Jerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980. Raised in Manhattan, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his subsequent work. In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, espeJerome David Salinger was an American author, best known for his 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye, as well as his reclusive nature. His last original published work was in 1965; he gave his last interview in 1980. Raised in Manhattan, Salinger began writing short stories while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. In 1948 he published the critically acclaimed story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" in The New Yorker magazine, which became home to much of his subsequent work. In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, an immediate popular success. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read and controversial, selling around 250,000 copies a year.The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention and scrutiny: Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently. He followed Catcher with a short story collection, Nine Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963). His last published work, a novella entitled "Hapworth 16, 1924", appeared in The New Yorker on June 19, 1965.Afterward, Salinger struggled with unwanted attention, including a legal battle in the 1980s with biographer Ian Hamilton, and the release in the late 1990s of memoirs written by two people close to him: Joyce Maynard, an ex-lover; and Margaret Salinger, his daughter. In 1996, a small publisher announced a deal with Salinger to publish "Hapworth 16, 1924" in book form, but amid the ensuing publicity, the release was indefinitely delayed. He made headlines around the globe in June 2009, after filing a lawsuit against another writer for copyright infringement resulting from that writer's use of one of Salinger's characters from The Catcher in the Rye. Salinger died of natural causes on January 27, 2010, at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire.

J.D.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets.Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets.Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal.Tolkien was an accomplished amateur artist who painted for pleasure and relaxation. He excelled at landscapes and often drew inspiration from his own stories. He illustrated many scenes from The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, sometimes drawing or painting as he was writing in order to visualize the imagined scene more clearly.Tolkien was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford for almost forty years, teaching Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse and Gothic. His illuminating lectures on works such as the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, illustrate his deep knowledge of ancient languages and at the same time provide new insights into peoples and legends from a remote past.Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1892 to English parents. He came to England aged three and was brought up in and around Birmingham. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1915 and saw active service in France during the First World War before being invalided home. After the war he pursued an academic career teaching Old and Middle English. Alongside his professional work, he invented his own languages and began to create what he called a mythology for England; it was this ‘legendarium’ that he would work on throughout his life. But his literary work did not start and end with Middle-earth, he also wrote poetry, children’s stories and fairy tales for adults. He died in 1973 and is buried in Oxford where he spent most of his adult life.

J.R.R.

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, and fantasy novels. His books have sold more than 350 million copies, many of which have been adapted into feature films, miniseries, television series, and comic books. King has published 61 novels and six non-fiction books.

Stephen

ERNEST CLINE is a novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. His first novel, Ready Player One, was a New York Times and USA Today bestseller, appeared on numerous “best of the year” lists, and is set to be adapted into a motion picture by Warner Bros. and director Steven Spielberg. His second novel, ARMADA, debuted at #4 on the NYT Bestseller list and is being made into a film by Universal Pictures. Ernie lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games.

Ernest

John Crowley is an American biotechnology executive and entrepreneur and the chairman and CEO of Amicus Therapeutics. He co-founded Novazyme Pharmaceuticals with William Canfield, which was later acquired by Genzyme Corporation, and founded Orexigen Therapeutics.

John

Brendon Burchard is a #1 New York Times best-selling author and "the world's leading high performance coach". His latest book, High Performance Habits, was a Wall Street Journal best-seller and named by Amazon as one of its top three best business and leadership books of 2017.

Brendon

David Raymond Sedaris is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He was publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay "Santaland Diaries". He published his first collection of essays and short stories, Barrel Fever, in 1994.

David

As  A.M. Barnard: Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power (1866)The Abbot's Ghost, or Maurice Treherne's Temptation (1867)A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866 – first published 1995)First published anonymously:A Modern Mephistopheles (1877)Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth and May were educated by their father, philosopher/ teacher, Bronson Alcott and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May.Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau and theatricals in the barn at Hillside (now Hawthorne’s "WaysideAs  A.M. Barnard: Behind a Mask, or a Woman's Power (1866)The Abbot's Ghost, or Maurice Treherne's Temptation (1867)A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866 – first published 1995)First published anonymously:A Modern Mephistopheles (1877)Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania on November 29, 1832. She and her three sisters, Anna, Elizabeth and May were educated by their father, philosopher/ teacher, Bronson Alcott and raised on the practical Christianity of their mother, Abigail May.Louisa spent her childhood in Boston and in Concord, Massachusetts, where her days were enlightened by visits to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s library, excursions into nature with Henry David Thoreau and theatricals in the barn at Hillside (now Hawthorne’s "Wayside").Like her character, Jo March in Little Women, young Louisa was a tomboy: "No boy could be my friend till I had beaten him in a race," she claimed, " and no girl if she refused to climb trees, leap fences...."For Louisa, writing was an early passion. She had a rich imagination and often her stories became melodramas that she and her sisters would act out for friends. Louisa preferred to play the "lurid" parts in these plays, "the villains, ghosts, bandits, and disdainful queens."At age 15, troubled by the poverty that plagued her family, she vowed: "I will do something by and by. Don’t care what, teach, sew, act, write, anything to help the family; and I’ll be rich and famous and happy before I die, see if I won’t!"Confronting a society that offered little opportunity to women seeking employment, Louisa determined "...I will make a battering-ram of my head and make my way through this rough and tumble world." Whether as a teacher, seamstress, governess, or household servant, for many years Louisa did any work she could find.Louisa’s career as an author began with poetry and short stories that appeared in popular magazines. In 1854, when she was 22, her first book Flower Fables was published. A milestone along her literary path was Hospital Sketches (1863) based on the letters she had written home from her post as a nurse in Washington, DC as a nurse during the Civil War.When Louisa was 35 years old, her publisher Thomas Niles in Boston asked her to write "a book for girls." Little Women was written at Orchard House from May to July 1868. The novel is based on Louisa and her sisters’ coming of age and is set in Civil War New England. Jo March was the first American juvenile heroine to act from her own individuality; a living, breathing person rather than the idealized stereotype then prevalent in children’s fiction.In all, Louisa published over 30 books and collections of stories. She died on March 6, 1888, only two days after her father, and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord.

Louisa

B.J. Novak is an American actor, writer, comedian, and director. Novak was one of the writers and executive producers of The Office, in which he also played Ryan Howard.

B.J.

Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates is an American author and journalist. Coates gained a wide readership during his time as national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he wrote about cultural, social, and political issues, particularly regarding African Americans and white supremacy.

Ta-Nehisi

Brian Patrick Herbert is an American author who lives in Washington state. He is the elder son of science fiction author Frank Herbert.

Frank

Patrick James Rothfuss is an American writer of epic fantasy. He is best known for his ongoing trilogy The Kingkiller Chronicle, which won him several awards, including the 2007 Quill Award for his debut novel, The Name of the Wind. Its sequel, The Wise Man's Fear, topped The New York Times Best Seller list.

Patrick

Alisa Rosenbaum was born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg to a prosperous Jewish family. When the Bolsheviks requisitioned the pharmacy owned by her father, Fronz, the Rosenbaums fled to the Crimea. Alisa returned to the city (renamed Leningrad) to attend the university, but in 1926 relatives who had already settled in America offered her the chance of joining them there. With money from the sale of her mother's jewelry, Alisa bought a ticket to New York. On arrival at Ellis Island, she changed into Ayn (after a name of some Finnish author, probably "Aino") Rand (which she said was an abbreviation of her Russian surname). She moved swiftly to Hollywood, where she learned English, worked in the RKO wardrobe department and as an extra, andAlisa Rosenbaum was born in pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg to a prosperous Jewish family. When the Bolsheviks requisitioned the pharmacy owned by her father, Fronz, the Rosenbaums fled to the Crimea. Alisa returned to the city (renamed Leningrad) to attend the university, but in 1926 relatives who had already settled in America offered her the chance of joining them there. With money from the sale of her mother's jewelry, Alisa bought a ticket to New York. On arrival at Ellis Island, she changed into Ayn (after a name of some Finnish author, probably "Aino") Rand (which she said was an abbreviation of her Russian surname). She moved swiftly to Hollywood, where she learned English, worked in the RKO wardrobe department and as an extra, and wrote through the night on screenplays and novels. She also married a bit-part actor called Frank O'Connor because he was 'beautiful' - and because her original visitor's visa had run out.Rand sold her first screenplay in 1932, but nobody would buy her first novel We the Living (1936) a melodrama set in Russia. Her first real success was The Fountainhead (rejected by more than ten publishers before publication in 1943).She started a new philosophy known as Objectivism, opposed to state interference of all kinds, and her follow-up novel Atlas Shrugged (1957) describes a group who attempt to escape America's conspiracy of mediocrity. Objectivism has been an influence on various other movements such as Libertarianism, and Rand's vocal support for Laissez-faire Capitalism and the free market has earned her a distinct spot among American philosophers, and philosophers in general.---

Jessica Nicole Hische is an American letterer, illustrator, and type designer. She is best known for her personal projects, 'Daily Drop Cap' and the Should I Work for Free flowchart.

Jessica

Cheryl Strayed is an American memoirist, novelist, essayist and podcast host. The author of four books, her award-winning writing has been published widely in anthologies and major magazines.

Cheryl

Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies. Golding spent two years in Oxford focusing on sciences; however, he changed his educational emphasis to English literature, especially Anglo-Saxon.During World War II, he was part of the Royal Navy which he left five years later. His bellic experience strongly influenced his future novels. Later, he became a teacher and focused on writing. Some of his influences are classical Greek literature, such as Euripides, and The Battle of Maldon, an Anglo-Saxon oeuvre whose author is unknown.The attention given to Lord of the Flies, Golding's first novel, by college students in the 1950s and 1960s drove literary critics' attentionSir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, and playwright best known for his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies. Golding spent two years in Oxford focusing on sciences; however, he changed his educational emphasis to English literature, especially Anglo-Saxon.During World War II, he was part of the Royal Navy which he left five years later. His bellic experience strongly influenced his future novels. Later, he became a teacher and focused on writing. Some of his influences are classical Greek literature, such as Euripides, and The Battle of Maldon, an Anglo-Saxon oeuvre whose author is unknown.The attention given to Lord of the Flies, Golding's first novel, by college students in the 1950s and 1960s drove literary critics' attention to it. He was awarded the Booker Prize for literature in 1980 for his novel Rites of Passage, the first book of the trilogy To the Ends of the Earth. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983 and was knighted in 1988.In 2008, The Times ranked Golding third on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".

William

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece.  John Kennedy Toole's hero, Ignatius J.  Reilly, is huge, obese, fractious, fastidious (eccentric and finicky about cleanliness), a latter-day Gargantua (Gargantua was a giant from Francois Rabelais' satirical novel Gargantua and Pantagruel), a Don Quixote of the French Quarter.  His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans lower depths (low socioeconomic status or poverty), incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures (journeying through hardship to achieve a happy ending). 

Jerrod Carmichael is an American stand-up comedian, actor, and writer. Carmichael co-created and starred in the semi-biographical NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show, which ran from 2015 to 2017.

Jerrod

Tucker Max is an American author and public speaker. He chronicles his drinking and sexual encounters in the form of short stories on his website TuckerMax.com, which has received millions of visitors since Max launched it as the result of a bet in 2000.

Tucker

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex is an American former actress and the wife of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. Markle was raised in Los Angeles, California. During her studies at Northwestern University, she began playing small roles in television series and films.

Meghan

Jesse Williams is an American actor, director, producer and activist. He is best known for his role as Dr. Jackson Avery on the ABC series Grey's Anatomy (2009–present).

Jesse

Ryan Rodney Reynolds is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, film producer, screenwriter and entrepreneur. He began his career starring in the Canadian teen soap opera Hillside and had minor roles before landing the lead role on the sitcom Two Guys and a Girl between 1998 and 2001.

Ryan

A Confederacy of Dunces

John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best known for his novel A Confederacy of Dunces.Toole's novels remained unpublished during his lifetime. Some years after his death by suicide, Toole's mother brought the manuscript of A Confederacy of Dunces to the attention of the novelist Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print. In 1981 Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best known for his novel A Confederacy of Dunces.Toole's novels remained unpublished during his lifetime. Some years after his death by suicide, Toole's mother brought the manuscript of A Confederacy of Dunces to the attention of the novelist Walker Percy, who ushered the book into print. In 1981 Toole was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Neon Bible tells the story of David, a young boy growing up in a small Southern town in the 1940s.  Davids voice is perfectly calibrated, disarmingly funny, sad, shrewd, gathering force from page to page with an emotional directness that never lapses into sentimentality.  Through it we share his awkward, painful, universally recognizable encounter with first love, we participate in boy evangelist Bobbie Lee Taylors revival, we meet the pious, bigoted townspeople.  From the opening lines of The Neon Bible, David is fully alive, naive yet sharply observant, drawing us into his world through the sure artistry of John Kennedy Toole. John Kennedy Toole, who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling comic masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces, wrote The Neon Bible for a literary contest at the age of sixteen.  The manuscript languished in a drawer and became the subject of a legal battle among Tooles heirs.  It was only in 1989, thirty-five years after it was written and twenty years after Tooles suicide at thirty-one, that this amazingly accomplished and evocative novel was freed for publication. 

John Kennedy Toole's The Neon Bible explores the challenges of growing up. The protagonist, David, navigates through the complexities of adolescence, dealing with issues like religion, sexuality, and societal expectations. It's a great read if you want to revisit the trials and tribulations of your teenage years.

The Struggles of Adolescence

The book shows how our environment shapes us. David's small-town upbringing in the South significantly influences his worldview and actions. If you're interested in how your surroundings can impact your life, you should definitely check out The Neon Bible.

The Impact of Environment

Religion plays a significant role in The Neon Bible. It's used as a tool for control and manipulation, but also as a source of comfort and community. If you're curious about the multifaceted role of religion in society, this book will give you plenty to think about.

The Power of Religion

Toole beautifully portrays the complexity of human relationships in The Neon Bible. From David's relationship with his parents to his interactions with his peers, the book explores the intricacies of human connections. If you're interested in understanding more about human dynamics, this book is a must-read.

The Complexity of Human Relationships

The Neon Bible delves into the consequences of isolation. David's loneliness and isolation from society lead to tragic outcomes. If you're interested in exploring the effects of isolation on the human psyche, this book will provide a deep and thought-provoking perspective.

Discover the Best Books Written by John Kennedy Toole

Best author’s book

A Confederacy of Dunces

Written books

A Confederacy of Dunces

The Neon Bible

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J.D. Salinger

J.R.R. Tolkien

Stephen King

Ernest Cline

John Crowley

Brendon Burchard

David Sedaris

Louisa May Alcott

B.J. Novak

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Frank Herbert

Patrick Rothfuss

Ayn Rand

Jessica Hische

Cheryl Strayed

William Golding

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