J is for James Joyce

I have read James Joyce's masterwork Ulysses. And honestly, all I can remember of it is Molly Bloom's joyously sensual "soliloquy of yes." I saw it performed as part of a one-woman show called James Joyce's Women and it was amazing. Hs novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and his short story collection Dubliners are much more accessible. I'm pretty sure I've read Finnegan's Wake also but it's been erased from my memory as completely as if it was never there. Pity. Because I'm pretty sure I'll never revisit it.

If you don't know the soliloquy, here it is.

J is for Jackson, Shirley

I revere Shirley Jackson. I think "The Lottery" is a dandy short story but for my money, The Haunting of Hill House is the best haunted house novel ever written--and I've read more than a few.  And just in case you're looking for some haunted house stories, here are some I've read and recommend:

Stephen King:  The Shining

Okay, technically, it isn't a haunted HOUSE story, but let's not quibble.

Susan Hill:  The Woman in Black

I was a bit  disappointed by the movie, although I thought it was wonderfully eerie and atmospheric. And Daniel Radcliffe is picking interesting parts post-Harry Potter.

Dorothy Macardle: The Uninvited

I saw the movie version of the book (which was published in 1941) and the ghostly special effects were terrific.

Alexandra Sokoloff:  The Harrowing

I'm a big fan of Sokoloff's writing, and I enjoyed this haunted college story tremendously.

But we were discussing Shirley Jackson and The Haunting of Hill House.  I went looking for an imaage of the novel's cover and found a whole lot of them, some of which seemed wildly off the mark, like this one that looks like it might be an English comedy of manners. (The cover at the top left is the cover of the edition I remember reading. I bought it used for ten cents at a local library sale.)

The writing in this book is just so beautifully done. Chilling and simple (like "The Lottery") and yet also poetic, especially in the final words.  If you've never read this book, read it.

I is for "I Hear America Singing" by Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman and his friend  Peter Doyle

I don't read much poetry now. Just about the only poetry I've read since leaving college is the poetry of Pablo Neruda--I was introduced to his work by a poetry placard on the bus--and Seamus Heaney's gorgeous version of Beowulf.

When I was in school, though, I had a really interesting course in which we read John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy, Studs Terkel's book Working (I was a big fan of his kind of journalism) and the poetry of Walt Whitman, specificlly "I Hear America Singing." (We also read Carl Sandburg's poem about Chicago.) I liked Whitman because he wasn't sing-songy. He used words like a painter uses pigments and when his masterwork, "Leaves of Grass" came out, it was labeled obscene when in fact it was simply sensual.

H is for "His Wife's Deceased Sister"

I ran across the short story, "His Wife's Deceased Sister" a few years ago when I was participating in Brian Lindemuth's "Short Story a Day" challenge. It was written by Frank R. Stockton.  If Stockton's name sounds familiar, it's because he wrote "The Lady or the Tiger?" one of a handful of short stories that almost all American kids read as children. ("The Most Dangerous Game," "The Ransom of Red Chief," and "To Build a Fire" are several of the others.)

"His Wife's Deceased Sister" is about a writer whose life is ruined when he writes a story so popular that no one thinks anything else can live up to it. Read it here.

G is for mystery writers Tess Gerritsen and Elizabeth George

Elizabeth George

There really aren't enough women writing crime fiction but there are two writers--whose work could not be more different--who have made their mark on the genre. They are Tess Gerritsen, who writes medical thrillers and created the series Rizzoli and Isles and Elizabeth George, who is an American but writes very "English" mysteries.
Elizabeth George has written a number of mysteires "starring" Inspector Lynley, and they have been turned into a BBC crime series. Her older brother Rober is also a novelist.
Tess Gerritsen was a doctor before she started writing fiction, part of a tradition of writing doctors that includes Arthur Conan Doyle, Robin Cook, Michael Crichton (he earned his degree but never practiced medicine) and James Rollins.

Tess Gerritsen

G is for Gutenberg

I grew up in a house where books were appreciated. There were always books around and you could expect that birthdays and Christmas would bring special books--hardback books. My father collected history books, particularly about the Civil War, and my mother loved mysteries but she also had a set of those gray, clothbound "Mocdern Library" editions of the clasics. The only one of those i remember reading was the Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, but she had the Russian novelists as well. i am way behind on reading the Russians, except for Pushkin. (But I digress.)

My point is that in my family we all bought books and sometimes that meant spending a significant chunk of money. Even when I was in high school hardback books cost a lot and you didn't buy them on impulse. the idea of free books--even books that were in the public domain--was just a lovely fantasy.  FREE BOOKS!!!

And then came Project Gutenberg. On the project's landing page you'll find the slogan, "the first producer of free books" but really, it's so much more than that. For me, it's the equivalent of the "seed banks" that are preserving our genetic heritage and the DNA of species on the verge of extinction. If civilization collapsed today, Project Gutenberg's repository of past literature would allow us to carry on with the accumulated wisdom of the past. There's probably a short story in that. There are more than 45,000 books in their data base and it's growing every day. And think about this--Johannes gutenberg was born in the 14th century. Seven centuries ago...the past is prologue.

F is for Francis, Dick

I discovered Dick Francis in high school. By that time his career as a crime writer was well underway so that  once I read his first novel, Dead Cert, there were plenty of books for me to catch up on. (He would eventually write 40, most of which became international best-sellers.) A former jockey (he rode for the Queen Mum), he set his mysteries against a backdrop of horse racing, an arena I wouldn't normally have cared very much about. Most of the books were one-offs, but a couple "starred" Sid Halley, a one-handed investigator who was played by Welsh actor Mike Gwilym in the television adaptation. Gwilym is retired now, but in his day he did everything from Shakespeare to tough guys and Jason Statham reminds me of him a lot. 
Francis died in 2010 but his son Felix has followed in his footsteps with mysteries branded with the Dick Francis name. There's one coming out later this year that features the return of Sid Halley. I haven't read any of Felix's books, but I may have to pick up that one.