101 Best Scenes Ever Written: A Romp Through Literature for Writers and Readers

Conrad selects favorite scenes from literature, theater, and film, groups them into categories, and analyzes them in order to help writers and readers understand why they are great. Its mainly presented to writers as a way to show how great scenes manage the trick of making you fall in love with a story, so that they can learn to do it themselves.

As with any list that declaims "Best" in its title, there are always scenes that are left out. However, I found the scenes selected to be worth reading, so I didn't doubt their value. He sticks mostly to canonical titles and well known works, which means that there is a prevalence of works by dead white men, few women, and almost no minorities. This does not take a way from the scenes show more presented, as these are certainly great scenes; it just reflects on the author's preferences and biases. Any such list is going to be limited, of course, but something from The Color Purple, Their Eyes Were Watching God, just about anything by Toni Morrison, or other such works with fabulous writing could have been considered.

In terms of advice, the author lays down "rules" with a mildly patronizing tone. Many of the rules I don't agree with and Conrad makes no reference to when authors break "rules" for better effect.

Worth a read, but I recommend borrowing it from a library as opposed to buying it. show less

101 Best Scenes Ever Written: A Romp Through Literature for Writers and Readers would perhaps be better titled How to Write a Great Scene: The Barnaby Conrad Way! Conrad excerpts scenes from great literature and film and discusses how we can apply the techniques used in those scenes to our own writing. Now I have no particular aspirations to write fiction, so I wasn’t really interested in how to use these techniques. However, I do enjoy the “peeks behind the curtain” that books on writing sometimes provide, so I didn’t mind that this book had more how-to information than I expected. But was it necessary to put the (often very trite) tips in in boldface centered type?
And then the advice is presented in such absolute terms. It's show more just not helpful, and is actually a little annoying.

Okay, I could forgive the bad advice written in an annoying tone, since I’m not in this book for the advice but for the scenes. But then Conrad did the unforgivable—and he did it twice by page 70. He spoiled the endings! After encountering two spoilers in the first 70 pages, I gave up. Too risky!

See my complete review at my blog. show less

This book is exactly what it purports to be: "a romp" through literature and Hollywood, a culling from the herd of 101 of the best scenes ever written. Mr. Conrad, a best-selling author who also used to professionally wave capes at riled-up bulls (until forced by a "bad goring" to retire from the sport), makes good on his promise. Scene after scene flits by without any but the barest verbal stitching on Conrad's part. The author's picture shows Conrad scowling scholarly at the camera, standing next to an easel and canvas, holding paints in his hands, the canvas's pretty woman's visage resembling something like what I imagine Joan and Jackie Collins's librarian sister to look like.

And so I was prepared for Mr. Conrad to maybe use the show more book's occasion to trot out some of his own writing. Nonetheless, I still cringed when Mr. Conrad, with a bit of hemming and erming, introduced one of his own scenes. But I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the best scenes in the entire book. Seriously.

The downside of this book is that it is chockablock with spoilers. The book's basically nothing but spoilers. It is just one spoiler after the other. Little Women? Jo dies. Tale of Two Cities? Whathisname dies in place of his friend. Animal Farm? Animals dominate other animals; the humans step back in the picture at the end. Also, Mr. Conrad is a tad too impressed with Hollywood's whole system of self-congratulation. I lost count of how many times he describes this or that famous scene, and then says: "This scene is so good that when Actor X and Actress Y played the parts on the big screen, they both won Oscars." As if winning an Oscar settled forever some kind of artistic question. But if it, how then to explain Cuba Gooding Jr. Robin Williams. James Cameron.

But that is not to say that Mr. Conrad fails to instruct. He does a great job. Nor does he fail to charm. He's a real charmer. He is likable. He chucks the reader's chin, and gives him candy on the sly. He picks the reader up from home at dusk, drives him a little distance, and then parks the car. "Shhhh!" he says. "Watch!" He points to the sky. First one, then another, and then too many too count: fireworks explode in the sky.

Oooh. Aaaah. show less

Fun reading, but I can't say I gleaned a whole lot from it.