Five must-read short-story collections

Jane Ciabattari is the author of the critically acclaimed short-story collection, Stealing the Fire.

For The Daily Beast, she named five must-read short-story collections. One book on her list:

A Taste of Honey by Jabari Asim

This first collection from cultural critic Jabari Asim (Why Obama Matters and The N Word) is a clear-eyed, warm-hearted, often humorous portrait of a sometimes tough time gone by. The 16 linked stories are set in Gateway, a Midwestern city not unlike Asim’s hometown of St. Louis. Four stories are narrated by Crispus Jones, a charmer barely old enough to cross the street by himself. The youngest of three boys, Crisp is sometimes humiliated (his brother Shomberg, 12, is a particular tease), but he gets revenge in his dreams: “I undid the day’s disasters and rewrote them to suit my most fervent desires. I had control. Everyone listened to me, and there was no end to my handsomeness…”

Asim draws us close to the tightly knit Jones family, their friends, neighbors, shopkeepers, the newly radical young “Warriors of Freedom,” and the police in the months from the hot foreboding summer of 1967 to the climactic moments of “urban unrest” after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in the spring of 1968. As Asim highlights individual dreams and disappointments, near misses and triumphs, he’s always attuned to the sting of racism and the balm of tenderness and joy that comes from being with the ones we love.

Read about the other collections on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best riots in literature

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

One book on the list:

The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

West's sour tale of a young man trying to make his way in depression-era Hollywood ends with a riot at a film premiere. A California crowd made irascible by their own disappointed dreams are ready for violence, and one small altercation sets them off.

Read about the other entries on Mullan's list.

The Day of the Locust is on Jane Ciabattari's list of the five best novels on Hollywood, Jonathan Kellerman's list of the top ten LA noir novels, and Peter Conn's list of the five best novels from the Great Depression; it also appears on Jonathan Evison's list of books about the Spirit of California.

--Marshal Zeringue

Gerald Scarfe's 6 best books

Gerald Scarfe is one of Britain’s best-known cartoonists; his work is instantly recognizable to readers of The New Yorker.

He named his six best books for The Daily Express. One title on the list:

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I had a very irregular education but when I read this 19th century Russian classic it was an absolute revelation. Sometimes so-called classics can be hard work but I found this absolutely gripping.

Read about the other books on Scarfe's list.

Crime and Punishment is one of the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer, and it appears on Andrew Klavan's five best list of psychological crime novels. Elmore Leonard has never read beyond page fifty of the tome.

--Marshal Zeringue

Alternate history: five American presidents

At io9, David Daw came up with a few American presidents in alternate history. One alt-president from his list:

Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip

One of the first alternate history presidencies was the satirical fascist presidency of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip in It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis. Published in 1935, the book centers on Windrip's presidency as he quickly rises to power after promising every American 500 dollars and then turns the US into a fascist dictatorship opposed by surprisingly few citizens. The story was popular enough to be adapted into a play and a 1960's TV movie and, after some network rejiggering, was actually the basis for the original 1980's V series.

Read about the other alternate presidents on Daws' list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top 10 troubled males in fiction

Tony Parsons' new novel is Men From The Boys, the final installment of his Harry Silver trilogy, which began with Man and Boy and was then followed by Man and Wife.

For the Guardian he named his top ten troubled males in fiction.

One troubled man on the list:

Magwitch in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

From the moment he grabs Pip by the throat in a graveyard until the time he sneaks back from Botany Bay to reveal himself as the young man's secret benefactor, Magwitch is one of the great tormented souls in literature. Violent, uneducated, blundering, yet full of love and desperate to do one good thing in his life.

Read about the rest of the list.

Great Expectations also made John Mullan's ten best list of fights in fiction, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and numbers among Kurt Anderson's five most essential books. It is #1 on Melissa Katsoulis' list of "twenty-five films that made it from the book shelf to the box office with credibility intact."

--Marshal Zeringue

Eleven presidents' favorite books

The Huffington Post's Jessie Kunhardt pulled together a list of favorite books of eleven U.S. presidents.

One president and book on the list:

John F. Kennedy

Though JFK had very sophisticated reading tastes -- among his favorites is Stendhal's "The Red and the Black," a psychological novel and satire of the French social order -- he also liked fun reads. One of his favorite authors was Ian Fleming, and he especially enjoyed "From Russia with Love."

Read about the other presidents' favorite books.

From Russia with Love also made John Mullan's lists of ten of the best chess games in fiction, ten of the best punch-ups in fiction, and ten of the best breakfasts in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books that can save the world

Lucas Wittmann, the Books Editor at The Daily Beast, argues that the books nominated for this year's Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism "demonstrated the important role that insightful, incisive, and well-researched books still play in helping us understand our complicated, messy world." One of the nominated books and why Wittmann thinks it is worth reading:

Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil
by Peter Maass

And then there are those complex subjects that are so hard do dramatize. Over the last two weeks we’ve watched the largest oil spill in U.S. history slowly metastasize through the Gulf. Many of us were shocked by the devastation but anyone who has read Peter Maass’ superbly terrifying account of oil, Crude World, will know that Ecuador and Nigeria have been experiencing something similar year after year. Our world runs on oil and Maass’ book is the guide to our awful addiction—and hopefully a spur to greater control. If you saw the 60 Minutes expose on Sunday night, you’ll know the urgency of reform.

Read the rest of Wittmann's feature.

The Page 99 Test: Crude World.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best towers in literature

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

One title on the list:

The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

But what are the two towers that give the title to the second volume of The Lord of the Rings? Minas Tirith, site of the trilogy's last battle? Minas Morgul? Or a couple of the other towers on the tower-thick map of Middle Earth: Barad-dûr, Cirith-ungol, or Isengard (where Gandalf is held by Saruman until rescued by an eagle)? Take your pick.

Read about the other works on the list.

The Lord of the Rings also made Lev Grossman's list of the six greatest fantasy books of all time, and appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best volcanoes in literature, ten of the best chases in literature, and ten of the best monsters in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Waters' 6 favorite books

John Waters is the writer/director of the films Hairspray, Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Cecil B. Demented. His new book is Role Models.

Waters told The Week magazine about his six favorite books. One title on the list:

The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq

My favorite politically incorrect novelist can write like nobody’s business, including yours. Incredibly cruel, sexist, and outside any moral standards, this insanely brilliant science-fiction novel is as good a place as any to start reading this author … or stop.

Read about the other books on Waters' list.

See Ray Taras' review of Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best books on American moguls

T.J. Stiles is the author of The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt, winner of the 2009 National Book Award and the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

For the Wall Street Journal he named a five best list of books on American moguls. One title on the list:

Pulitzer
by James McGrath Morris
Harper, 2010

Today's reporters and media tycoons would do well to study James McGrath Morris's life of Joseph Pulitzer, the journalist, editor and entrepreneur. A proverbial penniless immigrant (a German-speaking Hungarian Jew), Pulitzer fought for the Union in the Civil War, then moved to St. Louis. There he learned English and the news business. His rapid rise in journalism was interwoven with politics, a natural twist, since newspapers were overtly partisan. He briefly held elected office but found greatness as a newspaper owner. Morris is fascinating on Pulitzer as a working (make that hard-working) reporter and editor who understood how to grab his readers—and saw where his industry was going (or could go).

Read about the other books on the list.

The Page 99 Test: Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten Welsh underground novels

Welsh author Rachel Trezise won the inaugural Dylan Thomas prize, a £60,000 literary award for work by writers under 30, for her short story collection Fresh Apples. Her new novel is Sixteen Shades of Crazy.

For the Guardian, she named a top ten list of Welsh underground novels. One book on the list:

Luggage from Elsewhere by Aneurin Gareth Thomas

A dazzling and devastating account of a bittersweet old south Wales childhood and adolescence, ripe with discotheques and pints of snakebite and blackcurrant. A group of friends grow up and experiment with sex, drugs and political action in a society coming to terms with loss of work and power. "We lived on the coast but only ever knew how to eat fish fingers."

Read about the other books on the list.

Visit Rachel Trezise's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Yann Martel's five favorite books

Yann Martel is the author of the novel Life of Pi, winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Beatrice and Virgil, his new novel, is now out by Spiegel & Grau.

He named his five favorite books for The Daily Beast. One title on the list:

Disgrace
by J. M. Coetzee

Likely my favourite living writer. It's astonishing how much he does with so little. Disgrace is a spare and searing work about the changing South Africa, told through the story of a professor whose life goes all wrong.

Read about the other books on the list.

Disgrace also appears on Ian Holding's top ten list of books that teach us about southern Africa; it is one of Vendela Vida's favorite books of the last ten years.

Also see Yann Martel's recent (and somewhat different) 6 favorite books list.

--Marshal Zeringue