One title from Booklist's 2009 top ten list of crime fiction for youth, as complied by Ian Chipman: Masterpiece. By Elise Broach. Illus. by Kelly Murphy. 2008. Holt, $16.95 (9780805082708). Gr. 3–6.Read about all ten titles.
The involving world of art history and the miniature world of arthropods meet in this story of two fast friends, a boy and a beetle, who get caught up in a plot to heist a Dürer masterpiece from the Metropolitan Museum.
In 2005 Ruth Gledhill, the (London) Times religion correspondent, picked a critic's chart of the best biblical fiction.THE RED TENT Anita DiamantRead about the other books on Gledhill's list.
Dinah, a midwife, tells of the sexual passions and religious devotions of her father Jacob’s several wives.
Right Ho, Jeeves by P G WodehouseRead about the other disastrous performances on Mullan's list.
Gussie Fink-Nottle is tight as a tick when honouring the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School, ending with Bertie, who won the scripture prize. "He succeeded in scrounging that Scripture-knowledge trophy over the heads of better men by means of some of the rawest and most brazen swindling methods ever witnessed even at a school where such things were common". Exit Bertie.
One book on his list:OccupationRead about the other four books on Spotts' list.
by Ian Ousby
St. Martin's Press, 1997
Nothing can be more degrading for a nation than to be occupied. In the case of France, the German Occupation even extended to the ancient practice of hauling people off to be slaves -- in this case as forced laborers in German factories. Ian Ousby's "Occupation" is an outstanding introduction to this horrible-fascinating subject. The author's apparent disqualifications -- not a historian and not a scholar of French history -- are the very qualities that make him an excellent guide for the general reader who knows nothing about the subject and wants lucid answers to the simple questions: What really happened, what was heroic, what was shameful, and in what proportions did they flourish in the same soil and why?
Number One on his list: Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War.Read about the other nine titles on Walt's list.
An all-time classic, which I first read as a college sophomore. Not only did M, S & W provide an enduring typology of different theories of war (i.e., locating them either in the nature of man, the characteristics of states, or the anarchic international system), but Waltz offers incisive critiques of these three "images" (aka "levels of analysis.") Finding out that this book began life as Waltz's doctoral dissertation was a humbling moment in my own graduate career.
Actor/activist/writer Michael J. Fox is the best-selling author of Always Looking Up, a memoir about how his life was changed by Parkinson’s disease.The Bird Artist by Howard Norman (Picador, $14).Read about all six books on Fox's list.This is a book I wanted to option for a film. The narrator is a young man in early 20th-century Newfoundland who has killed an evil lighthouse keeper. He’s such a gentle soul that he never participated in the local custom of hunting birds, but instead chose to paint them. His story is one of redemption through art, and it’s helped get me through some tough periods. Norman’s hero, faced with a difficult situation, reacts badly, but it gives him the opportunity to evolve in ways he otherwise wouldn’t.
Number One on his list:The Quiet American by Graham GreeneRead about the other nine tales on Pryce's list.
Ostensibly it is about the eponymous quiet American – a naive and idealistic CIA agent in Saigon during the French colonial war of the 50s. But what lingers is the relationship between the world-weary newspaper correspondent, Fowler, and his beautiful girl Phuong. Greene perfectly skewers the superfluity of western notions of love that invariably inform such situations. Undermining the idyll is the mercenary elder sister, painfully aware of the need to use Phuong's beauty to secure a provider for the family while her beauty still has currency.
THE WORST WITCH Jill MurphyRead about the other five books on Craig's list.
Mildred is hopeless at spells but she triumphs by luck and goodness.
One novel on the list:Despair by Vladimir NabokovRead about the other doppelgängers on Mullan's list.
Hermann Karlovich, a Russian businessman, tells how, in Prague, he meets a tramp called Felix who looks exactly like him. Hermann suggests a switch of identities - and then murders the gullible Felix for his own life insurance. The perfect crime. Except that the exact resemblance of the two men may be in Hermann's mind only.
He named a best books list for The Week. One title on the list:Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock (Anchor, $14).Read about the other five books on Palahniuk's list.
Every decade, we get a stunning collection of dynamic, heartbreaking short stories. In the past, those collections came from Barry Hannah, Mark Richard, and Thom Jones. For the next 10 years, Pollock’s work will be tough for any writer to beat.
One title on the list:"The Moviegoer" by Walker Percy.Read about the other titles on Ford's list.
A seriocomic masterpiece that exploits the human connection between bliss and bale.
Number One on her list:The Portrait of a LadyRead about all five titles on Brown's list.
by Henry James
1881
Reputation is a timely subject, now that nobody has one. Whether you are erstwhile financial wizard Bernard Madoff or former Federal Reserve chairman and no-longer-sacred-monster Alan Greenspan, it's not a good time to imagine that your legacy is a done deal. A trio of reputations lie at the heart of Henry James's "The Portrait of a Lady." There is, of course, the reputation of our protagonist, the bright, independent-minded American heiress Isabel Archer. Then we have her suitor and eventual husband, Gilbert Osmond -- a vile American expat in Florence who has a completely unearned reputation for being gifted and special. In fact, he is a vain and cruel narcissist. Finally we have the scheming but sociable Madame Merle, who is reputed to be the most intelligent woman in Europe but who ends (in James's unforgettable dismissal) as "almost as universally 'liked' as some new volume of smooth twaddle." Only Isabel manages to live up to her advance publicity.
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