The Best Books of the Twentieth Century

The combination of reading and writing is a bivalent skill, vital for us, ordinary mortals, but also the best kept secret of successful writers. Each writer is defined, directly or indirectly, by his personal library.

This top of the best books to read is inspired by "Writers vote their favorite books", a top made with the help of 125 contemporary writers of Britain and United States, including Norman Mailer, Ann Patchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates.

Each autor sent a list of their favorite top 10 works of all time (novels, short stories, drama or poetry), placed in order of their preference.


Each of the 554 titles that were submitted by writers scored from 1 to 10, so, as always, the first title in the list of preferences received 10 points while the latter is priced with 1 point. Finally, the points were collected and te top of "The Best Books of the Twentieth Century" was created:

1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
4. Ulysses by James Joyce
5. Dubliners by James Joyce
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
8. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
9. The complete stories by Flannery O’Connor
10.Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov


If you loved this post, you should also read Top 10 Books to read of All Time

The best fashion books of 2011

This year has brought a number of fundamental changes in fashion, absolutely necessary in an environment that became too fragile for a society driven by information obtained dependent easy and free. In 2011 fashion is slowly if we think of the premises that gave it the special note, intangible note. Dreams are no longer build in front of the monitor, but arise as a result of a permanent journey around the world.

These being said, I urge you to put up a reading fashion list of best books to read and to follow and read the most interesting books that were launched in 2011.

The best fashion books of 2011

Ugly Beauty

If you're into fashion books, "Ugly Beauty: Helena Rubinstein, L'Oréal, and the History of Looking Good Blemished" (Harper Collins Publishing) is a must. Ruth Brandon, novelist and fine connoisseur of the history of culture and civilization, is trying to bring the spotlight on two legendary icons: Helena Rubinstein and Eugene Schueller, L'Oréal founder. The volume is especially interesting to study, because it is a successful attempt to penetrate the secrets of business sites that have dominated the cosmetics market since the early years of the Second World War (“War Paint: Madame Helena Rubinstein and Miss Elizabeth Arden”, “Helena Rubinstein” de Catherine Jazdzewski etc). Definitely a best book to read.

Rose, c'est Paris

"Rose, c'est Paris" is not itself a book of fashion but more of an inspirational volume that you should not miss. Bettina Rheims's vision and Serge Bramly's talent meets in pages that evokes Paris in a whole new way. A city animated by artists, identity is confused, obsessions, fetishes and manipulation concealed in the darkness of nights, which is materialized both in fashion and in the film or photography. "Rose, c'est Paris" is published by Taschen.

Christian Lacroix and the Tale of Sleeping Beauty

In 2011, fashion stories are told with a more consistent dose of involvement, not necessarily related to marketing. It's all about an area that constantly fascinates female audience. Beautiful story of Sleeping Beauty, The Brothers Grimm is transposed and told in a new and original manner. The fashion dream becomes real and closer to fulfillment for women who have not forgotten to look at the world through the eyes of a child.

If you loved my list of best fashion books to read from 2011, you can subscribe to my blog. Thanks!

How to cure molluscum book review

I know this is supposed to be a blog about all the good books I've been reading recently but right now I'm going to recommend you a book wrote buy Clark R. about Molluscum Contagiosum. I'm sure there are many folks out there that will die for a Molluscum treatment. Dermatologists don't know much about this condition and they will tell you that it will pass in 4-6 months. But what they will not tell you is that Molluscum can take up to 2 years until it's gone. That's why you need to speed up the process. I hope you'll enjoy the book!

Click here to read it!

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption book review

On a May day in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber plane went down into the Pacific Ocean and vanished, leaving only a spray of junk and a trail of oil, petrol, and blood. But out of thin air and water, a face came out. It was the plane’s bombardier, a teen lieutenant,who was fighting to a Carling float and drawing himself aboard. This is the beginning of the most exceptional odysseys of the Second World War.

Read more about his journey on Amazon.

Decision Points by George W. Bush

Let me keep this straight to the point and simple: this book is fascinating, down-to-earth. Appealing at certain turns and wildly unbelievable at others. The surprise is coming near the end: Decision Points is well-written and it's a pleasant reading.



This autobiography is centered around “the most consequential decisions” of his administration and his personal life from his determination to abandon drinking in 1986 to his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to his decisions regarding the financial crisis of 2008. It's a book can bee seen as a twist, part asking for forgiveness to the world, part family scrapbook, part self-conscious attempt to rewrite his political legacy.

Out of the Dark - Book Review

 
Out of the Dark

Author: David Weber
Genre: Vampire Science Fiction | Alien Invasion
Hardcover: 384 page

Place to buy the book: Amazon.com

Built up a short story, this trilogy beginning combines ingredients of military science fiction and dark fantasy. In the very near future, Earth is aimed for colonization by a galactic conglomerate known as the Hegemony. Humanity has been written down as bloody-minded, disposable savages. When the Hegemony’s collaborators, the loyal Shongairi, come out to suppress Earth, the resistance is far from anything they had ever thought, particularly when vampires come along to help the humans. Weber brings off this vanity in daring style with a focus on military-powered action that will exalt fans of his Honor Harrington series, and he keeps the pedal to the metal right up to the almost incredible conclusion.

The Last Olympian Book Review

The Last Olympian is a fantasy-adventure novel based on Greek mythology by Rick Riordan published on May 5, 2009. The book is the 5th and concluding installment in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series and serves as the direct sequel to The Battle of the Labyrinth. The Last Olympian circles around the demigod Perseus Jackson as he leads his acquaintances in a last stand to protect Mount Olympus. The book received many positive reviews.

The title relates to Hestia, the goddess of the hearth, who denotes to herself as such in a conversation with Percy. Additionally, there's a affirmation at the end of the book citing the close of "the first Camp Half-Blood series," arguing that there could be a lot to come after.

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper (book review)

This is where I leave you is a magnificent and funny saga about family. Tropper brings brilliant balance between the family history and its present-day fallout, proving his ability to create touchingly human characters and a deliciously page-turning story.

Tropper mines old themes with his new book, This is Where I Leave You. Love relationship with college soul mate? Check. Father whose love is silent and unspoken and strong? Check. Sex with old high school fantasy? Check. Issue with athletic brother and other sibling rivalries? Check. I could go on.

The death of Judd Foxman's father marks the first time that the entire Foxman family-including Judd's mother, brothers, and sister-have been together in years. Conspicuously absent: Judd's wife, Jen, whose fourteen-month affair with Judd's radio-shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public.

This Is Where I Leave You is Jonathan Tropper's most accomplished work to date, a riotously funny, emotionally raw novel about love, marriage, divorce, family, and the ties that bind—whether we like it or not.

The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch

I don't know how to start this time. At one point in my life, I spent a couple of months in a hospital, being pretty close to folks who were dying. I discovered one general truth: people die in the same way they live. A person approaches his or her dying reveals a great deal about the character traits, values, dispositions, and attitudes with which they walked in this movie we call living.

If you can spare 1 hour of your life to watch this lecture Randy Pausch (Oct. 23, 1960 - July 25, 2008) gave before a packed McConomy Auditorium I promise you will not regret it!

Many times in our lives, we know what we should be doing but don't always do it. The truths that Randy says in his book are things we should be doing NOW instead of waiting for a terminal diagnosis. Many of us may have terribly difficult circumstances in our lives that are hard to live with. But if a man with a terminal diagnosis can find happiness and productivity with a prognosis of pancreatic cancer, then we ALL can.
Even if you are not a book reader, please read this one. I can almost guarantee you won't be disappointed.

5 Classic Novels

Why classic books? Because they have stood the test of time. The second reason is they give you different “lenses” to look through. Most of them are relevant to our time and it's most likely to be relevant even to the far future. If you have the time to read these classic novels you, you will find an ideal way to expand your horizons and catch up on classics. So, without further announcements here are top 5 classic novels along with the Amazon links. I have chosen the cheapest ones I could find on Amazon:

1. Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)


2. Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift)


3. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)


4. Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens)


5. The Scarlet Letter (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

Fix yourself a drink, get comfortable and Start Reading!

The Northern Clemency (Hardcover)

Sunday Times said about this book that it is “Brilliantly styled . . . Hensher is fascinatingly good on how social transformation manifests itself in the textures, colours and manners of a culture . . . The Northern Clemency is not only extremely funny, but also deeply humane. [It] is a virtuoso display of sympathy: Hensher seems to dwell as easily and evocatively in the mind-world of a 10-year-old schoolboy as in that of a 59-year-old stroke victim or a middle-aged estate agent.”

Philip Hensher's The Northern Clemency begins at the perimeter of a late-summer party, amidst a din of neighbors gossiping one moment and navigating awkward silences the next. But once you encounter the Glover family–in particular, their languidly handsome teenage son Daniel–there’s no turning back. Hensher’s style (which earned him a spot on the Man Booker Prize shortlist) is among the many qualities that made this novel Amazon BestSeller. The language is so beautiful and brutally honest that you’ll find it hard not to underline your favourite passages, particularly those about the city of Sheffield, whose families witness "the last phase of its industrial greatness" in 1974 and begin to experience the intensifying class wars that ensue. The Northern Clemencybrings out the universal secret we all keep inside us: the family makes no sense, and yet makes all the sense in the world.