This must have some debate-worthy items on it.

This must have some debate-worthy items on it.

Nothing between 1966 and 1990? They're mad.

Not sure if this should go in Lit or Tech, but: I want a reading app on my ipad that is better than kindle or ibooks. Because what I want:

1)to be able to side-load DRM-free books that I have downloaded from elsewhere (I can do this in ibooks, but afaik not in the kindle app, though I can sideload with calibre onto my actual kindle)

2) to be able to resize the covers/bookshelf part (the pretty show of covers and such on the ibook bookshelf or kindle page is great and all, but I want to be able to enlarge or reduce it, which I can't seem to do)

3) to be able to click or hold or whatever on a book/cover, and have the description show up. Because seriously, I have a ton of books, and while sometimes I can remember from the cover what it's about, half the time I'm like "Wait, was Countless that YA about the vampires, or the thriller about the accountants, or the romance about the millionaire?"

4) to be able to group the books somehow (folders, bookshelves, collections, whatever. I can do this in ibooks, and I think I can do it in the kindle app? I can do it on my kindle, but haven't tried in the app)

Anyone have an awesome answer for me? I feel like I'm not asking that much of it!

Stanza?

This must have some debate-worthy items on it.

A few things come to mind:

I'd like to see why the author included certain less well-known works/events. I seem to lack the poetry appreciation gene, so I really can't judge the worthiness of "The Song of the Shirt." And I really can't say why it belongs in a 50-Greatest list.

As for Shakespeare, I'd probably drop his sonnets in favor of his output of 1595: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Richard II. At the dawn of modern drama, he wrote one of the world's greatest comedies, one of the world's greatest tragedies, and a superior history play -- all in one year. Nothing against the sonnets, but Shakespeare didn't play a role in inventing the sonnet.

Amazon or the Internet/Web or the word processor? Electronic sales/distribution or electronic publicatino or electronic creation? I'd argue that the word processor has as much right as the typewriter to a spot in the top 50.

Hec, what do you think belongs in the list from the 1966-1990 era? LOTR comes to mind, kicking off a huge wave of SF/fantasy, but that was published in 1954-55.

Twilight Fanfic Strikes Again: Beautiful Bastard Gets a Book Deal.

E.L. James' 50 Shades of Grey opened the door, and now Christina Lauren's Beautiful Bastard is sexily sashaying through it. Christina Lauren is actually two people — Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings* — who landed a book deal with Simon & Schuster after the popularity of their fanfic The Office** exploded online. Renamed and given sexy new packaging, Beautiful Bastard is about a kinky businessman and his sexxxy intern.

The first chapter is up for preview. Le sigh.

God damn, WHY haven't I started writing kinky fiction?

(Partly because I just don't take Teh Kink as seriously and utterly humorlessly as the current rash of fiction makes it out to be. I mean, it *can* be serious, but I have to say, we spend a lot of our time laughing our asses off at each other. Sadly, that makes a lot of people think we're Doin It Rong. So I probably couldn't write a book about it.)

I know a Lauren Billings. She was a bartender at my regular bar, and then she moved to Tahoe to play poker.

This must have some debate-worthy items on it

I don't understand why a German novel that I've never heard of (WG Sebald: Vertigo, 1990) is on that list. Did it have some impact on Anglo-American lit?

Just started Gone Girl -- maybe four chapters in -- and I love it. She's an incredible writer. I'm a little wary about hating the plot of it toward the end, because there was a pretty divisive twist, right?

a German novel that I've never heard of (WG Sebald: Vertigo, 1990)

I didn't even know it was German, just that I'd never heard of it, and didn't care enough to click. I didn't disagree with a whole lot of, though, so maybe it was important?

I do think choosing just fifty anything from the whole history of literate is tough, and she might have been better off choosing only books, or only cultural events.