Seven books to demystify J. Robert Oppenheimer

Aaron Tucker is the author of the novel Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos as well as two books of poetry, Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp and punchlines, and two scholarly cinema studies monographs, Virtual Weaponry: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films and Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema.

At LitHub Tucker tagged seven books about J. Robert Oppenheimer, director of the Manhattan Project. One title on the list:

Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb

A wide-ranging, dense history of the Manhattan Project, this tome also won the Pulitzer Prize and is widely considered the best book on the subject. Oppenheimer plays a central role in the middle portions of the book, as the director at Los Alamos, and is perfect those readers wanting to better understand the scale of the scientist’s work as it fits into the larger context of the creation of the atomic bomb.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six of the best books on rural life

Tim Pears's novels include In the Place of Fallen Leaves (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), In a Land of Plenty (made into a ten-part BBC series), Landed (shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2011, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards 2011) and the West Country Trilogy.

At the Guardian, Pears tagged six of the best books on rural life, including:

Melissa Harrison probes tensions between tradition and modernity. Her most recent novel, All Among the Barley (2018), appears to be a farming daughter’s straightforward coming-of-age story set in 30s Suffolk, yet is impossible to pin down. It’s about class, farming, folk culture, gender, politics and more, but resists glib interpretation and stays with the reader long after finishing it.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve essential books in which history matters

At the B&N Reads blog Ross Johnson tagged twelve essential history books, including:

A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, by Sonia Purnell

“She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.” That was the message sent out by the Gestapo in 1942 regarding Baltimore socialite Virginia Hall, who had escaped to London from Vichy-controlled Paris and joined up with the spies at the Special Operations Executive. Referred to as “the limping lady” because of her prosthetic leg, she returned to France to coordinate the underground resistance effort. Her cover blown, she then escaped on foot to Spain before venturing back into France again to lead guerrilla forces in advance of the Normandy landing. Hall’s is an incredible true story, and its told like never before in this book by celebrated journalist and historian Sonia Purnell.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four books that shaped Carmel Reilly's love of literature

Carmel Reilly writes for children and adults. She has worked as an educational writer for almost two decades and is the author of more than 300 titles of fiction and non-fiction for children and young teens. In 2011 she won the Partners in Crime Short Story award and in 2016 she was awarded a Varuna Residental Fellowship to develop her first novel, Life Before. Born in New Zealand, she now lives in Melbourne, Australia.

At the Sydney Morning Herald she tagged four of the books that shaped her love of literature, including:

As I Lay Dying
William Faulkner

Reading the eccentric tale of a poor, rural Mississippi family attempting to transport their dead mother’s body to her birthplace for burial was a revelation to me at 18. Told from multiple perspectives, in extraordinary language that ranges from the vernacular to the literary, the book moves between the minds of 15 different characters. It opened my eyes to how one story could be broken into many stories utilising a range of voices and perspectives.

Read about the other entries on the list.

As I Lay Dying is on a list of four books that changed Elizabeth J. Church, Jesmyn Ward's list of six favorite books featuring absent parents, Emily Ruskovich's top ten list of rural American novels, Jeff Somers's top five list of books written in very unlikely places, Shaun Byron Fitzpatrick's list of eight of the most badass ladies in all of banned literature, Nicole Hill's lists of nine of the biggest martyrs in fiction and five books that, like country and western songs, tell "stories of agony and ecstasy, soaring highs and mighty powerful lows, heartache and hard living," Laura Frost's list of the ten best modernist books (in English), Helen Humphreys's top ten list of books on grieving, John Mullan's list of ten of the best teeth in literature, Jon McGregor's list of the top ten dead bodies in literature, Roy Blount Jr.'s list of five favorite books of Southern humor, and James Franco's six best books list.

The “My mother is a fish.” chapter in As I Lay Dying is among the ten most notorious parts of famous books according to Gabe Habash.

--Marshal Zeringue

Thirteen books that every hippie owned

Jeff Tamarkin is the author of Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane. He is also the co-author of Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa, etc., with Howard Kaylan. At Best Classic Bands he tagged thirteen books that every hippie owned, including:

Soul on Ice—

Eldridge Cleaver was a resident of Folsom State Prison in 1965 when he began writing what became his memoir. Published three years later, it was widely viewed as one of the most honest contemporary depictions of the African-American experience in America, with all of its attendant racism and oppression. Cleaver wrote in raw terms of black liberation, the role of gender in black life, as well as topics such as war, celebrity, crime and much more.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten books with vanishing narrators

Juliet Grames's new novel is The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna.

At Publishers Weekly she writes:

Many—maybe even most—of my favorite books are novels narrated by an observer who does not consider themselves the main actor in the story. Think Nick Carraway, Jay Gatsby’s sort-of friend, the perfect mournfully sardonic narrator for one of American literature’s most enduring novels. I love stories told by the supposedly innocent bystander; the less charismatic best friend; the hapless fan or scholar whose own life recedes in the shadow of their subject of adoration.

Grames tagged ten favorite books in which the narrator isn't the main character, including:

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

Detective fiction has a long tradition of an average Joe narrator who relates the adventures of a whimsical genius investigator—a tradition that goes all the way back to the mystery genre’s inception with Edgar Allan Poe’s Auguste Dupin stories and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. With The Name of the Rose (1980), Eco offers a hyper-intellectual pastiche of that archetype with a murder mystery set in a 14th century Italian convent in which a bumbling Benedictine novice, Adso, describes the crime-solving antics of his master, a monk named William of Baskerville.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Name of the Rose is on Tessa Arlen’s top five list of historical novels, Sarah Dunant's six favorite books list, D.D. Everest's list of the ten top secret libraries of all time, Carolyne Larrington's top ten list of modern medieval tales, Jeff Somers's list of ten books you should finally have read in 2015, S. J. Parris's list of five favorite historical murder mysteries, Ian Rankin's list of five perfect mysteries, John Mullan's top ten list of the most memorable libraries in literature, Andy McSmith's top 10 list books of the 1980s, and Vanora Bennett's list of five favorite historical novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six unforgettable fictional vacations

Chip Cheek's new novel is Cape May.

At LitHub he tagged six favorite fictional vacations, including:

Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach

A honeymoon—the old-fashioned kind, in which a union is supposed to be consummated for the first time—is the subject of Ian McEwan’s short 2007 novel (which I avoided reading until I’d finished my own honeymoon novel). Set in 1962, right on the cusp of the sexual revolution, On Chesil Beach is a richly nuanced depiction of the wedding night of Edward Mayhew, a historian, and Florence Ponting, a violinist, at a Georgian hotel by the titular beach. The trouble is set up right from the start, with this perfect opening sentence: “They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.” Too bad, because they are both hopelessly naive and shy about their bodies and their desires—their own and each other’s. The novel proceeds, along with flashbacks to their courtship, through dinner, their fumbling attempts to consummate the marriage, and the immediate and long-term aftermaths, and the awkward, endearing comedy of the situation turns more disturbing and ultimately heartbreaking by the end.

Read about the other entries on the list.

On Chesil Beach also appears among Alison Moore's top ten seaside novels, Radhika Sanghani ten top books about losing one's virginity, Ella Berthoud's five top books on love, Eli Gottlieb's top 10 scenes from the battle of the sexes, and on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best honeymoons in literature, ten of the best beaches in literature, ten best marital arguments in literature, and ten of the best failed couplings in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten doomed and deadly romances in noir fiction

Vincent Zandri is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Caretaker’s Wife, Orchard Grove, and The Remains.

At CrimeReads he tagged ten affairs that went terribly wrong in true noir fashion. One title on the list:

The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain.

A drifter happens upon a diner/filling station that’s owned by an old Greek man who’s married to a hot young blonde. Said drifter and hot blonde fall head over heels. Naturally the old man has got to go, and the drifter sets his sights on taking him out. The 1981 film version with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange is a classic. (If ever there was a novel that had a direct influence on The Caretaker’s Wife, it’s this one.)

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Postman Always Rings Twice is among Benjamin Black/John Banville's five top works of noir.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top books about psychotherapy

Bev Thomas was a clinical psychologist in Britain's NHS for many years. She currently works as an organizational consultant in mental health and other services. She lives in London with her family.

About her new novel, A Good Enough Mother, in a starred review from Publishers Weekly: “[An] exceptional debut... Thomas melds astute psychological insight with powerful storytelling in this moving thriller.”

At the Guardian, Thomas tagged her top ten books about psychotherapy, including:

Mad, Bad and Sad by Lisa Appignanesi

A historical overview of the treatment of women’s mental and psychological health from 1800 to the present day. Appignanesi offers a fascinating insight into the relativity of diagnosis and how treatment approaches have altered over time. It’s particularly good on the shift of attitude around abuse, from disbelief and denial to the acceptance of a different reality that embraces the true complexities of trauma. It left me wondering how our current mental health services will be viewed by future generations.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Mad, Bad, and Sad: Women and the Mind Doctors.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books to help you think like a visual artist

Myla Goldberg is the bestselling author of Feast Your Eyes, The False Friend, Wickett’s Remedy, and Bee Season, which was a New York Times Notable Book, winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, and a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, the NYPL Young Lions award, and the Barnes & Noble Discover award. It was adapted to film and widely translated. In addition to her novels, she has written an essay collection, a children’s book, and short stories that have appeared in Harper’s.

At LitHub Goldberg tagged five books to help you think like a visual artist, including:

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The portrait at the center of this story is what usually grabs people’s attention, but while the book is developing its super-famous conceit, it’s also exploring the roots of artistic inspiration and the fraught power relationship between painter and muse as embodied by Basil Hallward, the painter in thrall to Dorian’s toxic charms. To what degree is the fullest realization of artistic genius dependent upon random factors, like who one happens to meet at a dinner party? Wilde uses Dorian’s story to address questions central to artistic identity. Once you read the book, check out the portrait Ivan Albright painted for the 1945 film adaptation.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Picture of Dorian Gray also appears on Emily Lloyd-Jones's list of five favorite books featuring deals you probably don’t want to make, Eric Berkowitz's list of five top books on sex and society, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best locked rooms in literature, ten of the best mirrors in literature, ten of the best disastrous performances in fiction, and ten of the best examples of ekphrasis in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five works involving weird, unsettling isolation

Liz Harmer's debut novel is The Amateurs. She is working on a second novel, and a story collection, which was a finalist for the 2014 Flannery O'Connor Short Fiction Award.

At Tor.com she tagged five works involving weird, unsettling isolation, including:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

Finally, I will leave us with a novel that has it all: marauders, survivors trying to figure out how to procure water and food (acorns are involved), and the hope of space travel. In some ways it is the opposite of [Shirley Jackson's] The Sundial, in which a group of purely detestable characters try to wait out the end of the world. With its empathic, visionary leader, and its Gospel-derived title, Parable of the Sower adds to this mytho-speculative genre by providing a dose of spiritual hope. People are terrible, but also capable of innovating and adapting, and this capacity to change may lead us both into and out of calamity.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best moms in fiction

At the B&N Reads blog, Nicole Hill tagged the ten best moms in fiction, including:

The Aunts
Practical Magic and The Rules of Magic, by Alice Hoffman

Again, circumstances beyond biology can forge some of the greatest mothers. The Owens family is decidedly non-traditional: two aunts raising two nieces, all witches. Also, there’s that whole family curse that spells doom for the unfortunate man who might fall in love with any Owens woman. While the hijinks that occur in Practical Magic may make you wonder about supervision Sally and Gillian’s aunts provide, their enduring encouragement to embrace the weird and witchy—and to give zero flips about what anyone else thinks—is an inspiration.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue