Top Ten New Authors for 2012

By -
This week's top ten list is one I like:  Top Ten Favorite New-To-Me Authors I Read In 2012.  I've found lots of authors this year, so I'm very happy to share them.

10. Marva Collins.  Collins goes on my classical education shelf as a great inspiration.  She is highly regarded in classical ed circles, and I finally got to read one of her books.

9. Sharon M. Draper.  Probably the best new-to-me children's book I read all year.

8. Tsitsi Dangarembga.  I thought Nervous Conditions was wonderful and plan to read The Book of Not at some point.

7.  Jorge Luis Borges. Great stories; I'm glad I finally picked him up.

6. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  My first new author of the year!  Eva recommended her highly, so thank you Eva!

5. Jacques Lusseyran.  His memoir, And There Was Light, was one of my favorite books of the year.  Read it!

4. Katherine Boo. I was so impressed with her writing, especially with her ability to take herself out of it.  Her wonderful chronicle of a slum neighborhood in a modern Indian city was not only amazing and insightful, it didn't feature her as a central figure.  

3. Gustave Flaubert.  His writing in Madame Bovary was just perfect.

2. Christine de Pizan.  The Book of the City of Ladies is now my favorite medieval text.

1. Boris Pasternak.  I just loved it.  Doctor Zhivago is such a great book.  The writing, Russia, all of it.



Comments

  1. Somewhere Only We KnowDecember 11, 2012 at 4:56 PM

    New follower! I'm not familiar with any of these authors. I guess I need to look into them.

    Check out my TTT.

    Sandy @ Somewhere Only We Know

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChristineDecember 11, 2012 at 6:06 PM

    Flaubert! Nice! This is the first list I've seen him on. I've always wanted to read Doctor Zhivago but haven't! I love Russian lit, so I'm not sure what my hang up as been!

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanDecember 11, 2012 at 7:39 PM

    Thanks for stopping by, Sandy! :)

    Christine, you must read Doctor Zhivago. It's not even difficult, and you'll love it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more