Literary Question of the Month - May

After taking a brief hiatus from Literary Questions of the Month, Rob comes back with this extremely fun but daunting question:

"you're a film producer, and wery hot property right now since your last film made a billion-zillion dollars and broke all sorts of box-office records, and won 20 Oscars...as a reward, you're told that you can make a film from any book your heart desires, be it your favorite, or one you can strongly visualize, or one you'd like to see remade in your own vision...you have a blank check, you can cast whatever actors you like, hire whatever director you wish...so, my multiple question is: what would that book be? who would you cast? and who would you pick to direct? (grins) you can even name your cinematographer if you're feeling frisky.."

(I had to quote, as a simple paraphrase wouldn't capture Rob's evil and sly, yet hilarious, persona.)

Is anybody up to the (fun) task of answering this question? Drop on by the BBD and weigh in on this if you think you have the perfect arthaus hit!

Literary Question of the Month - January

A new month brings a new topic to ponder over at the BBD. This month's question asks our members which authors they feel like they should like but don't like; I also asked what authors our members have enjoyed that they thought they wouldn't.

Charles Dickens is resoundingly on the lists; we have people in our group who love Dickens, and people who can't read him at all. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground when it comes to ol' Chuck. Also on the list is Toni Morrison, a woman that has had great fame and success as a writer, but whom many of us can't trudge through. Among other authors some of us just didn't click with were Maugham, Tolkien, and Henry James.

Books we were surprised to like? Being the critics that many readers tend to be, we produced a much shorter list (so far!) on this side. Among our picks were Barbara Kingsolver, John Irving, George Eliot (specifically Middlemarch), and .. well, that was about it, so far. Follow the entirety of the discussion here.

It's only halfway through January, so there's still plenty of time to weigh in! In fact, there's no time limit on any of these, so weigh in whenever!

Literary Question of the Month - December

I volunteered for this month's literary question, and to give people something to chew on, I asked what books you would recommend to your children (or grandchildren or nieces/nephews or cousins or godchildren or whatever young people you have in your life) to read at least once in their lifetime. This question was met with a bit of controversy, as many of our members were literarily rebellious in their youth (imagine that!). However, taking the situation as a hypothetical, and not as an invitation to bully our youngsters into reading anything they don't want to read, here are some of the recommendations that our members came up with:


The Bible: the Bible was overwhelmingly on the list, for many reasons--not only is a great majority of Western culture firmly entrenched in Christianity, but there are great morals and life lessons to learn from the Bible, even if you are not a Christian.

Greek Mythology: Also highly influential in Western culture.

Grimm's Fairy Tales (and other fairy tales): Ditto the influence. Also fun to read!

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Shakespeare (Tinky voted for the entire works of Shakespeare, but even just hitting a few would be fine, I think ;)

In Search of Time (Proust) (probably for when they are a bit older, eh?!)

The Stuff of Thought (Stephen Pinker)


What about you--what books would you look back on as having been invaluable to your literary life, and recommend to a young person (should they attempt to beat it out of you)?

Follow the whole convo by clicking the post title OR click here to check it out.