Pat Conroy's favorite contemporary Southern novelists

At The Daily Beast, novelist Pat Conroy (My Reading Life) tagged his six favorite contemporary Southern novelists.

One entry on his list:

Peachtree Road by Anne Rivers Siddons

In 1973, I met the dazzling Atlanta writer Anne Rivers Siddons at a party at the governor’s mansion, hosted by Jimmy Carter. Annie and I grew up together as writers and we have talked passionately about books since the night we met. At a dinner party at her house, she took me into her kitchen and told me she had started to write her Atlanta novel, Peachtree Road. The first line is, “The South killed Lucy Bondurant on the day she was born.” The book is magisterial because Anne has never written a sentence without music in it. To me, it is the defining book of a Southern city to come out of the 20th century. Our talks continue.

Read about the other novelists on Conroy's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best historical novels

Vanora Bennett is the author of two works of nonfiction, Crying Wolf: The Return of War to Chechnya and The Taste of Dreams: An Obsession with Russia and Caviar, and the novels Portrait of an Unknown Woman, Figures in Silk, and The Queen's Lover.

She discussed five favorite historical novels with Erin Yardley at FiveBooks, including:

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

I read this a few years ago and it was one of those books you always remember because it creates a whole new way of thinking. I had no idea at the time that the medieval mindset was any different to the modern one. It is about the adventure of a Franciscan friar and his novice in medieval Italy and it is part murder mystery, part game with semiotics and medieval knowledge. At university I read lots of French books referring to this medieval period where all knowledge was supposed to be classified, and re-classified and super-classified, and it became sort of idiotic, this academic approach that these monks had. Yet there was something amazing about this belief that you could classify knowledge. It’s also very good storytelling, but the part I remember was the sort of library filled with knowledge and these games, which teased you with knowing things and not knowing things. It’s just this very complex mindset that’s really different from our own and because I knew nothing about it, it was just terribly exciting to be taken off into this world.

This book seems to appeal to a very wide variety of people from mathematicians and science-fiction enthusiasts to linguists and literature professors…

I must say that I have tried to read a couple of other books by Umberto Eco and found them quite difficult, so I think he was reaching out to the world of fiction. There was an interesting book that I read recently by him about art and beauty in the Middle Ages, but it was so much more an academic book. I think The Name of the Rose crosses boundaries in a way that others don’t.

Read about the other books on Bennett's list.

Learn more about the author and her work at Vanora Bennett's website.

The Page 69 Test: Figures in Silk.

The Page 69 Test: The Queen's Lover.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 50 best winter reads

The Independent lined up a panel to select the fifty best winter reads.

One title to make the grade:

The Anatomy of Ghosts by Andrew Taylor

'2010 is proving to be a vintage year for historical thrillers and this is a heady draught of skulduggery and the supernatural,' says Rebecca [Armstrong, deputy features editor of The Independent]. 'The author captures the superstitions and mores of 18th-century England with a wryly witty eye.'

Read about the other books on the list.

View the video trailer for The Anatomy of Ghosts, and learn more about the book and author at Andrew Taylor's website.

Writers Read: Andrew Taylor.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten crime locations

The crime fiction expert and novelist Maxim Jakubowski named his top ten crime locations for the Guardian.

One entry on the list:

New Orleans in James Lee Burke's The Neon Rain (1987)

This was the first novel in which Burke introduced his ex-Vietnam vet anti-hero Dave Robicheaux as he roamed ceaselessly through the humid streets of the French Quarter, the Garden District and the adjoining bayou country in search of justice while wrestling with his own demons. The shimmering prose catches the smells, colours and unique atmosphere of the Louisiana city. The decline of the Crescent City has been chronicled in his following books, all the way to hurricane Katrina.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: James Lee Burke's The Tin Roof Blowdown.

Learn more about Following the Detectives: Real Locations in Crime Fiction, a volume of 21 essays about cities and other places in the world that are closely associated with famous fictional sleuths, edited by

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books on who terrorists are

Jessica Stern is the author of Denial: A Memoir of Terror, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill, and The Ultimate Terrorists.

With Daisy Banks at FiveBooks, Stern discussed five books about who terrorists are, including:

The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

I am intrigued by your next choice, which was one of the three works of literature most cited in the American media two weeks after 9/11 and yet it is set in London in 1886. This is The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.

Yes, I thought I was being clever and unique and didn’t realise so many other people had made the connection. The book is based on an incident that actually did occur when an anarchist tried to blow up the Royal Observatory. In the novel, a group of hapless anarchists are trying to incite a rebellion. Their main concern is that British society is too liberal and they want to demonstrate that this kind of thing can occur.

What I loved about this book is the cynicism that Conrad has in looking at the zealot. He makes clear that a person may start out as a true believer but over time they are doing work that they may or may not believe it. It is the silliness of zealotry that becomes really clear. Can bin Laden and his close circle of followers really believe that what they are doing is making the world a better place?

Where do you think al Qaeda has evolved to over all these years?

It’s ironic that the mission of this organisation shifts so regularly and is so highly dependent on the audience they are trying to reach that you do question the extent to which bin Laden believes his own rhetoric. Bin Laden started out with the goal of forcing Soviet troops out of Afghanistan. Next he aimed to force US troops out of Saudi Arabia. Next he claims to be representing the interests of all the world’s oppressed. At one point Zawahiri tried recruiting African-Americans with messages referring to Malcolm X. Now al Qaeda claims to be fighting global warming and is urging followers to help those suffering from the floods in Pakistan.

So you think al Qaeda has gone too far in trying to be all things to all people?

Yes, I do.

The Secret Agent also appears among Adam Thorpe's top ten satires and on John Mullan's list of ten of the best professors in literature.

Read about the other books on Stern's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five best novels on friendship

Lan Samantha Chang is the director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her latest novel is All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost.

For the Wall Street Journal, she named a five best list of novels on friendship.

One title on the list:

Crossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner (1987)

On a frosty night in Madison, Wis., in 1937, two young and hopeful couples form a bond that carries them through the next 34 years. Larry and Sally Morgan, talented but poor, are befriended by the wealthy and idealistic Sid and Charity Lang. After one memorable year in Madison, the couples and their children continue to meet in Vermont in the summers. Over time, their life expectations are tested again and again. Sid longs to be a poet but finds his dreams in conflict with those of his vivacious wife. Larry's own writing is put on hold when Sally is stricken with polio. In old age, the Morgans and Langs meet for a final time. The wilderness of Vermont, beautiful and threatening, suffuses their last, wrenching conversations, lending a natural mortality to this examination of human love and frailty. "I didn't know myself well, and still don't," Larry acknowledges. "But I did know, and know now, the few people I loved and trusted."

Read about the other novels on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Greil Marcus: 6 book recommendations

Greil Marcus is a rock critic and co-editor of A New Literary History of America. His new book is an anthology of writings on Bob Dylan.

He recommended six books to the readers of The Week magazine, including:

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

I don’t even like L.A., but for some reason it’s figuring heavily in this list. This 1939 novel is the Los Angeles of old buildings that have charm for a reader now, even if they had none for Chandler, and the beginning of the most indelible vernacular phrase-making in modern America.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Big Sleep also appears on Barry Forshaw's critic's chart of six American noir masters, David Nicholls' list of favorite film adaptations, and the Guardian's list of ten of the best smokes in literature.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five first-rate tales of making movies

David Thomson is the author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, now in its fifth edition.

For the Wall Street Journal, he named a five best list of books about making movies. One title on the list:

Final Cut
by Steven Bach (1985)

In 1981, Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" opened in theaters—and closed down its studio, United Artists. This was a tragedy, but traditional Hollywood studios were doomed anyway. The picture cost too much, it went too far into the wilds of Wyoming, it cast a French actress no one had heard of (Isabelle Huppert!), and it was the Waterloo of the auteur theory—Cimino had been permitted to do nearly anything he could think of. What makes "Final Cut'' so rueful and readable is that Steven Bach was at the time a top executive at United Artists—one who was fired in the "Heaven's Gate" aftermath. In the book he is also a dry, funny, very smart writer who pulls no punches and gives a controlled portrait of how things spun out of control. "Final Cut" is also a book about professional vulnerability in status-obsessed Hollywood, where Cimino (the "genius" from "The Deer Hunter") has long been consigned to oblivion. Here's the kicker: More and more viewers now realize that "Heaven's Gate" is pretty good!

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best angels in literature

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

One title on the list:

The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald

Fred Fairly is a scientist, an academic at St Angelicus ("Angel's") College, who can't help thinking of angels. "Fairly perhaps sees a bird flying over the fens, and he looks attentively at a young woman, and he combines the two of them, and imagines an angel. That is how the imagination works." He falls in love with Daisy, who is a kind of angel (a nurse, anyway).

Read about the other angels on the list.

Also see Karl O. Knausgaard's top ten angel books.

--Marshal Zeringue

The 10 best fashion books for students

At the Independent, Iain R. Webb, Professor of Fashion at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London, named the ten best fashion books for students.

One title on the list:

100 Years of Menswear by Cally Blackman, Laurence King

Blackman's photographic research is meticulous and often offbeat. This book is a great starting point for anyone interested in men's fashion.

Learn about the other books on Webb's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve great stories to help you to cope with mortality

At io9, Charlie Jane Anders and Michael Ann Dobbs came up with a list of science fiction and fantasy stories that can help you deal with death.

One title on the list:

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The book that gave us all the stoic, and somehow soothing, mantra "So it goes" also provides this wonderful, alien, way of looking at death:

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in the particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about this book is that this calm view of death is coupled with a fervent anti-war message.

Read about the other books on the list.

Slaughterhouse-5 also made Sebastian Beaumont's top 10 list of books about psychological journeys and Tiffany Murray's top ten list of black comedies.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten novels set in Moscow

A linguist and an international negotiator, Ann Shevchenko speaks seven languages and is the author of two books on cross-cultural communication.

Her debut novel is Bequest.

For the Guardian, she named her top ten novels set in Moscow. One novel on the list:

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (Moscow from 1810-1813)

The city of glamour and gambling, of superstition and appearances, relationships and glitzy balls.

"Moscow is about gossip, St Petersburg is about politics," says one of the characters.

It contrasts with the abandoned and burned city of 1813, Moscow after the Napoleonic invasion: the city of lost hopes, lost loves and lives.

Read about the other books on Shevchenko's list.

War and Peace also appears among Karl Marlantes' top ten war stories, Niall Ferguson's five most important books, Norman Mailer's top ten works of literature, and John Mullan's list of ten of the best floggings in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue