Crème de la Crème: A Celebration of One Hundred Outstanding Novels

By Theresa Louisa Walmsley-Hall

Cr me de la Cr me: A Celebration of One Hundred Outstanding NovelsCompiled in date order, Cr me de la Cr me, Celebrating 100 Exceptional Novels, (2000) includes works of fiction considered to be of major world significance. Novelists bring something few other forms of entertainment can offer; the ability to experience a rollercoaster of emotions: excitement and enthusiasm; happiness and joy; agitation and alarm; terror, loathing and horror; each author's voice unique: enlightening and perceptive; imaginative and observant, ironical and satirical; thought-provoking, and humorous.Diverse topics include hypocrisy; gender, social class, and race; virtue and sexuality; spontaneity and change; custom and convention; na vety and innocence; sexual liberation and the double standard; poverty and education; idealism and self-interest; independence and courage; danger and intrigue; obsession and mystery; primal passions; mental and physical cruelty; savagery and barbarism; vulgarity and the commonplace; the supernatural, mass surveillance, and state-based censorship.Compiled in date order; the book includes bite-sized summaries of such diverse classics as Matthew Lewis' Gothic terror thriller, The Monk: A Romance; (1796) Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, (1818) Victor Hugo's heart rendering novel, Les Mis rables; (1862) George Eliot's Middlemarch; (1874) Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina; (1878) H. G. Wells' science fiction thriller, The Time Machine; (1895) F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby; (1925) Aldous Huxley's Brave New World; (1932) George Orwell's, Nineteen Eighty Four; (1949) Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451; (1953) Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; (1962) Alice Malsenior Walker's The Color Purple; (1982) and Joanna Trollope's perceptive and thought-provoking novel, Other People's Children (1998).Censors typically react to the content of novels that they have not read; but nevertheless criticize; considering it to be their duty to construct bonfires upon which to set books alight; all copies D. H. Lawrence's The Rainbow; (1915) were seized and burnt.When the unexpurgated edition of Lawrence's novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, was eventually published by Penguin Books in 1960; the prosecutor asked a witness whether this was the kind of book that he would allow his wife and servants to read; he was ridiculed for being out of touch with changing social norms; nonetheless, three years later, Mary McCarthy's novel, The Group, (1963) was banned in Australia, Italy, and Ireland, as 'offensive to public morals'; but nonetheless stayed on the New York Times best-seller list for the following two years.Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, (1969) was removed from schools and library shelves and burnt; objections including the explicit use of language, and irreverent depictions of religion; ironically, the novel was nominated for the National Book Award in 1970, and remained on the New York Times paperback bestseller list for two years.Alice Malsenior Walker's novel, The Color Purple (1982) has been a frequent target for censorship regarding its explicit content; the novel appearing on the American Library Association list of the Hundred Most Frequently Challenged Books (2000-2009) at number seventeen; but, paradoxically, appears on the BBC's Big Read poll of the U.K.'s best-loved novels (2003). The title of Ray Bradbury's novel, Fahrenheit 451, (1953) refers to the temperature at which book paper catches fire. Ray Bradbury envisioned a future society in which the general public is reduced to watching shallow dramas on flat plane televisions fixed to the walls; novel-reading has been outlawed, firemen are paid to set fire to all books that they discover. The novel is also a commentary on how mass media reduces interest in reading literature. I read the book in 1967. Never to be forgotten; his novel inspired me to write this book.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B08DBNH7Y1
• ISBN13: 9798668387458
• Release Date: July 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 472 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"