The Bibliophile's Devotional

365 Days of Literary Classics

Hallie Ephron

• Publisher: Adams Media
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781605501055
• eBook ISBN: 9781440513558
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

What better way to start a day than with inspiration from a literary classic? Now you can do just that. In this book, praised author and critic Hallie Ephron delivers a daily dose of literary knowledge.

A brilliant companion to the canon of great literature, it's perfect for anyone who wants a novel way to energize each day. Ephron's work is a secular twist on the traditional devotional and provides concise plot summaries, sketches of standout characters, quotations you should know, and more about hundreds of books by tried-and-true authors as well as new literary voices.

Whether it's coffee with Austen, a quick lunch with Faulkner, or an end-of-the-day jolt with Chabon, this book proves a good book is a great source of daily inspiration.

December

DEC.
1

IN COLD BLOOD

BY TRUMAN CAPOTE

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”

THE VILLAGE OF Holcomb was the real-life setting for a brutal murder of four members of the Clutter family. Flamboyant author Truman Capote journeyed there to write about the murders, traveling with the more outwardly conventional Harper Lee. When he arrived, killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock were being held in jail.

Immersing himself in the setting and developing a personal, emotional relationship with both killers, particularly Smith, Capote pushed the bounds of journalism. He took liberties— lying to get his subjects to reveal their stories and imagining the chilling drama of real events in vivid detail—as no journalist had ever done before. He wormed his charming way into the head of Smith who told him: “I really admired Mr. Clutter, right up until the moment I slit his throat.”

This true-crime masterpiece, which Capote called a nonfiction novel, was published in 1965 after Smith and Hickock had been hanged for their crimes. Capote witnessed their executions.

In a “self-interview” published in 1980, Capote summed up his life: “I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict. I’m homosexual. I’m a genius. Of course, I could be all four of these dubious things and still be a saint.” Capote died four years later at the age of fifty-nine.

“Capote wrote the best sentences of anyone of our generation.”

—NORMAN MAILER, THE SPOOKY ART:
SOME THOUGHTS ON WRITING

DEC.
2

KILLSHOT

BY ELMORE LEONARD

The Blackbird told himself he was drinking too much because he lived in this hotel and the Silver Dollar was close by, right downstairs.

THIS 1989 CRIME novel pits a Native American hit man named Armand “the Blackbird” Degas and a psychopathic punk named Richie Nix against real-estate agent Carmen Col-son and her ironworker husband, Wayne, who live near the Michigan-Canada border. Degas has just rubbed out a Detroit mobster and is riding around in his payment—a baby-blue Cadillac—when his path crosses that of Nix. The pair, prime wacked-out Leonard characters, pull off a petty extortion scheme, which the Colsons have the misfortune of witnessing.

Fortunately for the Colsons, Nix is as stupid as he is incompetent; unfortunately, the law enforcer who should be providing them refuge, a federal marshal named Ferris (“just like the wheel”), is no straight-shooter. While they’re just a pair of average folks (his hobby is deer hunting, hers is handwriting analysis), the Colsons look after themselves remarkably well.

With his trademark smart dialogue and fast action, Leonard has been dubbed the “Dickens of Detroit” and his writing has been compared to the work of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross MacDonald. Leonard, who still writes his manuscripts on unlined yellow legal pads, disagrees: “I was more influenced by Hemingway, Steinbeck, John O’Hara and James Cain.”

“I want to adapt Killshot. . . . There are two parts that would be perfect for me and Harvey Keitel.”

—QUENTIN TARANTINO,
QUENT IN TARANT INO INT ERVIEWS

DEC.
3

THE 39 STEPS

BY JOHN BUCHAN

I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.

LOOK IN THE rearview mirror of James Bond’s Aston Martin and you’ll see, fading in the distance, Richard Hannay, the mining engineer/British amateur spy of The 39 Steps. In the novel, Hannay meets an American journalist who tells of an international assassination plan. When the journalist is murdered and his body is found in Hannay’s flat, Hannay becomes the prime suspect. As Hannay searches for the mysterious “Mr. Memory” and the man with the tip of his little finger missing, he realizes that only he can save the nation.

With this 1915 novel, Buchan invented the modern spy novel. Despite plotting that occasionally defies logic and the taint of anti-Semitism, this remains a classic work with its paranoid vision of German spies nestled in the English countryside. Hitchcock made a memorable version for the screen in 1935.

This was one of more than fifty fiction and nonfiction books, including six other novels featuring Hannay, that Buchan published in his lifetime.

“John Buchan is the father of the modern spy thriller. This is so even though the Hannay books are not, strictly speaking, about spies at all. . . . They are about penetration of the enemy, about lonely escape and wild journeys, about the thin veneer that stands between civilization and barbarism even in the most elegant drawing-room in London.”

—ROBIN WINKS, INTRODUCTION TO
THE FOUR ADVENTURES OF RICHARD HANNAY

DEC.
4

TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY

BY JOHN LE CARRÉ

The truth is, if old Major Dover hadn’t dropped dead at Taunton races Jim would never have come to Thursgood’s at all.

GEORGE SMILEY IS the anti–James Bond. The former spy is fat, middle-aged, middle-class, mild-mannered, unhappily married, and a genius at bureaucratic maneuvering. Retired in disgrace after a botched espionage operation, he’s lured back to work for one division of MI6 (the “Circus”) to discover and destroy a double agent, a mole who has penetrated the top levels of Britain’s Secret Service. The nursery rhyme of the title refers to the codewords for the suspects—the four men now running the Service. Smiley can trust no one, so he must operate without the resources of the intelligence network.

There’s no imaginary, high-tech wizardry here. John Le Carré (pen name of David John Moore Cornwell) gives a realistic account of how such an investigation is carried out and of the bureaucracy that surrounds it. Le Carré pits his agent’s beliefs against his actions, his loyalty to his country against his respect for his enemy. As in the real world, paranoia prevails.

This 1974 work is the first volume in Smiley’s “Karla Trilogy,” all considered modern masterpieces, and all populated by thoroughly human characters who take their time. This book demonstrates why “character-driven thriller” isn’t necessarily an oxymoron.

“The convolutions of conspiracy in [the George Smiley novels] are as elaborate and grandiose as medieval theology—a Byzantine struggle between the forces of light and darkness. The conflict is not simply between them and us, but, on both sides, between ourselves and our governments.”

—ANATOLE BROYARD, NEW YORK TIMES

DEC.
5

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• January
• February
• March
• April
• May
• June
• July
• August
• September
• October
• November
• December