The best "top 10" list.

Everywhere book lovers look, we are bombarded with "top 10" lists of the so-called best reads of the 21st century. This to me is almost always disappointing since each site has a different list, and almost all these lists are created by website-exclusive votes.

An example of this is Amazon's top 10 list. The website's list is created solely on what books it has sold in that genre to date. Many of these informational venues are not based on any sort of research, but only book sales and fan votes to that specific site. Example two, Goodreads.com has a list which is complied only of the votes of that sites viewers; again, no research.

Luckily, I have done my research and based on overall popularity and book sales, and have thus found what I feel is the best and most well-rounded "top 10" list available, thus far in the century.

"1. Twilight: Certainly you’ve been unable to escape hearing about this vampire love series. Although some fans are casual readers, others have embraced the series into obsession, becoming 'Twifans' or 'Fanpires.' As a whole, the Twilight series has sold more than 100 million copies around the world, and Twilight was the best selling book of the year in 2008. In its first day of release, the Twilight DVD sold more than 3 million copies, with huge crowds at midnight release parties. Twilight has been a large presence at many conventions, including ComicCon, and one completely devoted to Twilight, TwiCon.

2. Harry Potter: Before there was Twilight, there was Harry Potter, the young adult series written by J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and his friends learn to become expert wizards, and fans young and old have strongly embraced its culture. In fact, it’s even been considered that Harry Potter has spawned a lifelong love of books for readers young and old, converting nonreaders into those who will clear their schedules in order to sit down with the newest release. The series has met incredible success, with more than 400 million copies sold and every one of its six movies so far nearing a worldwide gross of $1 billion each. Rabid fans of the series have even created their own works, with almost 500,000 different pieces of fan fiction available online.

3. The Secret: If you believe this book will improve your life, it just might. At least, that’s what author Rhonda Byrne wants you to think. After being featured on Oprah, this self-help book that insists positive thinking can bring on incredible life changing results hit the New York Times bestseller list and went on the make a movie that was for a time the #1 DVD on Amazon. The book had many readers frenzied into a spiritual cult, insisting that through the Law of Attraction, they could achieve almost anything, including extreme weight loss and even beating cancer. Overall, The Secret has sold more than 19 million copies since 2006.

4. Lord of the Rings: Although published between 1954-1955, The Lord of the Rings has enjoyed an enduring fan following, as well as a new revival in fans due to The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies directed by Peter Jackson. These books have had many influences on popular culture, including the language of Elvish, an expansion in the genre of fantasy fiction and the inspiration of filmmakers such as George Lucas. 'LOTR' fans have been known to get tattoos inspired by the series as well as create fan art. Over the years, sales of these books have topped 150 million. The Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies reached a box office revenue close to $3 billion.

5. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: This franchise has enjoyed success in many different forms, including books, radio broadcast, TV, computer games, comic book adaptations, and even a large production movie. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy inspired 'Hitch-Hikeriana,' a variety of merchandising and spinoff items related to the series, especially towels. It has been an international phenomenon, enjoyed in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Israel, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. Every year on May 25th, fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy celebrate Towel Day to honor the late author Douglas Adams.

6. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of fantasy novels written for children. It’s been adapted to the radio, stage, TV, and even movies. The classic works sold more than 120 million copies, and have been printed in 41 languages. Authors including Neil Gaiman and Katherine Paterson have been influenced by the works, as well as the graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and popular TV shows like LOST and Family Guy. There is also a Saturday Night Live digital short, Lazy Sunday, that focuses on going to see Chronicles of Narnia in the movie theaters. Two movies have been released so far, and their worldwide box office gross has topped $1 billion.

7. Percy Jackson & the Olympians: In this series, a young boy learns that he is the son of Poseidon, and discovers the world of Greek mythology. The series began in 2005, and has recently released a movie of the first book, The Lightning Thief, which opened with more than $31 million in the box office its first weekend, the highest for a fantasy film outside of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Narnia. This same book has sold more than $1.2 million copies in hardcover and paperback. Percy Jackson has found fans young and old, with these fans going on to purchase the video game based on The Lightning Thief as well as a DVD that released to almost $14 million in revenue its first week.

8. The Da Vinci Code: Written by bestselling author Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code offers a thrilling look into the legend of the Holy Grail as well as Mary Magdalene in Christianity. Although critics have not received the book well, fans certainly have. Fans in the UK have gone on their own Da Vinci Code-style treasure hunts, with one pair causing damage to the stonework of a 14th century church in search of the Holy Grail. The book has sold over 80 million copies and been translated into 44 different languages, the bestselling English language novel of the 21st century. The Da Vinci Code film in 2006 earned more than $230 million worldwide in its opening weekend, at the time the third most profitable opening weekend in film history.

9. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Late author Stieg Larsson’s novel has become a posthumous bestseller with an large fan base. It was released to great popularity in Larsson’s native Sweden, and soon took over many European countries, eventually reaching a frenzy in the United States as well. The trilogy has topped more than 27 million copies worldwide, and its small-release film has reached a box office payday of nearly $10 million just in the US. Fans love The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo so much that a tour has been spawned in Stockholm, taking fans to important locations in Stieg Larsson’s book.

10. Sookie Stackhouse: Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels haven’t quite reached a Twilight frenzy, but the books that started True Blood have a rabid collection of fans, commonly referred to as 'Fangbangers.' The Fangbangers often descend upon the towns of Shreveport and Monroe, Louisiana in search of the fictional Bon Temps, Louisiana that True Blood is set in. These novels went on to create the True Blood drama series that has enjoyed fandom and critical acclaim, including a Golden Globe and Emmy. In its third season, True Blood is now HBO’s most watched series since The Sopranos."

This information is courtesy of Online Colleges.

Pictures via Google Search.

movie or the book? that is the question.

It's been the age-old question, well, since high school-age question any way; do you bother to spend a tedious amount of hours reading a book, or head to the local blockbuster? Most of you will know my answer: the book version of the story, of course. But why? Is it worth it? Hell I mean, Heck yeah!

If I were a high school English teacher, I would focus my plans on newer works of literature. So, for the sake of an example, say I assign My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. Well first, there would probably be no males taking my class, but more importantly, there would be a vast difference of knowledge between the readers of the book and the watchers of the movie. The 10 page paper that would be due for my class (now there are no males in the class, and half of the women just dropped), would definitely be an F for the person who writes about the death of the wrong sister. Don't ask me why the script writers decided to kill off the totally opposite sister in the movie than in the book, but this would be a detrimental fact that would be easily overlooked (or go unknown) to a "movie watcher" student.

That is just one example of why one should choose the book. I could go on with the other 14-23 examples I have in my head of why to choose the book, but only one will suffice for this posting. The amount of detail and work that goes into a novel can (sometimes) be a great deal more then in the movie, and skipping the text is simple deprivation. Especially during discussions of whether or not it was Anna or Kate that died. Do you really want to get an F?

Wikipedia?

Due to my love of 21st century literature, I often find myself surfing the web for author facts and/or facts about the particular book I am currently reading. Almost always at the beginning of every google search, Wikipedia is staring one in the face. I have a feeling that I am not the only one with this issue--or habit--but, as many know, that in the world of academia, Wikipedia is strictly a no-go. Not a legitimate source. But is it? I have complied some sources and a few pages of general information about Wikipedia and it's legitimacy, which may essentially change one's mind.

Created in the year 2001, it is no doubt that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has created buzz, both negative and positive. While Wikipedia has recently bubbled over with more than 3 million entries, 3,421,445 printed in English according to the site as of now, also bubbling is the wonder of how accurate the booming website actually is. While Wikipedia allows for absolutely anyone to edit and create articles, newspapers and other news organizations have been contemplating just how reliable the information actually is when it comes to adding Wikipedia’s information to their prevalent articles.

Wikipedia’s creator Jimmy Wales worked hard to try and create the perfect web-oriented encyclopedia. According to Dan Fletcher’s article, “A Brief History of Wikipedia,” when Wales’ first design, Nupedia, failed because all of the information was written by experts and peer-reviewed, which essentially took too long to publish, Wales bettered this idea by letting anyone with internet access create articles without an editorial review. After Wikipedia was launched in 2001, a tremendous amount of problems occurred, such as vandalism and article accuracy concerns. Wales has since created many solutions to the latter problems, but a lot of the public is still weary of the posted information; some though, think this revolutionary encyclopedia is helpful.

Wikipedia’s tremendous growth since 2001 has created a buzz with news organizations regarding the website’s validity. Stacy Schiff, author of “Know it all: Can Wikipedia Concuer Expertise?” is in awe when it comes to the amount of Wikipedia articles the site has to offer. “The Encyclopaedia Britannica, which for more than two centuries has been considered the gold standard for reference works, has only a hundred and twenty thousand entries in its most comprehensive edition,” she states. How can an internet sensation outdo one of the most prevalent encyclopedias of all time? Easily, some may say.

The opinion on the topic of the Encyclopaedia Britannica versus Wikipedia is also shared by Fletcher, he states that, “a 2005 study by ‘Nature’ found that Wikipedia's science entries came close to matching the Encyclopaedia Britannica's in terms of accuracy — with 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia — no one argues that Wikipedia's content is flawless.” The information is indeed not flawless, but maybe the popularity of the website coincides with its availability of an abundance of articles. Fletcher believes that some of the content in Wikipedia indeed is reliable, and the number of articles posted on Wikipedia far outweigh the number of articles the Encyclopaedia Britannica has to offer. But does the number of entries prove that Wikipedia is better? Schiff believes that amount of articles is not always the more reliable source, and in this case, definitely not. She poses the question: “what can be said for an encyclopedia that is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes illiterate?”

Google would disagree, believing there is a lot to be said of Wikipedia and its information. According to the article “Google Starts Including Wikipedia on Its News Site” by Noam Cohen, the famous search engine’s homepage is now including links to Wikipedia at the bottom of major news articles. Cohen offers up an explanation to this via Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker. “We saw users were finding the Wikipedia pages to be helpful complements to so many stories they saw,” he says. Stricker also explained that Wikipedia offered a broader view of topics covered on their news site. While Wikipedia may compliment news articles with opinions and ideas posted on the site, news organizations are still fighting with the idea of citing the infamous site in articles.

While the validity of Wikipedia has been questioned since its launch, prominent news organizations, such as The Wall Street Journal, have been flagged for citing Wikipedia as a source. Donna Shaw, author of “Wikipedia in the Newsroom” says that, “while the line ‘according to Wikipedia’ pops up occasionally in news stories, it’s relatively rare to see the user-created online encyclopedia cited as a source. But some journalists find it very valuable as a road map to troves of valuable information,” and that is exactly what The Wall Street Journal did. According to Shaw, a Journal reporter wrote an informative article on “turducken” and found useful information on the topic, most of which was used in a humorous fashion.

Humor is also an aspect to the use of Wikipedia as a source. Wikipedia is known to have an array of askew and exceptionally ineffective information, making the site the place to go to find out about wacky information. Schiff explains some unique information she has come across on Wikipedia. “A list of historical cats (celebrity cats, a cat millionaire, the first feline to circumnavigate Australia), a survey of invented expletives in fiction, instructions for curing hiccups, and an article that describes, with schematic diagrams, how to build a stove from a discarded soda can,” was just some of the odd information Schiff. But, this humorous information can add doubt to any serious information researcher’s mind, especially since—according to Fletcher—Wikipedia’s article on Star War’s Creatures is more than 15,000 words long, and the entry on World War II barely breaks the 10,000 word mark. With this in mind, does it make sense for news organizations to cite Wikipedia’s information in their articles? Some still believe so.

Many other news organizations have cited Wikipedia in their articles as well—humorous or not—and whether it is deemed acceptable depends on that organization’s policy. According to Donna Shaw’s article, “Citing Wikipedia,” in 2007 the Arizona Republic cited Wikipedia while writing on Congressman Rick Renzi’s background; John Leach, managing editor for news and digital media at the Arizona Republic stated that, “our point in using it [a Wikipedia citation] in the story was that the limited Wikipedia listing about Renzi shows how little was known about his background.” Leach then said that the paper decided not to use the online encyclopedia as a primary reference any longer, but use it as an initial starting point in their stories.

Shaw then explains that adapting the same idea as the Arizona Republic is Michigan’s Flint Journal, who also used Wikipedia when finding background information, but the Flint Journal was looking up facts on fantasy football. Editor Tony Dearing said, “we do not have a formal policy [on using Wikipedia as a source], but we are working on one and will have it soon. Trained journalists have better resources available to them than Wikipedia. I'm not satisfied that the accuracy of Wikipedia uniformly would meet the standards that we want as a paper.” While information is easy to find on Wikipedia, sometimes it’s too easy to find, and this can very much be a threat to news room article accuracy.

The trend of Wikipedia as an untrustworthy source, if a legitimate source at all, is continued with The Courier-Post in New Jersey. Shaw tells of an article written on food that included the definition of satay, which the author found on Wikipedia. Geoff O'Connell, metro editor, explained that, "we are pretty much of the mind that it can't be used as any kind of final, primary source. That occasionally depends on the subject matter. It can be of as much guidance as anything else on the Internet. I think things would have to move pretty far down the road for us to change our minds.” While skepticism seems to be coloring news rooms across the nation, this phenomenon poses the question: who considers Wikipedia legitimate?

The academia world has been weary of student’s use of Wikipedia as well, but The Carleton College confesses the site does have its advantages. Clearly stated on the Colleges Library webpage is the College’s view of the site. “It is easy to access online for free. Articles are often added quickly and, as a result, coverage of current events and new technology in particular is quite extensive. Printed encyclopedias can take years to add new entries and those entries may not cover a topic in as exhaustive detail as those in Wikipedia” the college site explains. More so, the College’s site also includes the idea that “many of the articles in Wikipedia are long and comprehensive, and many entries exist in Wikipedia for which no equivalent entry may be found in any other encyclopedia.” So while many, or most, colleges stray or forbid the use of Wikipedia as a source all together, the Carleton College seems to embrace the idea of the site, but of course, warn the students to proceed to the information with caution.

Regardless of the ideals of the Carleton College, the staff at the New Scientist correspond with most news rooms in the fact that they too are skeptical of Wikipedia, and they are not yet an organization that feels the website is legitimate. The staff of the New Scientist magazine created the article “Wikipedia's Quality Under Threat,” which explains that with the number of articles available on the site going up, so are the amount of editors, meaning that information is being altered more than ever by more people than ever.“The team has found that occasional editors, those who make just a single edit a month, are finding it harder to shape articles. One in four of their changes is undone. In 2003 the ‘revert’ rate was 1 in 10. The ‘revert’ rate for editors who make between two and nine changes a month has grown from five percent in 2003 to fifteen percent today,” explain the staff writers. This, they believe, is evidence of the growing amount new information on Wikipedia, which lowers the sites content value even more.

It is evident, and almost certain, that there will always be a debate on the validity and credibility of Wikipedia. Does one use this as primary source or just a stepping stone? Does one cite Wikipedia in an academic paper—such as this piece has? It seems that opinions on the matter vary greatly, and probably will for all time. Wikipedia describes themselves on their site as “not only an encyclopedic reference but also as a frequently updated news resource because of how quickly articles about recent events appear.” But the site is well aware of its criticisms by explaining that their “departure from the expert-driven style of the encyclopedia building mode and the large presence of unacademic contents have been noted several times.” This explains that whether one deems Wikipedia as an acceptable source is mere opinion, but the departure of the site is nowhere in sight, and that is one statement involving Wikipedia that possesses validity.



My Works Cited (not in correct MLA format):

Cohen, Noam. "Google Starts Including Wikipedia on Its News Site." The New York Times. 22 Jun 2009. New York Times, Web. 23 Nov 2009.

Fletcher, Dan. "A Brief History of Wikipedia." Time. 18 Aug 2009. Time Inc., Web. 9 Dec 2009.

Schiff, Stacy. "Know it all: Can Wikipedia Conquer Expertise?" The New Yorker. 31 Jul 2006.New Yorker, Web. 23 Nov 2009.

Shaw, Donna. "Citing Wikipedia." American Journalism Review. Feb/Mar 2008. University of Maryland, Web. 9 Dec 2009.

Shaw, Donna. "Wikipedia in the Newsroom." American Journalism Review. Feb/Mar 2008. University of Maryland, Web. 23 Nov 2009.

Staff. "Wikipedia's Quality Under Threat." New Scientist. 08 Aug 2009. New Scientist, Web. 24 Nov 2009.

"Wikipedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 9 Dec 2009. Wikipedia Foundation Inc., Web. 9 Dec 2009.

Zawistosky, Ann. "Using Wikipedia." Laurence McKinley Gould Library. 02 Oct 2007. Carleton College, Web. 9 Dec 2009.

why 21st century literature?

passions. we all have them. as a writer we would all hope mine would be writing, and hey, you’re right, but literature is something i lust after. after a long day of scribbling with my pen, or typing on my mac, i grab a cup of hot green tea and indulge in a good book. of the 21st century literature genre to be exact. growing up we learned of hawthorne, shakespeare, fitzgerald, and although definitely classics, will they still be classics for our kids? or our kids, kids, kids, kids? maybe. but as an avid reader and lover of new age lit, i thrive in the idea that even books written post 2000 have a lot to offer and information that can be taught. maybe we will learn a new-age iambic pentameter, or maybe not. maybe we will just learn to be enlightened by the fresh ideas of 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE.