Orville Schell, dean of the journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley, named his five most important books for Newsweek.The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides.Read about all five books.
It's the story of the destruction of a city. It's really the first piece of war reporting.
Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, recently told Barnes & Noble's interviewer about his ten favorite books.Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of CholeraRead about Hamid's top 10.
A book I loved so much that I have never been able to bring myself to read it again. Romantic, glorious, and for me radiant with the possibilities of what a novel could be.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
Because no one has ever written in more masterful a voice, and no one has ever beenso funny while treating subjects so painfully grim.
Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
For his understanding of human nature, the scope of his imagination, and his ability to tell a story that never lets you go.
James M. Tabor, author of the forthcoming Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Mysterious and Controversial Tragedies, named the five best first-person man-versus-nature books for Opinion Journal.Minus 148° by Art Davidson (Norton, 1969).
In February 1967, Art Davidson, Ray Genet and Dave Johnston completed the first winter ascent of Mount McKinley in Alaska, but on descent a monster storm trapped them at 18,500 feet. For six days they survived -- barely -- in a coffin-size ice cave, enduring 150-mph winds and temperatures that reached minus 148 degrees -- hence the title of Davidson's subsequent account. This finely crafted adventure tale runs on adrenaline but also something else: brutal honesty. Given access to all seven expedition members' journals, Davidson revealed that every "men vs. nature" tale has another dimension: men vs. themselves. His story of extreme mountaineering's good, bad and ugly spares no one -- especially himself. At one desperate point he volunteers to descend alone to "send in help." But: "I knew my reasons for a solo descent were flimsily constructed excuses to conceal my desire to save Art Davidson above all else." Before "Minus 148°," mountain tales glowed with heroism and self-sacrifice. Davidson's was the first to show the darker aspects as well.
--Marshal Zeringue
Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, named this week's list at The Week magazine.The Magic Pudding by Norman LindsayRead about the other titles on Pullman's list.
This Australian children’s classic is the funniest children’s book ever written. Lindsay’s illustrations are marvelous — full of the same wicked energy that drives his prose. I’ve loved it for more than 50 years.
Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - Dani Shapiro, author of Black & White and other works, told Barnes & Noble about her ten favorite novels.Daniel Deronda by George Eliot -- I read this in the same 19th Century literature class. It deals with ethnicity, with Jewishness, in a way that was highly unusual and risky for a female, English writer.Read the entire list.Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf -- I could really list any novel by Woolf. Reading her prose is like looking through calm, clear water. The language is so perfect. It does what great writing should: it illuminates, but it never gets in the way.
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov -- Gorgeous, poetic, verging-on-mad prose. An orgy of prose, really. I read it for the first time at an artist's colony where I was visiting while writing my first novel, and I remember feeling sad, almost nostalgic while reading it because I'd never be able to read it for the first time ever again.
The prolific James Patterson -- he has six books coming out this year (including the third in a young-adult series) -- told Newsweek about his five most important books.One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez.Read about the other four titles on Patterson's list.
The great American novel, which just happens to be from South America.
Brigadier “Chip” Chapman was a platoon commander in the Falklands campaign. He named his top six military books for the London Times.Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence
Panoramic and brilliant. Forget the film, read the book!
Read the entire list.
--Marshal Zeringue
Anne Perry, who has just published We Shall Not Sleep, the fifth and final novel in her World War I series, named her five "favorite fictional tales rooted in history" for Opinion Journal.I, Claudius by Robert GravesRead about the other four titles on Perry's list.
One of the most extraordinary accomplishments in fiction based on history is Robert Graves's "I, Claudius." Graves wrote the "diaries" of the physically awkward and bookish Roman emperor Claudius in such a way that reading them is like spending the last hour of the evening listening to one's eccentric uncle talking candidly about how his day has been. Claudius speaks of the great figures of the Roman world 2,000 years ago as if we know them as well as he does. They are reduced from legend to humanity: immediate, vulnerable and very real. Claudius's forays into military tactics on the frontiers, political reform at home, and architecture and philosophy in general are the interests of an uncle we would never interrupt, for fear of hurting his feelings. Ultimately we become fascinated as well.
Bill McKibben, who recently put his new book Deep Economy to the Page 69 Test, chose a list of "best books" for The Week magazine.Jayber Crow by Wendell BerryRead the entire list.
Any book by this Kentucky farmer-writer will do, but this recent novel is a particularly moving part of his ongoing project: showing the meaning of and need for real human community. Once you're finished with this, continue on to his collected essays.
Sam Taylor is the former pop culture correspondent for the Observer. His first book, The Republic of Trees, was published in 2005. His second novel, The Amnesiac, tells the story of James Purdew, a man obsessed with uncovering the events of three years of his life about which he remembers nothing.The Trial by Franz KafkaRead the entire list.
As far as I can remember, Kafka never once mentions the idea that his protagonist, Josef K, has forgotten anything of importance, but the possibility haunts every sentence in the novel. Why is he being persecuted for a crime he did not commit? Quite rightly one of the most influential novels of the 20th century.
y works and assum[ing] Faulkner, Cather and García Márquez went without saying."The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth.Read about the other four titles to make the list.
This is the great epic of the first half of the 20th century about three generations of an Austrian family. Intimate and visionary and stunningly written.
Last week at The Week, Jerome Groopman named "The List."He, She, and It by Marge PiercyRead about all six titles on Groopman's list.
Written as science fiction, this narrative is prescient, portraying a time when the Earth has become toxic and life itself may be extinguished. Under such conditions, human beings are forced to make difficult ethical choices, many of which could eventually be at hand, given the pace of scientific technology.
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