What a phenomenal success J.K. Rowling is. Born in 1965, a single mother in the 1980s, she wanted to make a living for herself and her children. So she started writing a story about a boy wizard. Now she is listed together with Shakespeare, Dickens, Joyce and Dostoevsky. It’s almost like the story of a little black boy born to a white college student mom in Hawaii in 1961, who is now and forever on the same list with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt (as they look down from Mt. Rushmore.
Top 10 Greatest Authors and their Best Books
- William Shakespeare (1564-1616) – Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet
- Charles Dickens (1812-1870) – A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations
- George Orwell (1903-1950) – Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Homage to Catalonia
- J.K. Rowling (1965-Present) – Harry Potter
- Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) – Mrs Dalloway, Orlando, To the Lighthouse
- Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) – The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and the Sea
- William Faulkner (1897-1962) – The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Absalom, Absalom !
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) – Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot
- James Joyce (1882-1941) – Ulysses, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) – The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Happy Prince and Other Tales, The Canterville Ghost
Then there is the phenomena of EL James – who sold 100 million copies of 50 Shades of Grey worldwide, and 45 million in america alone. Despite the critics view, the movie made 248 million world wide on opening weekend. Her fantasy has come true!
Odd. I found the book terribly boring and quit about 1/4 way through. Maybe I’ve lived in Southern California too long.