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44 LITERARY MOUNT RUSHMORES
A friend and I have a little game of intellectual tennis that we play, usually when we’re killing time. It’s called “The Mount Rushmore Game,” and basically it just requires us to come up with the four...
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35 BEST LINES FROM THE BEST SPEECHES
Back in 2008, on their website “The Art of Manliness,” Brett and Kate McCay wrote beautifully about oratory: “Oratory has been called the highest art for it encompasses all other disciplines. It...
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16 DEGREES OF SEPARATION—FROM HOMER TO HARRY POTTER
They say everything in literature is derivative, each creation influenced by a previous one. Perhaps, but there’s plenty of imagination still to be tapped. Most of the good stuff happens late at night,...
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23 BEST BOOKS ABOUT 23 SPORTS
I often give a talk to educators that I call “Hemingway was a Sportswriter.” It’s mostly about how teachers can utilize sports as a means of generating enthusiasm for reading and writing among...
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86 HARRY POTTER INCANTATIONS
Happy birthday, J.K. Rowling. And happy birthday, Harry Potter, too. July 31 is the big day. Here at the Why Not 100, we have our own favorite wizard. It’s Gandalf the Grey. And our favorite boy who...
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38 TOWNS THAT CELEBRATE CLASSIC LITERATURE
August 9 is National Book Lovers Day. So I’m going to explore that in a literal sense.There used to be a couple of communities in Florida, both of them settled sometime in the 1850s. One had a few...
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33 SUPER-SHORT BOOK TITLES
I just finished reading a really unusual book called “S.” It was conceived by J.J. Abrams, the brilliant guy behind the TV series “Lost,” which I absolutely loved until I absolutely hated it. (I felt...
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65 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...
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3 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...
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30 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,...
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90 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...
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18 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...
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95 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...
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40 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...
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96 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...
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37 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...
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55 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...
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28 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...
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75 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)...
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54 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...
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45 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,...
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60 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...
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13 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...
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31 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...
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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...
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