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Fiction about the nation’s capital is a growth that flourishes only on the lower slopes of Parnassus. Think of the flower of our novelists—Updike, Mailer, Roth, Cheever, Bellow—and see if you can call to mind a single scene that is set on the banks of the Potomac. Mailer did a famous nonfiction account of the march on the Pentagon (The Armies of the Night), and Updike briefly created a lifelike President Buchanan, but that second exception proves a more general rule, exemplified by Gore Vidal’s canon: historical reconstruction is the form in which our novelists prefer to approach the matter....

Can anyone recommend some good books of the post-apocolypse-America genre? I read a couple of books that have piqued my interest on the subject. I'm looking for some books that don't encompass zombies or 26th century steam engine building puritans. Thanks in advance.

Hi, everyone! It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" survey. As you know, I consider Freepers to be among the more well-read groups currently on the Internet. Each quart, I like to find out what everyone is reading. It can be anything...a technical journal, a NY Times best-seller, a trashy pulp novel...in short, anything! Please do not ruin this thread by posting something inane like "I'm reading this post". It became very unfunny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm reading a historical biography called "John L Lewis: Labor Leader" by Robert Zieger. I have found...

Was just wondering what the favorite adventure novels are for Freepers out there. Fiction or non-fiction.

Thanks to all those who replied. I received some very good nominations, also some names I wasn't aware of (and then there were the frivolous wastes of time). I still think popular culture is a battlefield for conservatives. One most don't realize. So it's nice to know who is already engaged. Here are my own choices. Tell me what you think: OK Here is my list of the ten greatest conservative filmmakers: 1 -Frank Capra 2- James Carabatsos (script writer as well as producer) 3- Lionel Chetwynde 4- John Ford 5-Elia Kazan 6- John Wayne 7- Clint Eastwood 8- John...

Please name your top ten conservative film makers (fiction not documentaries) and top ten conservatives novelists (fiction only). I'll give you mine afterwards.

Mystery by Ohio science-fiction writer appears 14 years after his death Tuesday, May 12, 2009 3:20 PM SANDUSKY REGISTER SANDUSKY, Ohio -- A mystery novel by a leading science fiction writer from Ohio has been published, decades after it was written and almost 14 years after his death. An agent found the 1971 manuscript by Roger Zelazny two years ago, stored among old papers in a New York warehouse. Hard Case Crime published the text in February under the title The Dead Man's Brother. Zelazny died in 1995 after helping to pioneer "New Wave" science fiction and writing more than...

BEIRUT (AFP) — As Beirut prepares to don the mantle of UNESCO "World Book Capital City 2009," Arabic novels are enjoying an unprecedented boom across the Middle East, breaking taboos on topics such as sex and religion. The Lebanese capital was chosen as the world's literary centre this year "in the light of its focus on cultural diversity, dialogue and tolerance," according to the UNESCO selection committee. There is no shortage of literary fodder as book readings and launches are scheduled across Beirut daily for the last week of April. Among books being showcased will be a wealth of latest...

A few weeks ago I suggested a few non-fiction books that were good reads. Here are some of my suggestions for fiction: Caleb Carr, The Alienist. Carr is trained in history, and this long, but involved, mystery involves a 19th century serial killer in which the detective is just beginning to use some of the forensic tools available to us today. In the process, he encounters Teddy Roosevelt, Jacob Riis, and J. P. Morgan among others. Each has more than a cameo. The Civil War trilogy by Newt Gingrich and Bill Fortschen, Gettysburg, Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat....

Ask the half-Syrian debut novelist Robin Yassin-Kassab to sum up western misconceptions of the Middle East, and he tells a story. In 1996 Yassin-Kassab moved from England, where he grew up with his English mother, to Damascus. The move was an attempt to get in touch with a part of himself that had long been missing: his Arabic heritage. "In Damascus I lived at the end of a short alley," says Yassin-Kassab. "Each morning I'd walk down this alley, and as I passed every door someone would say, 'Hey, Robin! Come in for tea!' It took me half an hour...

WAREHAM, MA -- “Left Behind denies what Bible-readers have believed for centuries," says David A. Reed, author of LEFT BEHIND Answered Verse by Verse. "I'm just giving the preachers of the Reformation an opportunity to reply."   Reed's new book features Martin Luther and John Calvin on the cover, along with illustrious preachers Jonathan Edwards, William Tyndale, John Wesley, John Wycliffe and Charles Haddon Spurgeon – all pointing fingers of condemnation at Tim LaHaye's blockbuster novel Left Behind. "The founders of the Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian and Congregationalist traditions all testify against the teachings of LaHaye's novels," Reed explained.  ...

Potter Author JK Rowling Equates Christians Who Avoid Potter with Islamic Fundamentalists Says "fundamentalists across all the major religions, if you put them in a room, they'd have bags in common! They hate all the same things" By John-Henry Westen EDINBURGH, March 12, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The newly released edition of the Edinburgh University Student newspaper, the oldest student newspaper in the UK, includes an interview with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.  In the interview Rowling claims to have received death threats from Christians opposed to her novels, calling Christian 'fundamentalists' "dangerous" and comparing them by inference to Islamic fundamentalists....

Like John O'Sullivan, I'm currently traveling in Europe and spent [Wednesday, Feb. 28]being asked wherever I went about Bill Buckley. He is an heroic figure to many because he was right about the great question of the second half of the 20th century at a time when far too many in the West thought it boorish and vulgar to be: As a character in one of his last novels tells a self-regarding liberal, "The kind of people who have offended you since you were at college are the people who won the Cold War." Bill was not a shrill man...

Tokyo:Until recently, cellphone novels — composed on phone keypads by young women wielding dexterous thumbs and read by fans on their tiny screens — had been dismissed in Japan as a subgenre unworthy of the country that gave the world its first novel, "The Tale of Genji," a millennium ago. Then last month, the year-end best-seller tally showed that cellphone novels, republished in book form, have not only infiltrated the mainstream but have come to dominate it. Of last year's 10 best-selling novels, five were originally cellphone novels, mostly love stories written in the short sentences characteristic of text messaging...

Best-selling writer Ira Levin, whose novels included the occult-horror classic "Rosemary's Baby," the Nazi thriller "The Boys From Brazil" and the satirical fantasy "The Stepford Wives," has died, his agent said Tuesday. He was 78. Levin suffered a fatal heart attack in his Manhattan apartment on Monday, said agent Phyllis Westberg. The native New Yorker, whose father was in the toy business and had hoped that his son would follow in his footsteps, decided at age 15 that he wanted a career in writing and finished second in a screenplay writing competition held by NBC while a senior at New...

What a difference a day makes. Jo Rowling came out of the closet this week—or at least her creation, Albus Dumbledore, did. Take note, Potter fans everywhere, that Rowling—in her great wisdom—has revealed to the world that the wisest, kindest, most powerful (and famous) senior wizard in literary history is gay. The Headmaster of Hogwarts prefers men. According to Rowling, “I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. . . . Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald [a bad wizard he defeated long ago], and that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was.” [1] Exactly...

Folks, CNN, along with numerous other news streams, has been busy reporting "author J.K. Rowling's revelation that master wizard Albus Dumbledore is gay." Unless you are just waking up from a deep coma, you should know already that J.K. Rowling is the creator of the runaway "Harry Potter" bestselling book series and movie hits, and also recognize Dumbledore as the magician character who is the kind headmaster of the school Harry attends, as well as Harry's father-figure and principal mentor. Much has been written against the Harry Potter series in the Christian googlesphere. Of note to Catholics, Father Gabriel Amorth,...

Recently, J.K. Rowling announced to the world that one of her characters, the heroic mentor of Harry Potter, Dumbledore was gay. Nonsense. There is no evidence of it in the books and the books (at this point) are all that matter. I have always thought the books deeply Christian not because Rowling told me so (which she recently confirmed), but because the text is full of Christian images and ideas. She had a chance to give Dumbledore a boyfriend, but she muffed it. I refuse to denigrate friendship by reading every close one as sexual . . . and she...

Harry Potter scribe J.K. Rowling's revelation that Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, is actually a gay wizard has shocked many Potter fans, but hardcore readers have always been attuned to his latent homosexuality. For starters, Dumbledore is repeatedly described by Rowling as having a "twinkle" in his blue eyes—coincidentally, the same eye color as bathroom patrolman and fellow friend of Dorothy Sen. Larry Craig. Dumbledore is also a flamboyant dresser, fond of flowing, colorful robes, and expresses a particular zest for decorating the Great Hall before feasts. His weapon of choice—fire—is literally flaming, and...

MOVE over Da Vinci, here comes Mary Magdalene. In the latest twist to the seemingly endless literary debate over the roots of Christianity, a controversy is looming over a novel by an author who claims to be descended from Jesus Christ. It may sound familiar to readers of Dan Brown’s blockbuster The Da Vinci Code, but Kathleen McGowan, an American who began her career as a journalist in Belfast, has persuaded publishers that her claims that Magdalene married Jesus and bore his children should be taken seriously. “I don’t want people to think I’m claiming to be some elitist figure...