A List of Book Lists

All summer long, I've been compiling massive lists of books lists, since everyone and their brother apparently wrote a "summer reading" list. Here, then, are my favorite book lists of the summer. There's a wide range of books included, from a variety of sources. Happy reading, bookworms!

• We start with the YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) lists. The first is the 2009 Best Books for Young Adults. I'm no longer a "young" adult, but a lot of the books on this list are good reading for everyone.
  
• The second YALSA list is the 2009 Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers. Most studies show that reading drops off once kids reach their teens. This is a shame, because reading is a lifelong pursuit that's great for everyone. This list includes books suggested by teens for teens.
• Time Magazine critics set out to list the Best 100 Novels since 1923. It's a good list, fairly inclusive of most of the greatest books in the 20th century (the list starts with 1923 because that's when Time began publishing). Because of the limited scope, it doesn't include any "classics" but it is a good compilation of "modern" literature.
  
• Newsweek Magazine, meanwhile, decided to enter the fray with its own list, the Top 100 Books. The Newsweek list is much more ambitious - they went with the top 100 books of all time, including fiction and nonfiction. They also compiled the list by reviewing other top 10 lists (from Modern Library, Oprah and more). Tolstoy's War and Peace sits atop this list. [Thanks to my friend Katie for pointing this list out to me.]
  
• The U.K. newspaper, the Telegraph, asked children's book authors and critics to suggest their own favorite science-fiction and fantasy books for kids this summer. I liked this list because it had authors talking directly to their audience and most of them didn't even suggest their own books. Thus, their inclusion on this list.
• What kind of list would this be if I didn't include Oprah?! Oprah's 2009 Books of Summer include the 25 books she says you can't put down, 20 books perfect for the beach, 5 books everyone should read, and 11 mysteries for those who like a little thrill in their summer.
• And for some local love, the Books of Summer from the Boston Globe. What makes the Globe's list distinct is that it's not actually a list. The editors took the time to write out a paragraph for each book suggestion, outlining the basic plot, the background and why they choose it. It's a thorough and well-rounded result.
• And from one coast to the other, I've also included the L.A. Times' 60 New Books to Read this summer. This list focused solely on books published between May and August of this year. So while you won't find any classics, you will find new treasures from first-time authors and return visits to your favorite writers. The list seems to be prescient. First published at the beginning of June, it includes books that have now been released and are garnering some well-deserved praise. Perhaps the L.A. Times can see into the future?
• And, since it's me and I do love Amazon.com, there's Omnivoracious' Best Books of the Year-So Far list. It's exactly what it sounds like: the best books of 2009, with the caveat that 2009 still has five months left in it. I'm particularly excited that Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden was included, since it was nowhere to be found on any of the other lists.
  
• Last, but certainly not least, there is NPR's 100 Best Beach Books, as selected by the NPR audience (including yours truly). I have to admit to some confusion over this list. While I love many of the books that made it onto the list, some of them just don't strike me as "beach" books. As much as I enjoy The Kite Runner (#3) or Anna Karenina (#42), they just aren't the kinds of books I'd take to the beach. But to each his or her own, I guess.

If you want to find more book lists and reading suggestions, head over to Rebecca's Pocket blog. She has an incredibly impressive compilation of book lists, which she has been adding to over the summer. It puts my humble list here to shame.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Reading about Reading

Well, not really, but that's the idea behind the literary concept of meta-fiction.

I was recently reorganizing my bookshelves and I found my copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. When I first read about the time-jumping hero Billy Pilgrim, I was in college and it was in the context of a discussion about meta-fiction. That sounds like a big, fancy college word, but when I started to think about it, meta-fiction really is everywhere these days.

Meta-fiction is a “type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually, irony and self-reflection.” (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

It can basically take many different forms, whether it’s fiction taking place within fiction (think of the play scene in Hamlet), a writer creating a story within a novel (e.g., Atonement or The French Lieutenant’s Woman), a novel within a novel (The Princess Bride) or even a story that occurs in the same time and place as another story, but told from a different perspective (Ender’s Shadow, Wicked, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead). Most obviously, meta-fiction also comes from stories that “talk” directly to the reader, breaking down the invisible “fourth wall” and force the reader into awareness of the fiction itself.

It’s a literary application that opens up all sorts of doors for character and plot development. Several popular films and television shows even use it to some degree. Think about the off-screen narrator in Arrested Development, the tongue-in-cheek approach to most episodes of The Simpsons, or the entire plot of the Will Ferrell-Emma Thompson movie Stranger than Fiction.

As a former (and ardent) English major, I can appreciate the academic side to meta-fiction. But sometimes academics get too caught up in the "scholarly-ness" of it all and forget to make it accessible to every reader. It's easier to think about meta-fiction in a real sense.

Sometimes when you read, you're escaping to another time, place or world. You're Harry Potter on the Quidditch pitch, searching for the Snitch or you're Arthur Dent, bemoaning the destruction of your home (both small and large). And the, sometimes, you're reading and you're suddenly confronted with the fact, via the book/text, that you are reading. That's meta-fiction.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Book News Round-Up

Greetings, bookworms. It's a short round-up this week and heavy on the Harry Potter news.

• Apparently, the Vatican and Harry Potter have kissed and made up. While the Catholic Church has been critical of the Harry Potter franchise in the past, it recently give a "thumbs up" to the latest movie. The review praised the film for its "clear line of demarcation between good and evil, making clear that good is right, and that in some cases this involves hard work and sacrifices."
• When it rains, it pours. After applauding the newest Harry Potter movie, the Vatican also took the step of praising Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. Wilde was baptized in the Catholic Church shortly before he died, but never really got the love he deserved, partly because of his reputation for being "indecent" during his lifetime. Now, the official Vatican newspaper has embraced Wilde for his literary contributions.
• Why read the books when you can have the castle? The French version of the Harry Potter DVDs includes a mini-scale replica of the Hogwarts castle and a place for all of the discs. It's a great collectors item, though I doubt it would fit on a shelf.
  

Unloved

The book club I belong to meets this weekend and I’m looking forward to a good discussion. This time, we read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. I had read the book once before, when it was first published, but I didn’t remember much about it, which is unfortunate, because I forgot that I didn’t like it.

I don’t usually dislike books on average. It has to be a really horrible book for me to dislike it. And I guess I can say that I didn’t hate Prep, but I found it difficult to finish because I disliked the main character, Lee, so much.

Books live or die based on the main character – or else why would people keep reading? The main character doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, it’s better if he or she is flawed. But there does need to be something redeeming about the character, something that draws the reader in and keeps them caring about the character’s life.

In some ways, it’s easier when the character is evil. Richard III, Voldemort, Bill Sikes from Oliver Twist – we all know these are the “bad guys” and we’re supposed to dislike them. But what about the character who isn’t evil or bad, but rather unlikable? These characters are essentially good (or at least okay) people, but their behavior marks them as annoying, frustrating or just plain unlovable.

One of the reasons Austen’s Emma is my least favorite Austen is because Emma Woodhouse is so hard to love. The same can be – and has been – said about Bella Swan, Holden Caulfield and Briony Tallis.

In Prep, Lee seems to drift through school apathetically. She pretends to be indifferent to her classmates, when she is really desperate to fit in. But instead of trying, she simply coasts. She doesn’t exert any effort and then wonders why her peers ignore her most of the time. She’s not bad, but she’s hard to like when she’s not willing to even try. She would be much more sympathetic if she did try, but was still rebuffed by her prep school classmates.

At some point, you stop caring about what happens to these characters. Unlikable characters don’t have to be perfect or even good. But they do have to stir some sense of sympathy. Otherwise, why keep reading?

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Harry Potter: Movie vs. Book

WARNING: Spoiler Alert!!!

I’m usually a big proponent of the “books are better than the movies” point of view. In my mind, there are very few movies that have better than their literary counterparts. And when you have a book like Harry Potter, it’s almost impossible to live up to the source material, simply because there’s so much of it.

Obviously, the Half-Blood Prince movie was different from the book. I expected that. And some of the changes didn’t really bother me, even if I did notice them. But other changes did make a difference – in some cases, a big one.

To start, some minor things:

• The romances between Harry/Ginny and Ron/Hermione are developed differently, but in a way that’s still fun.
• The random attack on the Burrow (added into the movie with J.K. Rowling’s approval) didn’t seem wildly out of place. In fact, it even makes sense – I always did kind of wonder why, in the book, the Death Eaters didn’t try to attack Harry during the few times he was outside of the school.
• Subplots involving Bill/Fleur, Lupin/Tonks and Percy were omitted or greatly reduced. Indeed, Bill and the other Weasley Charlie are left out of the movies all together (except for one brief mention at the beginning of Sorcerer’s Stone).
• It would have been nice to see more of the memories, if only to see Voldy’s crazy family. But those memories also served to explain – and identify – the Horcruxes Harry will have to destroy (i.e., the cup that never makes it into the movie). And speaking of the “H” word, Harry doesn’t put the Ravenclaw diadem on the statue in the Room of Requirement. This will make it mighty tricky to find the crown again when the time comes in Deathly Hallows.
  

Now, the three deviations that I think make for a weak ending:

First, for a movie called Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, there was an incredible lack of attention paid to the Half-Blood Prince (HBP) storyline. The effect of the HBP Potions book and all of the speculating that goes along with it gets cut from the movie. More importantly, it’s a part of the development of the relationship between Harry and Snape, which becomes critically vital to the story in Deathly Hallows (DH). The revelation that Snape was the HBP was a throw-away comment, as if it were added in to make sure the title made sense.

Second, the overall ending itself lacked the battle scene, reportedly taken out so HBP didn’t clash with the epic battle to come in DH. Taking that part out, however, the ending of the movie was very anti-climactic. Without the battle and the aforementioned HBP information, the confrontation between Harry and Snape lacked emotion. The movie made that exchange seem almost boring even. And, critically, movie Harry does not call Snape a coward. Snape’s reaction to that comment reveals a great deal about his purposely ambiguous character, which comes into play in DH.

Third, and in my mind, most importantly, movie Dumbledore doesn’t bind Harry when they return from the cave. He merely tells movie Harry to hide. While I’m (somewhat) willing to believe Harry would give his word and stay hidden, it’s completely out of character for him to not try to fight back. Hiding is not what Harry does. It’s actually an essential part of his character – that he doesn’t hide from fights or back down. He stands up for his friends and for what’s right.

These three major deviations didn’t ruin the movie for me. Overall, I enjoyed it quite a lot, especially considering it was much funnier than I expected. But unlike some of the other Harry Potter movies, this one could not be watched on its own. It’s very much a stepping stone from the previous movie to the final two. In the end, it does go back to the idea that the books are better than the movies.

However, there was one little bit that I did think was brilliant. At the very beginning of the movie, Death Eaters attack a London bridge and visit Diagon Alley. You see a very brief scene of people leading a man out of a shop with his head covered. A quick comment later in the movie explains this, but the significance of it remains downplayed – both in the movie and in the book. But the mere existence of it makes me appreciate just how much detail Rowling put in all of her books.

The moment? Wand maker Ollivander being taken to Voldemort. Those of you in the know will understand the importance of this. It’s the little things that really make the HP books incredibly rich.

[Photo Credit: Providence Public Library]

RIP Frank McCourt

Pulitzer-Prize winning author Frank McCourt died on Sunday.

From the NY Times News Service:

NEW YORK - Frank McCourt, a former New York City schoolteacher who turned his miserable childhood in Limerick, Ireland, into a phenomenally popular, Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, “Angela’s Ashes,’’ died in Manhattan yesterday. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan and Roxbury, Conn. The cause was metastatic melanoma, said Mr. McCourt’s brother, the writer and actor Malachy McCourt.

Mr. McCourt, who taught in the city’s school system for nearly 30 years, had always told his writing students that they were their own best material. In his mid-60s, he decided to take his own advice, sitting down to commit his childhood memories to paper and producing what he described as “a modest book, modestly written.’’

In it, Mr. McCourt described a childhood of terrible deprivation. After his alcoholic father abandoned the family, his mother - the Angela of the title - begged on the streets of Limerick to keep him and his three brothers meagerly fed, poorly clothed, and housed in a basement flat with no bathroom and a thriving population of vermin. The book’s clear-eyed look at childhood misery, its incongruously lilting, buoyant prose, and its heartfelt urgency struck a remarkable chord with readers and critics.

“When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all,’’ the book’s second paragraph begins in a famous passage. “It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.

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Book News Round-Up

Happy Friday, bookworms! The Round-Up is going live a day early, because I'll be in Virginia this weekend for my friend Katie's wedding.

• Boston.com has a map of the places in and around the city from famous (and not-so-famous) novels. You can find Allston (mentioned in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Wext Roxbury (from Nathaniel Hawthorne) and other favorites.
  
• Apparently, Hemingway was a KGB spy - and a bad one at that. The U.K.'s Guardian newspaper reports that Hemingway was recruited in the 1940's, but as he failed to provide any valuable or useful information, contact with his Soviet handlers eventually stopped. His story is detailed in a new book from Yale University Press, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America.
• Americans don't like books. At least not as much as food, shelter and other essentials. The Department of Labor released its survey of U.S. consumer expenditures. While shelter, transportation and food topped the list, books (or reading), came in at a measley 0.2% of total spending. A sad fact for librarians, surely.
  
• Last week, I mentioned the "best of the best" from the National Book Awards. Omnivoracious has helpfully compiled the full list of all 77 NBA winners and asks readers to select their three picks for the short list. I shamefully confess I haven't read many of these, so I'll just pick three of the ones I have: The Color Purple by Alice Walker, White Noise by Don DeLillo, and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier.
  
• Matt Stewart is boldly going where no author has gone before - he's releasing his novel, The French Revolution, entirely on Twitter - in 140 character tweets. According to his website, he decided to do so after being unable to sell the book to a publisher and because he started the project on Bastille Day and wanted to do something "revolutionary."
• In honor of the release of the new Harry Potter movie, the Daily Show proudly offers it's look back at the HP phenomenon. Warning: will induce laughter.
• There will be another book in the Twilight series - this time, a graphic novel. Yen Press will be publishing Twilight in graphic-novel form, with Stephenie Meyer as a consultant on the project. The stylized illustrations will be drawn by Korean artist Young Kim. The preview on Entertainment Weekly's website looks intriguing, though I'll have to wait for the final edition before I make my judgments.
  
• The movie adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men will be released in September. The film, directed by The Office star John Krasinski, is a collection of stories that take the form of interview transcripts which were serialized in Harper's, Esquire and the Paris Review.
• Lastly, quite simply because I couldn't resist, a fan-made video of Pride and Prejudice, Harry Potter style:



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Monsters and Zombies and Mash-Ups, Oh My!

I thought I could stay out of the fray regarding Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. But now, it seems inevitable that I’m dragged into it. Quirk Books, the publishers who brought us PPZ, just announced the next book in the series: Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Both books are mash-ups of the Jane Austen classics, but with crazy and bizarre twists. In PPZ, Lizzie Bennett is an accomplished zombie fighter who takes an initial strong dislike to one Fitzwilliam Darcy. The backstory remains the same; they’ve just added zombies! In SSS, the Dashwood sisters are stranded on a deserted island, looking for love – and fighting off sea monsters.

Grahame-Smith’s book is apparently doing well and, by all accounts, most Janeites seem to love them. My first instinct is to cringe – after all, Quirk editor and creator of the series did say, “I just thought it would be really funny to desecrate a classic work of literature.” But Ben Winters, author of SSS, makes the point that Austen’s novels are filled with strong, intelligent, self-assured women and lots of witty and clever conversations that, in a way, they are well suited to become over-the-top parodies.

I still hesitate to read these books because I do love the originals so much (and it’s not like my “to read” list is small or anything). But I suspect I’ll eventually succumb to temptation and give it a try.

Crazy as it sounds, I can actually picture Lizzie and Darcy fighting zombies side by side – once, of course, they got over their respective prejudices and pride.

[Photo Credit: Amazon.com]

Harry Potter Goodness

In honor of the movie version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which comes out in theaters today, I thought I'd present some of my favorite Potter-related fun stuff from around the Internet.

First up, Scholastic's Harry Potter Wizard Challenge. It's a trivia game with questions submitted by readers. Some of them are easy (what color are Harry's eyes?) while others deal with more of the minutiae (what kind of sandwich does Ron dislike?). You can select questions from any or all of the seven books.

Then, of course, there's the Potter Puppet Pals, which, really, doesn't need an introduction because it's so fantastic, it speaks for itself. My personal favorite? "Mysterious Ticking Noise," as seen below:



And last, thanks to my friend Meghan at Dancing a la Mode, there's Harry Potter: The Musical. Written and produced in earlier this year by a bunch of college kids and recent graduates, it was performed through a non-profit student-run theater company and ran for only three nights. Luckily, someone thought to tape it and put it up on YouTube. Brilliant.



Enjoy!

Book News Round-Up

Happy Sunday, bookworms! It's finally nice here in Boston - hope the weather's good for you too.

• The cover of Dan Brown's new book, The Lost Symbol, has been released. The latest Robert Langdon book will take place in Washington, D.C. judging by the picture. Apparently mysteries surrounding our Founding Fathers are all the rage these days.
  
• The National Book Foundation is celebrating 60 years of awarding books the National Book Award by finding the best NBA fiction book. It's essentially a battle of the titans, though voting will be open to the public. The top six books will form a short list and the winner will be announced in November.
  
• The U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, has compiled it's list of the 50 best summer reads ever - timeless novels that evoke a sense of the exotic, perfect for any summer day. (Be sure to check back later for a more complete post about the multiple summer reading lists floating around the Internet.)
• Don't cry for me, Argentina. Mark Sanford has lost his book deal. Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin, was set to publish his book about "fiscal conservatism" before his extra-marital affair was revealed. There's no word yet about any liberal publisher willing to publish the tale of Sanford and his mistress.
  
• Happy 105th birthday, Pablo Neruda! On this day in 1904, the Chilean poet was born. I'm a fan of Neruda's, but I didn't know it was his birthday until I visited Today in Literature - a fabulous website that ties together history and literature. You have to subscribe to get all the good stuff, but the price is reasonable for all of the troves of information you receive. I highly recommend it.
• Children's book author Kate Messner posted a defense of summer reading on her book blog. The post defends reading for fun - and not because schools require it. Her position is simple: schools require enough reading during the year. Summer should be the time when children (and adults) read whatever they want for fun. Because reading should be fun and sometimes we forget that. A great look at the importance of reading, just because.
  

Books on Air

Last week, I received an email from Penguin Group’s publicity office, letting me know about “Penguin Classics On Air,” a new web radio show that’s part of Penguin’s new “Publisher’s Office” online network.

Besides being completely excited about receiving my first “official” LND email, I was intrigued by the premise – and by the fact that the first broadcast was titled, “Why We Love Jane Austen.” (You know I love me some Jane Austen.)

Each episode or broadcast is set up similarly: an editor or scholarly expert talks about or interviews someone related to the topic, then a publisher reads the first pages of the book or work in question. There’s also a segment called “Reading the Classics from A to Z” in which a Penguin Group director attempts to read one Penguin Classic by an author per letter from the entire alphabet.

The Jane Austen episode has fun, spritely music in the background that you can just imagine being played in Regency England, perhaps at a ball that Elizabeth might have attended. The bulk of the episode involved an interview with Austen scholar Juliette Wells, a professor of literature who uses Austen in most of her courses. She talks about Austen in the classroom and how the novels transcend time, infusing pop culture today. She also discusses life in Austen's England and some of her favorite places in England to find Austen.

There are other episodes available, ranging from Russian and Jewish literature to Washington Irving and colonial New York. As the Publisher’s Office continues to grow and develop its content, more episodes will be added.

I first came across the Publisher's Office a few weeks ago and was suitably impressed upon my first visit. But I have to say (and I’m definitely not getting anything in return for saying this) – the direct email to LND and the incredible amount of information on the site have won me over. I’m a Publisher’s Office convert now. It’s definitely worth checking out. Between the interviews, the videos and the radio series, there’s something for everyone.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

Classics are Not Outdated

Part of my job involves children’s literature, specifically six novels that are part of a curriculum program: Number the Stars, Maniac Magee, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, So Far from the Bamboo Grove, Taking Sides and Bridge to Terabithia.

Five of the books are Newbury Medal winners and three are American Library Association Notable books. Though the most “recent” book was published in 1991, a full 18 years ago, these books are considered “classics” in the world of children’s literature and many are regularly included in middle school curricula and summer reading lists. Nearly all continue to top best-sellers lists for children’s literature, year after year.

When we surveyed the teachers we work with, a couple commented that the books were outdated. I admit I was surprised by the comments. Can classic novels be outdated?

This generation of children is a digital one. Children in middle school today were born in the mid to late 1990’s. Computers and the Internet have always been a reality. With 24/7 access to the web, video games galore and the latest gadgets, reading falls by the wayside. According to a study released by the NEA in November 2007, less than one-third of 13-year-olds are daily readers and as they get older, children and teens read less.

When they do read, they tend to gravitate towards contemporary thrillers (i.e., Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother) or fantasy adventures (i.e., Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book). So of course a book written in the 1970’s or 1980’s will seem outdated. Things that happened last year are now outdated in this fast-paced world of ours. The nature of the program means that we can’t always update the curriculum to reflect the latest trends in children’s literature, which is partly why “the classics” are used.

But my argument here is that the classics are “classic” for a reason. They continue to sell well for a reason. Despite whatever publication date they bear, these books have stood the test of time and teachers and educators return to them again and again because the messages they contain last longer than the decade’s fashion trends.

Jess and Leslie may have first existed in 1977, but the pain and hurt of losing a best friend doesn’t change with time. Nor have we stopped dreaming up stories about star-crossed lovers or bad first impressions. These books last because human experiences last. At our core, we’re not so different from people 20, 50 or 100 years in the past.

Then again, I might be biased. I reread Pride and Prejudice every year. After all, it’s a classic.

[Image from Amazon.com]

Book News Round-Up

Happy 4th of July, bookworms!

• There will be no "60 Years Later" for Holden Caulfield. A judge in Manhattan has blocked the publication of the proposed Catcher in the Rye sequel because it is too similar to J.D. Salinger's original work. The reclusive author brought a lawsuit against the author of the proposed sequel last month.
  
• Oprah's going indie! 7 independently-published books are on her "25 Books of Summer" list this year. Though only one independent book has made it past the O-meter in the last 13 years, this year's list boasts a number of indies, including Seth Grahame-Smith's revision of Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
  
• The sci-fi genre includes a wide range of books and sub-genres. There are a few definitive sci-fi books that have even launched the start of a new sub-genre. io9 has compiled a list of these books and their sci-fi spin-offs.
• Entertainment Weekly wants to know how you will prepare for the newest upcoming Harry Potter film. The PopWatch blog argues that re-reading the book before the movie's release means that the movie will lose it's ability to surprise viewers who don't remember the ending. I personally cannot forget the ending of the book, so I'll probably re-read Half-Blood Prince at some point this summer.
• The New England Children's Booksellers Advisory Council has released its Spring 2009 Top 10 books for young adults. According to the website, the list is a "bi-annual attempt to identify as many high-quality titles as possible" from the multitude of children's and young adult books published. Included on the Spring 2009 list are Gayle Forman's If I Stay and Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls.
  
• Alice Hoffman might want to rethink her Twitter policy. The author took to Twitter to criticize a reviewer of her latest book. Though Hoffman might have had a point initially, her tweets became excessively harsh and mean, directly attacking the reviewer by name. Hoffman's offense, rather than defense, turned some people off. Her Twitter account was soon deleted and she issued an apology through her publicist. It remains to be seen how this will affect future reviews - and book sales.
  
• At last, a solution to odor-less Kindles. Some book lovers, such as myself, resist e-book readers because real books provide a scent, a smell that distinctly says "book." Now, there's a compromise: Smell of Books, an "aerosol e-book enhancer" that lets you have "the best of both worlds: the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book." What on earth will we think of next?
  

Red, White and Blue

In honor of our nation's 233rd birthday this weekend, I set out to find "American" books for a Librarian Next Door list/post. What I found, however, is that it is exceedingly difficult to determine what qualifies as distinctly American literature when American literature is so vast and varied.

So, I did my best. My list of quintessentially American books, poems, and plays represents all 233 years of our country's history and tries to cover all major events and/or time periods while also acknowledging that "America" is whatever we decide we want it to be.

You may notice, due to my own slight OCD tendencies, that the list is roughly in chronological order, starting with the birth of the U.S.A. in the 1770's and leading up to present day.

(Note: I spent nearly a week compiling and revising this list. In no way do I mean to offend anyone by leaving an author or literary work off or by what I have decide to include. Feel free to argue - respectfully - with me in the comments.)

• Common Sense - Thomas Paine
• The Federalist Papers - Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison
• Walden - Henry David Thoreau
  
• Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
• Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
  
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
• The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
• To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
• Rabbit, Run - John Updike
  
• Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
• A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry
  
• Roots: The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley
• White Noise - Don DeLillo
• Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison
  
• Angels in America - Tony Kushner
• The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
  
• The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
• The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen