Amazon Books staff has compiled 2014 list of 100 must-reads into a list of “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime,”

Leyton Public Library, Leytonstone, London, UK (1944, Wikimedia Commons)

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Wednesday afternoon. Cloudy and warmer, 68 degrees.

I have Olivia today, so no time for a real post. I know I’ve been absent. What can I say?

Life . . .

                   

Click here to read the full article from CNN

Amazon released its newly curated list of 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime on Tuesday.

Books on the list include Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” (1925) and Kate Atkinson’s “Life After Life” (2013).

The list spans 200 years of literature, along with a wide range of genres and intended audiences; authors include David Sedaris, Salman Rushdie, J.D. Salinger, Michael Pollan and Shel Silverstein.

Sara Nelson, editorial director of print and Kindle books at Amazon.com, said the list was created through taxing months of deliberation among her team, though no mathematical algorithms were used.

“One of our tasks was to have books that don’t feel like homework: ‘eat your vegetables’ books,” Nelson said. “There was nothing in there except ‘I loved this book when I was 12 for this reason.’ We lobbied each other.”

The books are not ranked but rather are listed alphabetically to represent that “no book is more important than another,” she added.

(To see the Goodreads Readers’ Picks, click here.)

1. 1984 by George Orwell
2. A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
3. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
4. A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah
5. A Series of Unfortunate Events #1: The Bad Beginning: The Short-Lived Edition by Lemony Snicket
6. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
7. Alice Munro: Selected Stories by Alice Munro
8. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
9. All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
10. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
11. Are You There, God? It’s me, Margaret by Judy Blume
12. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
13. Beloved by Toni Morrison
14. Born To Run – A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall
15. Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat
16. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
17. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
18. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
19. Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese
20. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brene Brown
21. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Book 1 by Jeff Kinney
22. Dune by Frank Herbert
23. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
24. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
25. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
26. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
27. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
28. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared M. Diamond
29. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
30. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
31. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
32. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
33. Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware
34. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
35. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
36. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
37. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
38. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
39. Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich
40. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
41. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
42. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
43. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
44. Moneyball by Michael Lewis
45. Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham
46. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
47. Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
48. Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
49. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth
50. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
51. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
52. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
53. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
54. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
55. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
56. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley
57. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
58. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
59. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
60. The Color of Water by James McBride
61. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
62. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson
63. The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
64. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
65. The Giver by Lois Lowry
66. The Golden Compass: His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
67. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
68. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
69. The House At Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne
70. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
71. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
72. The Liars’ Club: A Memoir by Mary Karr
73. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan
74. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
75. The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
76. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
77. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
78. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
79. The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan
80. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
81. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver
82. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
83. The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
84. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
85. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
86. The Shining by Stephen King
87. The Stranger by Albert Camus
88. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
89. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
90. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
91. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
92. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel by Haruki Murakami
93. The World According to Garp by John Irving
94. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
95. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
96. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
97. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
98. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
99. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
100. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

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I read the news today, oh boy . . .

Sometimes, more likely, most times, I am my own worst enemy. I was reading more news about the fallout from Steubenville and CNN when I decided to click through on some links. The road I went down was not yellow-brick or rainbow-hued or lined with daisies. It was dark and dirty and left me feeling literally sick to my stomach.

This is what I have deduced from just a quick perusal:

• Girls/women who are raped are fair game for name-callers, haters, and anyone else interested in further harming them emotionally thanks to easy access to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
• Children are not safe anywhere, not in school, not in church, not in their counselors’ offices, not even in the dental chair.
• Our society has become emotionally numb to this news because it is so damned pervasive.
• I also read a blurb about this phenomenon that occurs mostly with Japanese male youth in which they decided never to leave their bedrooms. I can truly appreciate this and wonder why it is not more widespread.
• It’s kind of hard to decide which social travesty is breaking my heart more these days: the ways in which rape is treated so cavalierly, especially among our youth, or the prevalence of pervs in every single facet of our society.

• In case you think that I’m overreacting, feast your eyes on the following:
  • In Ohio: Two teenage girls were arrested and accused of using social media to threaten the young victim in the Steubenville Rape Case.
  • In Indiana: A woman is charged with trying to sell her one-year-old daughter for child porn.
  • In Florida: A man has been charged with using his neighbor’s wi-fi to download child pornography.
  • In Pennsylvania: A man admits to paying a 10-year-old neighbor for sex.
  • In Iowa: A 48-year-old male daycare provider has been accused of sexually abusing a number of children from as young as four-years-old.
  • In California: A 14-year-old boy has been charged with molesting two children who attended the day school run by the boy’s mother.
  • In California: A dental hygienist has been accused of sexually molesting a teenaged girl; there may be more victims who have yet to be identified.
  • In New York: A rabbi has been found guilty on 59 counts of child sex abuse.
  • In California: A former teacher is facing allegations of molesting 12 children; principal had been warned about questionable behavior three years prior.
  • In Arkansas: A church volunteer who was a member of the youth ministry has been charged with possession of child pornography.

   

No more. I had to stop myself. This is precisely why I stopped watching the news on television and also why I limit how much and what I read on the interwebs. I’m not made of strong enough stuff for this.

More later.

“There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.” ~ William S. Burroughs

CNN, you used to be about news. What happened to you?

I’m so glad that Mallory Ortberg skewered the CNN coverage of the Steubenville Rapists. “Such promising futures . . .” Blah, blah, blah. Let us not forget that they raped an unconscious girl and then posted pictures of the acts on social media. To me, that does not bespeak intelligence or promise, rather blatant stupidity and a clear lack of character.

The full article follows:

CNN Reports On The ‘Promising Future’ of the Steubenville Rapists, Who Are ‘Very Good Students’

by Mallory Ortberg

One way to report on the outcome of a rape trial is to discuss the legal ramifications of the decision or the effect the proceedings may have on the life of the victim. Another angle reporters can take is to publicly worry about the “promising future” of the convicted rapists, now less promising as a direct result of their choice to rape someone.

Reporters at CNN today chose the latter technique. General correspondent Poppy Harlow, speaking to anchor Candy Crowley, had this to say about the verdict:

“Incredibly difficult, even for an outsider like me, to watch what happened as these two young men that had such promising futures, star football players, very good students, literally watched as they believed their lives fell apart…when that sentence came down, [Ma’lik] collapsed in the arms of his attorney…He said to him, ‘My life is over. No one is going to want me now.’ Very serious crime here, both found guilty of raping the sixteen-year-old girl at a series of parties back in August.”

CNN also played footage of both convicted rapists tearfully apologizing in court. Harlow went on to describe in detail an emotional exchange between Ma’lik Richmond, one of the defendants, and his estranged father.

Candy asked Paul Callan, a legal expert, to elaborate on the future of the two young men, stressing their youth and emotional vulnerability.

“Sixteen-year-olds just sobbing in court, regardless of what big football players they are, they still sound like sixteen-year-olds…what’s the lasting effect, though, on two young men being found guilty in juvenile court of rape, essentially?”

“The most severe thing with these young men is being labeled as registered sex offenders. That label is now placed on them by Ohio law…That will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Employers, when looking up their background, will see that they’re registered sex offenders. When they move into a new neighborhood and somebody goes on the Internet, where these things are posted, neighbors will know that they are registered sex offenders.”

Yes, that is how the sex offender registry works. People who commit acts of sexual violence (rape, for example) and are convicted in a court of law are required to register with the national sex offender public registry, so that future employers and neighbors might do things like check said registry.

For readers interested in learning more about how not to be labeled as registered sex offenders, a good first step is not to rape unconscious women, no matter how good your grades are. Regardless of the strength of your GPA (weighted or unweighted), if you commit rape, there is a possibility you may someday be convicted of a sex crime. This is because of your decision to commit a sex crime instead of going for a walk, or reading a book by Cormac McCarthy. Your ability to perform calculus or play football is generally not taken into consideration in a court of law. Should you prefer to be known as “Good student and excellent football player Trent Mays” rather than “Convicted sex offender Trent Mays,” try stressing the studying and tackling and giving the sex crimes a miss altogether.

It’s perfectly understandable, when reporting on a rape trial, to discuss the length and severity of the sentence; it is less understandable to discuss the end of two convicted rapists’ future athletic and academic careers as if it were somehow divorced from the laws of cause and effect. Their dreams and hopes were not crushed by an impersonal, inexorable legal system; Mays and Richmond raped a girl and have been sentenced accordingly. Had they not raped her, they would not be spending at least one year each in a juvenile detention facility.

It is unlikely that Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow are committed rape apologists; more likely they simply wanted a showy, emotional angle at the close of a messy and sensationalized trial. Since the identity of the victim is protected, and the rapists obliged the camera crews by memorably breaking down and crying in court, they found an angle to match: extremely gifted young men were brought tragically low by… mumblemumblesomething.

That isn’t how rape trials ought to be discussed by professional journalists.

Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond are not the “stars” of the Steubenville rape trial. They aren’t the only characters in a drama playing out in eastern Ohio. And yet a CNN viewer learning about the Steubenville rape verdict is presented with dynamic, sympathetic, complicated male figures, and a nonentity of an anonymous victim, the “lasting effects” of whose graphic, public sexual assault are ignored. Small wonder, then, that anyone would find themselves on the side of these men—these poor young men, who were very good at taking tests and playing sports when they were not raping their classmates.

Related articles

• CNN Feels Really Bad Guilty Steubenville Football Players Were Found Guilty of Rape (thesuperficial.com)
• Here’s What CNN Should’ve Said About the Steubenville Rape Case (jezebel.com)
• How The Media Took Sides In The Steubenville Rape Case (thinkprogress.org)
• Steubenville, OH – lots of sympathy for the rapists, little for the victim (thechicagolibrary.wordpress.com)