Stephen King’s favorite books from “The Top Ten: Writer’s Pick Their Favorite Books.” Mr. King’s choices reflect that the notion that terrifying fiction lies not in the invention of otherworldly creatures, but in the examination of what is monstrous in human nature…
1. ‘The Golden Argosy,’ edited by Van H. Cartmell and Charles Grayson
2. ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,’ by Mark Twain
3. ‘The Satanic Verses,’ by Salman Rushdie
4. ‘McTeague,’ by Frank Norris
5. ‘Lord of the Flies,’ by William Golding
6. ‘Bleak House,’ by charles
7. ‘1984,’ by George Orwell
8. ‘The Raj Quartet,’ by Paul Scott
9. ‘Light in August,’ by William Faulkner
10. ‘Blood Meridian,’ by Cormac McCarthy
Read more here.
Anne Ursu’s ‘Breadcrumbs’
Middle-grade author Anne Ursu has just published what could be a break-out novel in Breadcrumbs. It’s the story of an intrepid fifth grade girl, Hazel, who looks at the world differently and her friend, Jack, who suddenly sees things differently. A modern fairy tale that draws from its older counterparts, the voice and heroine are utterly charming. To wit:
In books, a good choice is choosing to go fight the dragon. In Hazel’s life, it’s not going sledding because you left your boots at school.
Alice Munro’s ‘Dear Life’
The wonderful Alice Munro has a Personal History in the Sept. 19, 2011, issue of The New Yorker. Describing her mother:
She had managed to get herself off a farm on the bare Canadian Shield — a farm much more hopeless than the one my father came from — and she had become a schoolteacher, who spoke in such a way that her own relatives were not easy around her. She might have got the idea that after such striving she would be welcomed anywhere.
Pure Munro magic. In these two sentences, I know her mother’s aspirations, the high and the low of them, and get a feel of what the low of them has done to her spirit.
“There’s magic in that.”
“Someone needs to tell those tales. When the battles are fought and won and lost, when the pirates find their treasures and the dragons eat their foes for breakfast with a nice cup of Lapsang souchong, someone needs to tell their bits of overlapping narrative.
There’s magic in that. It’s in the listener, and for each and every ear it will be different, and it will affect them in ways they can never predict. From the mundane to the profound. You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows what they might do because of it, because of your words.”
— The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
‘The perfect machine’
His apathetic face was expressionless as he listened to himself being held up as a shining example. He was the perfect worker. He knew that. He had been told so, often. It was a commonplace, and besides it didn’t seem to mean anything to him any more. From the perfect worker he had evolved into the perfect machine.
— Jack London’s “The Apostate” is the Library of America’s Story of the Week. The full story is at http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2011/09/apostate.html
When I first read this story, years ago, the Industrial Revolution factories were all that came to mind, then the Great Depression. It was in the past. We had it better in America now. We had rights. We had protection. We had dreams.
It doesn’t feel that way any more. These are the images I think of when I read this story now:
and
and
London’s story is not about a time gone by that we can’t experience first-hand. When I hear politicians talk about job creation and education reform, these are the pictures I see.
Translating Murakami: A Conversation with Jay Rubin
Click here to listen to the New Yorker’s interview with Haruki Murakami’s longtime translator Jay Rubin about how he became a Murakami fan and translator, the reception in Japan of Murakami’s latest novel, “1Q84,” and why Rubin doesn’t recommend reading literature in translation…
Sneak peak of Jim Dale reading from THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern. This was a brilliant book and Jim Dale is a wonderful narrator for it. Its filled with beautiful prose and Morgenstern creates a world that you want to live in. This is an adult book but it has cross-over appeal to the YA world. There is magic but now wizards or wands or anything that resembles Harry Potter. And best of all its not a series. Its just a single, amazing story that once you start you never want it to end. There aren’t enough words to tell you just how much I love this book.
THE NIGHT CIRCUS will be available from Doubleday on 13 Sept 2011.
Write Place, Write Time: Toby Ball
I’m not sure, but I bet I speak for a lot of writers when I say that when you have a full-time job and two kids, you write when and where you can. Most of the time that means somewhere in our house - I have an office in our guest room, the living room couch is comfortable, I write in bed a…
Europa Editions: Everything Happens Today - First Five Sentences
To whet ones appetite until the novel’s September 27th on sale date….
“When you’ve walked all the way from the Upper East Side to Greenwich Village in the middle of the night, the first sight of home should be an occasion for joy. Wes felt anything but joyful as he climbed the stoop. He had hoped…
We knew there was a Poe house in the Bronx, but this Book Bench post has us particularly excited to go visit the site where “Annabel Lee” and “The Cask of Amontillado” were written.
