Five self-help books for people who don't do self-help

Stephen Grosz is a practicing psychoanalyst—he has worked with patients for more than twenty-five years. Born in America, educated at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Oxford University, he teaches at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London. He lives in London.

His stories have appeared in the Financial Times Weekend Magazine and Granta.

A Sunday Times bestseller, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves is his first book.

For the Telegraph, Grosz named five books "that can move us to empathy, to courage, to love," including:

Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988) is a series of posthumously published lectures on the inner qualities Calvino imagined we’d need in the years after 2000. These include quickness, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and consistency – but lightness is the most important. Lightness isn’t ignorance, but a serious point of view requiring insight and understanding, "a value, rather than a defect."

Read about the other books on Grosz's list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five top books on the most unusual creatures on Earth

One title on the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five top books on the most unusual creatures inhabiting our sea, earth, and sky:

Beasts: What Animals Can Teach Us About the Origins of Good and Evil
by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

If the two most cognitively advanced predators in the animal kingdom are humans and orca whales, why have we murdered over two hundred million of our own species, while these "killer whales" have killed none of theirs? Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson – author of The Dog Who Couldn't Stop Loving and Why Elephants Weep – uses the world's wildest creatures to illustrate how our own behaviors contrast with that of nature's other inhabitants. With compassion and a storyteller's eye for detail, Masson journeys back to civilization's dawn to explain why we characterize our most violent behaviors as animalistic, and why our early habit of classifying "otherness" as an "us vs. them" distinctions in our own species has proven a societal detriment.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Eight top YA novels about world travel

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Dahlia Adler tagged eight fantastic, internationally set YA novels, including:

Sekret, by Lindsay Smith

Cold War–era Russia isn’t exactly a dream vacation destination, but Smith’s debut—about psychic teen spies in the KGB—is compelling enough to make the trip worth it. Packed with history and culture, Sekret is, for better and for terrifying, an immersive experience into Soviet time and place that will have you clamoring for the sequel. (For bonus Russia points, pick up the beautiful, Revolution-era Tsarina, by J. Nelle Patrick.)

Read about the other entries on the list.

Writers Read: Lindsay Smith.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Galway's six favorite books

James Galway is an acclaimed flute player from Belfast, Northern Ireland, nicknamed "The Man With the Golden Flute."

One of his six favorite books, as shared at the Daily Express:

SIX WIVES: The Queens Of Henry VIII by David Starkey

Starkey is terrific. Anne Boleyn stands out because she was definitely framed. I also felt sorry for Henry because he was obliged to produce a new king. He produced Elizabeth I and should be very proud.

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten fictional heartthrobs who have ruined real live romance

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Molly Schoemann-McCann tagged ten fictional men who have ruined real live romance, including:

Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Because he matches Elizabeth so perfectly, wit for wit, and learns from his mistakes and owns up to them, and also you just know he looks like Colin Firth meets a young Laurence Olivier meets Captain America, with a chin cleft for days.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Pride and Prejudice also appears on Emma Donoghue's list of five favorite unconventional fictional families, Amelia Schonbek's list of five approachable must-read classics, Melissa Albert's list of recommended reading for eight villains, Jane Stokes's top ten list of the hottest men in required reading, Gwyneth Rees's top ten list of books about siblings, the Observer's list of the ten best fictional mothers, Paula Byrne's list of the ten best Jane Austen characters, Robert McCrum's list of the top ten opening lines of novels in the English language, a top ten list of literary lessons in love, Simon Mason's top ten list of fictional families, Cathy Cassidy's top ten list of stories about sisters, Paul Murray's top ten list of wicked clerics, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best housekeepers in fiction, ten great novels with terrible original titles, and ten of the best visits to Brighton in literature, Luke Leitch's top ten list of the most successful literary sequels ever, and is one of the top ten works of literature according to Norman Mailer. Richard Price has never read it, but it is the book Mary Gordon cares most about sharing with her children.

The Page 99 Test: Pride and Prejudice.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten literary heroes with weird names

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Alyssa Bereznak tagged ten literary heroes with weird names, including:

Moll Flanders, from Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders

Famous from the 1700s on, even though her name is one letter shy of the word “mold.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Moll Flanders also appears on Maria McCann's top ten list of books on 18th-century London's perils, John Mullan's lists of ten of the best highwaymen in literature and ten of the best seductions in literature, and Freya North's top ten list of romantic fiction.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten novels inspired by Shakespeare

Sally O'Reilly has received numerous citations for her fiction, which has been shortlisted for the Ian St James Short Story Prize and the Cosmopolitan Short Story Award. A former Cosmopolitan New Journalist of the Year, her work has appeared in the Guardian, The Sunday Times, the Evening Standard, and the New Scientist. She teaches creative writing at the Open University and the University of Portsmouth in England. Dark Aemilia is her U.S. debut.

At the Guardian, O'Reilly shared her top ten novels inspired by Shakespeare, including:

The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (Macbeth)

Like Macbeth, Ripley wants what someone else has got. And just as Macbeth murders Duncan, Ripley bumps off golden boy Dickie Greenleaf, seeking to take his place. Then the body count rises as Ripley attempts to secure his position. This isn't a direct retelling, but the parallels are clear: Macbeth is accused of taking on "borrowed robes" and Ripley literally steals Dickie's clothes and identity. For me, the main difference between the Scottish king and the young American is that Ripley is a proper psychopath – he doesn't feel remorse.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Talented Mr Ripley is on Walter Kirn's top six list of books on deception, Stephen May's top ten list of impostors in fiction, Simon Mason's top ten list of chilling fictional crimes, Melissa Albert's list of eight books to change a villain, Koren Zailckas's list of eleven of literature's more evil characters, Alex Berenson's five best list of books about Americans abroad John Mullan's list of ten of the best examples of rowing in literature, Tana French's top ten maverick mysteries list, the Guardian's list of the 50 best summer reads ever, the Telegraph's ultimate reading list, and Francesca Simon's top ten list of antiheroes.

Also see: the greatest Shakespeare homages and cover versions in science fiction and fantasy and Matt Haig's top ten list of novels influenced by Shakespeare.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five notable novels featuring unreliable narrators

Sophie Hannah is an internationally bestselling author of psychological thrillers, poetry, and short fiction.

For The Daily Beast, she tagged her five favorite novels featuring unreliable narrators, including:

Half Broken Things
by Morag Joss

A stunning psychological thriller about three misfits who come together with at first wonderful and then disastrous consequences. One of the best crime novels I’ve ever read—moving, gripping, and more memorable than almost every other thriller I’ve read. Joss is a superb prose stylist.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see: Kathryn Williams's list of fiction’s eight craziest unreliable narrators and Henry Sutton's top ten unreliable narrators.

--Marshal Zeringue

Four riveting nonfiction adventure books

At the Barnes & Noble Book Blog, Amelia Schonbek came up with four riveting nonfiction adventure books, including:

Wind, Sand and Stars, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is best known for writing the much loved book The Little Prince. But he was also an aviator in the early days of flight, and this memoir, which National Geographic named a Top Ten Adventure Book of All Time, recounts his time spent flying airmail planes in the 1930s throughout Africa and South America. It was treacherous work; the pilots flew “open ships and thrust our heads out round the windshield, in bad weather, to take our bearings.” The book is filled with Saint-Exupéry’s tales of near-disaster—and then there were the actual disasters, like a crash in the Sahara that nearly killed him. But the story is really about Saint-Exupéry’s discovery of the alternate reality of flight, and his meditation on making “an incursion into a forbidden world whence it was going to be infinitely difficult to return.”

Read about the other entries on the list.

Wind, Sand and Stars is one of John Wood's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten timeless classics that belong in every child’s library

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Joel Cunningham tagged ten timeless classics that belong in every child’s library, including:

Anatole, by Eve Titus

Before Ratatouille, there was another French rat looking to impress humans with his gourmet tastes. Though the story is delightful, the element that really sticks in the memory is Paul Galdone’s sparsely colored artwork, which manages to stick relatively close to rodent anatomy without coming off as, well, disgusting.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Also see Rebecca Stead's top ten American children's classics you may have missed.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six famously banned books

Seth Satterlee named six famously banned books for PWxyz, the news blog of Publishers Weekly, including:

The lesser the power, the more creative the retribution. After publication of [Graham] Greene’s 1966 novel set in Haiti, The Comedians, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier denounced the book as propaganda and declared Greene Haiti’s Public Enemy Number 1. Running out of ideas, Duvalier commissioned his Ministry of Foreign Affairs to print a repudiation: “Graham Greene Finally Exposed.” Suffice it to say, the pamphlet wasn’t nearly as convincing as The Comedians.

Read about the other books on the list.

The Comedians is among Paul French's five best books on the misadventures of expatriates and Amy Wilentz's ten best books on Haiti.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six books for fans of the BBC’s "Sherlock"

At The Barnes & Noble Book Blog Nicole Hill tagged six books for fans of the BBC's Sherlock, including:

The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie R. King

Holmes’ illustrious career has been well-documented; his retirement remains somewhat murkier. In this imaginative story of Holmes’ beekeeping years, the great detective is confronted with something he likely never expected: a teenage girl to match wits with! In Mary Russell, we have the most intriguing woman in the Baker Street universe since Irene Adler. Vatican cameos!

Read about the other books on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue