snow

From Antigua to Anniversaries (of Notable Novels)

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A street in Antigua, Guatemala, that has nothing to do with the topic of this literature post. 🙂 (Photo by me on January 8.)

Glad to be back! I missed writing a post last week because of a trip I took with my wife Laurel and younger daughter Maria to Guatemala, where Maria was born. A memorable visit that included stops in Guatemala City, Tikal, Antigua, Panajachel, and Guatemala City again.

Today, as I do every January, I’m going to mention well-known novels — many of which I’ve read, some of which I haven’t — reaching major round-number anniversaries. So, in 2026, novels published in 2001 are turning 25, 1976-released books are turning 50, 1926 novels are turning 100, etc.

The first 2001 novel that came to mind was Richard Russo’s riveting Pulitzer Prize winner Empire Falls, set in a Maine blue-collar town.

Released that year, too, was Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, about a couple and their three adult children. I liked it better than the author’s much-touted Freedom, though that 2010 novel was pretty good as well.

Also, Yann Martell’s Life of Pi, which features a boy stranded on a boat with a tiger after a shipwreck; Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, which has a lot to say about female relationships as well as racism; Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto, a riveting look at a mass-hostage situation; Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter, about a Chinese-American woman and her immigrant mother; Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which I found both compelling and annoying; John Grisham’s semi-autobiographical A Painted House; Neil Gaiman’s fantasy tour de force American Gods; and Jasper Fforde’s clever The Eyre Affair.

Kristin Hannah’s peak as an author was yet to arrive, but her somewhat-early-in-career 2001 novel Summer Island was quite absorbing as it focused on a fraught mother-daughter relationship and rapprochement.

In the series realm, Diana Gabaldon’s fifth Outlander novel (The Fiery Cross) and Lee Child’s fifth Jack Reacher novel (Echo Burning) came out 25 years ago.

The year 2001 also saw the publication of Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind and Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River, neither of which I’ve read.

In 1976, the most famous release was Alex Haley’s Roots, which was of course the multi-generational American slavery saga about Kunta Kinte and his descendants.

There was also Margaret Atwood’s third novel Lady Oracle, about a woman with multiple identities; and Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, a sci-fi-ish work whose lower-income protagonist is unjustly committed to a psychiatric institution.

Notable 1976 books I haven’t read include Anne Rice’s debut novel Interview with the Vampire and Judith Guest’s made-into-a-memorable-movie Ordinary People.

Exactly a century ago — 1926 — saw the appearance of Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, which I thought was good not great.

An underrated classic that year was L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, about a young woman who gets very bad news that turns out to be very good news.

There was also Colette’s The Last of Cheri, the sequel to the 1920 Cheri novel about the relationship between a younger man and older woman; and My Mortal Enemy, one of Willa Cather’s lesser works.

Well-known 1926 novels I haven’t read include Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Upton Sinclair’s Oil!

Published 150 years ago, in 1876: Mark Twain’s iconic The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, about a rascally boy and his friend Huckleberry Finn.

That year also saw the release of Daniel Deronda, George Eliot’s final novel and one of her best. Its title character, who discovers he’s Jewish, interacts with some very memorable people.

In addition, there was Thomas Hardy’s not-famous-but-interesting The Hand of Ethelberta.

Two 1826 highlights were Mary Shelley’s apocalyptic, late-21st-century-set The Last Man and James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans that unfolds in 1757 during the French and Indian War. Two novels with “Last” in the title that lasted.

And in 1726, 300 years ago, Jonathan Swift’s iconic Gulliver’s Travels was published!

Any thoughts on the novels I discussed? Any other titles you’d like to mention from those anniversary years? (I’m sure I missed some.)

Misty the cat says: “Tofu falling from the sky was not on my 2026 bingo card.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about two meetings, a local anti-ICE protest, and more — is here.

Frigid Fiction

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Much of the U.S. last week experienced record cold temperatures — including a painful 8 degrees Fahrenheit in my town as I wrote this blog post. At least that single-digit number had the silver lining of being 443 degrees short of the burn threshold of books, according to Ray Bradbury.

Of course, the bitter weather made me think of novels in which characters face low temperatures rather than the heat that consumed books in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. And I’m aware of having penned a somewhat similar piece about wintry literature five years ago for The Huffington Post (which treated its bloggers and commenters…coldly), but this piece has lots of new material and was written from scratch.

Among other literary attributes, cold weather and its often-accompanying dose of snow help create drama — with sheer survival sometimes at stake. Wintry fiction also makes us lament that the non-affluent are affected more by the elements than the rich. And for those reading cold-filled novels in warm homes or warm climes, it’s all vicarious — we’re not the ones freezing.

Russian novels are obviously among the first books that come to mind when thinking of fictional works with bone-chilling scenes in some or all their pages. These novels include, among many others, Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (just ask Napoleon), Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The House of the Dead, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich — with the second and fourth of those books set in Siberian prison camps.

Then there are Scandinavian novels (a number of them mysteries) with teeth-chattering locales — for instance, Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Peter Hoeg’s Smilla’s Sense of Snow, and John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Harbor.

And Canadian literature has plenty of shivering scenarios in novels ranging from Louise Penny’s How the Light Gets In to Mordecai Richler’s Solomon Gursky Is Dead (Jewish guy among the Eskimos!), to cite just two examples.

But authors from many other countries have obviously also tackled the cold — including Jack London in The Call of the Wild and White Fang, Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre, Herman Melville in Pierre, Edith Wharton in Ethan Frome, Willa Cather in My Antonia, Erich Maria Remarque in Spark of Life, L.M. Montgomery in The Blue Castle, Rita Mae Brown in Rubyfruit Jungle, Donna Tartt in The Secret History, Fannie Flagg in A Redbird Christmas, Jhumpa Lahiri in The Namesake, Audrey Niffenegger in The Time Traveler’s Wife, Maria Semple in Where’d You Go, Bernadette (which actually takes its characters to Antarctica), Joyce Carol Oates in Solstice, Alistair MacLean in Where Eagles Dare, Stephen King in The Shining, Lee Child in the Jack Reacher novel 61 Hours, and Andy Weir in The Martian.

Short stories with cold and snow? Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” (freezing was never so tragically poignant), James Joyce’s “The Dead,” Tolstoy’s “Master and Man,” London’s “To Build a Fire,” etc.!

What are your favorite fictional works with wintry elements?

My 2017 literary-trivia book is described and can be purchased here: Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com. The latest weekly piece — guest-written by my cat 🙂 — is here.