I have some interesting additions to my list of a half-dozen crimes-and-punishments novels for 2011. (See my previous posting where I explain that the list of a half-dozen serves as the foundation upon which other authors and titles will be added.)

Fred, someone I enjoy hearing from because he knows quite a bit about good literature, offers the following short list:

Fyodor Dostoevsky – The Brothers Karamazov; Eliot Pattison — Skull Mantra; Arthur Conan Doyle — The Hound of the Baskervilles; Michael Gregorio — Critique of Criminal Reason; Agatha Christie — Nemesis; and P.

It is time for me to join quite few other bloggers at other sites (too numerable to mention here) in an interesting exercise:

List the ten most influential books in your life.

So, without further elaboration or foundation, and without excessive deliberation except to note that this becomes something like an autobiographical exercise, I offer my humble list with the briefest of explanations for each title:

The Holy Bible: As a child, I lived in a Christ-haunted fundamentalist home where the church and the Bible were the foundations upon which many of my early thoughts were formed.

The Temptation of the Impossible:

Victor Hugo and Les Misérables

Mario Vargas Llosa

John King, translator

Princeton University Press

232 pages

Hardcover $24.95

978-0-691-13111-5

Here, in this compelling book, readers can enjoy the fascinating encounter between two literary giants: Mario Vargas Llosa and Victor Hugo.

Creators:
From Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney
by Paul Johnson
HarperCollins, March 2006
ISBN 0-06-019143-0
Hardcover

Paul Johnson—the celebrated journalist, historian, and author of many books including the personally recommended Intellectuals, The Birth of the Modern, and The Quest for God—once again challenges and delights inquisitive readers with Creators: From Chaucer and Dürer to Picasso and Disney.