Celebrating International Literacy Day with Stephen King

Greetings to our blog readers in Italy, Ukraine, and Sweden.

We are thrilled to see that someone from the coastal African nation of Gabon has checked out our blog!

Today is International Literacy Day, so we thought we'd post a random list of ten novels we need to read again as we listen to Depeche Mode:

1) Misery. Stephen King. 1987 (pict. top)

2) Choke. Chuck Palahniuk. 2001 (pict. center)

3) Bright Lights, Big City. Jay McInerney (pict. bottom)

4) The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald. 1925.

5) The Chosen. Chaim Potok. 1967.

6) The Hours. Michael Cunnigham. 1998.

7) The Breakfast of Champions. Kurt Vonnegut. 1973.

8) Netherland. Joseph O'Neill. 2008. (The author is half-Irish, and half-Turkish)

9) Deliverance. James Dickey. 1970. 

10) Chilly Scenes of Winter. Anne Beattie. 1976.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com

http://www.internationalliteracyday.com

http://www.jaymcinerney.com

http://www.hplct.org (Hartford Public Library; McInerney was born in the Connecticut capital)/

Quote of the Moment- Jay McInerney

Today, we continue our series of quotes from famous people from New England with a quip by Jay McInerney (b.1955, Hartford, Conn.) who is best-known for his break-through novel "Bright Ligths, Big City," a contemporary literary classic which was published when he was only 29 years old in 1984. The film became the basis for a Michael J. Fox movie of the same name is 1988, which wasn't successful partly because Fox was miscast as Robert Redford has been for the 1974 film version of "The Great Gatsby."

Other McInerney novels include "The Story of My Life" (1988) and "The Good Life"
(2006). "The Story of Life" is noteable because it features the character of Alison Poole, who is based on Rielle Hunter, the John Edwards mistress who once dated McInerney.

McInerney is also a contemporary of fellow novelist Bret Easton Ellis ("Less Than Zero," "American Psycho") and Tama Janowitz ("Slaves of New York"), who happens to be an alumnus of Hollins University, which is one of my two collegiate alma maters.

While researching this, we learned that McInerney is now on his fourth marriage, and he is a wine columnist for "The Wall Street Journal," which is having a very bad week due to Rupert Murdoch phone-hacking scandal.

Here is the quote from McInerney; we imagine it is in reference to "The Good Life" which is about the effects of 9/11 on America, ironically the Twin Towers were on the cover of "Bright Ligths, Big City":

"I've always written about the larger social events of the moment. It just seemed like I had to confront this one."