Contemporary Literature: Most Popular Articles

Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is when the words and actions of the characters of a work of literature have a different meaning for the reader than they do for the characters. This is the result of the reader having a greater knowledge than the characters themselves.

Poetry
Poetry is an imaginative awareness of experience expressed through meaning, sound, and rhythmic language choices so as to evoke an emotional response. Poetry has been known to employ meter and rhyme, but this is by no means necessary. Poetry is an ancient form that has gone through numerous and drastic reinvention over time. The very nature of poetry as an authentic and individual mode of expression makes it nearly impossible to define.

What is Poetry?
Poetry is many things to many people. Homer, John Milton, Christopher Marlowe, and of course Shakespeare have each given us enough to fill textbooks. Poems from the Romantic period include Goethe’s "Faust", Coleridge’s "Kubla Khan" and Keats’ "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Shall I go on? Because in order to do so, I would have to continue through 19th century Japanese poetry, early Americans that include Emily Dickinson and T.S. Eliot, postmodernism, experimentalists, slam... so what is poetry?

A New Earth
Spiritual teacher and author Eckhart Tolle ("The Power of Now") advocates present moment awareness and the dismantling of the ego as the path towards awakened living. "A New Earth" gets its title from a Bible verse referring to the rising of "a new heaven and a new earth." According to Tolle, "heaven" is the awakened state that will bring about "a new earth" in the outer world, the world of form.

Epic Poem
A long and highly stylized narrative poem celebrating the heroic achievements of its hero. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are usually regarded as the first important epic poems and are considered to define the form.

A Thousand Splendid Suns
The history of Afghanistan is marked by death, loss and unimaginable grief. And, yet, people find a way to survive, to go on. Ultimately, this is more than a story of survival in the face of what seem to be insurmountable odds. It is a story of the unconquerable spirit of a people seen through the eyes of two indomitable women. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner, is a must read for those who wish to understand the modern history (1964 - 2003) of Afghanistan.

The Secret Life of Bees
In "The Secret Life of Bees," Sue Monk Kidd wraps a coming-of-age tale around a search for one's mother, plunks it down into the racially-charged South Carolina of the 1960s and sets it all alight with a dose of feminine spirituality. . It is an inspirational feminist tale with strong female characters.

Funny Books
Here are ten books to tickle your funny bone - whether they fall into the humor fiction camp or are just hilarious works of nonfiction, they will laugh the soda right through your nose.

Bringing Down the House
Backed by anonymous investors and armed only with their audacity and their intellect, a team of MIT math students cleaned Vegas out of more than $3 million in a couple of years. They used published card-counting techniques and worked in teams like secret agents. They ate statistics for breakfast, and they raked in millions of dollars before getting caught. They were a dream team. So why did they get caught?

The Game
In cities around the world, men meet in underground "lairs" to discuss tactics and strategies for picking up women. Afterwards, they venture into the "field"-bars and clubs-and practice, questing after the holy grail: the perfect girl. Under a pseudonym, New York Times bestselling author Neil Strauss ventured into this bizarre subculture, traveling around the world and meeting the world's greatest seducers, men who claim to have found the combination to unlock a woman's legs-and her heart.

Books for Moms
A selection of Mothers Day books: books for Mom, books about Mom, books for new Moms... if you're looking for a gift book for Mother's Day, or if you're a Mother looking for a book for yourself -- this is the list.

The Five People You Meet
The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Excerpt

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter 1) - Trivia Quiz
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Harry Potter 1) - Trivia Quiz. How is your memory of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone? How well do you recall Harry Potter's first year at Hogwarts and his first encounter with Voldemort since he was an infant?

Rising Action
Rising action is tha series of events that lead to the climax of the story, usually the conflicts or struggles of the protagonist.

Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is the presentation in a work of literature of hints and clues that tip the reader off as to what is to come later in the work.

Falling Action
The falling action in a work of literature is the sequence of events that follow the climax and end in the resolution. This is in contrast to the rising action which leads up to the plot's climax.

Books about Love
Books about Love including The 50 Greatest Love Letters of All Time, A Natural History of Love, Geek Love, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The Map of Love.

He's Just Not That Into You
He's Just Not That Into You is not a guide to dating. Aimed at women of a certain class and lifestyle and filling a slim 165 pages, the book serves merely as a calling card for its authors, five-years-out-of-the-dating-pool Sex and the City consultant Greg Behrendt and 41-years-old-and-single SatC] executive story editor Liz Tuccillo. Presumably their participation in the creation of that over-praised HBO television series is what qualifies Greg and Liz to offer relationship guidelines.

Night
Night is Elie Wiesel’s candid, horrific, and poignant account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie’s wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author’s original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man’s capacity for inhumanity to man.

Inkheart
One night Meggie's father, Mo, reads aloud from a book called INKHEART, and an evil ruler named Capricorn escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books. From Cornelia Funke, the author of the international best-selling novel THE THIEF LORD, comes another thrilling and magical adventure about books themselves and the imagination they inspire.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter 4) - Trivia Quiz
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter 4) - Trivia Quiz. Do you remember Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? The Triwizard Tournament? Professors Moody and Bartemius Crouch? Viktor Krum and Fleur Delacour?

The Curious Incident
Narrated by a fifteen-year-old autistic savant obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, Mark Haddon's dazzling novel weaves together an old-fashioned mystery, a contemporary coming-of-age story, and a fascinating excursion into a mind incapable of processing emotions. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the freshest debut novels in years: a comedy, a tearjerker, a mystery story, a novel of exceptional literary merit that is great fun to read.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - Trivia Quiz
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) - Trivia Quiz. Test your memory of Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Young Adult Books
Young adult literature is usually characterized by having a young protagonist, a limited number of characters, few subplots, a compressed timespan, and a positive resolution. The YA audience is typically thought to be between the ages of 12 to 19 years, but much YA literature written today, including the Harry Potter books, and Philip Pullman's and Cornelia Funke's work has had crossover appeal to an adult audience.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter 5) - Trivia Quiz
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter 5) - Trivia Quiz. Do you remember Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix or has Vol... I mean, You Know Who been getting inside your mind? Best practice your Occlumency.

Soliloquy
A soliloquy is a reflective monologue given by a character when he or she is alone on the stage.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter 2) - Trivia Quiz
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter 2) - Trivia Quiz. How is your memory of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? How well do you recall Harry Potter's second year at Hogwarts?

How to Write a Book Review
The book review falls somewhere between a critical analysis of literature, which tends toward the dry and academic, and the book report, which we associate with the simple book summaries we may have turned in in our younger years. The book review has elements of both of these but is neither. Here are some simple guidelines to crafting a book review.

Haunted
Haunted is a novel made up of stories: twenty-three of them, to be precise. Twenty-three of the most horrifying, hilarious, mind-blowing, stomach-churning tales you'll ever encounter—sometimes all at once. Appallingly entertaining, Haunted is Chuck Palahniuk at his finest—which means his most extreme and his most provocative.

Conflict
Conflict is the struggle between the opposing forces on which the action in a work of literature depends. There are five basic forms of conflict: person versus person, person versus self, person versus nature, person versus society, and person versus God.

Irony
Verbal irony is the use of language to express the opposite of its literal meaning. It is often the writer's expression of awareness of a contrast between what is and what ought to be and used for the purpose of mockery or jest. Situational Irony is the contrast between the intention or purpose of an action and its result.

Eragon
When Eragon finds a polished blue stone in the forest, he thinks it is the lucky discovery of a poor farm boy; perhaps it will buy his family meat for the winter. But when the stone brings a dragon hatchling, Eragon's simple life is shattered, and he is thrust into a perilous new world of destiny, magic, and power. So begins Book 1 of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Trilogy.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter 3) - Trivia Quiz
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter 3) - Trivia Quiz. How is your memory of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Prepare to test your wits against the Dementors, the boggart, and Sirius Black.

Eldest
Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesmera, land of the elves, for further training in the skills of the Dragon Rider: magic and swordsmanship. Soon he is on the journey of a lifetime, his eyes open to awe-inspring new places and people, his days filled with fresh adventure. But chaos and betrayal plague him at every turn, and nothing is what it seems.

Past Booker Prize Winners
The Man Booker Prize is awarded to the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. It is not only one of literature's highest honors but quite lucrative as the winner takes home £50,000. This is a list of the previous 10 years' Booker Prize Winners.

Blink
In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant - in the blink of an eye - that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work?

A Complicated Kindness
Miriam Toews' darkly funny novel, A Complicated Kindness, is the world according to Nomi Nickel, a bewildered and wry sixteen-year-old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion. In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of her eccentric family as it falls apart, each member on a collision course with the only community they have ever known. It is a work of fierce humor and tragedy by a Canadian writer poised to take the American market by storm.

Allusion
An allusion is a reference to a famous person, place, thing or part of another work of literature. It is assumed that the reader understands the allusion.

Adeline Yen Mah
Adeline Yen Mah was born in Tianjin, China. Her mother died two weeks after her birth and Adeline was considered to be a source of bad luck by her family. Her father remarried a beautiful Eurasian woman one year later. She was half French and half Chinese and divided the Yen family into two different classes. Adeline's father, stepmother and their two children were the upper class, whereas Adeline and the four other step-children by the first wife were considered second class.

Denouement
Denouement (French: the action of untying) is the series of events that follow the plot's climax. It is the conclusion or resolution of the story.

Best Novels
While "best" is a subjective description, we feel certain that these ten are indeed the best literary novels published since the year 2000.

Maps and Legends
'Maps and Legends' is Michael Chabon's first book of nonfiction, 16 essays in which the author celebrates genre fiction by wandering academically through the detective stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, the fantasy of Philip Pullman, classic works of Norse Myth, and more. 'Maps and Legends' is a slim volume whose high points emerge when Chabon gets personal, describing how he came to write.

Farce
Farce is literature that combines exxageration with an improbable plot and stereotyped characters to achieve humor.

Mood
Mood is the feeling that a work of literature evokes.

Excerpt: The Virgin Suicides
Excerpt from "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides

Diary
For the first time since his first novel, Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk is writing in a woman's voice, albeit the obsessed and borderline deranged voice of Diary's "heroine." However, the urgency and broken speech are so reminiscent of his earlier work that it could very well be the fantasy of Fight Club's truly psychotic narrator.

Unaccustomed Earth
Jhumpa Lahiri's second collection of short stories, "Unaccustomed Earth," finds her at the rising peak of her literary powers. These stories are longer (nearly novella length in some cases) than those in "Interpreter of Maladies," her Pulitzer Prize collection of short stories. These new stories reveal a clear progression of her literary power from that first collection to her first novel, "The Namesake," to now.

Banned Books
Book Sense is a national marketing campaign on behalf of the independent bookstores of America. Independent booksellers with Book Sense have created this list of ten banned books in support of Banned Books Week, September 25 to October 2, 2004

Sue Monk Kidd
[br]Sue Monk Kidd, author of the highly acclaimed memoirs The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and When the Heart Waits, has won a Poets & Writers award, a Katherine Anne Porter Award, and a Bread Loaf scholarship. The Secret Life of Bees was nominated for the prestigious Orange Prize for fiction in England. Her latest novel is The Mermaid Chair.

Contemporary Classics Top 10
Ten books that have withstood the test of time, yet are recent enough to be called Contemporary Literature, these Contemporary Classics are a bare-bones reading list, essentials or must-reads. Any such list is purely subjective, of course, and one must soon choose for him or herself what makes the top ten, but this list would start you on your way to a solid background in Contemporary Literature.

The Golden Compass
In Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, readers meet for the first time 11-year-old Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Jordan College in Oxford, England. It quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own - nor is her world. In Lyra's world, everyone has a personal dæmon, a lifelong animal familiar. This is a world in which science, theology and magic are closely intertwined.

Elizabeth Kostova Interview
Elizabeth Kostova is the author of The Historian, a chilling historical mystery that reaches from the present day into the medieval past of Vlad the Impaler, Wallachia’s hideously barbarous 15th century ruler whose gruesome deeds gave rise to the legend of Dracula. Kostova’s intricately researched novel traces the paths of a modern-day father and daughter plunging obsessively from ancient village to dank crypt in a quest to destroy the vampire.

Foil
A foil is a character who serves as a contrast to another perhaps more primary character, so as to point out specific traits of the primary character.

At First Sight
Nicholas Sparks brings back two characters from his bestseller, True Believer. New Yorker, Jeremy Marsh is living in the tiny town of Boone Creek, North Carolina, married to Lexie Darnell, the love of his life, and anticipating the birth of their daughter. But, just as his life seems to be settling into a blissful pattern, an unsettling and mysterious message reopens old wounds and sets off a chain of events that will forever change the course of this young couple's marriage.

Middlesex
To call Middlesex a coming-of-age novel about a hermaphrodite would be like calling The Odyssey a story about some guy on a boat. Middlesex is nothing short of epic; one family's survival on a twisted path through Greece to 20th Century America; battles ranging from the fires of the Turkish wars, the igniting of Michigan race riots, and the burning desires hidden within a girl named Callie and the man named Cal who she is to become.

Dry : A Memoir
In "Dry," a follow-up to his shocking and hilarious childhood memoir, "Running with Scissors," Augusten Burroughs recounts his introduction into recovery from alcoholism.

Audrey Niffenegger Interview
Audrey Niffenegger is a writer, artist, and professor in the Interdisciplinary Book Arts MFA Program at the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. She is the author of "The Time Traveler's Wife," the inventive and unconventionally rendered tale of Clare, a luminously beautiful artist, and Henry, a time-traveler. In our interview, Ms. Niffenegger discussed her art and writing, among other things.

Contemporary Literature - TopPicks
An index of TopPicks for the Contemporary Literature guide site.

A Million Little Pieces
When James Frey checks himself into the world's oldest drug and alcohol treatment facility (undoubtedly Hazelden, though Frey never says), he is disfigured beyond recognition, has spent the preceding weeks in an alcohol and drug induced blackout, and is wanted in 3 states on a variety of charges. "A Million Little Pieces" is the starkly honest account of his return from the black hole of addiction.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Oskar Schell, the precocious nine year old narrator from Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, is an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Analogy
Analogy is a comparison of an unfamiliar object or idea to a familiar one in an attempt to explain or illuminate the unfamiliar.

Contemporary Authors
While it is impossible to rank the most important authors in contemporary literature, here is a list of ten important (English language) authors with some biographical notes and links to more information about them and their work.

Climax
Climax is the point of greatest tension in a work of literature and the turning point in the action. In a plot line, the climax occurs after the rising action and before the falling action.

Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler's alter-ego Lemony Snicket is the author and narrator of A Series of Unfortunate Events, a children's book series. Daniel Handler's adult novels are The Basic Eight, based loosely around Handler's experiences at San Francisco's Lowell High School; Watch Your Mouth, a rather experiemental novel that Handler has described as an "opera in book form;" and Adverbs (2006), a narrative web of a novel in which intersecting stories explore the theme of love.

Poetic Justice
Poetic justice is a literary outcome in which bad characters are punished and good characters are rewarded. In its purest form, poetic justice is when one character plots to undermine another and then ends up caught in his own trap.

Symbol
Symbols are people, places, or things used to represent somehing else in literature.

True Notebooks
When Mark Salzman is invited to visit a writing class at Central Juvenile Hall, a lockup for Los Angeles’s most violent teenage offenders, he scrambles for a polite reason to decline. He goes—expecting the worst—and is so astonished by what he finds that he becomes a teacher there himself. True Notebooks is an account of Salzman’s first years teaching at Central. Through it, we come to know his students as he did: in their own words.

Hyperbole
Hyperbole is intentional exaggeration used as a figure of speech for comedy or emphasis.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs
Chuck Klosterman, author of "Fargo Rock City," struggles to maintain a consistent level of quality throughout "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs," his recent collection of essays that range topically from the music industry to "The Awe-Inspiring Beauty of Tom Cruise's Shattered, Troll-like Face."

My Friend Leonard
"My Friend Leonard" by James Frey revolves around the struggles faced by Frey upon his release from rehab and subsequent imprisonment. As Frey tells us repeatedly in "A Million Little Pieces," he is "an alcoholic, a drug addict, and a criminal." His challenge now is to reforge his relationship to the world ad to those who dwell therein.

Oscar Wao
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is rooted in the despotic dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, "the Dictatingest Dictator who ever Dictated, the man who was Mobutu before Mobutu was Mobutu," against whom Oscar de Leon's family ran afoul in the 1940s. Reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's depiction of the Buendia family in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Oscar Wao traces Oscar's family history from Trujillo's 1940s Dominican Republic to the 1980s Patterson, New Jersey of Oscar's nerd youth.

Prey
In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles — micro-robots — has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive. As fresh as today's headlines, Michael Crichton's most compelling novel yet tells the story of a mechanical plague and the desperate efforts of a handful of scientists to stop it.

Hegemony or Survival
From Noam Chomsky, the world's foremost intellectual activist, "Hegemony or Survival" is an irrefutable analysis of America's pursuit of total domination and the catastrophic consequences that are sure to follow.

The Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger's debut novel, "The Time Traveler's Wife," is one part science fiction and one part love story. It is the compelling tale of Henry DeTamble, a man afflicted with a genetic disorder which causes him to slip sporadically through time, without warning and naked. It is also the story of Clare Abshire, the woman who loves him. Read the prologue.

Cornelia Funke
Cornelia Funke has written over 40 books, including the highly acclaimed Dragonrider and Wild Chicks series, and her books have been translated and sold in many countries. The Thief Lord has won many awards both in the US and throughout the world. Cornelia Funke's most recent novel is Inkheart, "a timeless tale about books, imagination and life. "

The Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind seems born of a different time. An ode to its own genre, a love song to itself, the story of a boy who is shown the power of a book, one so powerful that it threatens to destroy everything and everyone he loves.

My Revolutions
Hari Kunzru's "My Revolutions" is a thrilling novel with a plot that readers will find more than relevant in today's political climate. Idealism, anger, and social ambition fuel the fictional Michael Frame's involvement with a group of radical activists who protest the Vietnam War in 1960s London. The main character's turn to terrorism runs a recognizable course and offers striking insight into the modern tensions between individual and family, nation and state.

Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Junior (born November 11, 1922) is an American novelist, satirist, and most recently, graphic artist. His novels include Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, Cat's Cradle, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater Slaughterhouse-Five, Breakfast of Champions, Slapstick, Jailbird, Deadeye Dick, Galapagos, Bluebeard, Hocus Pocus, and Timequake

Harry Potter 1
In "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the first of J.K. Rowling's seven volume epic, Harry, a very likable child, has had to suffer living in a spider-infested room beneeth a staircase in the house of his odious aunt and uncle. When a letter arrives, indicating that he's been accepted to Hogwarts school for wizards and witches, his internment in the muggle (non-magical) world ends and his adventures in wizardry begins.

Brick Lane
Monica Ali's novel, Brick Lane, was resoundingly praised. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Ali was named as one of the best young British writers. I suspect that everyone's enthusiasm for the novel is, in part, that Ali is like a magician revealing all her secrets. IN a time when every Western country is facing off with its Muslim populations, this book provides its readers a look at a community that, frankly, frightens them; it is, in short, an education.

The Opposite of Fate
Amy Tan has touched millions of readers with haunting and sympathetic novels ofcultural complexity and profound empathy. With the same spirit and humor that characterize her acclaimed novels, she now shares her insight into her own life and how she escaped the curses of her past to make a future of her own. She takes us on a journey from her childhood of tragedy and comedy to the present day and her arrival as one of the world's best-loved novelists.

Resolution
Resolution is the part of the story's plot line in which the problem of the story is resolved or worked out. This occurs after the falling action and is typically where the story ends.

Bildungsroman
A bildungsroman is a coming of age novel, tracing the development of a character from childhood to maturity. Literally translated from German, bildungsroman means "novel of education" or "novel of formation."

Contemporary Lit Must Reads 1
Twenty contemporary literature must-reads, essentials! If you've read all of these, you are well on your way to an honorary contemporary literature degree. This contemporary literature reading list is comprised largely of titles published since 1970. Please visit my Contemporary Classics Reading List for older and more classic contemporary titles.

First Man
In a narrative filled with revelations, James Hansen re-creates Neil Armstrong's career in flying, from his seventy-eight combat missions as a naval aviator flying over North Korea to his transatmospheric flights in the rocket-powered X-15 to his piloting Gemini VIII to the first-ever docking in space. These milestones made it seem, as Armstrong's mother put it, "as if from the very moment he was born -- farther back still -- that our son was somehow destined for the Apollo 11 mission."

Caricature
In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.

I Heard That Song Before
In the psychological thriller,"I Heard That Song Before," Mary Higgins Clark takes the reader deep into the mysteries of the human mind, where memories may be the most dangerous things of all.

Stream of Conciousness
Stream of consciousness is a narrative technique in which the the writer renders a flow of associated thoughts and feelings giving the impression of one's consciousness as it streams through ideas visual, auditory, and physical.

The Choice
Travis Parker has everything a man could want: a good job, loyal friends, even a waterfront home in small-town North Carolina. In full pursuit of the good life - boating, swimming , and regular barbecues with his good-natured buddies -- he holds the vague conviction that a serious relationship with a woman would only cramp his style. That is, until Gabby Holland moves in next door.

Inside George Orwell
Author of numerous books and essays, but most remembered for his critically-acclaimed dystopian novel, "1984," George Orwell's thought and writing has been wide-reaching in its impact on society. But what of his own life? Gordon Bowker's biography, "Inside George Orwell," explores the life of the man who gave us "1984" and "Animal Farm"

The Kite Runner
The Kite Runner is Afghanistani-American novelist, Khaled Hosseini's best-selling debut novel, a tale of betrayal and redemption that rises above time and place while simultaneously remaining firmly anchored against the tumultuous backdrop of modern Afghanistan.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs
In Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller delivers her memory of an African childhood fraught with hardship, loss, and danger. She became accustomed to armed guerrillas and landmine-littered roads; hunger, drought, and malaria were never far off; and her family was both guilty of and victim to the racism that consumed colonial Africa in the late 20th century.

Under the Banner of Heaven
Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air was a narrative tour de force chronicling the disastrous 1996 Everest expeditions, and should be considered a classic of modern journalism. Measured against this awesome standard, Under the Banner of Heaven, a tour of mainstream Mormonism and its fundamentalist offspring, is a failure. It is a lucid and sometimes compulsively readable failure, but it lacks the narrative drive and cohesive perspective of Into Thin Air.

Theme
Theme is the dominant idea that a writer is trying to convey to his readers in a work of literature.

Antagonist
The antagonist is the main opponent of the main character in a work of literature. The main character is called the protagonist.

To Live
"To Live" is an epic and heartbreaking journey spanning four decades of recent Chinese history. It begins in the 1930s around the time of China’s second war with Japan and continues into the late 1970s reform era. In between, Hua weaves great sorrow and struggle for Fugui and his family through the tempestuous Chinese Civil War, The Great Leap Forward, and The Cultural Revolution.

Carl Hiaasen
Carl Hiaasen turned his hand to fiction in the early eighties. His first novel, Tourist Season,was published in 1986 and named "one of the ten best destination reads of all time" by GQ Magazine. He is the author of five other best-selling novels, Double Whammy, Skin Tight, Native Tongue, Strip Tease, Stormy Weather, Hoot and Basket Case.

Character Sketch
A brief narrative that reveals a fictional character's traits or personality.

Ten Little Indians
“Nine is a much funnier number than eleven,” explained Sherman Alexie in a recent book signing for Ten Little Indians, a collection of nine contemporary Native American tales. This much-anticipated work dances the line between banality and classic Alexie brilliance at its best, leaving the reader exuberate at its finish, but almost wishing they hadn’t read those first few.

National Book Award Winners
The National Book Awards are given to recognize achievement in four genres: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature. The winners are selected by five person independent judging panel for each genre and receive a $10,000 cash award and a crystal sculpture. The National Book award is one of North America's most coveted literary prizes. Here are the past ten years' winners from the Fiction category.

Elements of Style Illustrated
The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White has for decades been an essential tool for English language writers and a central feature of the writing curriculum for students. The 1959 handbook gets a 2005 facelift with the addition of Maira Kalman's fanciful illustrations in a clothbound edition published by The Penguin Press. Maira Kalman is the illustrator of numerous children's books and covers for The New Yorker magazine.

Philip Pullman
Philip Pullman is the acclaimed author of the His Dark Materials trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass. His other books for children and young adults include Count Karlstein and a trilogy of Victorian thrillers featuring Sally Lockhart. The Golden Compass, the first of Pullman's His Dark Materials triology, won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Allegory
Allegory is a story in which things and people represent something entirely other -- perhaps an idea or a philosophy. Allegories typically contain within a moral or lesson.

The Stone Gods
In Jeanette Winterson's "The Stone Gods," the inhabitants of Orbus are running out of planet. The unchecked consumption of fossil fuels has finally run its course. Global Warming is no longer a disputed phenomenon or a point for political positioning. Sea levels have risen, ice caps have melted, and the planet has been laid to waste. The world has devolved to three massive urban axes: The Central Power (a thinly disguised United States), Eastern Caliphate, and the SinoMosco Pact.

A Long Way Down
Meet Martin, JJ, Jess, and Maureen. Four people who come together on New Year's Eve: a former TV talk show host, a musician, a teenage girl, and a mother. Three are British, one is American. They encounter one another on the roof of Topper's House, a London destination famous as the last stop for those ready to end their lives. In A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby mines the hearts and psyches of four lost souls who connect just when they've reached the end of the line.

Diction
Diction is the author's choice of words, taking into account correctness, clearness, and effectiveness. There are typically recognized to be four levels of diction: formal, informal, colloquial, and slang.

Discovering Joan Didion
Upon reading only a couple of the essays collected in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," I knew two things immediately: her voice is one of an unbiased observer who doesn't judge, but merely collects people, places, events, information and structures them so that they are compellingly readable. Secondly, Joan Did ion's prose is some of the most artfully arranged I have ever read.

Old Glory, American War Poems
This unique, comprehensive anthology gathers together more than two hundred poems about the American experience of war—narratives, meditations, elegies, lamentations, odes, tributes, and battle hymns—many of them classics. Written by soldier-poets as well as poets on the home front, they are deeply personal, reflecting love of country, sacrifice, tragedy, glory, and sometimes disillusionment or dissent.

Harry Potter 7
It is a darker landscape since Voldemort's return to power and Dumbledore's subsequent demise at the wand of Severus Snape; many of Voldemort's followers have been released from Azkaban as have the Dementors, who now serve the Dark Lord's purposes as well. The Ministry of Magic, now controlled by Death Eaters, has instituted a campaign against muggle-borns that smacks of Nazi Germany, and Harry Potter is dubbed "Undesirable Number One," with a 2,000 galleon prize offered for his capture.

The Last Roundup
With his sharp-edged wit, Roddy Doyle introduces Henry Smart--adventurer, IRA assassin, and lover. At once an epic and a prophetic portrait of Irish history, both past and present, A Star Called Henry is a tour de force. In Oh, Play That Thing, Henry makes his way across America, teeming with surprises. It is both a saga unto itself—full of epic adventures, and a magnificent follow-up to A Star Called Henry.

Paul Auster
Paul Auster is an American novelist, essayist, translator, and poet. After graduating from Columbia University, Auster moved to France where he began translating the works of French writers and publishing his own work in American journals. He gained renown for a series of experimental detective stories published collectively as The New York Trilogy (1987). Other books include Moon Palace and Leviathan, and The Invention of Solitude, a memoir about the death of his father.

Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer was born in Brookline Massachusetts in 1954. He worked simultaneously as a carpenter and a freelance journalist until 1983, when he quit carpentry. His first book was EIGER DREAMS, a collection of articles written for Outside and Smithsonian. The second book was INTO THE WILD, the non-fictional chronicles of Chris McCandless, who ventured into the Alaskan wilderness to seek liberation and never returned. UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN explores the dark side of extreme religious belief.

Harry Potter 4
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the pivotal fourth novel in the tale of Harry Potter's training as a wizard. Harry wants to get away from the Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup with Hermione, Ron, and the Weasleys. He wants to dream about Cho Chang, his crush. He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's to take place at the Hogwarts. He wants to be a normal, fourteen year old wizard. Unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards.

Harry Potter 6
The war against Voldemort is not going well. Dumbledore is absent from Hogwarts for long stretches of time, and the Order of the Phoenix has already suffered losses. And yet... As in all wars, life goes on. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate -- and lose a few eyebrows in the process. The Weasley twins expand their business. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Classes are never straightforward, though Harry receives some extraordinary help from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince.

Why I Wake Early
Mary Oliver has been writing poetry for nearly five decades, and in that time she has become America's foremost poetic voice on our experience of the physical world. This collection presents forty-two new poems, all written within the last two years. This volume includes poems on crickets, toads, trout lillies, bears; on greeting the morning, watching deer, and, finally, on lingering in happiness.

Naturalism
Naturalism is a theory in literature which emphasizes the role of environment upon human characters. It is an extreme form of realism which arose in the early 20th century. Rather than focusing on the internal qualities of their characters, authors called out the effects of heredity and environment, outside forces, on humanity. In American Literature, Jack London is an example of a naturalist writer depicting man's struggle for survival in his environment.

Isabel Allende
Chilean Author, Isabel Allende was born on this day in Peru in 1942. In the 1960s and 1970s, Allende worked as a Journalist for a number of publications in both Chile and Venezuela. er first novel, "The HOuse of the Spirits," was published in 1982. Since that time, she's written many novels and collections of short stories for which she's won numerous awards around the world.

Garth Nix
Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Ragwitch, Sabriel, Shade's Children, Lirael, Abhorsen, The Seventh Tower Series, the Very Clever Baby series, Bill the Inventor, Black Bread the Pirate, and Serena and The Sea Serpent.

The Book Thief
Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak's new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist-books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau.

Harper Lee
Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama, where she attended local schools and the University of Alabama. She has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, three honarary degrees, and many other literary awards for her one novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Opening Day
April 15, 1947. It was an ordinary day for an ordinary baseball player. It was an extraordinary day for an extraordinary man. Jack Roosevelt Robinson went 0-4 that day, scoring the winning run, but he changed the face of baseball. Some said he changed the face of America...

Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk, born June 7, 1952 in Istanbul, has long been one of Turkey's best-selling novelists and in recent years has developed a growing following around the world. His books, now translated into 24 languages, explore the meeting of the Islamic and European worlds represented culturally and geographically by Turkey itself.

Luckiest Man
Jonathan Eig's "Luckiest Man" may be one of the best baseball books written. It is right up there with Roger Kahn's "The Boys of Summer," Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Wait Till Next Year," and Red Smith's "On Baseball." Heavily researched in a seemingly successful effort to separate mythology from fact, this is no hagiography. Henry Louis Gehrig is presented, warts and all. Modern baseball players need to read this book (or, have it read to them) and learn something about integrity and sportsmanship.

The Year of Magical Thinking
Joan Didion's journalistic skills are displayed as never before in this story of a year in her life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her husband unexpectedly dead due to a heart attack. This powerful and moving work is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself."

The Bride Stripped Bare
In writing The Bride Stripped Bare, the author decided to remain anonymous so she would feel absolutely free to explore a woman's inner world. As she writes in her afterword, "That doesn't mean this book is a memoir; it's many things to me, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and fact, a quilt pieced together not only from my stories but those of my friends." Coolly impassioned, The Bride Stripped Bare tells startling truths about love and sex.

Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America. A member since 1981 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

Fairy Tale
Fairy tales are simple stories of humans and their dealings with magical beings such as fairies, dragons, and wizards. Originally intended for children, the fairy tale has in certain instances involved into longer and more sophisticated narratives of supernatural events. The term embodies folktales such as "Snow White" and "Cinderella," many of which were originally collected in the early 19th century by the Brothers Grimm in "Grimm's Fairy Tales."

Epithet
The addition of an adjective or phrase to a word or name used to express the characteristic of that person, thing, or idea. Examples include "Ivan the Terrible," "Ms. Know-it-all," "Alexander the Great," and "The Artist formerly known as Prince." Homer famously used epithet's found throughout "The Odyssey" that included "rosy-fingered Dawn" and "gray-eyed Athena."

Michael Crichton
Michael Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942. His novels include "The Andromeda Strain," "Congo," "Jurassic Park," and "Timeline," "Prey," "Disclosure," and "Terminal Man." He is also the creator of the television series ER.

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell's 2000 bestseller, The Tipping Poing, has exhibited such enormous staying power on the bestseller lists that one supposes that Gladwell harnessed the very principles of social epidemics that he outlines therein. The Tipping Point purports to answer two questions, "Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or products start epidemics and others don't? And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?"

Figure of Speech
A figure of speech is an expression that uses a creative comparison of some sort in order to convey special meaning. Some figures of speech include hyperbole, metaphor, personification, and simile.

Autobiography
The author's account of his or her life. Autobiography can be in the form of diary, letters, memoirs, or many other forms.

The Traveler
Like a film written to be a summer blockbuster, supposed first-time novelist John Twelve Hawks' The Traveler has something for everyone: a strikingly beautiful, violent woman; a young black martial arts teacher, estranged from his odd church; mismatched but loving brothers with a tumultuous past; car chases; and a hint of romance. The characters aren't ciphers so much as they are roles, but this is less a novel than a thinly-disguised screenplay; nothing occurs that cannot be translated to film.

The Almost Moon
In "The Almost Moon," Alice Sebold's new novel. A woman steps over the line into the unthinkable in this unforgettable work by the author of "The Lovely Bones" and "Lucky." For years Helen Knightly has given her life to others: to her haunted mother, to her enigmatic father, to her husband and now grown children. When she finally crosses a terrible boundary, her life comes rushing in at her in a way she never could have imagined.

Harry Potter 2
J.K. Rowling's second novel in a series of seven, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" continues a coming of age epic that will enchant readers with its honest portrayal of humanity. Harry returns to Hogwarts only to discover a new machination in the making. Someone has opened the legendary Chamber of Secrets and let loose a monster. This creature literally petrifies anyone that comes into contact with it and Harry has reason to believe that the monster is capable of murder.

Oxymoron
An oxymoron is a phrase comprised of seemingly contradictory terms: "bittersweet," "jumbo shrimp," and "act naturally" are a few examples.

Suzan-Lori Parks
SUZAN-LORI PARKS is a playwright and screenwriter whose plays include TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, FUCKING A, THE DEATH OF THE LAST BLACK MAN IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD, THE SINNERS PLACE, DEVOTEES IN THE GARDEN OF LOVE, BETTING ON THE DUST COMMANDER, IMPERCEPTIBLE MUTABILITIES IN THE THIRD KINGDOM (1990 Obie Award for Best New American Play), THE AMERICA PLAY, VENUS (1996 Obie Award), and IN THE BLOOD.

The Road
Oprah Winfrey has chosen Cormac McCarthy's spare and glorious novel, The Road, for her book club, and McCarthy will soon appear on her show. This is quite a departure for both of them. The Road is an enormous departure from Oprah's last selection, Sidney Poiter's "spiritual autobiography, The Measure of a Man. While she has nearly always chosen thoughtful books of literary merit, none has approached the richness of this one.

Kafka on the Shore
In "Kafka on the Shore," Haruki Murakami delivers a tour de force of metaphysical reality, powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom.

Black Hole
Charles Burns' graphic novel about an alien plague attacking teenagers in suburban Seattle during the mid-1970s, "Black Hole" transcends its genre by deftly exploring a specific American cultural moment in flux and the kids who are caught in it- back when it wasn’t exactly cool to be a hippie anymore, but Bowie was still just a little too weird.

In His Own Words
The most stirring voice to come out of South Africa, Nelson Mandela has brought his message of freedom, equality, and human dignity to the entire world. Now his most eloquent and important speeches are collected in a single volume. From the eve of his imprisonment to his release 27 years later, from his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize to his election as South Africa's first black president, these speeches span some of the most pivotal moments of Mandela's life and of his countrys history.

Pirateology
Pirateology is a fantastic introduction to pirates for old and young alike. It is the journal of Captain William Lubber, an 18th Century pirate hunter sent off by the Governor of Massachusetts to hunt down and capture the dread pirate, Arabella Drummond. Within is a varied melange of pirate lore, history, artwork, and treasure.

The Memory of Running
Meet Smithson “Smithy” Ide, an overweight, friendless, chain-smoking, forty-three-year-old drunk who works as a quality control inspector at a toy action-figure factory in Rhode Island. By all accounts, including Smithy's own, he's a loser. But when Smithy's life of quiet desperation is brutally interrupted by tragedy, he stumbles across his old Raleigh bicycle and impulsively sets off on an epic journey that might give him one last chance to become the person he always wanted to be.

Alice Walker
Recognized as one of the leading voices among black American women writers, Alice Walker has produced an acclaimed and varied body of work, including poetry, novels, short stories, essays, and criticism. Her writings portray the struggle of black people throughout history, and are praised for their insightful and riveting portraits of black life, in particular the experiences of black women in a sexist and racist society.

The Corrections
Winner of 2001's National Book Award, Jonathan Franzen's "The Corrections" is a modern portrait of the family in decline. Gary is trying to convince his wife and himself, despite clear signs to the contrary, that he is not clinically depressed; Chip has lost his seemingly secure academic job and is failing spectacularly at his new line of work; Denise has escaped a disastrous marriage to fall into licentiousness; and Enid is burdened with her husband's downward spiral into Parkinson's disease.

Contemporary Lit Must Reads 2
Twenty contemporary literature must-reads, essentials! If you've read all of these, you are well on your way to an honorary contemporary literature degree. This contemporary literature reading list is comprised largely of titles published since 1970. Please visit my Contemporary Classics Reading List for older and more classic contemporary titles.

Crooked Little Vein
A burned–out private detective is enlisted by an army of presidential goons to retrieve the U.S. Constitution...the real one. Following in the steps of Neil Gaiman, <em>Crooked Little Vein</em> is packed with action, adventure, and a wild cast of characters that are sure to appease not only hardcore comic fans, but a whole new slew of mystery readers waiting for a surprisingly surreal treat that infuses the madness of the graphic–novel world.

Point of View
Point of view is the vantage point from which a story is told. In the first-person point of view, the narrator is a participant in the story. A story told by a narrator who is not one of the story's participants is called third-person point of view. Far more rare, is the second-person point of view in which the narrator addresses the protagonist directly as "you."

Emperor: The Gates of Rome
In the first volume of a planned series of [i]Emperor[/i] novels, [i]The Gates of Rome[/i] ,Conn Iggulden makes a hell of an argument for the retelling of tales. [i]The Gates of Rome[/i] is a stunning combination of bloody action, heroic bravery, and a brilliant story brought to life for a modern readership.