Monday, June 29, 2020

Top 100 Novels for Children and Teens

First posted 2/19/2019; updated 6/29/2020.

Novels for Children and Teens:

The Top 100 of All Time

This is a consolidation of two previous lists: “The Top 50 Children’s Novels” and “The Top 50 Young Adult Books.” It aggregates a dozen lists specific to young adult books, more than 25 general children’s book lists, and another 50+ general book lists.

  1. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter (series, 1997-2007)
  2. E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952)
  3. C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia (series: 1950-1956)
  4. J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937)
  5. Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
  6. Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
  7. Lois Lowry The Giver (1994)
  8. Katherine Paterson The Bridge to Terabithia (1977)
  9. A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) / The House at Pooh Corner (1928)
  10. Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games (trilogy: 2008-10)

  11. Louis Sachar Holes (2000)
  12. Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
  13. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) (1943)
  14. S.E. Hinton The Outsiders (1968)
  15. Philip Pullman His Dark Materials (trilogy: 1995-2000)
  16. Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden (1987)
  17. L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908)
  18. Norton Juster The Phantom Tollbooth (1961)
  19. E.L. Konigsburg From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1967)
  20. Lois Lowry Number the Stars (1990)

  21. Elizabeth George Speare The Witch of Blackbird Pond (1959)
  22. Gary Paulsen Hatchet (1987)
  23. Astrid Lingren Pippi Longstocking (1945)
  24. Shel Silverstein Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974)
  25. Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
  26. Daniel Handler as Lemony Snicket A Series of Unforunate Events (series: 1999-2006)
  27. Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869)
  28. Roald Dahl Matilda (1988)
  29. Mildred D. Taylor Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (1977)
  30. Louise Fitzhugh Harriet the Spy (1964)

  31. Judy Blume Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret (1972)
  32. Natalie Babbit Tuck Everlasting (1975)
  33. Markus Zusak The Book Thief (2005)
  34. Scott O’Dell Island of the Blue Dolphins (1961)
  35. John Green Looking for Alaska (2005)
  36. Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House (series: 1932-1971)
  37. Frank L. Baum The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
  38. Kate DiCamillo Because of Winn-Dixie (2000)
  39. Mark Haddon The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003)
  40. Robert C. O’Brien Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (1970)

  41. William Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908)
  42. J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55)
  43. William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954)
  44. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
  45. E.B. White Stuart Little (1945)
  46. Wilson Rawls Where the Red Fern Grows (1974)
  47. Sharon Creech Walk Two Moons (1994)
  48. Ursula K. Le Guin The Earthsea Cycle (series: 1968-2001)
  49. Sherman Alexie The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)
  50. Roald Dahl James and the Giant Peach (1988)

  51. Rick Riordan Percy Jackson & the Olympians (series: 2005-2009)
  52. Ellen Raskin The Westing Game (1978)
  53. Esther Forbes Johnny Tremain (1943)
  54. Beverly Cleary Ramona (series: 1955-1999)
  55. Neil Gaiman The Graveyard Book (2010)
  56. Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903)
  57. Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
  58. Stephen Chbosky The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999)
  59. John Green The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
  60. Kate DiCamillo The Tale of Despereaux (2003)

  61. Orscon Scott Card Ender’s Game (1968)
  62. Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl (aka The Diary of Anne Frank) (1947)
  63. Patricia MacLachlan Sarah, Plain and Tall (1985)
  64. Richard Adams Watership Down (1972)
  65. Jerry Spinelli Maniac Magee (1990)
  66. Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883)
  67. Michael Bond A Bear Called Paddington (1960)
  68. Anna Sewell Black Beauty (1877)
  69. Mary Norton The Borrowers (1953)
  70. William H. Armstrong Sounder (1970)

  71. Pam Munoz Ryan Esperanza Rising (2000)
  72. J.M. Barrie Peter Pan (aka Peter and Wendy) (1911)
  73. Roald Dahl The BFG (1982)
  74. Meg Rosoff How I Live Now (2004)
  75. Judy Blume Forever… (1975)
  76. R.J. Palacio Wonder (2012)
  77. Judy Blume Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972)
  78. Diane Wynne Jones Howl’s Moving Castle (1986)
  79. Laurie Anderson Speak (2011)
  80. Lynne Reid Banks The Indian in the Cupboard (series: 1980-1998)

  81. Christopher Paolini Inheritance (series: 2003-2011)
  82. Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book (1894)
  83. Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
  84. William Goldman The Princess Bride (1973)
  85. Richard Atwater Mr. Popper’s Penguins (1938)
  86. Jean Craighead George Julie of the Wolves (1972)
  87. Gene Luen Yang American Born Chinese (2006)
  88. Brian Selznick The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007)
  89. Johanna Spyri Heidi (aka Heidi’s Years of Wandering and Learning) (Heidis Lehr - und Wnaderjahre) (1880)
  90. T.H. White The Sword in the Stone (1938)

  91. P.L. Travers Mary Poppins (1934)
  92. Jeff Kinney Diary of a Wimpy Kid (series: 2007-)
  93. Sheila Burnford The Incredible Journey (1984)
  94. Shaun Tan The Arrival (2006)
  95. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813)
  96. Parick Ness A Monster Calls (2011)
  97. Veronica Roth Divergent (series: 2011-2013)
  98. Janette Sebring Lowrey The Poky Little Puppy (1942)
  99. Christopher Paul Curtis Bud Not Buddy (2000)
  100. anonymous Go Ask Alice (1976)

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Thursday, June 25, 2020

Homer The Odyssey

First posted 6/20/2020; updated 7/6/2020.

The Odyssey

Homer

First Publication: 800 B.C.


Category: historical/epic poetry


Sales: 45 million

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book:

The Odyssey is the original collection of tall traveler’s tales. Odysseus, on his way home from the Trojan War, encounters all kinds of marvels from one-eyed giants to witches and beautiful temptresses. His adventures are many and memorable before he gets back to Ithaca and his faithful wife Penelope.” AZ

The epic poem “retells the events of the war between Greece and the city of Troy, focusing on Achilles' quarrel with Agamemnon.” BN “Helen, queen of Sparta and the most beautiful woman in the world, is kidnapped by Paris, a Trojan prince. Hungry for revenge, the Greek Army lays siege on Troy. For nine long years they are unsuccessful – until they come up with a plan for their greatest-ever attack on the city. For victory or death, the two armies will collide for the final time.” BN

“We can never be certain that both these stories belonged to Homer. In fact, ‘Homer’ may not be a real name but a kind of nickname meaning perhaps ‘the hostage’ or ‘the blind one’. Whatever the truth of their origin…these tales… developed around three thousand years ago, may well still be read in three thousand years’ time.” AZ

“Its symbolic evocation of human life as an epic journey homewards has inspired everything from James Joyce’s Ulysses to the Coen brothers' film, O Brother Where Art Thou?TG


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Homer's The Iliad

First posted 6/25/2020; updated 7/6/2020.

The Iliad

Homer

First Publication: 800 B.C.


Category: historical/epic poetry


Sales: ?

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book:

The Iliad is the oldest Greek poem and perhaps the best-known epic in Western literature.” BN It “recreates a few dramatic weeks near the end of the fabled Trojan War, ending with the funeral of Hector, defender of the doomed city. Through its majestic verses stride…fabled heroes…never far from the center of the story are the quarreling gods: Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite.” BN

It found “eager new audiences when it was translated into many languages during the Renaissance.” BN It has subsequently “inspired countless works” BN and become “a beloved fixture of early Greek culture,” BN “Its themes of honor, power, status, heroism, and the whims of the gods have ensured its enduring popularity and immeasurable cultural influence.” BN

The Greek poet Homer is attributed with writing both The Iliad and The Odyssey although there is debate about “whether his works are…by the same hand, or have their origins in the lays of Homer and his followers (Homeridae).” LN In addition, this “assemblage of stories and legends shaped into a compelling single narrative” BN “was probably recited orally by bards for generations before being written down in the eighth century B.C.” BN


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Amazon: Top 100 Books

First posted 6/25/2020.

Amazon:

Top 100 Books

This list was created by aggregating six different Amazon lists (see details at bottom of page).

  1. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925)
  2. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813)
  3. Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
  4. George Orwell 1984 (1949)
  5. J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55)
  6. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
  7. Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games (trilogy: 2008-2010)
  8. Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
  9. John Green The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
  10. George R.R. Martin A Game of Thrones (1996)

  11. Gillian Flynn Gone Girl (2012)
  12. Laura Hillenbrand Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival (2010)
  13. Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
  14. William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954)
  15. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (aka Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) (1997)
  16. Markus Zusak The Book Thief (2005)
  17. Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961)
  18. Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955)
  19. Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1986)
  20. Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible (1998)

  21. Cormac McCarthy The Road (2007)
  22. Veronica Roth Divergent (2011)
  23. R.J. Palacio Wonder (2012)
  24. Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
  25. Paula Hawkins The Girl on the Train (2015)
  26. E.L. James Fifty Shades of Grey (trilogy: 2011-2012)
  27. Liane Moriarty The Husband’s Secret (2013)
  28. Kathyrn Stockett The Help (2009)
  29. Todd Burpo & Lynn Vincent Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back (2010)
  30. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899)

  31. Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1615)
  32. Homer The Odyssey (800 B.C.)
  33. Rick Riordan The Lightning Thief (2005)
  34. Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
  35. Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847)
  36. Lois Lowry The Giver (1994)
  37. Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
  38. Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
  39. Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926)
  40. Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957)

  41. Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818)
  42. Richard Adams Watership Down (1972)
  43. Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952)
  44. J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937)
  45. Chris McDougall Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen (2009)
  46. Abraham Verghese Cutting for Stone (2009)
  47. Brené Brown Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (2012)
  48. Frank Herbert Dune (1965)
  49. Kate Atkinson Life After Life (2013)
  50. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

  51. Viktor Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)
  52. Doris Kearns Goodwin Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005)
  53. Erik Larson The Devil in the White City (2003)
  54. Rebecca Skloot The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)
  55. Stephen King The Shining (1977)
  56. Gabriel García Márquez Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)
  57. Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866)
  58. Erich Maria Remarque All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)
  59. Stieg Larsson The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2005)
  60. Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869)

  61. Neil Gaiman American Gods (2001)
  62. Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl (aka The Diary of Anne Frank) (1947)
  63. Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861)
  64. Truman Capote In Cold Blood (1966)
  65. Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981)
  66. Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time (1988)
  67. Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
  68. Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
  69. Donna Tartt The Secret History (1992)
  70. Oliver Sacks The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985)

  71. C.S. Lewis The Chronicles of Narnia (series: 1950-1956)
  72. George Orwell Animal Farm (1945)
  73. Stephenie Meyer Twilight (2005)
  74. John Steinbeck The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)
  75. Andy Weir The Martian (2011)
  76. Edwin A. Abbott Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884)
  77. Rick Yancey The First Book of the 5th Wave (2013)
  78. James Joyce Ulysses (1922)
  79. Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851)
  80. Homer The Iliad (800 B.C.)

  81. Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857)
  82. Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince (1532)
  83. John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937)
  84. Stephen Chbosky The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999)
  85. Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932)
  86. C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters (1942)
  87. Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol (1843)
  88. Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged (1957)
  89. Sarah J. Maas Throne of Glass (2013)
  90. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)

  91. John Green Looking for Alaska (2005)
  92. Spencer Johnson Who Moved My Cheese? (1998)
  93. Tom Rath Strengths Finder 2.0 (2007)
  94. Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
  95. Kristin Hannah The Nightingale (2015)
  96. Albert Camus The Stranger (L’Etranger) (1942)
  97. James Dashner The Maze Runner (2009)
  98. Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850)
  99. Anthony Doerr All the Light We Cannot See (2015)
  100. Ayn Rand The Fountainhead (1943)

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Wednesday, June 24, 2020

The Best-Selling Book of All-Time: The Holy Bible: King James Version

First posted 6/24/2020.

The Holy Bible: King James Version

Various writers

First Publication: 1610


Category: religion


Sales: 6.7 billion (estimated)

Accolades (click on badges to see full lists):

About the Book:

“Shortly after inheriting the throne of England in the midst of violent religious strife, King James I called together the country’s leading churchmen and theologians at Hampton Court, ‘for the hearing, and for the determining, of things pretended to be amiss in the Church.’” AZ

“Out of that conference came the memorable decision to commission a new translation of the Holy Scriptures. King James I eagerly approved the idea in the hope that this new translation might help avert civil war by uniting the religious factions within his country. The uniform translation, since called the ‘King James Version,’ dramatically affected the course of development of the English-speaking world.” AZ

“When the King James translation of the Bible was first published in 1611, it was the first time that many people throughout the English-speaking world were able to read the Old and New Testaments in their native tongue. It proved so wildly popular, in fact, that it was the only book that many families owned. The majestic scope and poetry of the King James translation’s language made an incomparable impact on Western religion, culture, and literature that still resonates today.” BN


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Monday, June 22, 2020

The Top 100 Non-Fiction Books of All Time

image from prowritingaid.com

First posted 5/26/2018; updated 6/21/2020.

Non-Fiction:

Top 100 All-Time

These are the best non-fiction books of all-time, according to an aggregate of more than 30 lists focused specifically on non-fiction books and another 60+ general book lists.

  1. Various writers The Holy Bible: King James Version (1451)
  2. Mao Zedong Quotations from Mao Tse-tung (1966)
  3. Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl (aka The Diary of Anne Frank) (1947)
  4. Muhammad Quran (632 A.D.)
  5. Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince (1532)
  6. Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (1859)
  7. Henry David Thoreau Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)
  8. Truman Capote In Cold Blood (1966)
  9. Plato The Republic (380 B.C.)
  10. Stephen Hawking A Brief History of Time (1988)

  11. Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962)
  12. Sigmund Freud The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)
  13. Alex Haley & Malcolm X The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)
  14. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels The Communist Manifesto (1888)
  15. Simone de Beauvoir The Second Sex (1948)
  16. Elie Weisel Night (Un di Velt Hot Geshvign) (1958)
  17. Virginia Woolf A Room of One’s Own (1929)
  18. Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970)
  19. Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
  20. St. Augustine of Hippo The Confessions (400 A.D.)

  21. Wei Jiangong (editor) Xinhua Zidian (Xinhua Dictionary) (1953)
  22. William Strunk & E.B. White The Elements of Style (1959)
  23. Adam Smith Wealth of Nations (1776)
  24. Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936)
  25. James D. Watson The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA (1968)
  26. Michel de Montaigne Essays (1580)
  27. Sun Tzu The Art of War (5th century B.C.)
  28. John Maynard Kenyes General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936)
  29. Robert Pirsig Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
  30. Marcus Aurelius Meditations (167 A.D.)

  31. Thucydides The History of the Peloponnesian War (5th century B.C.)
  32. Herodotus The Histories (5th century B.C.)
  33. Jean-Jacques Rousseau Confessions (1781)
  34. Henry Adams The Education of Henry Adams (1918)
  35. George Orwell Homage to Catalonia (1938)
  36. Dr. Benjamin Spock The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946)
  37. W.E.B. DuBois The Souls of Black Folks (1903)
  38. Thomas Paine The Rights of Man (1791)
  39. Betty Friedan The Feminine Mystique (1963)
  40. Albert Einstein Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1916)

  41. Thomas S. Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)
  42. Thomas Hobbes Leviathan (1651)
  43. Confucious The Analects (4th century B.C.)
  44. Howard Zinn A People's History of the United States (2005)
  45. Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1787)
  46. Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845)
  47. Robert Graves Goodbye to All That (1929)
  48. Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America (1840)
  49. Mary Wollstonecraft A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792)
  50. Karl Marx Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1: The Process of Production of Capital) (1867)

  51. Frank McCourt Angela’s Ashes (1996)
  52. Thomas Paine Common Sense (1776)
  53. Edward Said Orientalism (1978)
  54. Tom Wolfe The Right Stuff (1979)
  55. William James The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
  56. Viktor Frankl Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)
  57. Publius (Alexander Hamilton/James Madison/John Jay) (edited by Clinton Rossiter) The Federalist Papers (1788)
  58. Friedrich Nietzsche Thus Spake Zarathustra (1885)
  59. William James Pragmatism (1907)
  60. Oxford University Press The Oxford English Dictionary (1948)

  61. Noah Webster Webster’s Dictionary (1783)
  62. Vladimir Nabokov Speak, Memory (1951)
  63. Lao Tzu The Way and Its Power (Tao Te Ching) (4th century B.C.)
  64. Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness (1943)
  65. John Stewart Mill On Liberty (1859)
  66. Stephen R. Covey 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (1989)
  67. Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene (2006)
  68. Primo Levi If This Is a Man (1947)
  69. Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich (1937)
  70. Jared Diamond Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (2005)

  71. Mark C. Young The Guinness Book of Records (1955)
  72. John Hersey Hiroshima (1946)
  73. Michael Herr Dispatches (1977)
  74. John Kenneth Galbraith The Affluent Society (1958)
  75. James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)
  76. James Agee & Walker Evans Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941)
  77. René DescartesDiscourse on Method (Discours sur la Méthode) (1637)
  78. Joan Didion The Year of Magical Thinking (2005)
  79. Henry David Thoreau Civil Disobedience (1849)
  80. Euclid Euclid’s Elements (280 B.C.)

  81. Dee Brown Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970)
  82. Paul Kalanithi When Breath Becomes Air (2016)
  83. Winston Churchill The Second World War (series: 1948-1953)
  84. Thomas Cranmer The Book of Common Prayer (1549)
  85. Joseph Smith The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ (1830)
  86. Galileo Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
  87. Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays (1841)
  88. Shelby Foote The Civil War (1974)
  89. Art Spiegelman Maus: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History (1980)
  90. Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie (1997)

  91. Benjamin Franklin The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (1793)
  92. Karen Blixen (as Isak Dinesen) Out of Africa (1937)
  93. Robert Baden-Powell Scouting for Boys (1908)
  94. Bill Wilson & Dr. Bob Smith Alcoholic’s Anonymous Big Book (1939)
  95. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago (1973)
  96. Tom Wolfe The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
  97. Elizabeth Gilbert Eat Pray Love (2010)
  98. Gertrude Stein The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1993)
  99. Eric Schlosser Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001)
  100. Jack Canfield & Victor Hansen Chicken Soup for the Soul (1993)

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Saturday, June 20, 2020

Leo Tolstoy War and Peace

First posted 6/10/2020; updated 7/5/2020.

War and Peace

Leo Tolstoy

First Publication: 1869


Category: historical novel


Sales: 36 million

Accolades:

About the Book:

“The most famous – and perhaps greatest – novel of all time,” BN War and Peace is “both an intimate study of individual passions and an epic history of Russia and its people.” BN The novel is “noted for its mastery of realistic detail and variety of psychological analysis” LN as it details “the metamorphosis of five families, some peasant, some aristocratic” AZ struggling for survival during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.” BN

“The theme of war, however, is subordinate to the story of family existence, which involves Tolstoy’s optimistic belief in the life-asserting pattern of human existence.” LN “Each individual is immersed in experiences and conversations elucidating Tolstoy’s themes of self-sacrifice and self-indulgence, anguish and ecstasy, diplomacy and deception, and religion and perdition. The complexities of character and plot are sometimes enigmatic, and names are often exhausting to recollect, but the genius of this book is everlasting.” AZ

The impressive dialog sparkles with humor and wit, and the vivid scenes of battle are riveting.” AZ “The novel also sets forth a theory of history, concluding that there is a minimum of free choice; all is ruled by an inexorable historical determinism.” LNWar and Peace is nothing more or less than a complete portrait of human existence.” BN

The book is well known for its length. “Even the author said it couldn't be described as a novel. But the characters of Andrei, Pierre and Natasha – and the tragic and unexpected way their lives intersect – grip you for all 1,400 pages.” TG


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All Time Best Books: Top 100

First posted 5/26/2018; updated 6/20/2020.

All-Time Books:

Top 100

Inspired by the 2018 PBS special The Great American Read, I assembled more than 170 best-of-books lists (see sources here) and aggregated them to create one master list of the all-time books. While these are mostly novels, there are some non-fiction books and even a few children’s picture books. Here are the results:

  1. Various writers The Holy Bible: King James Version (1451)
  2. Mao Zedong Quotations from Mao Tse-tung (1966)
  3. J.D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye (1951)
  4. F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby (1925)
  5. Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote (1615)
  6. Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
  7. George Orwell 1984 (1949)
  8. J.R.R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings (trilogy: 1954-55)
  9. Vladimir Nabokov Lolita (1955)
  10. Lewis Carroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

  11. James Joyce Ulysses (1922)
  12. Joseph Heller Catch-22 (1961)
  13. John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
  14. Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)
  15. Leo Tolstoy War and Peace (1869)
  16. J.R.R. Tolkien The Hobbit (1937)
  17. E.B. White Charlotte’s Web (1952)
  18. Charlotte Brontë Jane Eyre (1847)
  19. Herman Melville Moby-Dick (1851)
  20. J.K. Rowling Harry Potter (series, 1997-2007)

  21. Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice (1813)
  22. William Golding Lord of the Flies (1954)
  23. Mark Twain The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)
  24. C.S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
  25. Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness (1899)
  26. Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (1936)
  27. Homer The Odyssey (800 B.C.)
  28. Emily Brontë Wuthering Heights (1847)
  29. Toni Morrison Beloved (1987)
  30. Jack Kerouac On the Road (1957)

  31. Aldous Huxley Brave New World (1932)
  32. George Orwell Animal Farm (1954)
  33. Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina (1877)
  34. Fyodor Dostoyevsky Crime and Punishment (1866)
  35. Anne Frank The Diary of a Young Girl (aka The Diary of Anne Frank) (1947)
  36. William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury (1929)
  37. Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
  38. Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
  39. Ernest Hemingway The Sun Also Rises (1926)
  40. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) (1943)

  41. Homer The Iliad (800 B.C.)
  42. Muhammad Quran (632 A.D.)
  43. Louisa May Alcott Little Women (1869)
  44. Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
  45. Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1861)
  46. Dante Alighieri Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) (1304)
  47. Fyodor M. Dostoyevsky The Brothers Karamazov (1880)
  48. Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary (1857)
  49. Alice Walker The Color Purple (1982)
  50. Ralph Ellison Invisible Man (1952)

  51. Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)
  52. Mary Shelley Frankenstein (1818)
  53. Jonathan Swift Gulliver’s Travels (1726)
  54. George Eliot Middlemarch, a Study of Provincial Life (1872)
  55. Virginia Woolf To the Lighthouse (1927)
  56. Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter (1850)
  57. William Grahame The Wind in the Willows (1908)
  58. Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are (1964)
  59. A.A. Milne Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)
  60. Ernest Hemingway For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

  61. Charles Dickens David Copperfield (1850)
  62. James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
  63. L.M. Montgomery Anne of Green Gables (1908)
  64. Richard Adams Watership Down (1972)
  65. Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale (1986)
  66. John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men (1937)
  67. Anthony Burgess A Clockwork Orange (1962)
  68. Ken Kesey One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)
  69. Jack London The Call of the Wild (1903)
  70. Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (1938)

  71. Frank Herbert Dune (1965)
  72. Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (1958)
  73. Niccolo Machiavelli The Prince (1532)
  74. Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time (1913)
  75. Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children (1981)
  76. Georges Simenon Maigret (series, 1931-1972)
  77. Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged (1957)
  78. Albert Camus The Stranger (1942)
  79. Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
  80. Charles Darwin The Origin of Species (1859)

  81. Victor Hugo Les Misérables (1862)
  82. Geoffrey Chaucer The Canterbury Tales (1387)
  83. Robert Louis Stevenson Treasure Island (1883)
  84. Daniel Defoe Robinson Crusoe (1719)
  85. Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea (1952)
  86. Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
  87. William Faulkner As I Lay Dying (1930)
  88. Lois Lowry The Giver (1994)
  89. Alexandre Dumas The Count of Monte Cristo (1844)
  90. Henry David Thoreau Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854)

  91. Madeleine L’Engle A Wrinkle in Time (1962)
  92. Paulo Coelho O Alquimista (The Alchemist) (1987)
  93. Franz Kafka The Trial (1925)
  94. Plato The Republic (380 B.C.)
  95. Roald Dahl Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964)
  96. Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence (1920)
  97. Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass (1855)
  98. Richard Wright Native Son (1940)
  99. Rachel Carson Silent Spring (1962)
  100. Truman Capote In Cold Blood (1966)

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Tuesday, June 16, 2020

National Book Award for Fiction

First posted 6/16/2020.

National Book Award for Fiction:

1950-2019

The award was established in 1950 as awards to be given by writers to writers with “general fiction” as one of the categories. In the 1980s, there were several awards in the fiction category including hardcover, paperback, first novel or first work of fiction, hardcover children’s fiction, and paperback children’s fiction.

  • 2019: Susan Choi Trust Exercise
  • 2018: Sigrid Nunez The Friend
  • 2017: Jesmyn Ward Sing, Unburied, Sing
  • 2016: Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad
  • 2015: Adam Johnson Fortune Smiles
  • 2014: Phil Klay Redeployment
  • 2013: James McBride The Good Lord Bird
  • 2012: Louis Erdrich The Round House
  • 2011: Jesmyn Ward Salvage the Bones
  • 2010: Jamiy Gordon Lord of Misrule

  • 2009: Colum McCann Let the Great World Spin
  • 2008: Peter Matthiessen Shadow Country
  • 2007: Denis Johnson Tree of Smoke
  • 2006: Richard Powers The Echo Maker
  • 2005: William T. Vollmann Europe Central
  • 2004: Lily Tuck The News from Paraguay
  • 2003: Shirley Hazzard The Great Fire
  • 2002: Julia Glass Three Junes
  • 2001: Jonathan Franzen The Corrections
  • 2000: Susan Sontag In America

  • 1999: Ha Jin Waiting
  • 1998: Alice McDermott Charming Billy
  • 1997: Charles Frazier Cold Mountain
  • 1996: Andrea Barrett Ship Fever and Other Stories
  • 1995: Philip Roth Sabbath’s Theater
  • 1994: William Gaddis A Frolic of His Own
  • 1993: E. Annie Proulx The Shipping News
  • 1992: Cormac McCarthy All the Pretty Horses
  • 1991: Norman Rush Mating
  • 1990: Charles Johnson Middle Passage

  • 1989: John Casey Spartina
  • 1988: Pete Dexter Paris Trout
  • 1987: Larry Heinemann Paco’s Story
  • 1986: E.L. Doctorow World’s Fair
  • 1985: Don DeLillo White Noise
  • 1984: Ellen Gilchrist Victory Over Japan: A Book of Stories
  • 1983: Alice Walker The Color Purple (hardcover)
  • 1983: Eudora Welty The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (paperback)
  • 1982: John Updike Rabbit Is Rich (hardcover)
  • 1982: William Maxwell So Long, See You Tomorrow (paperback)
  • 1981: Wright Morris Plains Song: For Female Voices (hardcover)
  • 1981: John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever (paperback)
  • 1980: William Styron Sophie’s Choice (hardcover)
  • 1980: John Irving The World According to Garp (paperback)

  • 1979: Tim O’Brien Going After Cacciato
  • 1978: Mary Lee Settle Blood Tie
  • 1977: Wallace Stegner The Spectator Bird
  • 1976: William Gaddis J.R.
  • 1975: Robert Stone Dog Soldiers
  • 1975: Thomas Williams The Hair of Harold Roux
  • 1974: Thomas Pynchon Gravity’s Rainbow
  • 1974: Isaac Bashevis Singer A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories
  • 1973: John Edward Williams Augustus
  • 1973: John Barth Chimera
  • 1972: Flannery O’Connor The Complete Stories
  • 1971: Saul Bellow Mr. Sammler’s Planet
  • 1970: Joyce Carol Oates Them

  • 1969: Jerzy KosiĹ„ski Steps
  • 1968: Thornton Wilder The Eighth Day
  • 1967: Bernard Malamud The Fixer
  • 1966: Katherine Anne Porter The Collected Stories
  • 1965: Saul Bellow Herzog
  • 1964: John Updike The Centaur
  • 1963: J.F. Powers Morte d’Urban
  • 1962: Walker Percy The Moviegoer
  • 1961: Conrad RIchter The Waters of Kronos
  • 1960: Philip Roth Goodbye, Columbus

  • 1959: Bernard Malamud The Magic Barrel
  • 1958: John Cheever The Wapshot Chronicle
  • 1957: Wright Morris The Field of Vision
  • 1956: John O’Hara Ten North Frederick
  • 1955: William Faulker A Fable
  • 1954: Saul Bellow The Adventures of Augie March
  • 1953: Ralph Ellison Invisible Man
  • 1952: James Jones From Here to Eternity
  • 1951: William Faulkner Collected Stories of William Faulkner
  • 1950: Nelson Algren The Man with the Golden Arm

  • 1941: George Sessions Perry Hold Autumn in Your Hand (Bookseller Discovery: Novel)
  • 1940: Richard Llewellyn How Green Was My Valley (Favorite Fiction)
  • 1939: Dalton Trumbo Johnny Got His Gun (Most Original Book: Novel)
  • 1939: Elgin Groseclose Ararat (Bookseller Discovery: Novel)
  • 1939: John Steinbeck The Grapes of Wrath (Favorite Fiction)
  • 1938: Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca (Favorite Fiction)
  • 1937: Lawrence Watkin On Borrowed Time (Bookseller Discovery: Novel)
  • 1937: A.J. Cronin The Citadel (Favorite Fiction)
  • 1936: Norah Lofts I Met a Gypsy (Bookseller Discovery: Short Stories)
  • 1936: Margaret Mitchell Gone with the Wind (Most Distinguished Novel)
  • 1935: Rachel Field Time Out of Mind (Most Distinguished Novel)
  • 1935: Charles G. Finney The Circus of Dr. Lao (Most Original Book: Novel)

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