SPUNKY KIDS
Name the spirited children and the novels,
stories or plays in which they appear and
WIN the books!
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Current Contest
Test your literary knowledge by trying the previous
quizzes (answers available).
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Previous Contest
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Features of note:
How the 1,000 choices were selected
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Editor Eric's Criteria
The history and definition of science fiction
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What counts as SF?
Most of what you read in English was not written in English. Does it matter?
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Finding the best translations
Much ado about
William Shakespeare:
Who was the Bard? And what was he really on about?
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William
Shakespeare
Did Shakespeare of Stratford really
write those plays? Or were they penned by Bacon, or
Marlowe, or...?
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The
controversy
What he wrote and what really happened:
Shakespeare's histories
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How he
changed history
Mark Twain had great fun with the Bard
most celebrated soliloquy
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Taking
off Shakespeare
Other writers have been talking about
Shakespeare for ages—and some of it is not very nice
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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:
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Hamlet
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Henry IV, Part 1
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Julius Caesar
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King Lear
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Macbeth
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Othello
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The Merchant of Venice
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Romeo and Juliet
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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
Daughter dearest
If your exposure to James M. Cain was his earlier short novels, like The Postman Always Rings Twice or Double Indemnity, or if it came via the 1945 Joan Crawford film adaptation of this novel, then you may be pleasantly surprised by Mildred Pierce.... more
Finnegans Wake
The great joke
"Science split the atom and Joyce split the word." This summary of progress in the first half of the twentieth century has often been stated in reference to Finnegans Wake. Joyce chops up words and fuses the syllables together again in new ways that supposedly.... more
John O'Hara
Interim status reportJohn 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
Other recent book and author updates: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.
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The Beatles
1970-2002
Critical thinking to sort out fact from fiction.
• Editor Eric's guide to popular skepticism