Posts tagged lists

jyhslibrary: “10 Reasons Why the Internet is No Substitute for a Library.” but is the argument any good? http://bionicteaching.com/?p=796

jyhslibrary:

“10 Reasons Why the Internet is No Substitute for a Library.” but is the argument any good? http://bionicteaching.com/?p=796

teachingtotransform

If You Could Only Read Ten Books for the Rest of Your Life, What Would They Be?

Mine would have to be (includes fiction & non-fiction):

1.   Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
2.   Disgrace by J.M. Cotzee
3.   The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4.   Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (because then I’d be forced to read it and have time to do so)
5.   The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6.   The Bible
7.   The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
8.   Metaphysics by Aristotle
9.   Empire Falls by Richard Russo
10. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

This was not an easy list to put together. I worked on it for several weeks before I decided on the above titles. What would yours be? 

10 Signs That You’re a Writer by Writability You constantly edit. Whether it’s while you’re driving down the street and pass a misspelled sign, or grammatical errors in Facebook posts, you fix errors constantly in your mind—and sometimes not so silently.  You’re highly observant. And not only do you notice things all the time, but you file them away in your I could write about this later folder.  You often ask, “How could I describe this?” You don’t ignore your life experiences—everything from walking outside during a torrential downpour, to burning yourself while cooking, to taking the first bite of a piping-hot homemade chocolate chip cookie can be used in your writing, and you often pause to think about how you would describe it in words.  You have a hyperactive imagination. There’s never a dull moment in that head of yours—your imagination is always working on overtime to keep you entertained and give you fresh ideas.  You feel inspired to write after reading a good book. Enough said.  You often daydream about your WIPs. Your characters never completely leave you— they walk alongside you throughout the day and give you new ideas when you least expect it.  You feel guilty if you haven’t written anything in a while. What a “while” is depends, but after a writing hiatus, a part of you begins to demand that you get back to the keyboard and reprimands you if you don’t.  Grammar jokes are funny. Well, they are.  You can’t get enough books. After all, every new book is a couple hours worth of inspiration.  You keep doing this writing thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re not published, if no one else cares if you continue to write, if you don’t make a penny off of the words that you put on the page—none of that matters, because you’ll continue to write anyway.  10 Signs by Writability Reblogged from Writers Write 

10 Signs That You’re a Writer

by Writability

  1. You constantly edit. Whether it’s while you’re driving down the street and pass a misspelled sign, or grammatical errors in Facebook posts, you fix errors constantly in your mind—and sometimes not so silently. 
  2. You’re highly observant. And not only do you notice things all the time, but you file them away in your I could write about this later folder. 
  3. You often ask, “How could I describe this?” You don’t ignore your life experiences—everything from walking outside during a torrential downpour, to burning yourself while cooking, to taking the first bite of a piping-hot homemade chocolate chip cookie can be used in your writing, and you often pause to think about how you would describe it in words. 
  4. You have a hyperactive imagination. There’s never a dull moment in that head of yours—your imagination is always working on overtime to keep you entertained and give you fresh ideas. 
  5. You feel inspired to write after reading a good book. Enough said. 
  6. You often daydream about your WIPs. Your characters never completely leave you— they walk alongside you throughout the day and give you new ideas when you least expect it. 
  7. You feel guilty if you haven’t written anything in a while. What a “while” is depends, but after a writing hiatus, a part of you begins to demand that you get back to the keyboard and reprimands you if you don’t. 
  8. Grammar jokes are funny. Well, they are. 
  9. You can’t get enough books. After all, every new book is a couple hours worth of inspiration. 
  10. You keep doing this writing thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re not published, if no one else cares if you continue to write, if you don’t make a penny off of the words that you put on the page—none of that matters, because you’ll continue to write anyway. 

10 Signs by Writability

Reblogged from Writers Write 

amandaonwriting

Were DFW’s Favorite Books Mostly Thrillers?

The Christian Science Monitor ran a peculiar list of “David Foster Wallace’s 10 Favorite Books” recently, a ranking that’s since been picked up in places like Flavorwire. (The list was originally published without comment from the author in 2007, in the collection The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books.) The list isn’t what you’d expect from Wallace, or indeed any literary luminary, as DFW passes over names like Shakespeare and Pynchon and Joyce for Stephen King, Robert Harris, and Tom Clancy—and a couple of books (the Ed McBain 87thPrecinct mystery and the natural horror titleAlligator) that seem to be out print:

The Screwtape Lettersby C.S. Lewis
The Stand by Stephen King
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
The Thin Red Line by James Jones
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Fuzzby Ed McBain
Alligatorby Shelley Katz
The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy

What should we make of this? I don’t think Wallace was screwing with us. While his own fiction can be dense and difficult, he was a vocal advocate for straightforwardness—and just plain being nice; he wasn’t making light of these novels, nor, I think, simply being enigmatic, like Bob Dylan making a Christmas album.

[A must read if you are a DFW fan …click the link to read the entire article.]

My Favorite Authors and Books

The most popular questions that readers of Word Painting ask me is, “What are your favorite books,” and “Who are your favorite authors.” Usually they go hand in hand, my favorite authors tend to write my favorite books. I read both fiction and non-fiction throughout each year so I’ll break my list down into both categories.

[Keep in mind, this list is subject to change over the years]

Favorite Fiction:

Richard Russo - Empire Falls (one of the best works of fiction I have ever read. He won the Pulitzer Prize for this work)

J.M. Coetzee - Disgrace (I love his sleek narrative, and how he so keenly uses various literary devices in this novel).

John Irving - A Prayer for Owen Meany (Irving has a wonderful understanding of the human condition. Also, every book I’ve read of his has strong character development)

Victor Hugo - Les Miserables (an absolute masterpiece. What more needs to be said?)

John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men (If Steinbeck ever makes a reading list it’s usually not for this work. While I loved Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men spoke to me on a deeper level.)

Stephen King - Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (I know this is not a novel, it’s a novella, but it’s still one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve ever read. And, the movie adaptation is awesome too!)

Cormac McCarthy - All the Pretty Horses (Even though Blood Meridian is his “famous” work, and he won a Pulitzer for The Road and I have read those works too, I enjoyed All the Pretty Horses the most.)

Newly Discovered Fiction that is Excellent:

Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Paolo Giordana - The Solitude of Prime Number

Fiction I want to Read but have not yet:

David Foster Wallace - Infinite Jest & The Pale King

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crime and Punishment (Yep, I have not read this particular work by him)

Favorite Non-fiction:

Jon Krakauer - Into the Wild (Life changing)

Anne Lamott - Bird by Bird (A must read for aspiring writers)

Immanuel Kant - Critique of Practical Reason (I had a professor in my graduate studies at Marquette University who made Kant come to life. He shed a whole new light about Kant’s philosophy via this book).

Howard Zinn - A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present (A history according to the people and their writings)

Robert W. Jenson - Systematic Theology Volumes 1 & 2 (Yes, I enjoy reading theology, and this is the best Systematic ever written)

Neil Peart - Traveling Music: Playing Back the Soundtrack to my Life and Times (I love the rock band Rush, but I really admire and respect Neil Peart, their drummer. This book is an excellent “travel” book which discusses music more than travel).

David Foster Wallace - This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, About Living a Compassionate Life (Funny, poignant, and life changing).

Books Read for 2011

Here’s a list of the books I’ve read from 2011:

  1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larsson
  2. Little Bee - Chris Cleave
  3. Night - Elie Wiesel
  4. How Reading Changed My Life - Anna Quindlen
  5. Disgrace - J.M. Coetzee
  6. The Stranger - Albert Camus
  7. Siddhartha - Herman Hesse
  8. The Stephen King Illustrated Companion - Bev Vincent
  9. The Masked Rider: Cycling in West Africa - Neil Peart
  10. In the Heart of the Country - J.M. Coetzee
  11. The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
  12. Talk to the Hand - Lynne Truss
  13. The Quotable Book Lover - Ed. by Ben Jacobs & Helena Hjalmarsson
  14. The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter
  15. A Reader’s Manifesto - B.R. Myers
  16. A Thousand Cuts - Simon Lelic
  17. The First Five Pages - Noah Lukeman
  18. The Last Child - John Hart
  19. The Gospel According to U2 - Greg Garrett
  20. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
  21. How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors ed. by Dan Crowe
  22. Everyhing is Illuminated by Jonathan Safron Foer
  23. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling
  24. Half-Broke Horses - Jeannette Walls
  25. Blue Angel - Francince Prose
  26. Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard - Mark Finn
  27. Two-Gun Bob: A Centennial Study of Robert E. Howard - ed. by Benjamin Szumsky
  28. Apologize, Apologize! - Elizabeth Kelly
  29. Last Night in Twisted River - John Irving
  30. Myster and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor
  31. One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard the Final Years by Novalyne Price Ellis
  32. Fight Club - Chuck Palahnuik
  33. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
  34. Harry, A History: The True Story of the Boy Wizard, His Fans, and Life Inside the Harry Potter Phenomenon - Melissa Anelli
  35. Eddie Trunk’s Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal - Eddie Trunk
  36. The Buddha in the Attic - Julie Otsuka
  37. My Last Summer - Kerem Mermutlu
  38. Th1teen R3asons Why - Jay Asher
  39. Mile 81 - Stephen King
  40. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore
  41. God & Sex: What the Bible Really Says - Michael Coogan
  42. The Solitude of Prime Numbers - Paola Giordano
  43. If the Church Were Christian - Philip Gulley
  44. Wishful Drinking - Carrie Fisher
  45. I Curse the River of Time - Per Petterson
  46. 1984 - George Orwell
  47. Love Wins - Rob Bell
  48. The Color of Magic - Terry Pratchett (in progress)
  49. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook - Ben Mezrich (in Progress)

I hope everyone had a great year of reading and I look forward to seeing what each of you is reading for 2012! Happy New Year!

5 lies they tell you about writing

Excellent short list. Well worth reading.

100 Books Every High School Student Should Read

Some of these are way too heady for high school students, but it’s a good list for everyone.

vintageanchor:



1. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien: WH Auden thought this tale of fantastic creatures looking for lost jewellery was a “masterpiece”.

2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: A child’s-eye view of racial prejudice and weird neighbours in Thirties Alabama.

3. The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore: A rich Bengali noble lives happily until a radical revolutionary appears.

4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: Earth is demolished to make way for a Hyperspatial Express Route. Don’t panic.

5. One Thousand and One Nights Anon: A Persian king’s new bride tells tales to stall post-coital execution.

6. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe : Werther loves Charlotte, but she’s already engaged. Woe is he!

7. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie: The children of poor Hindus and wealthy Muslims are switched at birth.

8. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre: Nursery rhyme provides the code names for British spies suspected of treason.

9. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons : Hilarious satire on doom-laden rural romances. “Something nasty” has been observed in the woodshed.

10. The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki: The life and loves of an emperor’s son. And possibly the world’s first novel

11. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch: A feckless writer has dealings with a canine movie star. Comedy and philosophy combined.

12. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing: Lessing considers communism and women’s liberation in what Margaret Drabble calls “inner space fiction.”

13. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin: Passion, poetry and pistols in this verse novel of thwarted love.

14. On the Road by Jack Kerouac: Beat generation boys aim to “burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles.”

15. Old Goriot by Honore de Balzac: A disillusioning dose of Bourbon Restoration realism. The anti-hero “Rastingnac” became a byword for ruthless social climbing.

16. The Red and the Black by Stendhal: Plebian hero struggles against the materialism and hypocrisy of French society with his “force diame.”

17. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas: “One for all and all for one:” the eponymous swashbucklers battle the mysterious Milady.

18. Germinal by Emile Zola: Written to “germinate” social change, Germinal unflinchingly documents the starvation of French miners.

19. The Stranger by Albert Camus: Frenchman kills an Arab friend in Algiers and accepts “the gentle indifference of the world.”

20. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco: Illuminating historical whodunnit set in a 14th-century Italian monastry.

21. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey: An Australian heiress bets an Anglican priest he can’t move a glass church 400km.

22. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys: Prequel to Jane Eyre giving moving, human voice to the mad woman in the attic.

23. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: Carroll’s ludic logic makes it possible to believe six impossible things before breakfast.

24. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller: Yossarian feels a homicidal impulse to machine gun total strangers. Isn’t that crazy?

25. The Trial by Franz Kafka: K proclaims he’s innocent when unexpectedly arrested. But “innocent of what?”

26. Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee: Protagonist’s “first long secret drink of golden fire” is under a hay wagon.

27. Waiting for the Mahatma by RK Narayan: Gentle comedy in which a Gandhi-inspired Indian youth becomes an anti-British extremist.

28. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Remarque: The horror of the Great War as seen by a teenage soldier.

29. Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler: Three siblings are differently affected by their parents’ unexplained separation.

30. The Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin: Profound and panoramic insight into 18th-century Chinese society.

31. The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa: Garibaldi’s Redshirts sweep through Sicily, the “jackals” ousting the nobility, or “leopards.”

32. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino: International book fraud is exposed in this playful postmodernist puzzle.

33. Crash by JG Ballard: Former TV scientist preaches “a new sexuality, born from a perverse technology.”

34. A Bend in the River by VS Naipaul: East African Indian Salim travels to the heart of Africa and finds “The world is what it is.”

35. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Boy meets pawnbroker. Boy kills pawnbroker with an axe. Guilt, breakdown, Siberia, redemption.

36. Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak: Romantic young doctor’s idealism is trampled by the atrocities of the Russian Revolution.

37. The Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz: Follows three generations of Cairenes from the First World War to the coup of 1952.

38. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: This famous novella has been adapted for movies, opera and plays.

39. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift: Swift’s scribulous satire on travellers’ tall tales (the Lilliputian Court is really George I’s).

40. My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk: A painter is murdered in Istanbul in 1591. Unusually, we hear from the corpse.

41. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Myth and reality melt magically together in this Colombian family saga.

42. London Fields by Martin Amis: A failed novelist steals a woman’s trashed diaries which reveal she’s plotting her own murder.

43. The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaoo: Gang of South American poets travel the world, sleep around, challenge critics to duels.

44. The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse: Intellectuals withdraw from life to play a game of musical and mathematical rules.

45. The Tin Drum by Gnter Grass: Madhouse memories of the Second World War. Key text of European magic realism.

46. Austerlitz by WG Sebald: Paragraph-less novel in which a Czech-born historian traces his own history back to the Holocaust.

47. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: Scholar’s sexual obsession with a prepubescent “nymphet” is complicated by her mother’s passion for him.

48. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood: After nuclear war has rendered most sterile, fertile women are enslaved for breeding.

49. The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger: Expelled from a “phony” prep school, adolescent anti-hero goes through a difficult phase.

50. Underworld by Don DeLillo: From baseball to nuclear waste, all late-20th-century American life is here

51. Beloved by Toni Morrison: Brutal, haunting, jazz-inflected journey down the darkest narrative rivers of American slavery.

52. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: “Okies” set out from the Depression dustbowl seeking decent wages and dignity.

53. Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin: Explores the role of the Christian Church in Harlem’s African-American community.

54. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera: A doctor’s infidelities distress his wife. But if life means nothing, it can’t matter.

55. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark: A meddling teacher is betrayed by a favourite pupil who becomes a nun.

56. The Voyeur by Alain Robbe-Grillet: Did the watch salesman kill the girl on the beach? If so, who heard?

57. Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre: A historian becomes increasingly sickened by his existence, but decides to muddle on.

58. The Rabbit books by John Updike: A former high school basketball star is unsatisfied by marriage, fatherhood and sales jobs.

59. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain: A boy and a runaway slave set sail on the Mississippi, away from Antebellum “sivilisation.”

60. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle: A drug addict chases a ghostly dog across the midnight moors.

61. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: Lily Bart craves luxury too much to marry for love. Scandal and sleeping pills ensue.

62. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe: A Nigerian yam farmer’s local leadership is shaken by accidental death and a missionary’s arrival.

63. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: A mysterious millionaire’s love for a woman with “a voice full of money” gets him in trouble.

64. The Warden by Anthony Trollope: “Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money,” said WH Auden.

65. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: An ex-convict struggles to become a force for good, but it ends badly.

66. Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis: An uncommitted history lecturer clashes with his pompous boss, gets drunk and gets the girl.

67. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler: “Dead men are heavier than broken hearts” in this hardboiled crime noir.

68. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson: Epistolary adventure whose heroine’s bodice is savagely unlaced by the brothel-keeping Robert Lovelace.

69. A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell: Twelve-book saga whose most celebrated character wears “the wrong kind of overcoat.”

70. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky: Published 60 years after their author was gassed, these two novellas portray city and village life in Nazi-occupied France.

71. Atonement by Ian McEwan: Puts the “c” word in the classic English country house novel.

72. Life: a User’s Manual by Georges Perec: The jigsaw puzzle of lives in a Parisian apartment block. Plus empty rooms.

73. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding : Thigh-thwacking yarn of a foundling boy sewing his wild oats before marrying the girl next door.

74. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: Human endeavours “to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world” have tragic consequences.

75. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell: Northern villagers turn their bonnets against the social changes accompanying the industrial revolution.
 
76. The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins: Hailed by TS Eliot as “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels.”

77. Ulysses by James Joyce: Modernist masterpiece reworking of Homer with humour. Contains one of the longest “sentences” in English literature: 4,391 words.

78. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert: Buying the lies of romance novels leads a provincial doctor’s wife to an agonising end.

79. A Passage to India by EM Forster: A false accusation exposes the racist oppression of British rule in India.

80. 1984 by George Orwell: In which Big Brother is even more sinister than the TV series it inspired.

81. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: Samuel Johnson thought Sterne’s bawdy, experimental novel was too odd to last. Pah!

82. The War of the Worlds by HG Wells: Bloodsucking Martian invaders are wiped out by a dose of the sniffles.

83. Scoop by Evelyn Waugh: Waugh based the hapless junior reporter in this journalistic farce on former Telegraph editor Bill Deedes.

84. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy : Sexual double standards are held up to the cold, Wessex light in this rural tragedy.

85. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene: A seaside sociopath mucks up murder and marriage in Greene’s novel.

86. The Code of the Woosters by PG Wodehouse: A scrape-prone toff and pals are suavely manipulated by his gentleman’s gentleman.

87. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: Out on the winding, windy moors Cathy and Heathcliff become each other’s “souls.” Then he leaves.

88. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens: Debt and deception in Dickens’s semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman crammed with cads, creeps and capital fellows.

89. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: A slave trader is shipwrecked but finds God, and a native to convert, on a desert island.

90. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Every proud posh boy deserves a bratty, prejudiced girl.

91. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: Picaresque tale about quinquagenarian gent on a skinny horse tilting at windmills.

92. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: Septimus’s suicide doesn’t spoil our heroine’s stream-of-consciousness party.

93. Disgrace by JM Coetzee: An English professor in post-apartheid South Africa loses everything after seducing a student.

94. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte: Poor and obscure and plain as she is, Mr.
Rochester wants to marry her. Illegally.

95. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust: Seven-volume meditation on memory, featuring literature’s most celebrated lemony cake.

96. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: “The conquest of the earth,” said Conrad, “is not a pretty thing.”

97. The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James: An American heiress in Europe “affronts her destiny” by marrying an adulterous egoist.

98. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: Tolstoy’s doomed adulteress grew from a daydream of “a bare exquisite aristocratic elbow.”

99. Moby Dick by Herman Melville: Monomaniacal Captain Ahab seeks vengeance on the white whale that ate his leg.

100. Middlemarch by George Eliot: “One of the few English novels written for grown-up people,” said Virginia Woolf.

Overlooked: Five direly underappreciated U.S. novels >1960. By David Foster Wallace