonworthy novels inspired by Ireland, including:

The Irish Princess, by Karen Harper

If you love historical narratives from outside perspectives, you will love the story of Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a girl born to Irish royalty…and a girl who knew the wrath of Henry VIII almost as much as his wives. The King imprisons her father, destroying her family, she must seek allegiances and avoid enemies in the perilous English court.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books to get a grip on internet addiction

Olivia Sudjic’s debut novel is Sympathy. At the Guardian, she tagged five of the best books to explain how we behave in the digital world, including:

Jon Ronson’s So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed (2015) manages to be addictive reading – as compulsive as any online newsfeed – while distancing itself from the hysteria social media can induce. It demonstrates a nuanced and well-balanced analysis of our online behaviour.

Read about the other entries on the list.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is among Helen FitzGerald's ten top books about the dangers of the web.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six sci-fi novels about ecological disasters & environments gone mad

Sam Reader is a writer and conventions editor for The Geek Initiative. He also writes literary criticism and reviews at strangelibrary.com. At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog he tagged "six science fiction novels about ecological disasters and environments gone mad," including:

Clade, by James Bradley

Clade is possibly the most beautiful, optimistic end of the world novel ever written. In interlinking narratives, it tells the story of Adam and Ellie Leith, their family, their friends, and their descendants, set against a backdrop of apocalyptic storms, vanishing glaciers, flooding, turmoil, and dwindling colonies of bees. But what that description doesn’t convey is the amount of hope, beauty, poetry, and heart that Bradley pours into his apocalypse, painting lush portraits of the Australian bush and the people there who are just trying to survive together. In spite of the encroaching doom they must face, somehow the Leiths and their friends survive together, leading to an ending equal parts beautiful, melancholy, and a little bit hopeful.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best stories of deception

Sara Shepard's new novel--her first adult thriller--is The Elizas. One of her six favorite stories of deception, as shared at The Week magazine:

Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker

I read a lot of thrillers, but this recent example — two missing sisters, a narcissistic mother, and plenty of dark, ugly backstory — stood out. The psychology of this novel is very grounded and believable, and Walker managed to keep me guessing until the very last page.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top anti-novels

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and the Ustari Cycle from Pocket/Gallery, including We Are Not Good People. At the B&N Reads blog he tagged ten top anti-novels, including:

Ice, by Anna Kavan

Anna Kavan was born Helen Ferguson, and published under that name for decades. In 1940, she dyed her hair and changed her name, and her writing style changed drastically, too. Ice was the last novel published in her lifetime, and achieved her greatest renown; it’s a post-apocalyptic story of a world being strangled by advancing glaciers, and at first, she struggled to see it published. While there’s a premise, there’s almost nothing by way of plot; the prose is dreamy and often trades in disturbing imagery, and the book has been claimed as an early feminist work exploring the repression and brutalization of women in a lyrical, symbolic way. You don’t so much read this book as let the words flow through you, forming, if not a narrative, then an impression of one.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Ice is among Sofia Samatar's five favorite "intensely strange, beautifully written, and transportive fantasies."

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top fictional femme fatales

Peter Swanson's latest novel is All the Beautiful Lies. One of his five favorite fictional femme fatales, as shared at the Waterstones blog:

Crissy Harkinson in The Last One Left by John D. MacDonald (1966)

MacDonald wrote several femme fatales but none better than the truly evil Crissy Harkinson in one of his best standalone novels. She is the definition of ruthless, a woman who will stop at absolutely nothing to get what she wants. To that end she is willing to use every weapon in her arsenal, and she is pitiless. Characters like this can come across as oversimplified, or else misogynistic, but MacDonald was such an astute chronicler of the human condition that Crissy is a fully realized character, far more interesting than MacDonald’s most famous villain, Max Cady from his novel The Executioners, more popularly known as Cape Fear in the two film versions.

Read about the other entries on the list.

See John Mullan's ten best femmes fatales in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight books that make great party themes

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and the Ustari Cycle from Pocket/Gallery, including We Are Not Good People. At the B&N Reads blog he tagged eight books that make great party themes, including:

I, Claudius, by Robert Graves

Who’s up for a toga party? The answer is everyone. While Graves’ novels are short on food specifics, you can assume a few things: Wine, grapes, and the poisoned mushroom dish that ultimately kills Emperor Claudius. Of course, you don’t have to make the mushrooms poisonous, and honestly it probably doesn’t matter much what you serve, as long as there’s wine and everyone is wearing togas. Just don’t be the only one wearing a toga, or you’ll wish for poisoned mushrooms.

Read about the other entries on the list.

I, Claudius also appears on Christopher Wilson's top ten list of books about tyrants, Sarah Dunant's six favorite books list, Daniel Godfrey's top five list of books about ancient Rome, Jeff Somers's list of six historical fiction novels that are almost fantasy, Tracy-Ann Oberman's six best books list, the Telegraph's lists of the 21 greatest television adaptations of novels and the twenty best British and Irish novels of all time, Daisy Goodwin's list of six favorite historical fiction books, a list of the eleven best political books of all time, David Chase's six favorite books list, Andrew Miller's top ten list of historical novels, Mark Malloch-Brown's list of his six favorite novels of empire, Annabel Lyon's top ten list of books on the ancient world, Lindsey Davis' top ten list of Roman books, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best emperors in literature and ten of the best poisonings in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue