The Greatest Books: The Best Books of All Time - 1 to 50 Famous Last Words: Our 20 Favorite Final Lines in Literature Endings, as we all know, are important. An entire novel can be ruined by a disappointing ending, but by the same token, an entire novel can be made by a wonderful one. We’ve already given you a rundown of our favorite opening lines in literature, but since every beginning needs an ending (and you’d be surprised at how many works with awesome first lines also have awesome last lines – or perhaps you wouldn’t be surprised), we feel compelled to treat you to a list of our favorite last lines as well. Click through for 20 of our favorite endings from our bookshelf of classic and contemporary greats, and let us know your own picks for best last lines in the comments. 1. Best pessimistic diagnosis of a resigned and wistful generation: “Yes,” I said. 2. Most delicate ending to a delicate, harrowing story about the different kinds of humanity and grace: “Shut up, Bobby Lee,” The Misfit said. 3. Best reason to go adventuring in Wonderland: 4. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. 5. 6. 7. 8. 10. 11.
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. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 45.
10 great science fiction novels that have been banned @djscruffy: And that's why you're a heathen and should be burned at the stake. @djscruffy: In defense of public schools, I would suggest that the reason many of these books are challenged so often is that they're frequently included in school curriculums and libraries. I grew up in a state that, according to these links, engaged in book-burning less than a decade before my birth. That makes me shudder. But I'm also the child of a public school teacher and am familiar with my mother's and many of her peers' views on children's reading materials. I suppose I've wandered a bit. @djscruffy: To be fair, it's not usually the schools that want to ban the books, but the few overprotective parents who make wild assumptions about the books we try to teach. Most of us really try to teach the kids to think, rather than becoming nice little automatons.
The Novel 100: The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time Multiple Listings:9 authors wrote two of the books listed on TIME Magazine's list of the best English-language novels published since 1923: Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited; A Handful of Dust) George Orwell (1984; Animal Farm) Graham Greene (The Heart of the Matter; The Power and the Glory) Philip Roth (American Pastoral; Portnoy's Complaint) Saul Bellow (The Adventures of Augie March; Herzog) Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49; Gravity's Rainbow) Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse) Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita; Pale Fire) William Faulkner (Light in August; The Sound and the Fury) Authors on Two Separate ListsTIME Magazine's list of "100 Best Movies" released since 1923 is a companion to TIME Magazine's list of "100 Best Novels" (written in English) published since 1923. Notes about how the list was created Excerpts from: Richard Lacayo, "How We Picked the List" ( viewed 31 October 2005):
11 Literary References People Make Without Realizing It But I made the category for a reason -- to class up this joint -- so I'm sticking with it. And this should be a pretty accessible list: Literary references that we all make... without realizing, remembering or knowing they're actually literary references. To keep the list "pure," I shied away from any literary references that only really became popular because of movies based on books. Big Brother. Great Books of the Western World The Great Books (second edition) Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952 by Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. to present the Great Books in a single package of 54 volumes. The series is now in its second edition and contains 60 volumes. The original editors of the series chose three criteria for inclusion: a book must be relevant to contemporary issues, and not only important in its historical context; it must reward rereading; and it must be a part of "the great conversation about the great ideas," relevant to at least 25 of the 102 great ideas identified by the editors. History[edit] After debates about what to include and how to present it, with an eventual budget of $2,000,000, the project was ready. Sales were initially poor. With the advent of the Internet and the proliferation of E-book readers, many of these texts are available online.[4] Volumes[edit] Volume 1 The Great Conversation Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Volume 5 Volume 6
12 of Stephen Fry's Wise, Witty Quotations Stephen Fry is an actor, writer, poet, TV host, narrator, and for all I know a terrific cook -- the man is so prolific he has a Wikipedia page devoted simply to listing his works. Through all of his work he weaves threads of good humor, keen intellect, and a tremendously open attitude about his own life: the result is a tapestry of wit that is eminently quotable, and deserving of careful reading. Below, I've collected my favorite Fry quotations. 1. "The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. From The Fry Chronicles (Kindle Locations 1265-1266). 2. "This is the point. From Fry's Twitter account. 3. "... From The Fry Chronicles (Kindle Locations 3852-3857). 4. "What's great about them is that anybody can go into them and find a book and borrow it free of charge and read it. From Fry's March 2001 appearance on Room 101. 5. When asked his opinion about a Dream Catcher: "And astrology: most people will say of astrology, 'Well, it's harmless fun.' Getty Images 6.
In Which These Are The 100 Greatest Writers Of All Time The 100 Greatest Writers of All Time by WILL HUBBARD and ALEX CARNEVALE Other lists of this kind have been attempted, none very successfully. We would like to stress that there is a crucial difference between "an important writer" and "a great writer"; the latter is at this time our sole interest. 100. Prose stylist nonpareil, he addressed the dichotomy of race, the loneliness of existence. 99. The gestamtkunstwerk ('total work of art') was all the rage in Europe early in the last century, but Balzac was on the case almost a hundred years before. 98. The greatest artist Poland would ever spawn, Milosz was still composing vital poetry until his death in 2004. 97. When we speak of 'wit' in the theater we owe a debt to G. 96. Anti-semite? 95. We prefer to keep our religion, poetry, and booze in separate containers, but we know a lot of ex-hippie poets who swear by this guy. 94. No writer so little acclaimed in the first part of his life lived a second one in literary style in the West. 93.
The most beautiful death Brave New World novelist Aldous Huxley was diagnosed with cancer in 1960, at which point his health slowly began to deteriorate. On his deathbed in November of 1963, just as he was passing away, Aldous — a man who for many years had been fascinated with the effects of psychedelic drugs since being introduced to mescaline in 1953 — asked his wife Laura to administer him with LSD. She agreed. The following letter — an incredibly moving, detailed account of Aldous's last days — was written by Laura just days after her husband's death and sent to his older brother Julian. Transcript follows. 6233 Mulholland Highway Los Angeles 28, California December 8, 1963Dearest Julian and Juliette:There is so much I want to tell you about the last week of Aldous' life and particularly the last day.
A List of Books | 623 of the Best Books ever Written Fiction Truer Than Fact: A Haunting Autobiographical Novel Sarah Manguso's latest book is called The Guardians. I like autobiographies that approach their subjects insidiously. My favorite ones begin as a study of someone or something else. Sylvia grew from an autobiographical essay into a novella subtitled A Fictional Memoir. "The brush swept down and ripped free until, abruptly, she quit brushing, stepped into the living room, dropped onto the couch, leaned back against the brick wall, and went totally limp. The woman is Sylvia Bloch, indeed the name of the author's first wife, described in the book as "abnormally bright" but prone to violent rages, "like a madwoman imitating a college student." Leonard presents the compulsive love affair alongside his own compulsive record of it. hide captionSarah Manguso is also the author of The Two Kinds of Decay. Courtesy Farrar, Straus & Giroux Sarah Manguso is also the author of The Two Kinds of Decay. Though the book contains more rumination than plot, the ending is as shocking as that of any thriller.