1 HOMAGE TO ONE-HIT WONDERS
I’m not sure I remember a more satisfying moment from my childhood than the movie moment when Charlie Bucket unwrapped the Golden Ticket in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. “Greetings to you, the...
View Article31 FABULOUS PHILOSOPHIES FROM THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH
In chapter three of The Phantom Tollbooth, young protagonist Milo and his dog-clock-sidekick Tock arrive at the gates to the city of Dictionopolis, where they encounter a gateman. There follows this...
View Article13 SHORT STORIES THAT INSPIRED A MASTER OF THE GENRE
Did you know that Tom Clancy’s favorite book is 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? Stephen King’s is Lord of the Flies. Jonathan Franzen loves Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. Or how about creative types...
View Article60 COLORFUL BOOKS
National Book Award-winner Maya Angelou once wrote, “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.” About a century earlier, Oscar Wilde declared, “Mere color, unspoiled by meaning and unallied with definite...
View Article45 ICONIC MISQUOTED QUOTES
Baseball Hall of Famer and language mangler Yogi Berra is famous for saying many things. Among them is this: “I really didn’t say everything I said.” He’s not alone. Were we to choose, along with Yogi,...
View Article54 STORIES WRITTEN FOR ONE MAGAZINE
I stay up late. That’s just how my biological clock rolls. But it’s also because I’m a writer, and I traffic in ideas, and the middle of the night is when everyone else asleep. So all the ideas are...
View Article75 ALPHABET BOOKS FROM SLEEPING BEAR PRESS
Located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Sleeping Bear Press has published hundreds of titles since releasing its first children’s book in 1998. It may be best known for its excellent (and seemingly endless)...
View Article28 CYNICAL OBSERVATIONS FROM ONE HENRY MILLER RIDE
Whenever I have bouts of cynicism, periods of pervasive pessimism—and they’re not infrequent—I try to remedy the situation with occasional travel. That may mean physical forays into the American...
View Article55 NUGGETS OF TRIVIA FROM THE SPORTS 100
My favorite nonfiction books are the ones that examine oft-mined subjects from a new point of view, whether that means Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point or Jim Bouton’s Ball Four. So early in my...
View Article37 INSIGHTS FROM THE IMAGINATION OF DR. SEUSS
In the pantheon of the profound—Churchill and FDR, Shakespeare and Twain, even Will Rogers and Woody Allen (if you prefer mirth while musing), we at the Why Not 100 think Dr. Seuss belongs. Really. He...
View Article96 BOOKS WITH NUMBERS IN THE TITLE
When my son Luke started reading in earnest—that is, when he found that he had made his way through enough contemporary fantasy novels to fill the libraries of Rivendell and Hogwarts—I began to suggest...
View Article40 INITIALIZED AUTHORS AND THEIR REAL NAMES
Ever consider that most of us don’t necessarily know the first name of the authors of such classics as The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wizard of Oz, Curious George, Mary Poppins, Charlotte’s...
View Article95 SONGS ABOUT WRITING
Did you know that The Doors got their name from The Doors of Perceptionby Aldous Huxley? Did you know that Led Zeppelin injected J.R.R. Tolkien images into several songs? Or that The Red Hot Chili...
View Article18 BEST CHILDREN’S BOOKS ABOUT GOLF
The first thing one notices upon entering Ron Muszalski’s ground-floor apartment is not necessarily the assortment of golf posters and prints covering the walls. It isn’t the myriad golf postcards and...
View Article90 BRILLIANT BURMA SHAVE SIGNS
Poetry can be very moving. It can also be poetry in motion—literally. The best examples of that are the old Burma-Shave signs from the mid-20th century. I’m too young to have seen any in person, but I...
View Article30 BOOKS WRITTEN BY KIDS
Eragon. The Outsiders. The Diary of a Young Girl. All three books, classics in their genres, were written by teenagers. While electronic publishing and purchasing has revolutionized the book industry,...
View Article3 LETTERS FROM AUTHORS TO THEIR KIDS
Great writing can be a slog—it may reek of natural talent, but it tends to be the product of musing and pacing and tweaking and editing and complaining and rearranging. And that’s all in one day. But...
View Article65 FICTIONAL REFERENCES TO CORNELL
When a writer is building a character, crafting a back story, or setting a scene, nothing is an accident. The character lugs around an oversized purse? Speaks with a slight lisp? Drives a VW bus? Is...
View Article41 CLASSIC LITERARY PAIRINGS
When we at Why Not Books were musing on the title of our beautifully illustrated (by award-winner Zachary Pullen) picture book about the sport-altering 1913 U.S. Open golf championship, we realized...
View Article71 BOOKS IN ONE TRAIN OF THOUGHT
Jason Segel and Paul Rudd happen to be two of my favorite comedic actors. During a 2009 tandem interview about their film I Love You, Man, they got a bit giddy when the subject of a bromance...
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