SPUNKY KIDS
Name the spirited children and the novels,
stories or plays in which they appear and
WIN the books!
•
Current Contest
Test your literary knowledge by trying the previous
quizzes (answers available).
•
Previous Contest
On Twitter now:
Features of note:
How the 1,000 choices were selected
•
Editor Eric's Criteria
The history and definition of science fiction
•
What counts as SF?
Most of what you read in English was not written in English. Does it matter?
•
Finding the best translations
Much ado about
William Shakespeare:
Who was the Bard? And what was he really on about?
•
William
Shakespeare
Did Shakespeare of Stratford really
write those plays? Or were they penned by Bacon, or
Marlowe, or...?
•
The
controversy
What he wrote and what really happened:
Shakespeare's histories
•
How he
changed history
Mark Twain had great fun with the Bard
most celebrated soliloquy
•
Taking
off Shakespeare
Other writers have been talking about
Shakespeare for ages—and some of it is not very nice
•
What
they've been saying
The plays are the things, as someone
once said. Oh, yeah, that was him actually. Here are
commentaries on some of the plays that have made
the Greatest Literature list:
•
Hamlet
•
Henry IV, Part 1
•
Julius Caesar
•
King Lear
•
Macbeth
•
Othello
•
The Merchant of Venice
•
Romeo and Juliet
•
The Tempest
Literature of All Time?
Check out Editor Eric's famous list of the 1,000 greatest literary works in the world—from 2000 BCE to 2000 CE—from Gilgamesh to Get Shorty. Plus more than 300 commentaries on the greatest authors, books, translations and film adaptations.
• The Greatest Lit pages
• Go right to the list
Interim status report
John O'Hara is the Rodney Dangerfield of American literature: he's never got the proper respect and he spent much of his career complaining about it. At best, he's been called a "first-rate second-rate writer".... more
The Misanthrope
The critic of superficiality
The Misanthrope reads at first like one of those overheated old Russian novels in which everyone talks and talks, all very excitedly, while the action happens elsewhere. It's certainly Molière's most reflective play. No wonder it has taken so long to.... more
Alfred Bester
Odd man out in an odd field
Other giants of science fiction who emerged during the genre's Golden Age were notoriously prolific. Isaac Asimov counted over five hundred books in his output, plus hundreds of stories and articles.... more
Other recent book and author updates:Gilgamesh
The Demolished Man
East of Eden
The Grapes of Wrath
•All authors
•All works
Book Lovers
Guide to over 200 films, film series and television productions—from the silly to the authentic—based on the greatest works of literature.
• The Movie pages
Editor Eric's list of the 200 greatest works of speculative and science fiction—the greatest SF stories and novels published on the planet Earth.
• The SF pages
The Greatest
Canadian Literature
The 150 best novels, drama and poetry from writers in the
great white north, plus commentaries on selected books and
Canadian authors.
•
The CanLit pages
Toronto Reads
Eric's reviews of Toronto-related books, as published in the
Town Crier community newspapers.
Reluctant Dead
Hanlan's Point
Defiant Spirits
By Love Possessed
• Toronto Reads pages
Let's Put the Beatles Back Together AgainHow to Assemble and Appreciate the 2nd Half of
the Beatles' Legacy
A new book by Jeff Walker,
author of The Ayn Rand Cult
The Unknown Beatles
Has the myth of their breakup in 1970 kept you from appreciating their later recordings? See Editor
Eric's re-imagining of the Beatles' story, inspired by Jeff Walker's work.
•
The Beatles
1970-2002
Critical thinking to sort out fact from fiction.
• Editor Eric's guide to popular skepticism