Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
I live in New York City, the stories of my films take place in New York; I'm a New York filmmaker.
Spike Lee
http://www.brainyquote.com/...
Considering the attention I was paying to New York this past weekend, I decided it was time to pay homage to stories about the city. I do have to mention one author I know is from the state, too. Our own Daily Kos author, Karen Schwabach, whose children’s books include:
Hope Chest
Pickpocket’s Tale (set in New York before it was called New York)
Storm Before Atlanta
Another Daily Kos author whose book is set in New York:
Hiding Places - Lyn Miller-Lachmann (1987)
I couldn’t resist posting this letter considering that if I ever get to visit New York, I would be a stranger. Mark Twain writes a letter:
SATURDAY, Nov. 8.
To THE EDITOR OF THE SUN - Sir: Doubtless you city people do not mind having your feelings hurt and your self-love blistered for your horse car and elevated road service train you to patience and humble-mindedness, but with us hayseed folk from the back settlements the case is different. We are so delicate, so sensitive -- well, you would never be able to imagine what it is like. An unkind speech shrivels us all up and often makes us cry. Now, the thing which happened today a New Yorker would not mind in the least; but I give you my word it almost made me want to go away and be at rest in the cold grave.
I stepped aboard a red Sixth avenue horse car -- No. 106 -- at Sixth avenue and Forty-second street at 11:45 this morning, bound down town. Of course there was no seat -- there never is: New Yorkers do not require a seat, but only permission to stand up and look meek, and be thankful for such little rags of privilege as the good horse-car company may choose to allow them. I stood in the door, behind three ladies. After a moment, the conductor, desiring to pass through and see the passengers, took me by the lapel and said to me with that winning courtesy and politeness which New Yorkers are so accustomed to: "Jesus Christ! what you want to load up the door for? Git back here out of the way!" Those ladies shrank together under the shock, just the same as I did; so I judged they were country people. This conductor was a person about 30 years old, I should say, five feet nine, with blue eyes, a small, dim, unsuccessful mustache, and the general expression of a chicken thief -- you may probably have seen him.
I urged him to modify his language, I being from the country and sensitive. He looked upon me with cold and heartless scorn, thus hurting me still more. I said I would report him, and asked him for his number. He said, in a tone which wounded me more than I can tell, "I'll give you a chew of tobacco."
Why, dear sir, if conductors were to talk to us like that out in the country we could never, never bear to ride with them, we are so sensitive. I went up to Sixth avenue and Forty-third street to report him, but there was nobody in the superintendent's office who seemed to want to converse with me. A man with "conductor" on his cap said it wouldn't be any use to try to see the President at that time of day, and intimated by his manner, not his words, that people with complaints were not popular there, any way.
So I have been obliged to come to you, you see. What I wanted to say to the President of the road was this -- and through him say it to the President of the elevated roads -- that the conductors ought to be instructed never to swear at country people except when there are no city ones to swear at, and not even then except for practice. Because the country people are sensitive. Conductors need not make any mistakes; they can easily tell us from the city people. Could you use your influence to get this small and harmless distinction made in our favor?
MARK TWAIN
- from the New York Sun, November 9, 1890. Titled "An Appeal Against Injudicious Swearing" or "New York Civility" in some reprintings.
http://www.twainquotes.com/...
Wiki has a list of books set in NYC:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
I will list just a few.
What is the use of lists, you wonder? For me, it is a chance for nostalgia. I say, “Oh, I had forgotten that book or I have been meaning to re-read this one.” I also recognize books that friends have mentioned that should go on my reading list.
I hear you say, “You mentioned only one book by my favorite author and it is not his best.” I did sometimes keep only one title and that is why you are needed to comment below. Tell us what their best books are. Tell us about someone I left off the lengthy list or why a certain book about New York really is the best. Tell us which of your favorite books is not set in NY, but is by a NY author or one who lived in NY. Lists do not always catch all the books. For example, Nat Hentoff's books are not on the list and I added one below that is a non-fiction book.
As always, you may talk about any book that is on your mind. I just choose a theme to help us have a discussion.
Many of my readers may live in New York or visit there regularly. It would be fun to hear about favorite places to visit that are associated with NY authors or NY books.
Of course, I have to mention books that are my favorites, first, which are
Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin and the graphic book, Will Eisener’s New York, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, Time and Again by Jack Finney, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon, and Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
I have not read all of these (the ones I have read are in italics). Tell us about your favorites.
Nineteenth century
A History of New York - Washington Irving (1809)
Washington Square - Henry James (1880)
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets - Stephen Crane (1893)
Twentieth century
Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton (1913)
The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton (1920)
Old New York - Edith Wharton (1924)
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
Manhattan Transfer - John Dos Passos (1925)
The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett (1934)
My Sister Eileen - Ruth McKenney (1938)
Laura - Vera Caspary (1943)
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith (1943)
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan - Georges Simenon (1946)
I, the Jury - Mickey Spillane (1947)
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison (1947)
The Victim - Saul Bellow (1947)
The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk (1951)
The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger (1951)
The Caves of Steel - Isaac Asimov (1953)
Marjorie Morningstar - Herman Wouk (1955)
Breakfast at Tiffany's - Truman Capote (1958)
Brown Girl, Brownstones - Paule Marshall (1959)
"Franny and Zooey" - J.D. Salinger (1961)
Another Country - James Baldwin (1962)
The Group - Mary McCarthy (1963)
Joy in the Morning - Betty Smith (1963)
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (1963)
The Chosen - Chaim Potok (1967)
Rosemary's Baby - Ira Levin (1967)
The Godfather - Mario Puzo (1969)
The Taking of Pelham 123 -Morton Freedgood (1973)
Time and Again - Jack Finney (1970)
Enemies - Isaac Bashevis Singer (1972)
Looking for Mr. Goodbar - Judith Rossner (1975)
Sophie's Choice - William Styron (1976)
A Contract with God - Will Eisner (1978)
Will Eisner's New York: Life in the Big City: New York, The Building, City People Notebook, Invisible People
The Stand - Stephen King (1978)
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - Stephen King (1982)
Last Angry Man - Gerald Green (1983)
Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney (1984)
Neuromancer - William Ford Gibson (1984)
Blood Music - Greg Bear (1985)
Flood - Andrew Vachss (1985)
The New York Trilogy - Paul Auster (1985-86)
Banana Fish (manga series) - Akimi Yoshida (1985-1994)
The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe (1987)
Billy Bathgate - E.L. Doctorow (1990)
Children of the Night - Mercedes Lackey (1990)
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love - Oscar Hijuelos (1990)
Skinny Legs and All - Tom Robbins (1990)
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis (1991)
The First Wives Club - Olivia Goldsmith (1992)
The Alienist - Caleb Carr (1995)
One Coffee With - Margaret Maron (1995)
Winter's Tale - Mark Helprin (1995)
World's Fair - E.L. Doctorow (1996)
The Book of Night With Moon - Diane Duane (1997)
Snow in August - Pete Hamill (1997)
The Hours - Michael Cunningham (1998)
Liberty Falling - Nevada Barr (1999)
Twenty-First Century
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon (2000)
City of God - E.L. Doctorow (2000)
The Princess Diaries (series) - Meg Cabot (2000)
The Grand Complication - Allen Kurzweil (2001)
Shopaholic Takes Manhattan - Sophie Kinsella (2002)
Three Junes - Julia Glass (2002)
The Devil Wears Prada - Lauren Weisberger (2003)
Imitation in Death -J.D. Robb (2003)
Oracle Night - Paul Auster (2003)
Small Town - Lawrence Block (2003)
Between Two Rivers - Nicholas Rinaldi (2004)
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion (2005)
Rise and Shine - Anna Quindlen (2006)
New York - Edward Rutherfurd (2009)
Our Children are Dying by Nat Hentoff (I added to list)
Books for children
1870s
Eight Cousins - Louisa May Alcott (1874)
Rose in Bloom (sequel to Eight Cousins) - Louisa May Alcott
1940s
Stuart Little - E.B. White (1945)
The Matchlock Gun - Walter D. Edmonds (1941)
1950s
Eloise - Kay Thompson (1955)
1960s
The Cricket in Times Square - George Selden (1960)
It's Like This, Cat - Emily Cheney Neville (1963)
Harriet the Spy - Louise Fitzhugh (1964)
The Long Secret - Louise Fitzhugh (1965)
Noonday Friends - Mary Slattery Stolz (1965)
The Jazz Man - Mary Hays Weik (1966)
The Contender - Robert Lipsyte (1967)
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg (1967)
Jennifer, Hecate, MacBeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizabeth - E.L. Konigsburg (1967)
The Young Unicorns - Madeleine L'Engle (1968)
"A Girl Called Al" - Constance Greene (1969)
1970s
Freaky Friday - Mary Rodgers (1972)
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing - Judy Blume (1972)
1980s
Sarah Bishop - Scott O'Dell (1980)
Superfudge - Judy Blume (1980)
So You Want to Be a Wizard - Diane Duane (1983)
The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline - Lois Lowry (1983)
Hiding Places - Lyn Miller-Lachmann (1987)
1990s
The Pigman and Me - Paul Zindel (1991)
Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway? - Avi (1992)
The Thief from Five Points - Louise Fitzhugh (1995)
Lily's Crossing - Patricia Reilly Giff (1997)
Journey to Ellis Island - Carol Bierman (1998)
Diaries of the week:
Write On! What is literary fiction?
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Climate CoLab: Brainstorming Global Climate Change
by gmoke
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Open Source Global Outcome Simulation Games
by gmoke
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Pro-Evolutionary Theology: 19th-Century Voices
by dirkster42
http://www.dailykos.com/...
My Favorite Authors/Books: Annie Dillard (The Written Word is Weak)
by Garrett
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Books That Changed My Life: September Sign-up
by aravir
http://www.dailykos.com/...
plf515 has a book talk on Wednesday mornings early.
sarahnity’s list of DKos authors
http://www.dailykos.com/...