So Misguided

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Advent — Top 100 Books

Critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo pick the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923‚ the beginning of TIME. And, I’d read whatever Lev tells me to read. I’ve bolded the ones I have read below. I guess this is my new “to-read” list.

See the full article for links and info on how the list was created.
All-TIME 100 Novels

A – B

The Adventures of Augie March
All the King’s Men
American Pastoral
An American Tragedy
Animal Farm
Appointment in Samarra
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
The Assistant
At Swim-Two-Birds
Atonement
Beloved

The Berlin Stories
The Big Sleep
The Blind Assassin

Blood Meridian
Brideshead Revisited
The Bridge of San Luis Rey

C – D

Call It Sleep
Catch-22
The Catcher in the Rye
A Clockwork Orange

The Confessions of Nat Turner
The Corrections
The Crying of Lot 49
A Dance to the Music of Time
The Day of the Locust
Death Comes for the Archbishop
A Death in the Family
The Death of the Heart
Deliverance
Dog Soldiers

F – G

Falconer
The French Lieutenant’s Woman
The Golden Notebook

Go Tell it on the Mountain
Gone With the Wind
The Grapes of Wrath

Gravity’s Rainbow
The Great Gatsby

H – I

A Handful of Dust
The Heart is A Lonely Hunter
The Heart of the Matter
Herzog
Housekeeping
A House for Mr. Biswas
I, Claudius
Infinite Jest
Invisible Man

L – N

Light in August
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
Lolita
Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Rings
Loving

The Moviegoer
Lucky Jim
The Man Who Loved Children
Midnight’s Children
Money
Mrs. Dalloway

Naked Lunch
Native Son
Neuromancer
Never Let Me Go
1984

O – R

On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The Painted Bird
Pale Fire
A Passage to India
Play It As It Lays
Portnoy’s Complaint
Possession
The Power and the Glory
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Rabbit, Run
Ragtime
The Recognitions
Red Harvest
Revolutionary Road

S – T

The Sheltering Sky
Slaughterhouse Five
Snow Crash
The Sot-Weed Factor
The Sound and the Fury
The Sportswriter
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
The Sun Also Rises

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Things Fall Apart
To Kill a Mockingbird
To the Lighthouse
Tropic of Cancer

U – W

Ubik
Under the Net
Under the Volcano
Watchmen
White Noise
White Teeth
Wide Sargasso Sea

There are a couple of letters there that need attention.

Read more: TIME.com http://entertainment.time.com/2005/10/16/all-time-100-novels/slide/all/#ixzz2nsdhtOyf

Advent — Bookshelf Porn

image

Why are book lovers obsessed with bookshelves? Maybe because our imaginations are so vivid that we just like to look at books and spaces for reading those books and are magically transported to other worlds upon viewing interesting shelves. Maybe. Just maybe.
http://bookshelfporn.com/tagged/favorites/

Book Review: The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love was The Afterword Reading Society book club selection for Nov 26. I stupidly, and for a second time in a row, was not my usual 100% and I missed submitting my information. That said, my untimeliness in no way represents how much I enjoyed this book, nor how much I appreciate receiving a copy of this fine novel.

Alma Whittaker, born Jan 5, 1800, bears witness to the vast changes taking place in science, religion, commerce and class, all without leaving her home White Acre. Ok, she does leave near the end of her life, but what leads her to that point is such a sweeping tale of botany, early childhood education, colonization through cultivation of plants for medicine and food, charity (misplaced or not) and a family lineage that is fearsome in its tenacity. The story is told through Alma’s interactions with a number of visitors who come to White Acre to meet with Alma’s father Henry Whittaker. Henry Whittaker made his fortune travelling the seas as a young lad on behalf of Joseph Banks and the Kew Gardens. He was a swift learner and had few scruples so he quickly used his knowledge of botany and commerce to his advantage. When the time was right, he picked a wife, moved to America, set up a partnership for a profitable pharmaceutical company and continued to add pennies to his pockets through his expeditions.

The story moves from Henry’s travels to London to Peru to Philadelphia, then follows Alma’s trek to Tahiti and Amsterdam. There are beautiful descriptions of orchids, mosses and other botanicals. There’s adventure on the high seas, a retracing of human history, Darwin’s theories of evolution, and the push by abolitionists and adventurers to reconsider the world.

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It reminds me of Anna Pavord’s The Tulip, which was a nonfiction look at the cultural baggage this bulb brings with it. The Signature of All Things: A Novel is The Tulip’s fictional counterpart.

Check it out on ElizabethGilbert.com along with the reading group guide and other goodies, including a Signature of All Things cocktail. Yum.

Michael Tamblyn at FutureBook 2013 on 50 Infinite Shades of Grey


“Is it bestiality if he turns from a dolphin into a human while they’re having sex?” October 14, 2013

Kobo COO Michael Tamblyn at FutureBook 2013, “Infinite Shades of Grey: The Promise and Peril of Self-Publishing,” on 9 days of hell.

Quote: On October 12th, Kobo had a significant catalogue of self-published titles in the UK. Tens of thousands of authors and hundreds of thousands of titles, a thriving part of our UK business. Living the dream, as they say.

On October 14th, we had zero self-published titles available in the UK from zero authors and our 300-year-old retail partner had suspended their web presence.

For more context please read this first:
http://janefriedman.com/2013/11/28/writing-on-the-ether-118/

Or start with the video and transcript here:

Infinite Shades of Grey: The Promise and Peril of Self-Publishing in the UK

Advent — How to Read a Book

Francis Bacon once remarked “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Today’s StumbleUpon advent find is this article on How to Read a Book, which looks at the four levels of reading Mortimer Adler wrote about:

Elementary
Inspectional
Analytical
Syntopical

In short, the goal of reading determines how you read.
http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/how-to-read-a-book/

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