Monday, July 19, 2010

Ten of the best card games in literature

For the Guardian, John Mullan named ten of the best card games in literature.

One title on the list:
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

Young Pip is invited by rich Miss Havisham to play cards with beautiful Estella and to be mocked. "'He calls the knaves Jacks, this boy!' said Estella with disdain." The contest is torment. "She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong." Naturally he falls for her.
Read about another novel on the list.

Great Expectations also made Tony Parsons' list of the top ten troubled males in fiction, John Mullan's ten best list of fights in fiction, David Nicholls' top ten list of literary tear jerkers, and numbers among Kurt Anderson's five most essential books. It is #1 on Melissa Katsoulis' list of "twenty-five films that made it from the book shelf to the box office with credibility intact."

--Marshal Zeringue