This puts even my meanness to shame

I'm at a loss for words after reading this news article:

Man lets girlfriend languish in jail for days A MISERLY German left his girlfriend to languish in prison for more than two weeks - because he didn't want to pay the measly fine. Magdalena Czerwinska, 34, was sentenced to 15 days in prison for theft but was told she could pay a fine instead and walk free. But when she called her lover Max Schuster and asked him to pay the fine for her he refused and said he would rather save the $390 for himself. A police spokesman in Wanne-Eickel said: "He said he didn't feel like coming to pay the fine and so she is still stuck in jail. "People are very worried in the current economic climate and they have to make whatever savings they can. He saw not paying the fine as a simple saving." It is not clear if Mr Schuster and Czerwinska will stay together when she gets out of prison.

 

Earth Hour 2009

Buoyed by the success of Earth Hour 2008, World Wildlife Fund Australia (WWF) declared at a press conference today,

“It is with great pleasure and pride that we have witnessed the coming together of a critical mass of people worldwide who are keen to demonstrate their participation in reducing carbon emissions produced by fuel-based electricity generation. Earth Hour 2008 has been a resounding success in raising the awareness of how just a little effort can result in so much visibility, and we must continue to remind ourselves endlessly.

“In answer to criticisms that Earth Hour is a hollow gesture and the impact on the environment negligible, WWF has decided to take the next step in harnessing the momentum we have gathered for Earth Hour 2009, and introduce the following changes:

“We now ask you who have signed up to make a real effort in conserving electricity as well as reducing our reliance on fuel-based electricity generation.

“Instead of merely switching off the lights and non-essential equipment for an hour, we want you to go to sleep an hour early every night. This in itself will render lights, TVs, video game consoles, etc. non-essential for that hour, and can therefore be switched off. This behavioral trend will also gradually starve the nightlife trade, which in turn will bring about more savings when late night bars begin to close early, and close up shop full stop. We realise and acknowledge that socialising is essential to us as human beings, but we can always choose to change our habits and rearrange our schedules such that socialising happens earlier in the evening, and reject the overuse of electricity for mere considerations of convenience and comfort. Real progress come at a price.

“We also ask that you make a hour of real effort during the next 12 months by heading down to one of the special gyms – a list of which is available on our Web site – that are equipped with cycles, treadmills and weight-training equipment that converts the energy you spend working out into electricity, which is then transferred to a storage facility. Once you have generated a certain quota of electricty, equivalent to an hour of hard cycling, you will receive a certificate of achievement that will gain you admittance to the official Earth Hour 2009 celebration event in your city next March. Of course, you are more than welcome to generate more than that. We also offer monthly and annual gym memberships, for either set fees – relatively higher than industry standards, but all profits will go towards future Earth Hour advertising and events, after we recoup the cost of developing and installing the special training equipment – or for contracts to generate fixed units of electricity through your gym activity. We like to think in win-win terms.

“National governments can now also sign up for Earth Hour, by agreeing to an undertaking to stop production of missiles, bombs and other products in their armament factories and defence laboratories. You cannot begin to fathom how much electricity those facilities consume!

“Earth Hour 2009 will remain a solely self-congratulatory celebration held at a time convenient for participants, who can then spent the entire hour in guilt-free backslapping each other instead of doing something productive towards the cause. After all, lots of people are motivated by self-interest and personal gains only; to make an effort towards benefitting the world at large, without the promise of profit, recognition or bragging rights is to go against nature.

“There is a rumour that WWF will ask all television stations to suspend broadcast and switch off their transmission equipment for an hour during Earth Hour 2009. That is unfounded and simply not true. They give us free publicity, just as you are reporting this now, because there is something for them to gain. We are not stupid, really.

“We look forward to your continued support. Thank you.”

Mrs Mean's Top 100

Mr Mean and I have talked about it, and we thought we could do better than those at Borders at organising a Top 100 World's Best Fabricator's List. After all, there's was over 10% graphic novels, and they doubled up on the Jane Austen novel Emma. Not to say that graphic novels cannot be well done or popular, but I think that over 10% is somewhat exaggerating their overall importanec to literary contribution over the centuries and somewhat diminishes the diversity of range in the prize.

So Mr Mean and I set ourselves a task - we had to each come up with a Top 100 List. There were certain restrictions:

a) all books had to be available, currently, for instance from Borders or Amazon
b) Only one book per author
c) All books had to be fiction

We'd try to come up with lists that would be a "good prize for someone".

And it's not as easy as it seems. I was stumped trying to think of what books I'd choose. many just didn't seem good enough to make the cut, and I really wanted to pick a few from the same author! I knew there were some books I wouldn't mind having, but I know some of my tastes are esoteric to say the least. I knew there were some books that many people buy frequently, but it's not like they would be what I'd call "a good literary prize" - and if you let them in, why them and not every other person who writes a bargain table pulp fiction piece?

I mainly stuck to novels, though there is a tiny bit of poetry and two items are plays.

I think my list shows a lot of bias, but hey: What list wouldn't?

1. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare – William Shakespeare
2. The Real Inspector Hound – Tom Stoppard
3. Browning: Poems - Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning
4. Sophie’s World – Jostein Gaarder
5. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
6. Possession: A Romance – A.S. Byatt
7. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
8. The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai
9. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
10. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
11. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzeee
12. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
13. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
14. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
15. Small Island – Andrea Levy
16. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
17. 1984 – George Orwell
18. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
19. The Complete Novels of Jane Austen – Jane Austen
20. The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens
21. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
22. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
23. Youth/Heart of Darkness/The End of the Tether – Joseph Conrad
24. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
25. The Dubliners – James Joyce
26. Tess of the D’Urbevilles – Thomas Hardy
27. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
28. Lady Chatterley’s Lover - D.H. Lawrence
29. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
30. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
31. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
32. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
33. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
34. Oscar & Lucinda – Peter Carey
35. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
36. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
37. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
38. Cloudstreet – Tim Winton
39. The Remains of The Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
40. Magician – Raymond E. Feist
41. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
42. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
43. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
44. The Lord of The Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
45. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
46. American Gods – Neil Gaiman
47. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Phillip K. Dick
48. Neuromancer – William Gibson
49. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
50. The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin
51. War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
52. Misery – Stephen King
53. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
54. Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
55. The Magus – John Fowles
56. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
57. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
58. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
59. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
60. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
61. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
62. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
63. The Odyssey - Homer
64. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
65. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
66. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell - Susannah Clarke
67. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
68. Dracula - Bram Stoker
69. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
70. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
71. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
72. Perfume - The Story of A Murderer - Patrick Suskind
73. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
74. For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway
75. Where Angels Fear to Tread - E.M. Forster
76. The Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
77. Gulliver's Travels - Jonathan Swift
78. Around The World In 80 Days – Jules Verne
79. Middlemarch - George Eliot
80. The Sea – John Banville
81. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
82. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
83. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay – Michael Chabon
84. Murder on The Orient Express – Agatha Christie
85. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
86. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
87. Maestro – Peter Goldsworthy
88. So Much to Tell You - John Marsden
89. Looking for Alibrandi – Melina Marchetta
90. All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
91. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint Exupery
92. Watership Down - Richard Adams
93. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodges Burnet
94. Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery
95. The Phantom Tollbooth – Norton Juster
96. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass – Lewis Carroll
97. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 and 3 ¾ - Sue Townsend
98. Two Weeks With The Queen - Morris Gleitzman
99. Tiger Eyes - Judy Blume
100. The BFG – Roald Dahl

Revised list of 100 fiction titles by the world's best fabricators

Here's to idle minds.

If I was to put together a list of 100 (English-language) fiction titles as a prize package, similar to what Borders gave away in the World's Best Fabricators: Win a bookcase to brag about competition (which I won) last year – but an ‘improvement’ on their selection – what would the list look like?

These are some (arbitrary) guidelines that I'll follow:

1. Make no undue assumptions about the recipient(s) of the prize, eg. their age, gender, interests or prior reading history. (I will assume, however, that they understand written English and can read from a regular, physical book.)

2. Endeavour to cover different genres and periods, and maintain some semblance of gender balance of the authors.

3. Do not include more than one title from each author (even if they only served as co-authors).

4. Allow ‘well-known’ titles that have been translated into English from a foreign language, where the importance of the author and/or title warrants it.

5. Include only titles that are readily available new from a ‘major’ publisher, and exclude titles that are out-of-print, or has to be ordered direct from the author or are sold via web sales only. (I'll use availability of new copies from Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk as a basic test.)

6. Assume this is a starter collection for a personal library, and it should encourage the recipient(s) to build on it; hence, it is sufficient to include the first stand-alone title in a series, but not so to include only the first volume of a multi-volume work if the entire book is available in a single volume.

OK, let's begin. Given I don't generally follow literary news, I shall start with picking some authors and/or titles of note – which I may or may not have read or even heard of before this exercise – by checking out winners of prestigious literary awards.

From Nobel Prize for Literature winners:

1. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature [which I'll denote as NPL] 2007, and one of Times magazine's list of best 100 English-language novels published since 1923 [TMB100].

2. Life and Times of Michael K by J.M. Coetzee

NPL 2003 and two-time winner of the Man Booker Prize — once for this title.

3. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk

NPL 2006, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2003

4. Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

NPL 2000

5. The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

NPL 2004, Franz Kafka Prize [FKP] 2004

(I vaguely remember bringing my copy of this to read while I was on the river cruise in Europe, and didn't think enough of it to bring it back with me, but ‘donated’ it to the cruise ship library instead. It was less memorable to me than the movie. That, however, didn't stop me from including this title here; besides, it helps with the gender balance thing.)

Other Man Booker Prize [MBP] winners:

6. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

MBP 1981, and “Booker of Bookers” award in 1993

(Originally I'd wanted to include The Satanic Verses, as well as American Psycho, for reason of the famous controversies they sparked, but I didn't think that made The Satanic Verses a better book – or a better choice for inclusion – than Midnight's Children.)

7. Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

MBP 1988 (from the only other two-time MBP winner), Miles Franklin Award 1989

8. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

MBP 2000, TMB100

(I'd wanted to include The Handmaid's Tale instead because I like dystopian novels, and it had won the inaugural Arthur C. Clarke Award [ACCA] in 1987 besides.)

9. Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt

MBP 1990, TMB100T

(Trying to maintain gender balance of authors here.)

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction [PPF] winners:

10. The Known World by Edward P. Jones

PPF 2004, IMPAC 2005

11. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx

PPF 1994

12. The Hours by Michael Cunningham

PPF 1999

It's been noted that Elfriede Jelinek and Harold Pinter, both FKP winners, went on to win the NPL, so I'm including the following as well as a “watch this space” entry:

13. Kafka on Shore by Haruki Murakami

FKP 2006, World Fantasy Award 2006

While I'm at it, let me add another two vaguely science fiction/fantasy books that are considered to be mainstream literature:

14. The Separation by Christopher Priest

ACCA 2003

(I want to include Christopher Priest, and while I've read and liked The Prestige – which won WFA 1996 – I wanted to avoid ‘just’ picking titles that have been made into movies, and I have a thing for ‘alternate history’ novels anyway.)

15. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

TMB100 (Ishiguro won a MBP, but not for this title.)

Now, before I move onto SF/fantasy proper (and probably get carried away), I want to include several epic poems, from different periods:

16. Iliad by Homer

17. Beowulf

18. The Divine Comedy by Dante

19. Paradise Lost by John Milton

20. The Changing Light at Sandover by James Merrill

    While we're on epics, let me add:

21. Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory

22. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

23. Musashi by Eiji Yoshikawa

and throw in some newer historical or ‘alternate history’ novels as well:

24. I, Claudius by Robert Graves

TMB100

25. Gates of Fire by Stephen Pressfield

26. The Alchemy of Fire by Gillian Bradshaw

27. The Other Boelyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

28. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

29. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

Hugo Award 1963

Which, of course, leads me to SF/fantasy, and I'll do my best to limit myself to less than 20 celebrated examples of the genre(s). Let's begin with the ‘Big Three’ of ‘hard SF’, and I'll try and pick titles that are award-winning works but not their early claims to fame:

30. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

Hugo Award 1962

(Heinlein has won two Hugo Awards prior, and another two after this.)

31. The Gods Themselves by Issac Asimov

Hugo and Nebula awards 1973

(Asimov was arguably best known for the Foundation series and I, Robot.)

32. Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Hugo and Nebula awards 1974

(Clarke was arguably best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey.)

Given SF/fantasy was largely dominated by male authors (and that impression persists today), I want to include where possible prominent female authors of the genre with multiple Hugo and/or Nebula Award-winning titles:

33. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

Hugo and Nebula awards 1970

(Le Guin was the first female author to a Hugo or an Nebula awards, and she has gone on to win more of either.)

34. The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

Hugo and Nebula awards 1993

35. Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh

Hugo Award 1989

36. The Moon and the Sun by Vonda N. McIntyre

Nebula Award 1998

(Since I can't get Dreamsnake, for which McIntyre won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards in 1979, from Amazon.)

37. The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature 2002

(LMB has won the Hugo Award for best novel four times, but not for The Curse of Chalion, for which it was also nominated. Its sequel, The Paladin of Souls, went on to win both the Hugo and the Nebula awards.)

Now, onto specific titles:

38. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein

TMB100

39. The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan

(I hear this is very good, although the same is not said for the later titles in the series. The series is now up to Book Eleven, so I guess this is a sweetener to make up for giving away the complete LoTR above, if the prize winner is of a mind to spend money on expanding his library.)

40. Neuromancer by William Gibson

Hugo and Nebula awards 1985, TMB100

41. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Hugo and Nebula awards 1986

(Its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, won both Hugo and Nebula awards in 1987.)

42. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Hugo award 2002, Nebula award 2003

43. The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson

Hugo award 1996

44. Peace and War by Joe Halderman

Hugo and Nebula awards 1976 (for The Forever War), Hugo award 1998 and Nebula award 1999 (for Forever Peace)

(This is actually a compilation of three of Halderman's novels: The Forever War, Forever Free, and Forever Peace. The three-in-one volume is comparable in price to other paperback fiction titles, so I think I'll throw in the lot. Besides, I can't resist having both War and Peace and Peace and War in the list.)

45. The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson

(A geek favourite and, according to Wikipedia, “a seminal work of conspiracy fiction.”)

46. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

(Which respectable collection of SF can afford to be without this?)

47. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman

(Everybody's new favourite, it seems.)

Taking the lead from Borders, I'll also include a few notable graphic novels:

48. A Contract with God by Will Eisner

(The prototypical, landmark graphic novel.)

49. The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

Pulitzer Prize Special Award 1992

50. Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Hugo award (for ‘other forms’) 1988, TMB100

51. Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller

(I've chosen to include this rather than Sin City.)

Damn, it's been tiring to just get to this point, and I'm only halfway down the list! Oh, horror:

52. The Shining by Stephen King

OK, more of my personal preferences showing here: I'm not much for modern/medical horror, and much prefer gothic horror/suspense/romance:

53. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice

54. Dracula by Bram Stoker

55. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

56. Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley

57. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe

58. The Monk by Matthew Gregory Lewis

59. The Italian by Ann Radcliffe

which leads us into classics territory:

60. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo

61. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

62. Justine by the Marquis de Sade

63. Vilette by Charlotte Brontë

64. Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

65. The Awakening by Kate Chopin

66. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Add some ‘modern classics’ to the list:

67. My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

68. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

69. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence

70. The Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

71. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

TMB100

72. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

TMB100

73. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

(This makes the list, just because.)

Time for some more dystopian novels:

74. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

75. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

76. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

TMB100

Now, a few more titles from whom I think of as authors of note:

77. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

(I just have to have Rebecca, you see.)

78. The Magus by John Fowles

79. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco

80. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Again, taking the lead from Borders, several ‘thrillers’ from different sub-genres:

81. Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow

82. Primal Fear by William Diehl

83. The Firm by John Grisham

84. Along Came a Spider by James Patterson

85. The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

86. The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum

87. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

88. Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell

89. Déjà Dead by Kathy Reichs

and who can fail to include Sherlock Holmes, the granddaddy of whodunnits?

90. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Some books for children (and young adults) could be nice, too:

91. The Little Prince by Antonie Saint-Exupéry

92. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

TMB100 for The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe

93. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

94. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

95. The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket

96. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling

97. The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Now, just to be whimsical, I'll add:

98. The Lady and the Chocolate by Edward Monkton

Given we are talking about the world's best fabricators, I guess even if I've been told including the Bible is not on, I can't pass up mentioning L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology. It might be crap, but there are many people around the world who bought it! Just so we can see, after 50 years in the business of fabrication of events and stories, what he came up with, especially when I had quite a list of good SF up above against which to compare this:

99. Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard

(Don't worry, it's only one copy of it, and the Church of Scientology is rich enough as it is, so the profit they get from the sales of one extra copy is not worth worrying about.)

Finally, while I'm not really a big fan of the Bard, I guess he deserves a place on the list:

100. William Shakespeare: The Complete Works

What would your list look like?