(poets excluded) 1. twain 2. fitzgerald 3. kerouac 4. wolfe 5. thoreau 6. joyce 7. o'neill (eugene) 8. chandler 9. conroy 10.thompson (hunter) hmmm... 7 irishmen, in the bunch... well, had to be fair to other ethnicities, too...

sure you haven't forgotten anyone? (heehee)

didn't have room for karl marx on the list... (have to go off line for a few minutes... please don't embarass me while I'm away?)

hmmmmmmm.........

back now...

1. Orson Scott Card 2. Pat Conroy 3. Diana Gabaldon 4. Harlan Ellison 5. Guy Gavriel Kay

This topic suggests a body of work, so i'll skip the one-hit wonders: let's say Austen, Wharton, Salinger, Proust, Welty and thank you, nick for reminding me of an all-time favorite, scott Fitzgerald.

Poe, Lovecraft, Gibson, Sterling, Asimov, Heinlein, Card, London, Rice, I'm sure others will come to me later...

yeah, "the poor sonofabitch" (fitzgerald, i mean)... Gatsby is my favorite book, bar none... and waver between he, twain, and yeats, as far as absolute favorites go... last couple of pages of Gatsby are enough to make any serious writer wanta just throw up his hands... what's the point of even trying, after reading that? seriously, don't think english prose gets any better, cleaner, purer than scott fitzgerald, at his best... read Gatsby the first time whaen i was 14, and count that moment, that last page, as maybe my most sublime reading experience... still get goosebumps, thinking of it... (and still believe, somewhat, in that orgiastic future...but most especially born back ceaselessly, into the past)

Amy Tan, Belva Plain.............

Yeah Nick, I know what you mean. I spent a long time "looking for the green light" in life....

I'll always believe in the green light... have seen it up close, too (and it is extraordinary)...

I've glimpsed it enough to know it exists, which gives the beacon of hope. However, I've stopped searching for it, for fear I'll be disappointed. Sometimes it appears when it's most unexpected and it's like an epiphany.

yeah, know what you mean... and even the green light est douce-amere, once you find it (ask scott)... maybe the pursuit of it really is the thing, like he said (though hardly bore out, over his life)...

"You're a rotten driver," I protested, "Either you ought to be more careful, or you oughtn't drive at all." "I am careful." "No, you're not." "Well, other people are," she said lightly. "What's that got to do with it?" "They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident." "Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself?" "I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why I like you." (from Gatsby, of course...)

I rather enjoy keeping the green light in view as the beacon it is. I fondly believe I will never reach it but hopefully will never lose sight. I suppose I'm afraid of discovering it is merely glass.

no, the light is real... (i'm sure of that) we're made of glass, though, i think...

shit nick. Now you've really rocked my foundation. *dumb stare*

oops

i feel way out of my league. I'v read twain, tolstoy, etc. But since having so many kids, i've gotten away from real meaningful literature. The most moving book i've ever read was Passions of the Mind by Irving stone. The one i liked best was 10000on the hoof by Zane grey. it was a portrait of a woman whose life ws utterly changed by the first world war. Shocked my self by saying anything at all. You'll think i'm stupid or at least shallow.

Not true, Kay, one of my most intelligent, creative teachers in high school was a huge Zane Grey fan. Even named her daughter Zane. Believe me, after a little while on here, you'll find some of us (okay, maybe just me) to be just as "stupid or at least shallow", if not more so... Have fun, and again, welcome!

i love irving stone! (esp. "adversary in the house" (the wonderful story of one of my heroes, eugene debs), "clarence darrow", and "lust for life"...) i'm not familiar with "passions of the mind", though... what is it about? (and no one that loves books, especially inhabiting this age of 30 minute (sitcom length) attention spans, could ever be construed as being "stupid" or "shallow")

don't feel out of place Kay! Believe me, there are times where I wonder about myself (and so does everybody else *wink*) you know, I've never read Stone. Thanks for posting, Kay, enjoy!

Welcome Kay! I feel compelled to second nick's post... anyone who takes the time to read and think about a book these days sure deserves points in the intelligence box. Can't tell you how many students opt to write their book reports on the movies these days. Unfortunately (for them and for multiple reasons) the movies rarely mirror the details of a plot nor give the sedentary spectator an opportunity to form his own opinions, thoughts or images. And, if it makes you feel better, sometimes I just want to read kids books. No, they don't challenge my cerebral abilities (usually) but they often present a clear, unblemished (idealistic) view of the world. Somedays I need that innocence.

it is extraordinary to be able to do that/feel that... you are very fortunate...

1. Alice Walker 2. Joseph Campbell 3. Tom Robbins

I really enjoy Tom Robbins as well Linda but, after reading one of his novels, I must wait a few months before reading another. His style is sarcastic, dry and terribly hysterical but two in a row like that is TOO much for me. What is your favorite book by him? I've only read one by Alice Walker -- yep. That one.

Alice Walker.....hmmmm....very familiar..... Stacey, is she the one who wrote -- that was made into a movie called -- ??

My fave Tom Robbins was 'Skinny Legs and All'. What a novel! The only one I had trouble reading was 'Even Cowgirls get the Blues". Maybe its time to try that one again.

Has anyone read Wuthering Heights?

Capitol-City A&E News Update Austin, Texas ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Capitol-City.Com BOOKSTORE Online! Were looking for the Best writers in Austin! If you are an Austin writer and want to promote your book send us a copy for review and we will review it on our ALL NEW Capitol-City.Com BOOKSTORE Online! If you are an avid reader of local talent, please give us your opinion and we will post your review of your favorite Texas writers & books in the "Reader's Great Book Picks". Just say your piece and email back to this address: larue@capitol-city.com Check Out the Austin Readers Forums on Capitol City. You can find them directly from the menu or from a link inside the bookstore. We are also interested in profiling local visual artist, so if you are one, or know one, let us know. New Articles Now Available! Brook Mays Guitar Wars, preview up now, photos to come. I'll have Chris Mosser's Mo Music Musts Article updated by tomorrow. BANDS, ARTISTS, WRITERS, MUSICIANS WE WANT TO TELL AUSTIN ABOUT YOU!! Send us info about you, your web sites, your cd's for review. We are here to talk about you so take advantage of our huge readership. send your press kits to: Capitol City A&E Magazine, 13492 Research Blvd., Ste. 120-143, Austin, Texas 78750-2254 Our Wonderful and Devoted Volunteer Staff: Rush Evans- ( Music Reviews, Austin Music History, Program Director at K-Eye Television ) Laura Rojo- Music Reviews, Photographer ( KLBJ Local Licks Live Photographer for 7 years ) Chris Mosser- ( Live Show Reviews, Disc Jockey at KLBJ-FM, member of the band ?Human? ) Marybeth Gradziel - ( seasoned veteran writer specializing in Arts & Folk Music ) Milos Fortunato - ( Award winning screenwriter and Fine Artist ) Doug La Rue (Me)- ( Award winning Artist and Photographer, Co-Publisher and Editor ) Paul Browder- (My business partner and Co-Owner of Capitol City Publishing, L.L.C.) George Shineldecker- ( Office Manager, mostly Pauls Browders office manager) JT Guerrero - ( Photographer ) http://www.capitol-city.com

I've read Wuthering Heights.....

How 'bout those windy moors? Sends a shiver down my spine....

I think I have to re-read Wuthering Heights. It's been a long time, so I've forgotten much of the story line, but I recently read a book by Alice Hoffman called "Here on Earth" which is an Homage to WH (I think) the way "A Thousand Acres" echos King Lear. It took me a long time to catch on, but when the girl in the story gets caught while spying on the rich neighbors and is drawn into their circle, to the consternation of the wild-card orphan boy who lives in her home and who becomes wildly jealous...And here's more that sounds familiar, but I have to read Wuthering Heights while the new book is still fresh in my memory so I can figure out why she made the choices she did. hmm.

Martha, be sure to let us know which you preferred...

Wuthering Heights is my all time favourite. And Jane Eyre. I can't choose - I love the Bront�s' works - all of it. And I quite like Graham Greene's work -Travels with my Aunt is my favourite work by him. And P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves Books. And Umberto Eco's good too. And James Hogg. And Oscar Wilde (I especially liked The Portrait of Dorian Grey.)

There is a new biographical film, "Wilde", that is out. Our paper gave it a lukewarm review. (Oops, maybe I should be mentioning this in the movie conference)

lukewarm as a rating does not usually entice me but I rarely heed reviews anyway.

I like some movies that are Lukas Haas warm --liked Witness, liked Ramblin Rose

i liked Chasing Amy.

For Nick from New Thinking THE GENIUS OF JOYCE I used to love James Joyce. I used to hate James Joyce. I loved him because he was an explosion. He was liked a can-opener. He pushed, he stretched and he explored. He took things to extremes, and he forced society to look at itself, to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. Of course, I also loved James Joyce because he was Irish, because he gave me pride and confidence. Even though he lived most of his life in exile, he wrote about nothing except Dublin. He was once asked if he missed Dublin. He replied that in many ways he had never left. I began to hate James Joyce because he could be so difficult, so hard to penetrate. Reading him was often so much like hard work. And I hated him because of what he helped create: Joyceans. Not all Joyce fans, of course, but a considerable number really irked me. I once observed a bunch of Joyceans walking down South Circular Road, Dublin, on Bloomsday. It struck me how utterly mechanical these people were; how they walked like robots and talked like robots. Two of them stopped and began to argue. One said that he was tired and wanted to take a short rest. The other sternly reminded his friend that they had planned this trip together three months ago and that they were supposed to be in Eccles Street by 12.15. I'm back to loving Joyce. Back to realising how influential he has been on my thinking. A key thing that struck me in a very fundamental way about his novel, Ulysses, was how much structure it borrowed. It was based around Dublin. It was based around a period of a day. It was based around Homer's Odyssey. There are many other structures it was based around that I cannot recall right now. (Each chapter was based around an organ in the body, as far as I remember.) Joyce was a genius. Ulysses was a masterpiece. Yet the structure for his book was adapted from other sources. (Geniuses steal, beggars borrow.) It was like he had a house with eight rooms, and he let other people build the foundations and put up the walls. Then Joyce went to work on the rooms, making them challenging and substantial, not having to worry, not having to work on the foundations and having the walls to frame his imagination. In the rooms - these limited spaces - he could expand the space and thinking of our time. Of course, James Joyce, like all geniuses, worked extremely hard and had an absolute attention to detail. He honed his ideas and style over many, many years. Today, there are so few foundations, so little that seems to have been honed and cared for over many years. The Digital Age and Internet is like a giant building site, where very little has been built and that which has been built has a very short life. The pressure to understand and survive today, means that we not alone find it difficult to get a perspective on tomorrow, but equally important, we have little time to learn from yesterday. James Joyce created greatness with time, not against it. Gerry McGovern mailto:gerry@nua.ie

(thanks wer... really enjoyed that... (where do you find this stuff?)... anyway, it was cool... and thoughts of jem joyce are definitely sustaining ones... enabling, you know, that foray to the "reality of existence"... enabling, too, that forging, finally (um it's every day for me cause my memory is really bad) of "concience for our race"... (right, couldn't just say thanks could i?) (oh damn and i quoted too... shit)

(course i probably got it wrong so maybe it doesn't count)

actually, this particular "stuff" found me, otherwise, just lucky and eclectic, I guess...

indeed... (a scholar and a gentleman... um, and pictish warrior/conqueror, too)... thanks again...

de nada...(you left out fat, hairy, sweaty, and old...)

(what's rush got to do with this?)

don't recall him being hairy... (not that I've looked all over, either, I must add)

�sigh of relief�

Nick Hornby, author of Fever Pitch (also a film, starring the infamous Colin Firth. and yes, he is quite a hunk isn't he?), About a Boy and High Fidelity. High Fidelity is probably *the* best book I've ever read. Ever.

I really enjoyed High Fidelity Mike... kinda of Coupland on downers! Have you read any Douglas Coupland? Similar style, just as frank but something about his words just lean me toward smiling as opposed to crying.

never read any Coupland, no. A bit too populist for me (I'm such a pathetic snob - I don't like reading the saem books as everybody else. I went to a weekend thing that featured the High Fidelity in October 1997, and I refused to buy it for over a year for that very reason - it was popular. sad sad sad...) HIgh Fidelity should be read by women so that they understand exactly what they do to men.

never heard of either of those two authors. do they keep you interested?

"High Fidelity" was quite entertaining, I thought, although something of a "guy's novel." Have you read "Bridget Jones's Diary", Mike? That is the female equivalent of HF, I think (and British, of course). The author is Helen Fielding.

I heard of that a couple of weeks ago actually, autumn, so thanks for recommending it again. I'll try and dig it up at the bookshop. What's it like/about?

One year in the life of a single woman. Angst about dating, jobs, friends, family, etc. Half of it went over my head because of the Briticisms, but it was enjoyable--I recommended it to one of my "singletons".

Oh yeah, I remember - I actually looked at it when I was searching for my last book, but I didn't feel that empathising with women was within y capabilities at the time. And it probably still isn't...I'll put it on my non-existent list :-)

:-)

I adore the comical differences between social classes in Jane Austen's Emma, but I also adore the harshness and dark passion due to the gap between the classes in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. I also adore the simple linguistic beauty in English Patient.

George Orwell Mark Twain Kurt Vonnegut All three have a common theme of the despair of a thinking man in a world propelled by the unthinking crowd. Apart from Twain, they are disillusioned Socialists (Twain being from a time before the Socialist movement...) without much faith in their fellow man, except a faith in his ability to do the wrong thing, with results in part hilarious and disasterous. For those who think that Orwell and hilarity are mutually exclusive, may I recommend Coming Up For Air... Steinbeck falls in there somewhere, too...

I tried to post this in "Favourite Books" but that topic is frozen... Cannery Row - of the three Steinbeck novels I've read, the only one with an obvious sense of humour and without a sad ending. Actually it doesn't have an ending at all; it just becomes time for us to go and the party seems to continue after we leave... Coming Up For Air - one of George Orwell's funniest novels, about a man trying to find the simpler life of his youth (the more complicated, modern, uptight time being 1939...) with hilarious yet mildly sad results. Bluebeard - the first Kurt Vonnegut novel I read. Better than Slaughterhouse Five IMO. Doesn't get any better than Rabo Karabekian... The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn - As powerful in its own way as Pudd'nhead Wilson and a spit in the eye of the prigs of American literature. From The Earth To The Moon and Round The Moon - How did Jules Verne get it so RIGHT?

Visitors to Monterey, CA flock to the "new and improved" Cannery Row--John Steinbeck is rolling in his grave. My current favorite author is Chitra Divakaruni. She writes the most sensual novels set in India and full of that country's imagery.

Top Three on my list would have to be: Diana Gabaldon JD Robb Janet Evanovich (although loved Elizabeth Lowells' Amber Beach... -she's probably fourth.) :-)

I've also read everything by Anita Shreve, Barbara Kingsolver and Elizabeth Berg, which is no small feat considering these ladies crank one out nearly every year!

Almost forgot- Absolutely love Suzanne Brockmann's Navy Seal series The latest one started with terrorist training between a Seal Team and the SAS- *sigh* all those Alpha Males! *fanning face*

I have never read anything by: Jane Austen Any of the Brontes Victor Hugo Moilere Voltaire Daniel DeFoe Dante Alighieri and several other important writers whose names I cannot recall (and have probably never heard of) so I can't really comment on them. I haven't read anything by Rex Stout, either. I tried to read "Robinson Crusoe" once and gave up. A friend of mine insisted that I read "The Mayor of Casterbridge" and I tried until I ground to a halt about half-way.

This is what you haven't read, then what have you read that you liked?

I shall reiterate: Mark Twain, George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger (The Catcher In The Rye and Franny And Zooey were both quite good) the "William" books by Richmal Crompton, "Asterix" comics by Goscinny and Uderzo (translated by Derek Bell and Anthea Hockridge). Am currently interested in Sue Grafton's Alphabet Mysteries featuring private investigator Kinsey Millhone. Liked the first two of Robert Parker's "Spenser" novels but got tired of them. Being a fan of the TV show "A Nero Wolfe Mystery", and hearing that they are quite faithful to the books, I would like to read some of Rex Stout's "Nero Wolfe" novels and short stories. I hope he did not get stale toward the end the way Arthur Conan Doyle did with Sherlock Holmes. Jules Verne is also very interesting not so much for his literary work but for his uncanny foresight. His ideas for submarine propulsion and respiration in spacecraft are utterly preposterous, but the fact that he not only predicted both (lots of dreamers had) but went into such scientifically based (which in some cases turned out to be prophetic) detail as to how they would work and how they would be used. Submarines that could stay underwater indefinitely, attack surface shipping, and come and go undetected? A man-carrying projectile being fired by Americans from Florida (instead of Texas) into lunar orbit? Wow!

I could never get into Hardy, either. That's the great thing about books, there's something for every taste. I made my husband read Pride and Prejudice and he wound up really liking it!

*laughing* Well Done Autumn! :-D -but really, how could anybody NOT like it???

My thoughts exactly, SB!

Now -to convince the rest of the world! :-) Autumn, you should check out the Janet Evanovich books Karen and i are discussing on the new book topics. You'd like them - i'm sure of it!

The Evanovich books are wonderful.

Come by and post at the Evanovich topics Blackbeard! :-)