The Big Read
The Big Read is ‘an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of American culture. The NEA presents The Big Read in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services and in cooperation with Arts Midwest.’
The Big Read ‘answers a big need. Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, a 2004 report by the National Endowment for the Arts, found that not only is literary reading in America declining rapidly among all groups, but that the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young. The concerned citizen in search of good news about American literary culture would study the pages of this report in vain.’
The Big Read ‘reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.’ I guess I’m above average, according to their list.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (4 of them)
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible (some of it)
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (90% done)
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo ★
• 690 Words written by Steve @ 17:28 | 24-Aug-08 in Classics • Critique It
Currently Reading: July-08
Hitler: 1889-1936: Hubris by Ian Kershaw
Hardcover: 845 pages
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (1-Jan-99)
ISBN-10: 0393046710
ISBN-13: 978-0393046717
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #95,383 in Books
Source: Gift from Frank
About this book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
‘We surely need books like Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners that examine German society as a whole in an effort to understand how Hitler came to power and held it for so long. But we also need classic, political biographies that focus on the dictator himself. Kershaw’s book, the first volume of a projected two-part biography, pays some attention to how ripe a demoralized Germany was for demagoguery after the Treaty of Versailles, but the author’s focus is on Hitler and his political career — the decisions he made as he rose to power and those he made once he attained it. What distinguishes this effort is the extent of documentation as Kershaw, a professor of history at the University of Sheffield, exploits the full Goebbels diaries and texts of early Hitler speeches only recently made accessible. Also notable is the portrait Kershaw draws of Hitler as surprisingly remote from the thuggery, greed and corruption of his followers, high and low, even as he actively encouraged the development of a cult of personality. Kershaw closes with an examination of Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, a fait accompli made possible by the timidity and disarray of Germany’s supine neighbors. Had the French marched, Hitler said later, “we would have had to withdraw… with our tails between our legs.” By 1936, Kershaw writes, events had substantiated Hitler’s hubris. A “nemesis” (subtitle of the next volume) would in reality not emerge before 1941. Kershaw’s massive work (made somewhat too massive by some repetition) is valuable for the rigor with which it portrays Hitler not as some supernatural evil force ejected into history from beyond but as a thoroughly natural figure — evil, surely, but historically evil.‘
—Publishers Weekly
Hitler: 1936-1945 Nemesis by Ian Kershaw
Hardcover: 1210 pages
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company (Sep-01)
ISBN-10: 0393322521
ISBN-13: 978-0393322521
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #27,163 in Books
Source: Gift from Frank
About this book, Booklist wrote:
‘George VI thought him a “damnable villain,” and Neville Chamberlain found him not quite a gentleman; but, to the rest of the world, Adolf Hitler has come to personify modern evil to such an extent that his biographers always have faced an unenviable task. The two more renowned biographies of Hitler — by Joachim C. Fest (Hitler) and by Alan Bullock (Hitler: A Study in Tyranny) — painted a picture of individual tyranny which, in the words of A.J.P. Taylor, left Hitler guilty and every other German innocent. Decades of scholarship on German society under the Nazis have made that verdict look dubious; so, the modern biographer of Hitler must account both for his terrible mindset and his charismatic appeal. In the second and final volume of his mammoth biography of Hitler — which covers the climax of Nazi power, the reclamation of German-speaking Europe, and the horrific unfolding of the final solution in Poland and Russia — Ian Kershaw manages to achieve both of these tasks. Continuing where Hitler: Hubris 1889-1936 left off, the epic Hitler: Nemesis 1937-1945 [sic] takes the reader from the adulation and hysteria of Hitler’s electoral victory in 1936 to the obsessive and remote “bunker” mentality that enveloped the Führer as Operation Barbarossa (the attack on Russia in 1942) proved the beginning of the end. Chilling, yet objective. A definitive work.‘
—Gilbert Taylor
This is a fabulous two-volume achievement and I’ve been enthralled for a couple of weeks with them both. Highly recommended. Should be required reading, for high school or at least in college. ★
• 612 Words written by Steve @ 12:15 | 14-Jul-08 in Non-Fiction • Critique It
2008 Publishing Trends
Publishers Weekly has the details on «15 trends to watch in 2008», which includes, of course, «Kindle»:
‘1. The popularity of e-books will increase, with titles formatted for Amazon’s Kindle leading the way. Content for the Sony Reader will sell faster than ever, but by this time next year, Kindle-compatible books will be outselling them by more than 2 to 1. And Palm, which has historically been the bestselling format, will have had its best year-on-year increase as well. Powells.com, which offers the largest selection of titles in formats that are not in closed distribution (a total of 150,000 in Adobe, Microsoft and Palm so far) will also have a record year for e-book sales. By year end, nearly every straight-text title published with commercial intent will be available for Kindle; the trick for the other formats will be to make sure they’re included, too. And Kindle pricing will drive the market. But despite the fast growth, e-books will still make up a tiny share of the market—no more than 2% of sales for most titles—and will contribute only a minimal amount to publishers’ bottom lines.’
—Publishers Weekly
Number 15 sounded interesting:
‘15. In addition to being the Year of the Author, 2008 will be the Year of the Experiment. Initiatives like the widgets used by HarperCollins and Random House, the video trailers produced by Simon & Schuster, the publishing to cell phones being enabled by Mobifusion and tried by several publishers, and Macmillan’s call to employees for ideas for the company to bankroll show a growing awareness that publishing companies need to create a culture of experimentation. What’s an experiment? We’ll define it as a commercial effort undertaken without any real conviction as to how it will work out, and with the expectation that learning from failure is a more likely benefit than success.’
So I tried it out in two entries below. As you can see, it seems that Harper Collins widget seems to work, while the Random House (at least at this writing) does not.
Interesting stuff, though. Especially on the Apple side. I’m finding that I can read books just find with my iPod Touch and «ManyBooks.Net». Check it out. ★
• 369 Words written by Steve @ 17:34 | 09-Jan-08 in Literacy • Critique It
The Dangerous Book for Dogs
Also highly recommended and recently added:
[Widget may not be working. If not, go «here».] ★
• 44 Words written by Steve @ 17:31 | 09-Jan-08 in Library • Critique It
The Dangerous Book for Boys
Added to the library and loving it:
★
• 7 Words written by Steve @ 17:11 | 09-Jan-08 in Library • Critique It
The Iron Kingdom
Iron Kingdom by Christopher Clark
Hardcover: 800 pages
Publisher: Belknap Press (29-Sep-06)
ISBN-10: 0674023854
ISBN-13: 978-0674023857
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #24,062 in Books
Source: UCBerkeley Library Loan
About this book, the Daily Telegraph wrote:
‘The story of Prussia is one that has been told many times, but seldom as intelligently, elegantly and interestingly as it is here. Christopher Clark has written a monumental history of a state that started from small beginnings as the Mark of Brandenburg, grew in size, violence and pretensions, and ended up being destroyed forever in 1947, when the victorious Allies decided they had had enough of this troublesome phenomenon … The bulk of a fascinating text, littered with intriguing detail and wry observation, focuses on this transformation in the 200 years from the bloody Thirty Years War in the 17th century (which cost Prussia half its population) to the creation by the Prussian nobleman Otto von Bismarck of a German Empire in 1871…Clark has written a masterly synthesis of [the] many disparate strands in a long and ultimately forlorn history.‘
—Richard Overy
It’s a great book, right up my alley — the arcana of German history. Sometimes it gets bogged down a bit in too much arcana of Prussian electoral bureaucracy, but it is a classic and enjoyable read, nonetheless. ★
• 209 Words written by Steve @ 14:18 | 29-Dec-07 in Reading • Critique It
The Tin Roof Blowdown
Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke
Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Simon and Schuster (July 17, 2007)
ISBN-10: 1416548483
ISBN-13: 978-1416548485
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,535 in Books
Source: Personal Collection
About this book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
‘In Burke’s meticulously textured 16th Dave Robicheaux novel (after 2006’s Pegasus Descending), Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath provide the backdrop for an account of sin and redemption in New Orleans. When Detective Robicheaux’s department is assigned to investigate the shooting of two looters in a wealthy neighborhood, he learns that they had ransacked the home of New Orleans’s most powerful mobster. Now he must locate the surviving looter before others do, and in the process he learns the fate of a priest who disappeared in the ill-fated Ninth Ward trying to rescue his trapped parishioners. Burke creates dense, rich prose that draws the reader into a web of greed and violence. Each of his characters feels the hands of both grace and of perdition, and the final outcome of their struggle is never quite certain. Burke showcases all that was both right and wrong in our response to this national disaster, proving along the way that nobody captures the spirit of Gulf Coast Louisiana better.‘
—Publisher’s Weekly
It’s a fabulous read. I’m almost finished with it, and continue to be amazed by his writing and by my fascination with it, since it’s not normally a genre I spend much time with. Highly recommended. ★
• 235 Words written by Steve @ 23:53 | 19-Nov-07 in Fiction • Critique It
A Short History
What I’m reading now (in addition to The War of the World mentioned below):
*A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Paperback: 560 pages
Publisher: Broadway (2004)
ISBN-13: 978-0767908184
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #214 in Books
Source: Personal Collection
About this book, Publishers Weekly wrote:
‘As the title suggests, bestselling author Bryson (In a Sunburned Country) sets out to put his irrepressible stamp on all things under the sun. As he states at the outset, this is a book about life, the universe and everything, from the Big Bang to the ascendancy of Homo sapiens. “This is a book about how it happened,” the author writes. “In particular how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since.” What follows is a brick of a volume summarizing moments both great and curious in the history of science, covering already well-trod territory in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, paleontology, geology, chemistry, physics and so on. Bryson relies on some of the best material in the history of science to have come out in recent years. This is great for Bryson fans, who can encounter this material in its barest essence with the bonus of having it served up in Bryson’s distinctive voice. But readers in the field will already have studied this information more in-depth in the originals and may find themselves questioning the point of a breakneck tour of the sciences that contributes nothing novel. Nevertheless, to read Bryson is to travel with a memoirist gifted with wry observation and keen insight that shed new light on things we mistake for commonplace. To accompany the author as he travels with the likes of Charles Darwin on the Beagle, Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton is a trip worth taking for most readers.‘
—Publishers Weekly
I’m not normally much into the kind of science and math that is explored here. But this is a fascinating book about a topic made very accessible by the skills of Mr. Bryson. Lots of stuff here I can share in the classroom. Highly recommended. ★
• 359 Words written by Steve @ 15:47 | 27-Dec-06 in Reading • Critique It
Shopping
Thanks to a 30% Teachers’ Appreciation Week discount, I was able to do some shopping this weekend. My haul:
Next on the reading list:
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
Paperback: 175 pages
Publisher: Barnes and Noble Classics (2005)
ISBN: 1593082568
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,065,276 in Books
Source: Personal Collection
About this book, the publisher wrote:
‘Epigrammatic, enigmatic, intensely poetic, the Tao Te Ching is the mystical, spiritual soul of Taoism, one of the three great religions (along with Confucianism and Buddhism) of ancient China. The Tao is usually translated as “the way.”‘
• 89 Words written by Steve @ 12:39 | 02-Oct-06 in Reading • Critique It
Reading List: 28-Sep-06
I’m renewing an old acquaintanceship with one of my favorite authors, and one of the classic American collections of all time:
Thurber Carnival by James Thurber
Hardback: 443 pages
Publisher: Modern Library (1994)
ISBN: 0-679-60089-2
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #290,790 in Books
Source: Contra Costa County Library
About this book, Amazon.com wrote:
‘After the chuckles and amidst the chortles, the first-time reader of The Thurber Carnival is bound to utter a discreetly voiced “Huh?” Like Cracker Jacks, there are surprises inside James Thurber’s delicious 1945 smorgasbord of essays, stories, and sketches. This festival is, surprises and all, a collection of earlier collections (mostly), including, among others, gems from My World—and Welcome to It, Let Your Mind Alone!, and The Middle Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze. Needless to say, there are also numerous cartoons that, by themselves, are worth the price of admission. While redoubling Thurber’s deserved reputation as a laugh-out-loud humorist and teller-of-gentle-tales, it reintroduces him as a thinker-of-thoughts.‘
—Amazon.com
There are fabulous nuggets in this collection and the writing is still just as wonderful today as it was in its day. ★
• 183 Words written by Steve @ 11:41 | 28-Sep-06 in Reading • Critique It
Next Up
Next on the reading list:
Mugby Junction by Charles Dickens
Hardback: 132 pages
Publisher: Hesperus Press (2006)
ISBN: 1-84391-129-9
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,611,951 in Books
Source: Contra Costa County Library
About this book, Amazon.com wrote:
‘Compiled by Charles Dickens, Mugby Junction is an intriguing composite of tales. Published here for the first time in its entirety, it contains one of Dickens’ most celebrated ghost tales, The Signalman, as well as short stories by Charles Collins, Hesbah Stretton, Andrew Halliday, and Amelia Edwards. Arriving at Mugby Junction in an attempt to escape his unhappy past, Barbox Brothers befriends a workman and his invalid daughter. With their help, he sets his sights on discovering which of the seven lines of the junction will most aid him in his journey of escape. In exploring one such line, he meets “the woman he had lost,” only to return to Mugby Junction once this has played out. Staying there, and continuing his friendship with the workman and his daughter, he collects the myriad stories he hears tell of at the junction.‘
—Amazon.com
I have to admit that other than Great Expectations in high school, I haven’t read mcuh of Dickens, just snippets. Oh, and the quintessential A Christmas Carol. ★
• 206 Words written by Steve @ 11:22 | 28-Sep-06 in Reading • Critique It
New on the Reading List: 11-Aug-06, #3
Also currently reading:
I Read It, but I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers by Cris Tovani
Paperback: 140 pages
Publisher: Stenhouse Publishers (October 2000)
ISBN: 157110089X
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,311 in Books
Source: Personal Collection
About this book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
‘Cris Tovani’s book is fabulous! As a reading teacher, it helped me to find ways to help my students understand what they were reading AND to help them understand when they were understanding. … It also has great insights for content teachers — thoughts for helping students comprehend content reading. I highly recommend it for all teachers.‘
—Publisher’s Weekly
Some of my students read well, but don’t understand what they just read. Hopefully, this book will help me understand and help them. ★
• 122 Words written by Steve @ 13:01 | 12-Aug-06 in Reading • Critique It
New on the Reading List: 11-Aug-06, #2
Also currently reading:
Pegasus Descending by James Lee Burke
Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: Simon and Schuster (July 18, 2006)
ISBN: 0743277724
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #101 in Books
Source: Personal Collection
About this book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
‘Drawing on classical antecedents, bestseller Burke peoples his 15th Dave Robicheaux novel (after 2004’s Crusader’s Cross) with his usual assortment of near mythic characters, demonstrating how our everyday lives are beset with age-old, universal dilemmas. … With peerless naturalistic descriptions and lush, metaphysical imagery, Burke creates another challenging morality play for his flawed, everyman hero.‘
—Publisher’s Weekly
The Dave Robicheaux novels grabbed me about seven or eight years ago and haven’t let go. I’ve read every one of the last 14 and can’t wait to get into #15.
They are a bit formulaic, but the writing, like the landscape, is lush and descriptive, hypnotic and spellbinding.
I’m not normally into detective/mystery stuff, but this series is the one exception that I make.
Can’t wait to get into this one. ★
• 159 Words written by Steve @ 12:54 | 12-Aug-06 in Reading • Critique It
New on the Reading List: 11-Aug-06, #1
Currently reading:
What Jesus Meant by Garry Wills
Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: Viking Adult (March 2, 2006)
ISBN: 0670034967
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #702 in Books
Source: Personal Collection
About this book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote:
‘Wills believes that most Christians don’t understand Jesus’ startlingly radical message, so they should not claim to have knowledge of how he would act today. People of all political persuasions have used Jesus’ words to rationalize a domesticated, flaccid Christianity that upholds the status quo, or, worse yet, supports discrimination toward those who are on the margins. This attitude, according to Wills, completely misses the truth that Jesus “walks through social barriers and taboos as if they were cobwebs.”‘
—Publisher’s Weekly
I’m looking forward to reading a different take on this subject. ★
• 122 Words written by Steve @ 11:46 | 12-Mar-06 in Reading • Critique It