James Baldwin is one of the most significant American writers of the twentieth century, across several genres, but perhaps most importantly in his fiction. His work deals with themes of sexuality, race, and class, and are vivid contributions to the civil rights movement and the gay liberation movement. His 1962 novel Another Country is, perhaps, his most… Continue reading James Baldwin’s “Go Tell It on the Mountain”

This may be a bit of a surprise. It was to me. The #8 book (alphabetically) on my list of “The 100 Most Loveable Novels in the English Language” turns out to be another novel from Jane Austen. One of the unwritten laws I wrote down for myself at the beginning of this project was… Continue reading Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”

I have made no secret of my desire, in my list of the “100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language,” to include as many different authors as I could, to spread the love among a variety of periods and styles. But  in the end there were two particular novelists whose contributions to English literature were… Continue reading Jane Austen’s “Emma”

Margaret Atwood may be the most significant author in world literature who has not yet won the Nobel Prize. Two of her novels (The Blind Assassin and The Testaments) have won the Booker Prize—the elite annual British award for the best novel written in English and published in the UK or Ireland. And four other novels have been… Continue reading Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”

A lot of people would put Kingsley Amis’s modern classic Lucky Jim in this slot, and I did find that novel to be an impressive sendup of academic life and a withering lampooning of pretentiousness—and, truth to say, if I were to do a second list of “The Next 100 Most Lovable Novels in the English Language,”… Continue reading Martin Amis’s “Money: A Suicide Note”

Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age novel has never been out of print in the hundred and fifty years since its first publication in two parts in 1868-69. Generations of women have grown up and been inspired by the four March sisters Meg, Beth, Amy, and especially by the independent spirited and passionately ambitious Jo. Helen Keller… Continue reading Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”

Watership Down is another novel that doesn’t often appear on these kinds of lists, probably because it’s thought of essentially as a children’s book, or at least YA. But the book won the Library Association’s  Carnegie Medal in 1972, recognizing it as the best children’s book of the year. It also won the Guardian Prize in the… Continue reading Richard Adams’ “Watership Down”