Well, At Least There Was Good Stuff to Read: The Books of the Decade. Anybody remember how anxious and thrilled we were in those last months of the 20th century?
When we weren't at war and we had a budget surplus and it looked like Al Gore would be president? The prospect of a 21st century filled with new technologies, new art and literature loomed large and bright. But now, as we look back at what was decidedly a shitty decade for an incredible variety of people in an equally incredible variety of ways (evictions/invasions/bombings/etc), it's surprisingly hard to be pessimistic about the books that assessed, satirized, dramatized and distracted us from the events of the past 10 years. Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read.
A Reddit.com user posed the question to Neil deGrasse Tyson: "Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?
" Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astrophysicist, director of the Hayden Planetarium, and popularizer of science. Where possible, we have included links to free versions of the books, all taken from our Free Audio Books and Free eBooks collections. Or you can always download a professionally-narrated book for free from Audible.com. Details here. If you're looking for a more extensive list of essential works, don't miss The Harvard Classics, a 51 volume series that you can now download online. 1.) 2.) 30 Very Funny Books.
It's a dreary day, so I thought I'd indulge myself and come up with a list of my favorite comedies.
A caveat, however: this is not a fancy English-professor-y list of the finest, most exquisitely crafted, most erudite or intellectually sophisticated works on paper in the language. This is a list of the books that make me laugh until my mascara starts to run. These are books to read over your first cup of coffee or just before you go to sleep . Remember: a day you've laughed is day you haven't wasted--even if you didn't get out of bed. Some days you need a jump-start to get to the funny parts of life. Top 10 classics – vote for the most beautiful book. Lord of the Flies – William Golding Introduced by Ian McEwan, illustrated by Sam Weber Sam Weber's arresting images in this cloth-bound edition of William Golding's classic tale perfectly capture the novel's highly charged atmosphere.
Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan writes a wryly funny and engagingly personal response to this 1954 story about a group of school boys marooned on a tropical island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results. 14 daunting books every man must read - Entertainment. Page count: 832 What it’s about: Nick Shay is a waste-management executive with a sinister past and a wife who’s having an affair.
The novel spans his life, wider historical events and the lives of the famous, using a baseball as the constant link between people and time. A 2006 survey of authors and critics by The New York Times voted it runner-up for best American novel of the previous 25 years (Toni Morrison’s Beloved came first). Why read it: “He’s good about the modern world in a way that nobody else is,” says Matt Thorne, author, screenwriter and book reviewer.
50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 (or so) Years. In compiling the books on this list, the editors at SuperScholar have tried to provide a window into the culture of the last 50 years.
Ideally, if you read every book on this list, you will know how we got to where we are today. Not all the books on this list are “great.” The criterion for inclusion was not greatness but INFLUENCE. All the books on this list have been enormously influential. The books we chose required some hard choices. We also tried to keep a balance between books that everyone buys and hardly anyone reads versus books that, though not widely bought and read, are deeply transformative. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 10 Evocative Writers of Place. Today is famed Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez’s 84th birthday.
Known for his importance in developing the genre of magical realism as well as his lush descriptions of an often only slightly shifted Colombia, Márquez has created some of the most beautiful worlds of any writer living today. In the introduction to the Everyman’s Library edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude, author Carlos Fuentes writes, “[Márquez] creates a place. A mythical locale: Macondo. García Márquez, story-teller, knows that presence dissolves without a place (a base of resistance) that can be all places: a place that will hold everyone, that will hold all of us: the seat of time, she enshrinement of all times, the meeting ground of memory and desire, a common present where everything can begin again: a temple, a book.” Gabriel Garcia Marquez — Colombia Arundhati Roy — India “May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. Eudora Welty — The American South Cormac McCarthy — Mexico J.M. Orhan Pamuk — Turkey. The Literature Page - Read classic books by famous authors online.
The Literature Network: Online classic literature, poems, and quotes. Essays & Summaries. 10 New Must-Reads for February. Now that the year is fully under way, it’s time to buckle down, stick to your New Year’s resolutions and get some books checked off your list.
Curiouser and Curiouser! 10 of Literature’s Trippiest Books. Today is the birthday of the venerable Lewis Carroll, creator of what is arguably the best-loved children’s tale of all time, Alice in Wonderland.
He’s also the author of one of the trippiest, most psychedelic books of all time, which is, um, also Alice in Wonderland. To celebrate the occasion of his birth (he would be 180 years old today), we’ve collected the texts that we consider to be the trippiest books of all time, “trippy,” in this case, being defined as “resembling or inducing the hallucinatory effect produced by taking a psychedelic drug.” See, kids: why take drugs when you can just read these crazy books?
They are much less likely to do you any permanent damage — though we can’t make any promises. Click through to read our list, and let us know if we’ve left off your favorite trippy tale in the comments! Required Reading for Your Quarter Life Crisis. This week saw the release of Leigh Stein’s debut novel The Fallback Plan , a hilarious take on the post-college, self-absorbed, 20-something in existential crisis.
We were pleased to see it, because in general, it seems like the 20s are a little bit of a dead area in fiction — there are hundreds of books about making it as a teenager (or even as a child prodigy) and hundreds more about grown-up issues and disaffected men in their 30s and 40s, but fewer about the post-college, pre-life choices period that many young Americans seem to be wallowing in these days. However, to give all you angsty 20-somethings in existential crisis mode something to read while you’re waiting out the weird years, we’ve created an absolutely required reading list, for bathtubs and bar stools alike. The 50 Coolest Books Ever - Entertainment. 50 Movies That Are Better Than The Book.