Saturday, April 21, 2012

Joseph Olshan's 6 favorite books

Joseph Olshan is the award-winning author of ten novels including Nightswimmer and The Conversion. He spends most of the year in Vermont.

His latest novel is Cloudland.

One of his six favorite books, as told to The Week magazine:
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

A masterpiece of narrative, characterization, and surprise. At the center of Dickens's great novel is the mystery of Pip's benefactor. When the benefactor is revealed, Pip must re-evaluate everything that has happened in the first half of the novel. As he does this, we are shown a new, tender side of Pip, whom we thought we knew.
Read about another book on the list.

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

Visit Joseph Olshan's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Conversion.

The Page 69 Test: Cloudland.

Writers Read: Joseph Olshan.

--Marshal Zeringue