Five top novels with sporting themes

Chad Harbach's novel is The Art of Fielding.

One of five top novels with sporting themes that he discussed with Alec Ash for The Browser:

[Y]our first pick is Bernard Malamud’s 1952 classic baseball novel The Natural.

I actually only read The Natural last summer, after my book came out. It’s is about a baseball player named Roy Hobbs. He’s a young phenom who gets knifed by a woman on a train and falls away from the game for many years, but comes back at the end of his career and makes it to the major league for one moment of potential triumph. It’s a very dark book, in fact. Roy Hobbs is a really one-dimensional figure. He’s not a thoughtful guy. He’s very ambitious, in a narrow, greedy American sort of way. He only cares about the game.

The plot runs parallel to the myth of the Fisher King. The team is the New York Knights, the manager is called Pop Fisher, they’re seeking the National League pennant, and there’s this Excalibur-like bat called Wonderboy. It almost reads like an allegory.

Malamud does it very well. On the one hand it’s a very gritty book, and on the other hand it has deep mythic undertones. He obviously sees baseball within America as a mythic tradition. And if you know about the history of professional baseball, he takes a lot of baseball anecdotes from the turn of the century and weaves them into the book. So there’s the sense in the book that the history of baseball is a source of American mythos.

In the same way, perhaps, that the “Art of Fielding” book-within-a-book that gives your novel its name has a mythical, Sun-Tzu feel to it?

You’re right, the way that it’s written is quite Eastern – so not an American mythos but the same idea of a spiritual underpinning to the game, whether you’re a practitioner or a fan.

Read about the other books Harbach tagged at The Browser.

The Natural is among Jimmy So's thirteen best baseball books and Nicholas Dawidoff's five best baseball novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top works of accidental theology

Christian Wiman's books include Every Riven Thing, winner of the Ambassador Book Award in poetry, and Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam. His new book is My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer.

In an interview with Christianity Today, he said: "I read a lot of theology, even though I am almost always frustrated by it. Thomas Merton once said that trying "to solve the problem of God" is like trying to see your own eyes. No doubt that's part of it. There is something absurd about formulating faith, systematizing God. I am usually more moved—and more moved toward God—by what one might call accidental theology, the best of which is often art, sometimes even determinedly secular art."

One of Wiman's five top works of accidental theology, as told to the Wall Street Journal:

The Habit of Being
by Flannery O'Connor (1979)

Flannery O'Connor first became famous for teaching a chicken to walk backward. She was 6. There is something in the act, some essential absurdity and wry glee, as well as some essential loneliness that makes a child seek companionship in a hen, that goes to the heart of what makes this posthumous collection of O'Connor's letters so enjoyable and moving. O'Connor was a Catholic in a Protestant part of the country (Georgia), a religious person in a secular intellectual milieu, and her letters are particularly helpful for anyone who finds herself torn between the apparently opposite poles of orthodoxy and atheism. "Apparently" is the operative word here. "I don't know how the kind of faith required of a Christian living in the 20th century can be at all if it is not grounded on this experience ... of unbelief." Her letters are certainly grounded in this experience. The wonder is how often they—and she—flower out of it into expressions of credible faith.

Read about the other books on Wiman's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Deborah Findlay's six best books

Deborah Findlay is an English actor whose film appearances include The End of the Affair (1999), Vanity Fair (2004), and Truly Madly Deeply (1990).

One of her six best books, as told to the Daily Express:

The Love Of A Good Woman by Alice Munro

I love Alice Munro because she’s very delicate with her writing. She creates a world and tells the story in an elliptical way. You have to join the dots to see what she’s talking about. She is very haunting. It is hard to write good short stories I think.

Read about the other books on Findlay's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten teen twin books

Penelope Bush is the author of Alice in Time, Diary of a Lottery Winner's Daughter, and, more recently, Me, Myself, Milly, which explores the dynamic between two identical twin sisters.

One of her top ten teen twin books, as told to the Guardian:

Tintin and The Castafiore Emerald by Herge

I'm allowed to slip this one in, or any Tintin book for that matter, because of the presence of the inimitable Thompson Twins. That is, if identical twins can be described as inimitable. The truth is that between the ages of 12 and 14 I didn't really feel like reading novels but I could never get enough of cartoon books. I would scour jumble sales and second hand book shops to find anything with stories told in pictures. We didn't have Manga in those days. So don't pooh-pooh the humble comic book, I still believe that the absorption of such things at a tender age furnished me with an appreciation of good stories, lively dialogue and humour.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Castafiore Emerald is one of Sally Gardner's top ten books for children with dyslexia and Rachel Cooke's ten best graphic novels.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty essential books about the next step in human evolution

Annalee Newitz at io9 came up with a list of 20 essential books about the next step in human evolution.

One novel on the list:

Amped, by Daniel Wilson

In his SF novel Amped, Wilson asks many of the same questions that [bioethics professor James] Hughes asks in his scholarly work in Citizen Cyborg. Wilson imagines a future where people who have been enhanced with brain implants have an identifying mark so that people know when they are dealing with somebody who has been "amped." Again, humans have taken charge of their evolution — and that process has become deeply political.

Read about the other books on the list.

My Book, The Movie: Amped.

The Page 69 Test: Amped.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten of the best books set in Paris

Malcolm Burgess is the publisher of Oxygen Books' City-Lit series, featuring writing on cities including Berlin, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Venice and Dublin.

For the Guardian, in 2011 he named ten of the best books set in Paris, including:

Claude Izner, Murder on the Eiffel Tower, 2007

The brand-new Eiffel Tower – the glory of the 1889 Universal Exhibition – is at the centre of this dazzling murder mystery set in late 19th-century Paris.

"Pointing straight up into the sky on the other side of the Seine, Gustav Eiffel's bronze-coloured tower was reminiscent of a giant streetlamp topped with gold. Panic-stricken, Eugénie searched for a pretext to get out of climbing it."
• 7th arrondissement

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see: Wai Chee Dimock's five top books on Hemingway in Paris and the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on Americans in Paris.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten great novels about newspapers

For the Telegraph (U.K.), Sameer Rahim and Felicity Capon came up with ten great novels about newspapers, including:

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (1986)

Ford’s novel about a failed novelist turned sportswriter was one of Time magazine’s five best books of 1986. It is the first of a trilogy of novels featuring Frank Bascombe: Independence Day and The Lay of the Land followed soon after. Bascombe’s life seems idyllic, yet he is actually a man in crisis: his novelistic ambitions are unfulfilled, his wife has divorced him and his eldest son dies in a tragic accident.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Bob Greene's five best books about writing for the newspaper.

The Sportswriter appears on Aifric Campbell's top 10 list of portrayals of working life in fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft

The staff of the Christian Science Monitor tagged five books – fiction and nonfiction – that share a connection to the notorious March 18, 1990, theft of 13 masterworks from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, including:

The Music Lesson, by Katharine Weber

Katharine Weber's 1999 novel The Music Lesson imagines the theft of another Vermeer painting under a very different set of circumstances. ("The Concert" was the Vermeer work stolen from the Gardner.) But the novel offers an interesting convergence with some ideas about the Gardner theft. One long-held theory about the missing Gardner works is that they were stolen to benefit the Irish Republic Army and were perhaps being held in Ireland. Weber's novel tells the story of an American art historian urged by her IRA-connected cousin, first to help steal a Vermeer, and then to watch over it by living with it in an isolated cottage in West Cork, Ireland.

Read about the other books on the list.

Also see R.A. Scotti's five best books about art thefts.

Writers Read: Katharine Weber (April 2008).

--Marshal Zeringue

Susan Spencer-Wendel's six favorite books

A journalist for over twenty years, Susan Spencer-Wendel left her job as courts reporter for the Palm Beach Post when she was diagnosed with ALS. Her new memoir is Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living With Joy.

One of her six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:

Alone by Adm. Richard E. Byrd

I am frozen in a wheelchair these days by ALS, so books are divine escape. I treasure those that offer an extraordinary sense of place, as this 1938 classic does. Alone is Byrd's account of the six months he spent researching in Antarctic darkness, slowly dying from carbon monoxide poisoning, witnessing phenomena denied most mortals. The book prompted me to travel from Florida to the Yukon in winter to try to see the glorious aurora he describes so well.

Read about the other books on Spencer-Wendel's list.

Visit Susan Spencer-Wendel's website.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten inspiring books about running

At the Christian Science Monitor Ben Frederick tagged "10 books to get you excited about running now that spring is coming," including:

"The Perfect Mile," by Neal Bascomb

Roger Bannister, John Landy, and Wes Santee were three men all trying to break the same record: the four-minute mile. Most people thought it was impossible, but Bannister did it in 3:59. Then six weeks later Landy broke his record by one second. Their fateful showdown is known as the Miracle Mile. One of the most iconic images in sports – Landy looking over his left shoulder while Bannister passes him on the right – has been immortalized in bronze. Even though you know the outcome, the book is still suspenseful and does a good job of capturing the drama. It also highlights Santee, who was never given a chance to compete against the other two.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on the musician in society

Stuart Isacoff is a pianist, composer, and critic; he was the founding editor of Piano Today magazine. A winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music, he is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal and other publications. His latest book is A Natural History of the Piano: The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians--from Mozart to Modern Jazz and Everything in Between.

One of Isacof's five best books on the musician in society, as told to the Wall Street Journal:

Dr. Faustus
by Thomas Mann (1947)

Thomas Mann's account of fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn—a fantastical Faustian spin on the musical mind of Arnold Schoenberg—is not only great literature but also a thought-provoking meditation on the artist as "other" and on the tension between the primitive spark at the heart of art and the need for disciplined control. We see the young genius encounter these matters as a child, when "a stable-girl, with bosoms that shook as she ran and bare feet caked with dung" sings artlessly but lustily for Adrian and his friends, introducing them to the social cohesion that issues from musical harmony. We note young Adrian's isolating migraines and witness his urge to strike out on new musical paths. And we experience foreboding when his teacher evokes Beethoven's plight: his audiences, for his last works, "stood with heavy hearts before a process of dissolution or alienation, of a mounting into an air no longer familiar or safe to meddle with." In the end, master Leverkühn must, like Beethoven, confront the pain of an artist apart.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about outsiders for teenage girls

Noting that all of the titles on Darren Shan's top ten list of books about outsiders for teenagers were "written by, and is largely concerned with the exploits of — you guessed it! — a straight white man," Emily Temple came up with an alternate list "of outsider lit for teenage girls — or teenage boys willing to read outside the mold," including:

Out, Natsuo Kirino

Sure, the four women who figure prominently in Kirino’s Out could be considered a clique. But then again, each woman is removed from society in her own way, and they’re only in cahoots because one of them murdered somebody (about the most brutally outsider of activities) and everyone is blackmailing everybody else as they dispose of the body. It gets weirder from there, if you can imagine it.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue