Chris Ware's 6 favorite books

Chris Ware's new book is Monograph.

One of his six favorite books, as shared at The Week magazine:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

There's a reason Angelou's memoir of childhood rape is assigned in schools where books about reality aren't banned: The extraordinary will, life, and voice she forged in the wake of her trauma provide an example against which we all should dare to measure ourselves.

Read about the other entries on the list.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is among Dea Brøvig’s top ten books about mothers and Sona Charaipotra's six critical reads for Black History Month.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five YA novels that feature protagonists who identify as asexual

At the BN Teen blog, Nita Tyndall tagged five YA novels that feature protagonists who identify as asexual ("but what’s more important is the books don’t center around that fact"), including:

Before I Let Go, by Marieke Nijkamp

NY Times bestseller Marieke Nijkamp’s newest novel is just as chilling as her first, but in a completely different way. When Corey left her small town of Lost Creek, Alaska, she didn’t think it’d be the last time she’d ever see Kyra, her best friend. But now Kyra is dead and Corey has no idea why. And Lost Creek, the town that shunned Kyra when she was alive, has embraced her after her death. In flashbacks we see Kyra and Corey’s relationship, including discussions of Corey’s asexuality, that are handled with depth and care. This was a beautiful book about the price of friendships, and an asexual protagonist just made it better.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten terrifying horror books you've never read

At The Week magazine Matthew Walther tagged ten terrifying horror books you may have never read, including:

The Cipher by Kathe Koja

By the '90s, I think it had become clear that the future of horror fiction did not lie in the direction taken by Stephen King and others of doorstopper-sized tomes filled with irritating details, sloppy prose, and too many explanations. Koja strips the genre down to the basics: A black hole appears inexplicably in the floor of a couple's apartment in Detroit and dreadful things happen. I paid $60 for my mass-market paperback copy of The Cipher, which has never appeared between hardcovers. The only easy way of getting hold of it these days is, alas, in ebook form. Any publisher willing to bring it back into print would be performing an invaluable service to literature.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five YA reads featuring rebels with a cause

At the BN Teen blog, Jenny Kawecki tagged five YA novels featuring rebels with a cause, including:

Dress Codes for Small Towns, by Courtney Stevens

As the pastor’s daughter in a small, southern town, Billie is already pushing the boundaries of acceptance by dressing like a boy. She doesn’t care, though, as long as she has her tight-knit hexagon of friends. Things get slightly more complicated when Billie realizes she’s crushing on two of her best friends—one a boy and one a girl—who also happen to be falling for each other. Keeping her feelings to herself seems like the best course of acton, until community service forces the friends to spend even more time together than normal. Soon it feels like everyone is kissing someone, and Billie’s no longer sure where she’ll end up. As someone who grew up in a similar environment, I love Stevens’ take on learning to explore ideas and beliefs beyond the world you’ve grown up in.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Five books featuring psychological hauntings

Sarah Porter is the author of the Lost Voices Trilogy (Lost Voices, Waking Storms, The Twice Lost) in addition to Vassa in the Night—all for the teen audience.

Her new novel is When I Cast Your Shadow.

One of Porter's five favorite books featuring psychological hauntings, as shared at Tor.com:

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The ghost as embodied mass trauma.

The most visionary of ghost stories suggests that individual tragedies may not be self-contained, but instead express an immense and devastating communal inheritance channeled through personal grief. After Sethe kills her two-year-old daughter to save the child from being returned to slavery, Beloved first manifests as a fairly classic poltergeist, venting her rage against her family. Later, though, she comes to Sethe as something much greater. Incarnate in the dewy, teenaged beauty that should have been hers, Beloved enacts infantile hunger, love, longing, and destructiveness. But behind her tantrums, Beloved keeps the secret of memories that she cannot communicate. She is not just the ghost of one little girl, but also the ghost of the Middle Passage’s uncountable victims. The trauma of her early death cannot be separated from the larger traumas of slavery. History haunts Beloved’s family through her; it returns embodied in a girl delicate, violent, and infinitely sad.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Beloved also appears on Matthew Fellion and Katherine Inglis' list of ten books that were subject to silencing or censorship, Jeff Somers's list of ten fictional characters based on real people, Christopher Barzak's top five list of books about magical families, Ayelet Gundar-Goshen's ten top list of wartime love stories, Judith Claire Mitchell's list of ten of the best (unconventional) ghosts in literature, Kelly Link's list of four books that changed her, a list of four books that changed Libby Gleeson, The Telegraph's list of the 15 most depressing books, Elif Shafak's top five list of fictional mothers, Charlie Jane Anders's list of ten great books you didn't know were science fiction or fantasy, Peter Dimock's top ten list of books that challenge what we think we know as "history", Stuart Evers's top ten list of homes in literature, David W. Blight's list of five outstanding novels on the Civil War era, John Mullan's list of ten of the best births in literature, Kit Whitfield's top ten list of genre-defying novels, and at the top of one list of contenders for the title of the single best work of American fiction published in the last twenty-five years.

--Marshal Zeringue

Top ten books about pastoral life

Rosamund Young is the author of The Secret Life of Cows.

One of her ten top books about pastoral life, as shared at the Guardian:

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

In this gorgeous pastoral comedy, city meets countryside with the same yawning lack of understanding as today. When the perfumed court jester Touchstone encounters the simple shepherd Corin, whose greatest pride, like mine, is “to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck”, he chastises him for getting a living by the “copulation of cattle”. Similar criticism today might be found on billboards alongside the M25.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifty YA novels adults will love, too

At B&N Reads Tara Sonin tagged fifty YA novels adults will love, too, including:

This is Where it Ends, by Marieke Nijkamp

A shooter causes havoc in a school over 54 minutes in this bestseller, a harrowing, emotional psychological thriller. Told through four perspectives, all with their own fears and secrets, this novel’s diverse cast shines light on the importance of inclusivity and mental health care.

Read about the other entries on the list.

This is Where it Ends is among Eric Smith's six top diverse YA thrillers.

The Page 69 Test: This Is Where It Ends.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twelve great books about the human brain

Jason Tougaw is the author of The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism and The Elusive Brain: Literary Experiments in the Age of Neuroscience. At Electric Lit he tagged twelve great books about the human brain, including:

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Unconsoled

Ishiguro has told interviewers that his most audacious novel — people love it or hate it — is an experiment with writing in “the language of dream.” Each section begins with Ryder, the novel’s bewildered narrator, waking up from sleep he can never get enough of, and finding himself in a world where closet doors lead to art parties, where strangers turn out to be his wife and child, and where there’s a city full of people who are certain his opinions about aesthetics will save them. It’s an experiment in disorientation, and I guess that’s why so many readers find it frustrating. But to me it’s a page-turner. If I pick it up, I can’t put it down. Ishiguro is a master.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Unconsoled is among Robert McCrum's ten most difficult books to finish.

--Marshal Zeringue

Ten hair-raising horror novels not written by Stephen King

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Theresa DeLucci tagged ten top contemporary horror novels, including:

The Red Tree, by Caitlin R. Kiernan

Kiernan doesn’t consider herself a “horror” author and I want to respect that. But I couldn’t possibly exclude this Irish-American master of New Weird, Southern Gothic, and Lovecraftian terror. She is essential reading for anyone who loves evocative prose and truly frightening elements of existential awe. The Red Tree is a later work, combining several hallmarks of Kiernan’s distinctive wheelhouse: corrupt history, madness, and unreliable narrators that will force you to question everything. But, really, you should read as much of her bibliography as possible. And never feel safe again.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Fifteen of the best political novels and plays

At the Guardian Tim Adams and Robert McCrum tagged fifteen of the best political novels and plays, including:

Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)

Richard Wright wrote to his friend William Faulkner that black and white Americans were engaged in a “war over the nature of reality”. The terms of Wright’s engagement in that ongoing war were set by his 1940 novel Native Son, which sold 250,000 copies in its first three weeks. The novel tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a native of the south side of Chicago in the 1930s, who murders two women, one white and one black. Its controversy was rooted in the case Bigger’s lawyer makes in mitigating his crimes in the context of racist oppression – that white society is also responsible. The book did much to politicise the civil rights generation and continues to be a key reference point for #BlackLivesMatter.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue

Twenty-one novels based on or inspired by Shakespeare

At B&N Reads Jeff Somers tagged 21 novels based on or inspired by Shakespeare, including:

The Dead Father’s Club, by Matt Haig

Inspired by: Hamlet. Haig chooses a different route from most authors re-working Shakespeare, in that his story, though modernized, is pretty faithful to the original: the ghost of Phillip’s father visits the young man and implores him to murder his brother to prevent him from marrying Phillip’s mother and taking over the family business. Phillip pursues this goal, but slowly comes to doubt whether his father is right, while the reader begins to doubt Phillip’s grasp on reality.

Read about the other entries on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Dead Fathers Club.

My Book, The Movie: The Dead Fathers Club.

--Marshal Zeringue

Six top books of poetry

Alice McDermott is the author of several novels, including After This; Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; and At Weddings and Wakes. That Night, At Weddings and Wakes, and After This were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

Her new novel is The Ninth Hour.

One of Alice McDermott's six favorite books of poetry, as shared at The Week magazine:

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

I love the value of big books of poetry, and for good reason: My parents literally weighed the paperbacks I was required to purchase for school. (Signet Classics' edition of Middlemarch at $5.95 was a good deal. Forty-five cents for The Turn of the Screw? Not so much.) Yeats' collected works might as well be called Poems for All Occasions. Love, marriage, death, divorce ("the hour of waning love is upon us"), reunions, elections. And of course there's "A Cradle Song" for a birth.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue