For the past six years, Missoula Public Library has sponsored a yearly Reading Challenge. Patrons are asked to read one book in each of 50 categories, with suggestions given and links to some actual book-lists in some cases. Some of the categories this year include:
- A Book You’ve Been Meaning to Read
- Body Part in the Title
- Collaborative Authors
- Immigrant Experience
- Natural Science
- Novel by Dickens
- Orange Cover
- Poetry Collection
- Protagonist is a Doctor
- Redheads
For the complete list check here
The category I chose to highlight today is Picaresque, which the Merriam-Webster online dictionary explains that a picaresque novel “centers around a wandering individual of low standing who happens into a series of adventures among people of various higher classes, often relying on his wits and a little dishonesty to get by.” Now doesn’t that sound like fun? Here are some of the suggested titles:
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
In recent years, neither the persistent effort to “clean up” the racial epithets in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn nor its consistent use in the classroom have diminished, highlighting the novel’s wide-ranging influence and its continued importance in American society. An incomparable adventure story, it is a vignette of a turbulent, yet hopeful epoch in American history, defining the experience of a nation in voices often satirical, but always authentic.
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole’s hero is one Ignatius J. Reilly, “huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, and a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original character, denizens of New Orleans’ lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures” (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun Times)
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
Don Quixote is the epic tale of the man from La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza. Their picaresque adventures in the world of seventeenth-century Spain form the basis of one of the great treasures of Western literature.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac’s masterpiece of the Beat era was first published by Penguin Books in 1959 and continues to provide a vital portrait of a generation adrift, as well as inspiration for travelers, dreamers, and artists in every generation that has followed.
Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty—even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.
ANOTHER SUGGESTION:
FIND OUT WHAT IS ON THE SUMMER READING LIST OF YOUR GRANDCHILDREN
I recently noticed that posts may not be arriving on a regular basis, I apologize for the disruption. If I plan to be gone, I schedule posts in advance but did not follow one step in the process last month. So if you want to read what you missed go to the list of posts on the right-hand side of this post.
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