Top Ten Books, Part Two, on The Point

Today we did part two of our top ten favorite books.  Bob Waxler, recently retired English professor from U. Mass, Dartmouth, joined Mindy and me for the monthly book show on WCAI’s  The Point. Our topic was the second half of our top ten favorite books. As it happened, it was also pledge week at WCAI, which may account for our not having any callers today. However, if you missed the show, you can always listen to it online, in fact even if you DID listen to the show this morning, you will have missed the very end which we had to record after we were off the air. You can always listen online! To read about our first top five books head over to this blog entry.

Jill Erickson, Head of Reference & Adult Services

Bob’s Picks

Middlemarch by George Eliot

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

Frankenstein, or, The modern prometheus by Mary Shelley

Night by Elie Wiesel

Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin

Jill’s Picks

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, pictures by Garth Williams

Martha Quest by Doris Lessing

A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf  (or read ALL of her diaries!)

Finding Time Again by Marcel Proust. Not currently available in CLAMS, but feel free to read any Proust. Or you could try reading about people reading Proust as seen in the New York Times.

The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf, drawings by Robert Lawson

And if you want to know other people’s top ten books, try My Ideal Bookshelf with art by Jane Mount and edited by Thessaly La Force. Fascinating lists in part because all sorts of people suggested titles, typeface designers, architects, musicians, filmmakers, athletes, chefs, as well as writers.

Listener Pick

We got an e-mail from a listener after we were off the air. He writes: “I respectfully wish to add a few plays to the must read books mentioned in today’s Point, perhaps Shakespeare’s Othello — and certainly one or two from George Bernard Shaw, perhaps drawn from Pygmalion, Major Barbara, and Mrs. Warren’s Profession. All remain extremely relevant with issues that still speak to us, and the Shaw plays are all exceptional and entertaining reads.