100 Books You Should Read...

... if you're exactly like me.

After grumbling about amazon's list of 100 books everyone should read, I sat down to compose my own list.

I followed amazon's apparent rule of just one book (or series) per writer. Otherwise this would be largely a list of books by Diana Wynne Jones, Terry Pratchett and Dr. Seuss.

I set another rule for myself: There are no books on the list by authors I know personally.

Anyway, the following list contains hardly anything from the adult or juvenile literary canon. There are no books that I was required to read in public school, and only one that I read for a college course. The list is made up of books that I personally found to be at least three of the following:

• fascinating
• fun
• funny
• life-affirming
• well-written
• full of information that I didn't know
• memorable
• worth multiple rereads

They're books I've recommended to people. So, without further ado, here's a list of books you're guaranteed to enjoy... if you're exactly like me. :-)

1. A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs: Reminscences of My Life in Camp With the 33^rd Colored Troops, Late 1^st South Carolina Volunteers by Susie King Taylor
2. A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti [poems]
3. A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss
4. A House for the Season series by Marion Chesney [Regency romance]
5. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
6. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn
7. A Schoolteacher in Old Alaska by Hannah Breece
8. A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman
9. America at 1750, a Social Portrait by Richard Hofstadter
10. America's Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines by Gail Collins
11. An A to Z of Georgian London by John Rocque & Ralph Hyde [atlas]
12. And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts
13. Andrew Lang's Fairy Books by Leonore Blanche Alleyne Lang¹
14. Anticancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber
15. As Various as Their Land: The Everyday Lives of 18^th Century Americans by Stephanie Grauman Wolf
16. Bedknob and Broomstick by Mary Norton
17. Catherine Called Birdy by Karen Cushman
18. Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister by Gregory Maguire
19. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
20. Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willem
21. Down the Common: A Year in the Life of a Medieval Woman by Ann Baer
22. Dr. Goat by Georgiana
23. Earl's Too Cool For Me by Leah Komaiko
24. Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key²
25. Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce
26. "Fire, Fire!" Said Mrs. McGuire by Bill Martin
27. The Golden Gazette: News from the [California] Newspapers of 1848-1857 by Dudley T. Ross
28. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England 1650-1750 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
29. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
30. Harry Potter series by JK Rowling
31. Having Our Say by the Delaney Sisters
32. I Can't Said The Ant by Polly Cameron
33. I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew by Dr. Seuss
34. I Hate English by Ellen Levine
35. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
36. If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow by Cooper Edens
37. In Search of the Birth of Jesus by Paul William Roberts
38. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Written by Herself by Harriet Ann Jacobs
39. Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino
40. Jillian Jiggs by Phoebe Erickson
41. Journey by Aaron Becker
42. Just Us Women by Jeanette Caines
43. Katherine by Anya Seton
44. Life in a Medieval Castle by Frances and Joseph Gies
45. Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
46. Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind by Carol Hollinger
47. May I Bring a Friend? by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers
48. Memoirs of an Infantry Officer by Siegfried Sassoon
49. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
50. Mother Earth Father Sky by Sue Harrison
51. My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass
52. One Monday Morning by Uri Shulevitz
53. Out of the Shadow: A Russian Jewish Girlhood on the Lower East Side by Rose Cohen
54. Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt
55. People by Peter Spier
56. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
57. Plain Folk in a Rich Man's War: Class and Dissent in Confederate Georgia by Teresa Crisp Williams et al
58. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
59. Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer
60. Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary
61. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
62. Roots by Alex Haley
63. Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol
64. Sheep in a Jeep by Nancy E. Shaw
65. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
66. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City by Shane White
67. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
68. Speak Softly, and Carry a Beagle by Charles Schultz
69. Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years of Pogo by Walt Kelly
70. The Adventures of Tintin: The Black Island by Hergé
71. The Aran Islands by J.M. Synge
72. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
73. The Five Gospels, by Robert W. Funk et al
74. The Hard Facts of the Grimms' Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar
75. The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom
76. The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
77. The Lives and Times of Archy and Mehitabel by Don Marquis
78. The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones
79. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith
80. The Narrative of Sojourner Truth by herself
81. The Norton Anthology of Poetry
82. The Nutshell Library by Maurice Sendak
83. The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Woman Suffrage by Carol Lynn Yellin & Janann Sherman
84. The Prospering by Elizabeth George Speare
85. The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W.E.B. Du Bois
86. The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck: A Journey Through the Himalayas and Down the Brahmaputra by Rory Nugent
87. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
88. The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber
89. The Watsons Go to Birmingham 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
90. The Winged Watchman by Hilda Van Stockum
91. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
92. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
93. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
94. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
95. To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
96. Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington
97. Watership Down by Richard Adams
98. When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago
99. Women in England c. 1275-1525: Documentary Sources by P.J.P. Goldberg 
    100. Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel

1As my mother always says, "This women's lib thing wasn't about nothing, you know."

2Key wrote several other middle grade fantasies, all worth reading

100 Must-Read Books by... some people.

Sigh. Amazon has just released a list of 100 books everyone should read. Of course I started out counting how many I'd read. But I quickly became distracted, as I scrolled through the rows of book covers, by how few of the books were by female authors.

So I ended up counting the male authors on the list. Seventy of the books are by men.

I want to acknowledge that progress has been made. Traditionally, lists of this kind contain only a handful of books by women. Or none.

There are also five (5) books on the list by black writers.

Now, here are a few books by women and/or black writers that are not on the list although most bookish people have probably read most of them:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (probably not qualified because she's already on the list once)

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Roots by Alex Haley

Just off the top of my head.

There are 22 children's books on the list (thanks, Sarah!) of which 15 are by men. I won't bother to list those books by women that could have been included, because it's my impression most children's books are by women. But here are a few by African-American writers that surely qualify for a literary to-do list:

The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis

Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Oh, and a whole host of picture books by Donald Crews or Pat Cummings.

Anyway. These (not so) minor quibbles aside, let me get back to my original count. I find I've read 36 of the 100 books on the list. Of those, I liked 16 and loved 3. There are also 6 books on the list that I tried to read but gave up on. But that's not the authors' fault. It's this darn ADD.

Bookstores with signed books in stock

Hi! As of today, 2/3/14, the following upstate New York bookstores have signed copies of Jinx and Jinx's Magic in stock. If you're interested in buying one, you might want to call the store before you go to make sure they've still got them.

The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza
1475 Western Avenue
Albany, New York 12203
518-489-4761

Barnes & Noble
131 Colonie Center
(on Wolf Rd near Central Ave)
Albany, New York 12205
518-438-1728

Barnes & Noble
Consumer Square Plaza
821 County Road 64
Elmira, New York 14903
607-796-2020

Harry Potter in the Style of Famous Writers #2

(some parts previously posted elsewhere)

Today it's A.A. Milne and J.R.R. Tolkien, neither of whom I find I can carry for long. So, briefly:

Harry the Pooh

“Ron,” said Harry Potter (rum-te-tum-tum), “You don’t think I’m… well…”

“Yes, Harry Potter?” said Ron helpfully.

“Well, I do mean to say,” (rum-te-tum-tum) said Harry Potter thoughtfully. “That is, I say, Ron, you don’t think I’m, well, sort of Possessed by Voldemort, do you?”

“Bother!” said Ron. “I do wish you wouldn’t say that name, Harry Potter.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harry Potter. “It sort of came out, you know, in a sort of a way.”

Harry of the Rings

"Begging your pardon, Mr. Harry, sir," said Ron. "But I never did hold with no riding of invisible reptilian horses. 'Tain't natural-like, if you see what I mean."

"No, Ron," said Harry wearily, "I fear you never did. But it is fated to me. The thestrals hang before my eyes, white-eyed and dwimber. Just be glad you can't see them, old friend. I'm afraid Dumbledore was right."

Harry Potter in the Style of Famous Writers #1

(previously posted elsewhere)

Bear with me for a bit of silliness... to wit:

How Harry Potter would have come out if various other writers had written him.

First up, John Steinbeck.

Harry Potter and the Grapes of Wrath

The little wizards watched evil creep up on them like the tide. They studied Defense Against the Dark Arts and learned no counter-curses, they cried Expecto Patronum but could summon no patroni. And the wizards of great knowledge have worked, have studied, have considered, and the Death Eaters are gathering in the graveyards, and the Dementors' psychic rot and general air of extreme Depression is poisoning the air.

These little wizards will be Death Eaters next year, for Voldemort's lure will have choked out the last scrap of decency from their little wands.

Hogwarts will belong to the Death Eaters. Only the Death Eaters can survive, for they have drawn great powers that the little wizards cannot dream of. And these powers may cost your soul, but they put pumpkin bread on the table, pumpkin bread and canned peaches and butterbeer, which costs two sickles. And a wizard must feed his family. A wizard must have sickles and knuts to feed his family. 

The evil spreads over Hogwarts, and its creeping is a great sorrow on the land. Wizards who can accio anything and make great maps, maps that trace everybody's location, can find no way to locate Voldemort. Big wizards can find no way to stop the little wizards from becoming Death Eaters. Wizards who have discovered twelve uses for dragon's blood cannot create an educational system which stops turning one-fourth of the little wizards evil. And the failure hangs over Hogwarts like a great sorrow.

And so the Second War begins.

Vegetable Dip

 

I can't convince myself this is good for you, even if you use all-organic ingredients. But it is very good, and especially useful as an appetizer or snack for holiday parties.

2/3 cup sour cream

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1 tsp prepared horseradish (or more, if you roll that way)

1 tsp lemon juice

1 scallion, chopped

Jane's Crazy Mixed-Up Salt* to taste

Combine the sour cream and mayonnaise, mix well. Stir in the lemon juice and horseradish. Add salt to taste. Top with chopped scallions.

Serve with carrot sticks, celery sticks, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, etc.

*No, I don't work for the company, but this stuff is great! And all-natural.

The President Buys Some Children's Books

How about that! President Barack Obama and his daughters visited the Politics and Prose bookstore on upper Connecticut Avenue in DC last Saturday and bought 21 books, one of which was Jinx!

I am, of course, stunned, thrilled, and honored. I've voted for several Presidents but this is the first time a President has voted for me.

The news story about this calls the President's shopping list "eclectic." Since that's not terribly informative, I'm going to take a look at each of the children's books the President and his daughters chose. (I'll leave it to someone else to do the adult books.)

Picture Books:

Moonday - by Adam Rex

This book, written and illustrated by the author of The True Meaning of Smekday, answers the question "What do you do when the moon lowers itself into your backyard?"  

Journey - by Aaron Becker

A lonely girl draws herself out of her room and into an adventure. A New York Times Best Illustrated Book of 2013. 

Harold and the Purple Crayon - by Crockett Johnson

Classic picture book about a boy who goes for a walk in the moonlight, creating a world as he goes with his purple crayon.

Books for newly-independent readers (grades 1 to 3, ages 6-8)

Lulu and the Brontosaurus - by Judith Viorst and Lane Smith

In this chapter book, a rather spoiled girl named Lulu seeks a brontosaurus for a pet. But when she finds one, things don't turn out quite as she expected.

Ottoline and the Yellow Cat - by Chris Riddell

Ottoline and her silent guardian, Mr. Munroe investigate the mysterious disappearance of several well-to-do dogs. Plenty of illustrations help tell the story.

Middle grade and YA (ages 9 and up)

Heart of a Samurai - by Margi Preus

In 1841, 14-year-old Manjiro and his fellow fishermen are shipwrecked off Japan, rescued by a passing ship and taken to America. This book won a 2011 Newbery Honor.

Flora and Ulysses - by Kate DiCamillo

Sucked into a vacuum cleaner and rescued by a girl named Flora, a squirrel acquires superpowers. This book was chosen as a Best Book of 2013 by Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Amazon, and was on the National Book Awards Longlist.

Jinx - by Sage Blackwood

Abandoned in a sentient forest, a boy named Jinx must cope with wizards, witches, trolls, and his own mysterious powers. This book was chosen as a Best Book of 2013 by School Library Journal, Kirkus, and Amazon.

Half Brother - by Kenneth Oppel

13-year-old Ben bonds with the baby chimp, Zan, that his scientist parents bring home to raise, but his parents seem to regard Zan as just an experiment.

I assume these books are destined for young relatives and the children of friends. Some common threads run through the selection:

- There's a lot of fantasy here.

- Most of the books deal with venturing forth, often in search of something unusual.

- Many of the books have a theme of coming to terms with people or creatures different from ourselves.

- Change is a theme in most of these books, including coping with change, and our ability to bring about change.

Anyway, it's a great selection all in all (if I do say so). I hope the young recipients enjoy them.