A, B, C, etc... etc.... Z

There's a fun meme I saw floating around today (first on Literary Musings, who got it from A Guy's Moleskin Notebook) which asks you to list your favorite title form each letter of the alphabet. It's actually quite hard, and I took a few liberties:

A Atonement by Ian McEwan

B Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

C Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dosteyvski/ Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

D Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje

E Everything's Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

F Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

G Going to See the Elephant by Rodes Fishburne

H The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende

I Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

J Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

K Kavalier and Clay; The Amazing Adventure of by Michael Chabon (streeetch)

L Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

M Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

N Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell

O One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

P A Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Q All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (love teaching more than reading it)

R The Road by Cormac McCarthy

S The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

T Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle

U Understanding Linguistics by Elizabeth Grace Winkler (I actually enjoyed it)

V A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

W The World According to Garp by John Irving

X (E)Xtremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (cheater)

Y (My) Year of Meat by Ruth Ozecki

Z Zadie Smith's writing (you know... in general)

At one point in this process I considered listing my books in alphabetical order by title. It actually makes sense, but will never, ever happen.

Photo Credit: A-Z Bookends

Love Me Some Homoerotic Victorian Lit

In honor of new, uncensored The Picture of Dorian Gray that was released earlier this month, I'd like to climb on my soapbox for a second. I really, really hate the phrase "that's so gay." I'm a heterosexual woman, but I still find the phrase so offensive. What is it supposed to mean? When I hear it in context it's usually being used a synonym for lame, feminine, or corny. It's distasteful and rude.

Okay, I'm done. Well, at least until I receive my copy of And Tango Makes Three next week from Amazon (I fell off the wagon, but had a gift card) and go on and on about book banning and gay penguins.

For those who aren't familiar with The Picture of Dorian Gray by one of my favorite Victorian writers Oscar Wilde, it's about a man so obsessed with youth he wishes a painting would age instead of his actual body. When this actually happens he becomes a very, very naughty boy, partaking in activities that would make the fragile Victorians readers faint (alcohol, drugs, promiscuity, and homosexuality). Wilde's publisher of course toned it down, deciding to cut out most of the homoeroticism. This summary doesn't do the book justice, by the way, so please read it if you have not.

Now, 120 years later, editor Nicholas Frankel is publishing a more uncensored version, adding in more of the original text, as well as a great deal of annotation. Will it be raunchy by today's standards? I highly doubt it. Will it be that much longer of a text? No, rumor has it only five hundred additional words. But, in a time where steps have been taken to "clean up" certain classics, is it a good thing? Absofuckinglutely.