Ten of the best caves in literature

For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best caves in literature.

One book on the list:

The Odyssey by Homer

In the land of the troglodyte Cyclops, Odysseus and 12 of his men visit the cave of the giant Polyphemus to ask him for food. But he makes them prisoners in his lair, which is sealed by a giant rock. Each day he eats a couple of them. How will they escape?

Read about the other caves on the list.

The Odyssey also made Mullan's lists ten of the best shipwrecks in literature, ten of the best monsters in literature, and ten of the best examples of rowing in literature, as well as Carsten Jensen's list of the top ten seafaring tales.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books about doctors' lives

Abraham Verghese is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. His books include the novel Cutting for Stone and the memoir My Own Country.

For the Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of books about doctors' lives.

One title on the list:

Mortal Lessons
by Richard Selzer

I read "Mortal Lessons" as a medical student and was astonished by the prose, the introspection, the lyricism of this practicing surgeon. Richard Selzer is the model "physician-writer," if there is such a thing, in that he does so much more than cater to readers' sometimes prurient interest in things medical; his language is baroque and musical, his epiphanies profound and personal. Here he is writing about the stomach: "Yet, interrupt for a time the care and feeding of this sack of appetite, do it insult with no matter how imagined a slight, then turns the worm to serpent that poisons the intellect for thought, the soul for poetry, the heart for love."

Read about the other books on the list.

See--Writers Read: Abraham Verghese.

--Marshal Zeringue

Shirley Henderson's six best books

Shirley Henderson is a Scottish actor who played Jude in Bridget Jones’s Diary, Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter film series, and appeared in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting. She stars in Todd Solondz’s Life During Wartime.

She named her six best books for the Daily Express. One novel on the list:

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson

I loved the title of this book. I wanted the story to be full of crimes from the past that are yet to be solved, dark secrets revealed and everyone and everything in the stories somehow connected. It was all that I wished for and more, a brilliant read.

Read about the other books on Henderson's list.

See Kate Atkinson's top ten novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 pubs in literature

Richard Francis writes both fiction and non-fiction. He has published nine novels so far, a book on utopian thought and biographies of Ann Lee, the founder of the Shakers and of Samuel Sewall, the only one of the Salem Witch trial judges to admit the whole thing was a miscarriage of justice.

He has two books due out in 2010. The Old Spring is a novel set in a pub and will be published by Tindal Street Press this month. Fruitlands: The Alcott Family, The Englishmen, and Utopia, is non-fiction and gives an account of an eccentric and ill-starred utopian experiment that was set up in Massachusetts in 1843 by Bronson Alcott, the father of the author Louisa May Alcott, who was in fact a child at the community.

Francis named his top ten literary pubs for the Guardian. One novel on the list:

Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens (1864-5)

Another redoubtable landlady, Miss Abbey Potterson of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters in Limehouse (giving upon the river), reigns "supreme upon her throne, the Bar", and is more than a match for the villainous Rogue Riderhood. She serves delectable "Purl, Flip, and Dog's Nose", but can draw the line when she has to. "I am the law here, my man," she tells a protesting customer, "and I'll soon convince you of that, if you doubt it at all." But later in the novel she takes care of Jenny Wren, combining, as a good landlady should, a firm hand and a warm heart.

Read about the other entries on the list.

In the season finale of season two of Lost, the character Desmond says he carries around Charles Dickens' Our Mutual Friend because he wants that to be the last book he reads before dying.

The opening paragraph:

In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 best credit crunch books

Ruth Sunderland is business editor of The Observer. She came up with a list of the ten best credit crunch books.

One title on the list:

Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream… by Gillian Tett

An elegant and expert account by the UK's most prescient financial journalist of how bankers at JP Morgan invented the credit derivatives that were perverted into instruments of mass destruction. FT writer Tett, who has a doctorate in social anthropology, is fascinating on how an elite banking "tribe" gained so much power over the rest of society. Readers will have to decide for themselves whether she lets off JP Morgan too lightly.

Read about the other books on the list.

Fool's Gold appears on Tim Bennett's five best list of books on the latest financial crash.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on disgrace

Rachel Cusk is the author of the memoirs A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother and The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy, and of seven novels: Saving Agnes, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award; The Temporary; The Country Life, which won a Somerset Maugham Award; The Lucky Ones, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award; In the Fold; Arlington Park, which was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction; and The Bradshaw Variations.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of books on disgrace. One novel on the list.

Babbitt
by Sinclair Lewis
Harcourt, Brace, 1922

George F. Babbitt is a family man, community pillar and real-estate agent with an almost religious zeal for his way of life in the fictitious boom city of Zenith. He is even a member of a club called the Boosters, whose sole purpose is to celebrate and vaunt Zenith's virtues wherever possible. Yet Babbitt contains a dangerous grain or two of sensitivity, enough for him to wonder occasionally what would happen if he didn't "boost." In his most private moments he can admit that he finds his wife dull, his children irritating, his job unfulfilling. And one way or another these thoughts cease to be so private: Babbitt becomes, without ever quite meaning to, something of a dissenter. His consequent rejection by his community is instant and vicious, frightening in its middle-class brutality.

Read about the other books on the list.

Rachel Cusk's Arlington Park is one of Adam Thorpe's top 10 satires.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best pianos in literature

For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best pianos in literature.

One novel on the list:

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Amelia and Becky – the good girl and the bad girl – both play the piano, but look at their different styles! After her husband's death, Amelia "spends long evening hours, touching ... melancholy harmonies on the keys, and weeping over them in silence". Becky, meanwhile, entrances the wife of the man she is seducing with the bogus "tenderness" of her renditions of Mozart.

Read about the other pianos on Mullan's list.

Vanity Fair also appears on Thomas Mallon's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve best fiction titles of the summer

For The Daily Beast, Janice Kaplan named the twelve best fiction titles of the summer.

One novel on the list:

Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross

In his bold debut novel Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross offers a stunning view on marriage—and the fine line dividing love from hate. The noir-ish plot and brilliant writing keep you turning pages, and even the implausibility of some events seems part of the crazed haze we enter in states of passion. The story revolves around a man who loves his wife but dreams (from page one) of her dead. When she chokes to death on a peanut, can anyone prove he killed her? One of the detectives is Sam Sheppard—yes, the man jailed for killing his wife—and a long section about that unsolved murder adds to the nightmarish intrigue. My husband slept gently next to me as I read—and I did think of hiding all knives before I turned out the light.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Karin Slaughter's 6 best books

Karin Slaughter is the New York Times and #1 internationally bestselling author of numerous thrillers, including Undone, Beyond Reach, Triptych, and Faithless. Her new novel is Broken.

She named her six best books for the Daily Express.

One book on her list:

Skin by Mo Hayder

This sequel to Hayder’s novel Ritual is even better. Her detective Jack Caffrey is an amazing character and I like reading about the situations he gets into with the Met’s murder squad. She tells tough stories. She’s really a little tougher than me. The diving scenes have helped me with the research for my next book.

Read about the other books on Slaughter's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

7 poetry books to ignite your imagination

Glen Roven is an Emmy Award-winning composer, lyricist, and conductor and co-founder of GPR Records.

For Flashlight Worthy, he selected a list of seven poetry books to ignite your imagination. One title on the list:

The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems
by Michael Ondaatje

Ondaatje is best known for using language that captures the landscapes of dreams. "The Cinnamon Peeler," found in this collection, is a love poem enhanced by sensory information like scent, touch, and sound. Looking for that special someone? "The Cinnamon Peeler" truly captures the ways we can push our minds and our hearts to love another person deeply and fully. Read by singer and actor Michael Cerveris on "Poetic License," Ondaatje's poem is a testament to true love....

Read about the other poetry books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Bill Clegg's favorite memoirs

For The Daily Beast, Bill Clegg, author of Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man, named his five favorite memoirs.

One title on the list:

Family
by Ian Frazier

Ian Frazier could write about a paper bag, and he’d be both charming and profound (I think he has, actually), and this memoir—simultaneously about his growing up in Ohio and the more than century-old history of his family—is both. The last pages and the very last lines of the book are magnificent.

Read about the other memoirs on Clegg's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best music memoirs

Pop critic Kitty Empire picked the best rock autobiographies for the Observer.

One title on her list:

Mötley Crüe: The Dirt by Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Nikki Sixx and Vince Neil, with contributions from Neil Strauss

Mötley Crüe were the kind of band that thought This Is Spinal Tap was a real documentary and that Hammer Of The Gods – Led Zeppelin's scurrilous, legendary biography – a thrown gauntlet. The debauchery of their 80s tenure is probably unparalleled, and their tale both tragic and hilarious. But perhaps the most insidious revelations concern the human beings behind the cartoon rock pigs: elder statesman Mick Mars's crippling disease and Tommy Lee's razor-sharp wit.

Read about the other music memoirs on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue