Tag Archives: Lists

100 Great French Books: From the Middle Ages to the Present by Lance Donaldson-Evans

Posted on by
1

Synopsis:
A catalog of Gallic must-reads from Le Chanson de Roland through The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq.

Review:
100 Great French Books: From the Middle Ages to the Present is such a fine addition to my permanent library. I love lists, especially ones recommending books to me! I will definitely be working my way through this one.

I am no expert on French literature, but author and U. Penn professor Lance Donaldson-Evans was knighted in France for his contributions to spreading French culture and language, so his opinion is probably worth listening to. Maybe the academics will find some hairs to split, but as for me, I’m excited to get reading.

Many thanks to BlueBridge for the review copy.

Similar Books?

Posted on by
2

Reader Jay wants some book recommendations:

Sorry to bother you, however I was wondering if you could help me out with something.I live in america, and I am wanting to start reading 1 book a week.This trying to get me back into reading again, as I was one of those people in college and highschool that only read the required stuff.I was wondering if you could help me out with any recommendations.

I have a dry and sarcastic witty sense of humor,I am also a 23 year old male.I’m not into romance, or fantasy (ie stuff like Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings etc). I tried amazon for recommendations but it like most sites is the typical if you like 1 book by author you will like all books by that author.Below is the stuff that is currently on my list, so you can get an idea of what sort of thing I like.Hope you can give me some recommendations, thanks for any help.

Christopher Moore – A Dirty Job (Currently Reading)
Christopher Moore – Lamb The Gospel According to Biff,Christ’s Childhood Pal
Kurt Vonnegut – Breakfast of Champions
Ella Minnow Pea – Mark Dunn
Nicholson Baker – The Mezzanine
Chuck Palahniuk.- Choke

I have read Ella Minnow Pea, Choke, and some other Vonnegut. Have heard great things about Moore but haven’t read him. So let me see what I can come up with:

  • The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde has the same whimsy & wordplay as Ella Minnow Pea
  • The Killer Inside Me as a good introduction to Jim Thompson
  • The Negative by Michael Covino–hard to find but such a good read, about the making of an epic flop–or epic masterpiece. When the negative is stolen for a ransom, the director has a very odd response. Great heist story

Does anybody else have suggestions for Jay?

Favorite Films A to Z

Posted on by
5

Taken from my dear Sheila:

List your favorite films from A to Z, one for each letter of the alphabet.

A for Amadeus
B for Blade Runner
C for Cabaret
D for Dressed to Kill
E for East of Eden
F for Fear Eats the Soul
G for Ginger Snaps
H for The Haunting
I for Imitation of Life
J for Johnny Guitar
K for Krull
L for Leave her to Heaven
M for Mildred Pierce
N for Natural Born Killers
O for Ossessione
P for Pandora’s Box
Q for Queen Christina
R for Raise the Red Lantern
S for Seance on a Wet Afternoon
T for Two Friends
U for The Usual Suspects
V for Valley of the Dolls
W for Whale Rider
X for X-Men
Y for You Can Count on Me
Z for Zoolander

Top 48 SF Movies Based on a Novel

Posted on by
Reply

I’m meme-crazy because I love my baby more than this blog. It’s true! (But I have a lot of love to go around, so don’t worry.)

From A Dribble of Ink:

Copy the list below.
Mark in bold the movie titles for which you read the book.
Italicize the that you’ve watched.

1. Jurassic Park
2. War of the Worlds
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park
4. I, Robot
5. Contact
6. Congo
7. Cocoon
8. The Stepford Wives
9. The Time Machine
10. Starship Troopers
11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
12. K-PAX13. 2010
14. The Running Man
15. Sphere
16. The Mothman Prophecies
17. Dreamcatcher
18. Blade Runner(Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)
19. Dune
20. The Island of Dr. Moreau
21. Invasion of the Body Snatchers
22. The Iron Giant(The Iron Man)
23. Battlefield Earth
24. The Incredible Shrinking Woman
25. Fire in the Sky
26. Altered States
27. Timeline
28. The Postman
29. Freejack(Immortality, Inc.)
30. Solaris
31. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
32. The Thing(Who Goes There?)
33. The Thirteenth Floor
34. Lifeforce(Space Vampires)
35. Deadly Friend
36. The Puppet Masters
37. 1984
38. A Scanner Darkly
39. Creator
40. Monkey Shines
41. Solo(Weapon)
42. The Handmaid’s Tale
43. Communion
44. Carnosaur
45. From Beyond
46. Nightflyers
47. Watchers
48. Body Snatchers

The Alphabet Meme

Posted on by
6

Picked this meme up from Melanie, in honor of two YA books I read for work this weekend.

The goal of this is to list favourite authors according to last name (with a representative fave book as well).

Atwood, Margaret — Cat’s Eye
Bronte, Charlotte — Jane Eyre
Card, Orson Scott — Ender’s Game
Dragonwagon, Crescent — The Year It Rained (with Paul Zindel)
Eager, Edward — Half Magic
Forster, EM — Howard’s End
Gibson, William — Neuromancer
Hobb, Robin — Ship of Magic
Ishiguro, Kazuo — And Never Let Me Go
Jackson, Shirley — Hangsaman
King, Stephen — The Gunslinger
Lewis, CS — Till We Have Faces
Martin, George RR — Game of Thrones
Novik, Naomi — His Majesty’s Dragon
Oates, Joyce Carol — Blonde
Percy, Walker — The Last Gentleman
Queenan, Joe — If You’re Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble
Rendell, Ruth — Judgment in Stone
Smith, Wesley — Culture of Death
Tolkien, JRR — The Return of the King
Undset, Sigrid — Kristin Lavransdatter
Vine, Barbara — A Dark-Adapted Eye
Wharton, Edith — Twilight Sleep
X — I’ll read the next book someone recommends by an author whose last name starts with X.
Yancey, Phillip — Where is God When It Hurts?
Zarr, Sara — Story of a Girl

Top 20 Meme

Posted on by
1

Picked this up from Becky:

The rules: Top twenty favourite books in no particular order. Don’t think about it for too long. Take twenty minutes only to compile your list. Bold the ones you’ve read, or reread, since you’ve started blogging. Include novels, non fiction and plays.

1. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
4. Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
5. Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
6. Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
8. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
9. Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
10. Asylum by Patrick McGrath
11. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
12. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
13. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
14. Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
15. Private Demons by Judy Oppenheimer
16. Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott
17. The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
18. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
19. The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler
20. Birth at Home by Sheila Kitzinger

100 Most Influential Books by Women

Posted on by
11

Via BookGal–I’ve bolded the ones I’ve read.

1. Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
2. Anne Rice, Interview With the Vampire
3. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
4. Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
5. Virginia Woolf, The Waves
6. Virginia Woolf, Orlando
7. Djuna Barnes, Nightwood
8. Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
9. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
10. Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome
11. Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
12. Nadine Gordimer, Burger’s Daughter
13. Harriette Simpson Arnow, The Dollmaker
14. Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
15. Willa Cather, My Ántonia
16. Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
17. Erica Jong, Fanny
18. Joy Kogawa, Obasan
19. Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
20. Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child
21. Doris Lessing, The Grass Is Singing
22. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
23. Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
24. Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres
25. Lore Segal, Her First American
26. Alice Walker, The Color Purple
27. Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland
28. Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon
29. Muriel Spark, Memento Mori
30. Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
31. Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina
32. Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
33. Susan Fromberg Shaeffer, Anya
34. Cynthia Ozick, Trust
35. Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
36. Amy Tan, The Kitchen God’s Wife
37. Ann Beattie, Chilly Scenes of Winter
38. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
39. Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer
40. Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays
41. Mary McCarthy, The Group
42. Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
43. Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man
44. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
45. Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
46. Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart
47. Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood
48. Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here
49. Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
50. Toni Morrison, Beloved
51. Stella Gibbons, Cold Comfort Farm
52. Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr. Fortune’s Maggot
53. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
54. Laura Riding, Progress of Stories
55. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
56. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower
57. Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits
58. A.S. Byatt, Possession
59. Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
60. Rita Mae Brown, Rubyfruit Jungle
61. Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
62. Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
63. Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
64. Katherine Dunn, Geek Love
65. Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
66. Barbara Pym, Excellent Women
67. Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
68. Anne Tyler, Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
69. Anne Tyler, The Accidental Tourist
70. Nancy Willard, Things Invisible to See
71. Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
72. Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Disturbances in the Field
73. Rosellen Brown, Civil Wars
74. Harriet Doerr, Stones for Ibarra
75. Harriet Doerr, The Mountain Lion
76. Stevie Smith. Novel on Yellow Paper
77. E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News
78. Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
79. P.D. James, The Children of Men
80. Ursula Hegi, Stones From the River
81. Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
82. Katherine Mansfield, Collected Stories
83. Rebecca Harding Davis, Life in the Iron Mills
84. Louise Erdrich, The Beet Queen
85. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
86. Edna O’Brien, The Country Girls Trilogy
87. Margaret Drabble, Realms of Gold
88. Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall
89. Dawn Powell, The Locusts Have No King
90. Marilyn French, The Women’s Room
91. Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter
92. Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries (I just reviewed this one!)
93. Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John
94. Tillie Olsen, Tell Me a Riddle
95. Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
96. Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
97. Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
98. Alice Hoffman, The Drowning Season
99. Sue Townsend, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
100. Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater

Umm… no Jane Austen?

ALA’s Home Library Suggestions for Families

Posted on by
2

Need help knowing what books to buy for your kids? The American Library Association wants to help:

The ALA-Children’s Book Council (CBC) Joint Committee, with cooperation from the ALSC’s Quicklists Consulting Committee, has created the four bibliographies below, “Building a Home Library,” to provide guidance to parents, grandparents, and others interested in assembling a high-quality library for their children at home.

The lists are sort of skimpy; this wouldn’t be much of a library. And it skews heavily towards commercially popular books from the last few years (Walter Dean Myer’s Monster, Louis Sachar’s Holes, for example)–not that those books aren’t worthwhile, just that are they the best cornerstones of a home library? They seem more like books to check out from the library to me.

I posted my own list of Essential Books For Children, which got some great responses in the comment thread. And this post is in honor of a manuscript I read today for work which happened to be the new novel by an author who appears on this list not once, but twice. Go fish!

A Basket of Books for Baby!

Posted on by
12

I had baby showers last weekend and this weekend, and since everybody knows I’m a reader, I got a ton of books for Superfast Baby. In fact, the theme of the shower my mom & my high school friend threw was “books” and everybody brought a book to put in this really cute basket. Plus, my best friend from college, who is also a huge reader plus has an MA in Children’s Literature, made me a list of books that she and her kids really enjoyed. So, I’m going to give you the list of all the awesome books I got in honor of a book I read for work this weekend that prominently featured stuffed animals (and I’m the sorrier for it). Continue reading →