Top ten books on grieving

Helen Humphreys is the author of four books of poetry, six novels, and two works of creative non-fiction. Her most recent work of non-fiction is Nocturne (2013), a memoir about the life and death of her brother, Martin.

One entry from her top ten list of "writing that best reflects, and consoles, the experience of loss," as told to the Guardian:

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

This novel tells the story of the adult Bundren children, on their way, by horse and cart, to bury their mother, Addie, in Jefferson, a town 40 miles away from where she has died. The family travel with the body of their mother in a coffin built by the carpenter son, Cash, and each of the children narrates a part of the journey. It is a beautiful and lyrical look at grief, told by a chorus of mourners.

Read about the other entries on the list.

As I Lay Dying is on 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

Five top lectures on writing

Gish Jen, author of Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self, is the author of four novels, including Typical American, Mona in the Promised Land, and World and Town.

For The Daily Beast she named her favorite lectures on writing, including:

Lectures on Literature
by Vladimir Nabokov

Take, for example, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature. Insisting that “Style and structure are the essence of a book; great ideas are hogwash,” he flies with serene ecstasy in the face of academic dogma, caressing instead the details of a work: the routes of Stephen Dedalus and Leopold Bloom through Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses, the wax on the dancing slippers of the eponymous heroine in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. “There is no such thing as real life for an author of genius,” he maintains, there is only “the pleasurable shock of artistic truth.” As for whether we agree, exactly, never mind. The lectures and their argument are themselves such a pleasurable shock, we can only be charmed and enlightened.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten best small towns in books

Brad Tyer's new nonfiction book, Opportunity, Montana: Big Copper, Bad Water, and the Burial of an American Landscape, is about restored rivers, familial disappointment, and sacrificial landscapes.

For Publishers Weekly, Tyer tagged “'10 [Small Towns in Books] That Made An Impression On Me,' whether they treat a town where I’ve lived, a town I barely recognize from the off-ramp, or a town that exists nowhere but the map of some reader’s imagination," including:

The Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry

Part 1 of what came to be a trilogy—with Texasville and Duane’s Depressed—centered on the fictional but thoroughly precedented town of Thalia, Texas. That’s not the suburban Texas I grew up in, but if I’ve seen that one-block town square and imagined that movie-house open for business once, I’ve seen and imagined it a thousand times. And it’s more alive today in McMurtry’s book than it will ever be again on actual Texas soil.

Read about the other entries on Tyer's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten influential authors who came to the US as immigrants

At the Christian Science Monitor Ben Frederick came up with a list of ten influential authors who came to the US as immigrants, including:

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov was born in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, but his family was forced to leave during the Bolshevik revolution. They lived in France and Germany until 1940, when fear of the advancing German troops drove them to the United States. In the US, Nabokov taught at Harvard and Cornell Universities and at Wellesley College. In 1955 he published "Lolita," his most famous novel, about a man in love with a 12-year-old girl. "Lolita" is considered by many scholars to be one of the best English-language novels of the 20th century. The list of authors influenced by Nabokov's work is longer than one of his books.

Read about the other authors on the list.

Nabokov's Pnin made Matthew Kaminski's list of the five best novels about immigrants in America.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten John le Carré novels

John le Carré has published over twenty novels. In October 2008 on BBC Four he told Mark Lawson that his best novels were The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Tailor of Panama, and The Constant Gardener.

For the Telegraph, Jon Stock named his ten favorite le Carré novels, including:

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1963)

The plot of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is assembled with more precision than a Swiss watch. The heartless way in which Alec Leamas is manipulated; Control's ruthless playing of Mundt and Fiedler; and of course the dramatic ending on the Berlin Wall, immortalised in the film starring Richard Burton. My favourite le Carré, it gets better with each re-read.

Read about the other novels on Stock's list.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is among the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on The Cold War, Charles Cumming's best books, and Keith Jeffery's five best books about Britain's Secret Service.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on scientists in World War II

Stephen Budiansky is the author of fourteen books about military history, intelligence and espionage, science, and the natural world. His most recent book is Blackett’s War, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2013.

For the Wall Street Journal he named a list of the five best books on scientists in World War II, including:

The Making of the Atomic Bomb
by Richard Rhodes (1986)

In this epic history of the Manhattan Project, Richard Rhodes seamlessly weaves perceptive and very human portraits of J. Robert Oppenheimer and other key scientists together with a thorough understanding of the technical challenges they faced and the political and military context in which they operated. Rhodes does the almost impossible—not only making nuclear physics clear (and exciting!) but reconstructing the story as it unfolded to those who lived through it. His finely wrought chapter recounting the first test of the bomb makes clear that the scientists themselves were never entirely sure until the very end that their audacious undertaking would succeed. In the awed moments after the blast, physicist Kenneth Bainbridge congratulated Oppenheimer and the other Los Alamos leaders—then observed, "Now we are all sons of bitches."

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb is on Jon Gertner's list of six notable books about science and tech, William Rosen's five best list of books about inventions, and Michael Evans's list of six top books on nuclear war.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books featuring grandparents

Sarah Moore Fitzgerald's debut novel Back to Blackbrick features a boy who lives with his grandparents. Published in the UK in February by Orion, Back to Blackbrick will be released in the US in September 2013 by Simon & Schuster. An academic and associate vice president at the University of Limerick by day, Fitzgerald writes novels late at night under cover of darkness.

One of the author's top ten books featuring grandparents, as told to the Guardian:

Holes by Louis Sachar

There's lots in this brilliantly told story, including the very unlucky Stanley Yelnats's "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing" great great grandfather, along with entertaining and clever lessons about character, karma and family curses.

Read about the other entries on Fitzgerald's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

The ten greatest personality tests in sci-fi & fantasy

At io9 Katharine Trendacosta and Charlie Jane Anders came up with the ten greatest personality tests in science fiction and fantasy.

One entry on the list:

Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Unlike the Turing Test, which tries to distinguish between machine intelligence and human intelligence, the Voight-Kampff test looks for emotional acuity. Using a device to measure autonomic responses, like a sort of lie detector, the tester then asks the suspected Replicant a series of questions designed to test for empathy. In the movie, they involve a poor turtle on its back in the desert, who needs Leon's help.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? also appears on John Mullan's list of ten of the best titles in the form of questions, Charlie Jane Anders and Michael Ann Dobbs's list of ten classic sci-fi books that were originally considered failures and Robert Collins's top ten list of dystopian novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five memorable dystopias in fiction

Lawrence Norfolk is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Lemprière’s Dictionary, The Pope’s Rhinoceros, In the Shape of a Boar, and John Saturnall's Feast. He lives in London.

One of five memorable dystopias in fiction Norfolk tagged for the Daily Telegraph:

Neal Stephenson’s Anathem (2008) details the adventures of a young monk-scholar who exchanges monastic seclusion to plumb the mysteries of his thrice-devastated world. The denouement is an outrageous piece of plot-trickery but Stephenson pulls it off.

Read about the other books on Norfolk's list.

Anathem made Annalee Newitz's list of ten top works of science fiction that are really fantasy.

Also see Annalee Newitz's list of ten great American dystopias, Robert Collins' top ten list of dystopian novels, and Gemma Malley's top 10 list of dystopian novels for teenagers.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten top novels for newcomers to crime fiction

At Kirkus Reviews, J. Kingston Pierce named ten top novels for readers looking for an introduction to the glories of crime fiction, including:

The Gods of Gotham, by Lyndsay Faye (2012)

[T]o represent the burgeoning subgenre of historical mysteries, I recommended this quick-stepping thriller about a fire-disfigured bartender, Timothy Wilde, who in 1845 joins the embryonic New York Police Department. Right away, Wilde gets mixed up with a young girl who’s fled one of the town’s higher-end brothels, covered in blood and claiming to know the whereabouts of a concealed graveyard for abused children.

Read about the other books on Pierce's list, and follow his insights into crime fiction at The Rap Sheet.

Learn more about The Gods of Gotham at Lyndsay Faye's website.

Writers Read: Lyndsay Faye (April 2012).

The Page 69 Test: The Gods of Gotham.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books on gardening

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of six top books on gardening:

American Grown: The Story of the White House Garden and Gardens Across America
by Michelle Obama

A book born from the First Lady's planting of her own kitchen garden in 2009, American Grown proves a multifaceted conversation-starter about the satisfactions of growing one's own food, as well an inquiry into good health and nutrition worldwide, citing instances of gardening as community outreach through the United States. Despite an address at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Obama proves a humble and determined guide, walking readers through her own botanical trials and errors -- and unique recipes -- with an admirable ardor for all things arbor.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books on Afghanistan

William Dalrymple's books include several works of history and travel, including City of Djinns, which won the Young British Writer of the Year Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; the best-selling From the Holy Mountain; White Mughals, which won Britain’s most prestigious history prize, the Wolfson; and The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize for History and Biography. His new book is Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42.

One of Dalrymple's top ten books on Afghanistan, as told to the Guardian:

The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright

Wright's acclaimed book contains by far the most rounded biographical portrait of the central figures of al-Qaida, and how they took root in Afghanistan. It is also a beautifully written and wonderfully compelling narrative. Wright is especially revealing about Bin Laden's own personality: his naivety, egalitarianism and surprising austerity — a rare example of a Saudi billionaire prepared to move to the rigours of Afghanistan and undertake hard manual labour and to live in comfortless, rigorous poverty. Still the best of the many books on 9/11.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Looming Tower also made Marjorie Kehe's list of eight worthy 9/11 books and the Christian Science Monitor's list of seven books about Osama bin Laden.

Also see: Five top books on foreigners in Afghanistan; Five books on Afghanistan; and Five best books about Afghanistan.

--Marshal Zeringue