Five YA novels in which environmental catastrophe leads to a dystopia

At Slate, Torie Bosch has an interesting essay about how dystopian young-adult fiction is tackling the social consequences of global warming. Her starting point is The Hunger Games story, and she tags a few other similarly themed novels, including:

Birthmarked by Caragh O’Brien. About the novel:

After climate change, on the north shore of Unlake Superior, a dystopian world is divided between those who live inside the wall, and those, like sixteen-year-old midwife Gaia Stone, who live outside. It’s Gaia’s job to “advance” a quota of infants from poverty into the walled Enclave, until the night one agonized mother objects, and Gaia’s parents disappear.

As Gaia’s efforts to save her parents take her within the wall, she faces the brutal injustice of the Enclave and discovers she alone holds the key to a secret code, a code of “birthmarked” babies and genetic merit.

Fraught with difficult moral choices and rich with intricate layers of codes, Birthmarked explores a colorful, cruel, eerily familiar world where a criminal is defined by her genes, and one girl can make all the difference.

Read--Caragh O'Brien's Birthmarked, the movie.

Learn about four other novels Bosch mentioned.

Read Bosch's essay.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on hysteria

Asti Hustvedt is the author of Medical Muses: Hysteria in Nineteenth-Century Paris. An independent scholar who has written extensively on hysteria and literature, she has a Ph.D in French literature from New York University, is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Phi Betta Kapa Fellowship. Hustvedt is the editor of The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France and has published many translations. She lives in New York City.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of books on hysteria. One title on the list:

Mad, Bad and Sad
by Lisa Appignanesi (2008)

Lisa Appignanesi's ambitious and fascinating book explores two centuries of "mad, bad and sad" women and the mind doctors who treated them. While the author's scope extends well beyond hysteria proper, the disorder in its myriad forms appears throughout the text. Some of her subjects are women who became famous patients, such as a young woman named Augustine, whose hysteria made her a medical celebrity in 19th-century Paris; and some are famous women who became patients, including Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. Appignanesi reminds us that medical history is made up of human stories and that unhappiness, especially of the female variety, tends to be adapted to fit current diagnostic categories. These days, the tendency is to locate mental illness in biology—in "chemical imbalances" in the brain, for example. Appignanesi counters, with ample evidence, that illness is not stable but shifts according to the needs of the time.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Lisa Appignanesi's Mad, Bad, and Sad.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten canonical, super-weird science fiction novels

At io9, MaryKate Jasper and Charlie Jane Anders came up with a list of ten super-weird science fiction novels that are considered part of the canon.

One entry on the list:

Dreamsnake by Vonda McIntyre

Why It's Weird: The novel follows a healer through a post-apocalyptic, desert-like landscape, as she looks for a replacement "dreamsnake." Dreamsnake bites produce hallucinations similar to acid trips. So in a sense, what we're looking at here is one long roadtrip dedicated to the pursuit of LSD.

Why It's Required: Dreamsnake swept the awards when it was first published, winning the 1979 Hugo Award, the 1978 Nebula Award, and the 1979 Locus Award. It was also nominated for the 1979 Ditmar Award in International Fiction.

Read about the other entries on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Dreamsnake.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best thunderstorms in literature

At the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best thunderstorms in literature.

One novel on the list:

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Esther is out walking in the woods with Mr Jarndyce and Ada after a spell of sultry weather when the storm suddenly breaks on them. They take shelter in a keeper's cottage, which they think is empty. But as they sit and listen to the storm, Lady Dedlock's voice comes from the darkness. Fatefully, she and Esther have met.

Read about the other storms on the list.

Bleak House is one of Ian Rankin's 5 favorite literary crime novels, Tim Pigott-Smith's six best books, James McCreet's top ten Victorian detective stories and one of Rebecca Ford's favorite five fiction books. It is on John Mortimer's list of the five best books about law and literature and John Mullan's list of ten of the best men writing as women, and is among the top ten works of literature according to Stephen King.

--Marshal Zeringue

Olen Steinhauer's six favorite books

Olen Steinhauer’s widely acclaimed Eastern European crime series, which he was inspired to write while on a Fulbright fellowship, is a two-time Edgar Award finalist and has been shortlisted for the Anthony, the Macavity, the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger, and the Barry awards. The series includes The Bridge of Sighs, The Confession, 36 Yalta Boulevard, Liberation Movements, and Victory Square. Steinhauer is also the author of the bestselling Milo Weaver series, including The Nearest Exit, The Tourist, and An American Spy.

One of the author's six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

How is it possible to write such a philosophically challenging work that is this entertaining and wildly funny? I still don't know, though I've read the novel innumerable times. Everything builds from a simple dilemma — Tomas must choose between domestication and sexual freedom — and snowballs into a celebration of the rich and bountiful breadth of living. I want to be Kundera when I grow up.

Read about the other books on Steinhauer's list.

Lee Child called The Unbearable Lightness of Being "his private pick for the 20th–century novel that will live the longest." John Mullan includes it among ten of the best visits to the lavatory in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable books on Ireland in America

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

The Emerald Diamond
by Charley Rosen

Baseball may be America's national pastime, but Rosen recounts the pervasive influence of Irish players, managers and fans on the game. An Irish pitcher tossed the first curveball. Irish players, taking cues from their forebearers' successes in organizing labor, were vital in the formation of the first players' union. Equipment such as batting helmets, catcher's shin guards, and even the little broom used by umpires to clean home plate, as well as early stars like home run king Dan Brouthers and a slew of successful managers, testify to a Hibernian impact on baseball that cannot be overemphasized. A fun, fact-filled case that the outfield is really Kelly green.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see: Frank Delaney's five best books on Ireland and top ten Irish novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top comic novels

Andy Borowitz is a writer and a comedian whose work appears in The New Yorker and at his satirical website, BorowitzReport.com, which has millions of readers around the world. The author of six books, he is the first-ever winner of the National Press Club's humor award, a two-time finalist for the Thurber Prize for American Humor, and a two-time host of the National Book Awards. He has been called a "Swiftian satirist" (The Wall Street Journal), "America's satire king" (The Daily Beast) and "one of the funniest people in America" (CBS News Sunday Morning).

With Eve Gerber at The Browser, Borowitz discussed five of his favorite comic novels.  One title on the list:

True Grit
by Charles Portis

Last, Charles Portis’s 1968 novel about a late 19th century girl’s quest to avenge her father’s death in the old West. Tell us about the strange characters that inhabit True Grit, why you picked it and what makes it so funny?

The narrative voice of that girl, Mattie Ross, is what makes this book such a standout, and the characterisation of “Rooster” Cogburn, her drunken yet surprisingly effective partner in her quest. As before, I have to demur by saying that describing why something is funny is a pretty good way of making it seem not funny. But I urge everyone who wants a good laugh to read it. Plus it’s very short – a good quality in a comic novel.

The critic Ron Rosenbaum called the author of True Grit “the most original, indescribable sui generis talent overlooked by literary culture in America”. Can you characterise Portis’s place in the pantheon of American comic writers?

In the introduction to the anthology I edited last year, The 50 Funniest American Writers, I pointed out the futility, as it seemed to me, of ranking comic writers – or any artists for that matter – in any pantheon of any kind. The title of the anthology was a joke, something that people who skipped the introduction may have missed. So I’m going to stick with that and plead the Fifth here. I will say that Portis is becoming less and less overlooked as people discover his books. He’s wonderful.

According to Time magazine – and me – there is no one funnier in 140 characters than you. Is comedy in the Twittersphere different from being funny in other forums? What is Twitter doing for and to comedy?

On Twitter, it helps to be timely and concise. But that's nothing new. Mark Twain would have been great at Twitter. But if he had had Twitter he might never have gotten around to writing Huckleberry Finn. Maybe that's what Twitter is doing to comedy – diverting our attention from longer forms into short bursts of funniness. Only time will tell whether this is a net gain or loss. I try not to think too much about it. It's a lot of fun right now.

Finally, what's the funniest thing about reading?

Definitely the typos.

Read about the other novels Borowitz tagged at The Browser.

True Grit also appears on Tad Friend's five best list of novels on success, Willy Vlautin's list of five great books set in the West, and Jonathan Lethem's list of five terrific novels overshadowed by their film versions.

--Marshal Zeringue

Brian Selznick's six favorite children's books

Brian Selznick has written and illustrated several award-winning children's books, including The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which inspired the multi-Oscar-winning film Hugo.

On of his six favorite children's books, as told to The Week magazine:

The Juniper Tree translated by Lore Segal and Randall Jarrell

The definitive edition of the Grimms' fairy tales, accompanied by some of Maurice Sendak's most brilliant and haunting images. Each picture is filled with strange allusions and unforgettable characters. You'll feel like you've never heard (or seen) these stories before.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten romans-fleuves

"Roman-fleuve sounds a very French sort of thing," writes Jeffrey Archer at the Guardian. "Britannica defines it as 'a series of novels, each one complete in itself, that deals with an era of national life, or successive generations of a family'."

Archer, who is the author of his own five-book series, The Clifton Chronicles, named his top ten romans-fleuves, including:

The Smiley trilogy by John le Carré

In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley's People, Le Carré achieves a perfect blend between the novel of manners and the sophisticated spy story. Future generations will be able to learn all they need to know about the attitudes and obsessions of a certain part of British society in the 1960s and 1970s from these novels. At the centre stands the unforgettable character of George Smiley – decent, intelligent, thoughtful, relentless, self-questioning – who uncovers a mole in the secret service, attempts to restore the service's prestige and takes on the great Soviet spymaster Karla. When it comes to spies, Le Carré has no equal.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is on John Mullan's list of ten of the best pairs of glasses in literature and among Robert Baer's five best books on being a spy and Stella Rimington's six favorite secret agent novels; Peter Millar includes it among John le Carré's best books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on March Madness

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

When March Went Mad
by Seth Davis

National interest in college basketball (and, subsequently, the NBA) was reborn in 1979 when Larry Bird's Indiana State Sycamores battled Earvin "Magic" Johnson's Michigan State Spartans for a media-hyped national championship in what is still basketball's highest-rated televised game of all time. Davis shows how the nation's fascination with this game, heightened by tensions over race and class, reshaped American sport culture and created the modern multi-billion dollar concept of "March Madness". Though this was the only game the two star athletes played against each other during their collegiate careers, it produced one of the greatest rivalries ever in professional sports, as Byrd's Celtics and Magic's Lakers would vie for NBA dominace throughout the ensuing decade.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see--The 10 best books about college basketball.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five of the best books on the Israeli intelligence service

Gordon Thomas is a political and investigative journalist and the author of over 50 books, published in more than 30 countries and in dozens of languages. The total sales of his works exceed 45 million copies. A revised and updated edition of his Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad has just been released.

One of Thomas's five best books on the Israeli intelligence service, as told to the Wall Street Journal:

Man in the Shadows
by Efraim Halevy (2006)

Efraim Halevy was the director-general of Mossad from 1998 to 2002, a period of crisis that saw five Israeli prime ministers come and go, even as the threat of Islamic terror rose. He writes with surprising candor about his work and mounts a determined defense of the service against accusations that it has a dangerous degree of autonomy: "There must be an intimacy that is constantly nurtured between the intelligence leader and his political leader." Halevy came to office in the aftermath of two Mossad failures. The first was the attempt to assassinate Khalid Mishal, the spiritual leader of Hamas. The second was a failed operation in Switzerland, when a Mossad officer was arrested trying to wiretap the phone of a suspected terrorist. "Much scorn and ridicule was poured on the service," shaking the confidence of those serving in the ranks. Halevy shows how he worked to rebuild confidence. Perhaps most striking is his description of the complex interplay between intelligence and policy making, offering insights worth keeping in mind as Israel faces new threats and challenges today.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable books for would-be space travelers

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

Red Mars
by Kim Stanley Robinson

After the moon, Mars represents the next feasible opportunity for manned space exploration. In the kickoff to one of the most celebrated of science-fiction trilogies, Robinson provides an intoxicating vision of how we might settle and transform our planetary neighbor. A cast of intrepid colonists are swept up in a truly epic-scale adventure, with a dash of utopian dreams balanced by the author's integration of deeply researched science about everything from how to thicken a world's atmosphere to new drugs and treatments for aging. Red Mars is a mind-bending journey into a possible future, with implications that touch on ecology, politics, and every aspect of human society.

Read about the other books on the list.

See--Kim Stanley Robinson's ten favorite Mars novels.

--Marshal Zeringue