Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
CKY Books Top Ten Best Selling Authors of the Decade (2000-2009)
1. J.K. Rowling
2. Stephanie Meyer
3. Stephen King
4. Dr. Seuss
5. Spencer Johnson
6. Mary Pope Osborne
7. James Patterson
8. Dan Brown
9. Jim Collins
10. Nora Roberts/ J.D. Robb
The list isn’t surprising. These are all prolific and/or wildly popular authors. But I realized only one of these them would land on my personal top ten favorite authors list. It’s not that I don’t LIKE these writers. I do. In fact, I’ve read, and enjoyed, books by all of them. But that begs the question – who would I consider my top ten favorite authors? That was surprisingly easy to answer.
1. Anne Rice
2. Anne McCaffrey
3. Stephen King
4. RA Salvatore
5. Michael Crichton
6. Robert Jordan
7. Terry Brooks
8. David Eddings
9. C.S. Lewis
10. Sara Douglass
That list is in no particular order. But I see a definite trend there…
So what about you? Who would be on YOUR list?
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
Are you wearing your green? March 17 can be a lot of fun with the parades and canals turned green and pinches and green beer. But like most holidays, its origins are much different. Interestingly enough, St. Patrick was not even Irish. He was born in Great Britain but at the age of 16 was captured by Irish raiders. He spent six years as a slave in Ireland, herding livestock. He turned to religion for comfort, eventually escaped and returned home. However, he had a dream one night that convinced him to return to Ireland, which he did after he was ordained bishop. He spent the rest of his life preaching, converting the masses to Christianity and building churches. (We know all this thanks to the book he wrote “Confessio”)
The first St. Patrick’s day parade was not celebrated in Ireland. Though the anniversary of St. Patrick’s death has been celebrated in Ireland for thousands of years as a religious holiday, the incarnation we see now began in 1762 when Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched through New York. The parades grew to be a show of unity and later, a celebration of heritage, for Irish-Americans. It wasn’t until 1995 that Ireland began promoting St. Patrick’s Day with a modern bent in order to drive tourism.
What do YOU do to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day?
Quotes from Irish authors:
“May you live all the days of your life” – Jonathan Swift
“I can resist anything but temptation.” Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan, 1892, Act I
“Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing. ” William Butler Yeats
“The English did many terrible things but one great thing you did was give us this extraordinary language … and it works for us.” John Banville
“We are all born mad. Some remain so.” Samuel Beckett
“I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day. “ James Joyce
Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010
On Monday Barry Hannah, southern author, died at age 67. His writing has been described as “darkly comic” and has won several awards. His first novel, Geronimo Rex, won the William Faulkner Prize and earned a National Book Award nomination. He was also awarded the Arnold Gingrich Short Fiction Award, and the Award for Literature from the American Institute of Arts and Letters for his short story collection, Airships. Another of his short story collections, High Lonesome, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Although I consider myself a southern girl, I have never read any of Mr. Hannah’s work. Have you? What did you think?
