{"id":338,"date":"2008-08-28T16:50:24","date_gmt":"2008-08-28T16:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/?p=338"},"modified":"2020-05-07T13:34:21","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T17:34:21","slug":"shirley-schreidells-top-ten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/2008\/08\/28\/shirley-schreidells-top-ten\/","title":{"rendered":"Shirley Schreidell&#8217;s Top Ten"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">I have so many loves, just Dickens could almost fill the list&#8230;. I omit some lengthy choices like <em>Les Miserables,<\/em> <em>The Count of Monte Cristo<\/em>, (a page-turner!); Paul Scott&#8217;s \u00a0<em>The Raj Quartet<\/em>; Trollop&#8217;s <em>He Knew He Was Right<\/em>, and probably the greatest novel, <em>War and Peace. <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">In no particular order:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">1.\u00a0<strong><em>The Three Musketeers,<\/em><\/strong> Alexander Dumas, \u00a0the greatest adventure tale of all time!<br \/>\n2.\u00a0<em><strong>A Tale of Two Cities<\/strong>,<\/em> Charles Dickens, the first paragraph and the final page are two of the most famous passages in all of literature. The plot in between ain&#8217;t bad either!<br \/>\n3.\u00a0<strong><em>Great Expectations<\/em><\/strong>, also by Dickens with his usual array of unforgettable characters (e.g. Miss Haversham in her bridal finery, sitting at the table with the mice-infested cake, and the clock on the wall, stopped at the hour she was jilted long ago!) Like Shakespeare and Tolstoy, Dickens creates great characters!<br \/>\n4.<strong><em>Ninety-Three<\/em><\/strong>, Victor Hugo fast paced story of the French reign of terror in 1793.<br \/>\n5.\u00a0<strong><em>Cousine Bette<\/em><\/strong>, my favorite Balzac novel of a poor cousin&#8217;s revenge against her wealthy relatives.<br \/>\n6.<strong><em>Cheri and The Last of Cheri<\/em>,<\/strong> two novellas by Colette, sensuous writing! A middle-aged courtesan trains a 19 year old boy about life and love, ah me, what an opera this would have made with a score by, say, Massenet or Puccini!<br \/>\n7.\u00a0<strong><em>McTeague <\/em><\/strong>by Frank Norris. Naturalistic style, bare bones dialogue, one of the gloomiest endings ever!<br \/>\n8.<strong><em>The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone<\/em>,<\/strong> Tennessee Williams&#8217; lone novel, with his usual sad, neurotic females this one adrift in Rome.<br \/>\n9.<em>T<strong>he Last Hurrah<\/strong><\/em>, Edwin O&#8217;Conner. This is an election year. Why not a political novel? This one is excellent and I laughed for 427 pages!<br \/>\n10.<strong><em>The Leopard<\/em><\/strong>, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, Published posthumously in 1958, this novel is a throw-back to the great 19th century tradition in style. Beautifully written, it is the story of a 19th century Sicilian prince who watches, powerlessly, as his island country slides into what Sicily would become and from which it has still not recovered.<br \/>\n11.<strong><em>The Death of Napoleon<\/em><\/strong>, Simon Leys. What if the real Napoleon had escaped from St. Helena leaving a double in his place? This could be read as a fable or the nature of greatness or identity or just for fun. A Delight!<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Whoops! I knew ten would not be enough.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">How about plays? or short stories? \u00a0or memoirs? I have loads loves there, too&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>Bestest, <\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Shirley<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have so many loves, just Dickens could almost fill the list&hellip;. I omit some lengthy choices like Les Miserables, The Count of Monte Cristo, (a page-turner!); Paul Scott&rsquo;s &nbsp;The Raj Quartet; Trollop&rsquo;s He Knew He Was Right, and probably the greatest novel, War and Peace. In no particular order: 1.&nbsp;The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,4,25,65],"tags":[228,229],"class_list":["post-338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-reading","category-reading-group","category-world-lit","tag-shirley-schridell","tag-suggested-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebookbeat.com\/backroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}