books

2013 favorites: books

Favorite Books Read in 2013

In order, as pictured, from left to right and going down the typewriter-sitting pile:

NOS4A2 – Joe Hill. I believe my Twitter-length review was “made me fear Christmas and children more than I did already” but the tiny pointed teeth only scratch the surface of this epic ride of a novel. I can’t remember the last time I read something that took supernatural elements and wove them into the real world so masterfully and believably. Also, perfect holiday gift.

The Rathbones – Janice Clarke. Has my name on the cover for good reason, I adored this book to little pieces. Myth wrapped in sea shanty and family history, so beautifully told. I cannot wait to see what Janice does next, though of course I am going to be incredibly patient.

Life After Life – Kate Atkinson. I went on a Kate Atkinson bender last year so I was very much looking forward to this one and it didn’t disappoint. It also didn’t hurt that I read it in February surrounded by snow while housesitting for my parents, perfect mood for it. If you haven’t read it yet, winter would be a great time to dive in.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman. If I had a book to define my year it would be this one. Which I read early because Twitter is Magic and that of course led to more magic things. But beyond that, this lovely little book made me want to write again, in that magical way that I haven’t been feeling enough lately, and I got to thank Neil Gaiman for that personally.

Sailor Twain, or The Mermaid in the Hudson – Mark Siegel. I’d seen this on many of last year’s best books lists and I was curious but I still didn’t expect it to be as surprising and wonderful as it is. Beautiful art, beautiful story. I’ve been using it as a gateway drug for anyone who tells me they’ve never read a graphic novel.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan. Had you told me at the outset that this book would make me cry I would not have believed you but it snuck up on me at the end. I have a thing for endings, and while this book was fantastic fun the whole way through the very last pages are perfection. Also it glows in the dark.

Hyperbole and a Half – Allie Brosh. I have said it before, I will say it again: I am grateful to live in a world that has Allie Brosh in it. I’ve been a fan of her blog for years and her posts on depression (I & II) are brilliant and funny and wonderfully real. I am grateful to have her words and pictures in book form to live on my shelf so I can re-read them over and over even without electricity or batteries.

Jim Henson: The Biography – Brian Jay Jones. I don’t really read biographies. I’ve read a few for research but that’s about it. I picked this up on a whim and then couldn’t put it down. It reminded me how much I grew up on all things Henson and Muppets and how much of an influence on my creative self he was and how I forget that sometimes because it’s so deeply engrained. I don’t remember a time pre-Muppets. I’m pretty sure The Great Muppet Caper was the first movie I saw in the theatre and I made my dad stay through the credits so we were the only ones left when Gonzo takes a photo of the audience. This biography is wonderful and engaging and a fantastic peek behind the curtain.

Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan & Pia Guerra. We went to Midtown Comics and started chatting with one of the booksellers (comicsellers? gurus?) who after he found out our tastes went on about all things Brian K. Vaughan. I got one volume of Y and then immediately had to read the rest of it. It’s epic and smart and surprising. I read a lot more Vaughan this year but this one was my favorite, though I’m excited to see where Saga goes in the future. (Related: if anyone can tell me where I can find volume 4 of the deluxe editions of Ex Machina I’d appreciate it, I have all the others & I still don’t really understand why 4 is the elusive one.)

And a special bonus non-pictured tease because it was easily one of the very best things I’ve read this year, and possibly ever:

The Enchanted – Rene Denfeld. Not out until March 2014, but oh, this book. It is exquisite. I won’t tell you too much since it’s not available yet but I read it months ago in manuscript form and I’m so glad it has a perfect cover and I cannot wait to tweet and shout and spread the word about it. It’s extraordinary, truly.

So those are the favorites of the year for 2013. I had an off-kilter reading year, got a lot of things read in the first half of the year and then fell off the reading wagon a bit. (December was eaten by The Goldfinch. Still not done with it yet.) But it was a year full of wonderful books and surprises and I hope next year will bring even more.

By erin, 10 yearsDecember 23, 2013 ago

double book birthday!

It is finally August 6th! I have been waiting for this day for so long because two of the best books I’ve read in the past year are out today, hurrah! Double book birthday!

(This is one of the frustrating aspects of getting advanced copies of things, waiting so long to be able to share fabulous new book discoveries.)

First, SAVE YOURSELF by the wonderful Kelly Braffet.

I never know how to describe this book which I personally think of as an excellent quality in a novel. I’ve seen it called a thriller but it’s the kind of thriller that occurs in your backyard, in your neighborhood, at your convenience store. Where things have gone wrong before and will go wrong again and all you can do is keep turning the pages. One of those extraordinary books where the characters feel like living, breathing people. Dark and bleak yet so compelling. You know that feeling when you’re reading and you’re scared about what might happen but you have to find out and you feel all conflicted and nervous and it’s just delicious? That feeling. A lot.

This is the first novel of Kelly’s that I’ve read and I’m very much looking forward to reading her previous books. (Kelly is also featured in this fabulous NYT Magazine article about the absurdly talented King family.)

And sharing the auspicious August 6th book birthday, THE RATHBONES by Janice Clark.

My name is on the cover there so I think it’s probably obvious that I loved this one, but here’s the whole quote:

“Part odyssey, part ancestral mystery and part sea shanty, all brilliantly entwined and soaked in Greek myth. Mercy’s journey over sea and shore and through extraordinary family history is a remarkable tale, both epic and intimate. The Rathbones itself feels as though it was loom-woven or carved in whalebone. Beautifully crafted and elegantly told. A siren song of a story.”

I was super nervous when I picked this up because it seemed like it could have gone amiss with the layering of the Odyssey with whales and New England but it steers itself through this beautiful inbetween of reality and myth. It’s Janice’s debut novel and I cannot wait for her next one but I will be patient because I’m not one to talk on such a subject.

Go forth! Buy books! Read on beaches with sand between your toes or lounged upon backyard grass or couch curled or wherever your reading spot of preference is! It’s only August, still plenty of summer reading time.

By erin, 11 years ago

books

post-ocean blue dress gratitude

Last week I got to wear a blue (blue! not black!) dress and interview Neil Gaiman and talk about The Ocean at the End of the Lane and admit in front of hundreds of people that I’ve never seen Doctor Who.

(I know. I’m sorry.)

I had planned on doing some sort of post-event blog post but then afterwards I really wasn’t sure what to say.

I had a lot of fun and though I was supremely nervous it went really well and everyone including Neil seemed very pleased with everything. He’s remarkably easy to interview considering he kept answering questions before I even asked them. Perhaps he’s clairvoyant. I met him for the very first time about an hour before we were on stage so the whole thing felt remarkably surreal.

There is an excellent writeup of the evening over on Tor.com (though I think a few of the quotes about whether or not we die may be misattributed).

I had many more questions than we had time for, though my main goal was to talk about things that maybe weren’t being talked about at every single stop on his tour, and we got tiny frogs in teacups and BPAL and Mythic Boy Jesus so I’d call that a win.

One of the last audience questions posed to Neil was “Who is your favourite living writer?” and of course it was a longer list than just one, and included a few recently no longer living writers as well, like Iain Banks and Diana Wynne Jones.

And I thought in that moment how incredibly lucky I was to be sitting there, when I will never get the opportunity to meet the other gigantic influence on my writer-brain I mentioned in my babbling introduction, the incomparable Douglas Adams.

There is a sentiment I am concerned got a bit lost in that babbling during that introduction (I was nervous), which is this:

I would not be the writer I am today without Neil Gaiman.

I’m not sure I would even be a writer at all without him.

I discovered his work at the perfect time for my developing story-brain and I am eternally grateful for that.

I’m not sure the gratitude got properly expressed then, so here’s an extra Thank You, Neil for good measure:

Thank you, Neil.

For your work and for asking me to do this event and for being a real live lovely person.

(Also I am sorry that I inadvertently stole the title of that Batman thing, but The Night Circus is indeed a really good title.)

By erin, 11 years ago

books

gaiman-y post (goes well with tea)

Neil Gaiman’s lovely, brilliant The Ocean at the End of the Lane comes out today, hurrah!

I’d tell you what I think of it but if you’re reading this you probably already know, and in case you didn’t, this is what the back cover looks like:

I was asked by the publisher if they could use a quote that was an amalgamation of things I’d said on Twitter and here and of course I said yes. I truly thought they’d use it in promotional materials or something, so when I received a finished copy of the book with this on the back I was surprised and delighted and I am absolutely honored that my name is on this book.

BookRiot is all Gaiman, all the time today and as part of it they’ve posted the Neil Gaiman Introductory Tea Service I wrote for their Start Here project. (The short version of this from now on will just be: “Read The Ocean at the End of the Lane” because it would truly be an excellent book to start with.)

Tomorrow night at Symphony Space I shall be in conversation with Mr. Gaiman himself and I have all sorts of things (non-spoilery things!) to ask about this book and general things about writing and stories and myths and memories and such. As I’ve mentioned before, the event is already sold out so my apologies for that. Hopefully it will not be like the anxiety dream I had last night where I couldn’t find my cards with my questions and topics and there was hardly anyone there and all anyone wanted to talk about was baking.

(I shall be signing as well so do please bring your circusy things if you’d like me to sign them. If you do not have circusy things, there will be copies of The Night Circus for sale.)

Today I will be re-reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane so it is fresh in my mind and drinking lots of tea (yerba mate with coconut sugar) and wondering why I still feel like I am comparatively new to the world of Neil Gaiman when I’ve been reading his books for over a decade.

By erin, 11 years ago

books

on ARCs and blurbs and (yet again) time

For those of you who don’t know (and I, despite years as a rather avid reader, had no idea until I started figuring out how to get published) an ARC is an Advance (or Advanced) Reader (or Reader’s or Reading) Copy (the C seems to always be for copy). They are also sometimes called galleys, for additional confusion. They’re sent out to booksellers/librarians/reviewers before the book itself is published so people can decide to stock or sell or review it, and they also send them to authors in order to get the little quotable endorsement phrases (blurbs) on the covers or on posters or t-shirts or whatnot. (Blurbs on t-shirts might not be a thing, actually, but someone should look into that. For BEA, maybe.)

So you have likely all seen blurbs on books. You may have already seen blurbs by me on books, of which there are two that are already in book form and two more on their way to being books (I shall give you a peek at the third at the end of this post). I have, to date, blurbed four whole books. I have been sent a lot more than that, though.

This is my current pile of things received late last year & year-to-date, with a bunny on top:

It’s already more books than I could read in a year, especially a year where I should be writing a novel. (A novel which is requiring reading other not-in-the-pile books for research-esque purposes, too.) Which brings me to a sad but true confession:

I’m a slow reader.

Not like, glacial slow but it takes me a good chunk of time to read a standard length novel. I’ve been trying to keep track of everything I read this year and so far I’m managing about four books a month. So, no too shabby, but not enough to keep up with my for-my-own-entertainment, for writing research *and* please-blurb-me books, especially since the blurb-requesting ones are time sensitive. Like little book time bombs. Luckily they remain readable after the time limit expires. I am working on a way to stop time in order to read more, but so far I haven’t mastered it.

I’ve been trying my best to reply to the expired ones (just sent another batch of analogy-filled emails today) as much as I can, though sometimes I can’t find a specific contact email, and one of the emails I sent in this batch came back with an autoreply stating the editor no longer worked at the publisher. Oops.

Luckily I still have some time to possibly read a decent percentage of the pile but the other thing I have learned through this whole process is that I am absurdly picky. I like a lot of books but the ones I love enough to press on others and put my name on in blurby endorsement form are rarer.

Maybe there’s a book I’ll love in the pile somewhere or one will arrive in an envelope sometime soon (they arrive quite frequently) and hopefully I’ll manage to read it in a timely manner. It’s strange to be asked for such things, and even stranger to me that my name on someone else’s book makes any sort of difference. But I’m glad to be able to help boost the signal when I read something extraordinary.

So the next thing that will be appearing on bookshelves with my name on it is a book I mentioned very briefly in my list of books I read & enjoyed last year. It’s called The Resurrectionist, it unfortunately doesn’t come out until May but I was given an early copy and it’s even more gorgeous than I’d expected.

I got to use so many of my favorite words in that blurb.

That’s another thing, for things I do blurb I try to avoid the “This book is better than kittens” generic sort of quote and try to be as descriptive and evocative of what I liked about it as I can. I won’t tease you with anything about blurbed book #4 since it won’t be out until September, but I seriously spent hours coming up with the right combination of words and I’m still mildly bitter that I didn’t manage to get the word “salt” in there somewhere.

And the moral of this post is I need more time to read. Or more time in general, that would be nice.

By erin, 11 years ago

books

read this.

I spent a good chunk of the weekend reading Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

I had wanted to read it for a while because I like the title and I’m a sucker for books about books.

Also, the cover glows in the dark.

(Seriously. I checked.)

Also also, it has my name on the back of the (glow-in-the-dark) cover:

I figured if Nick Harkaway had such lovely things to say about it it would probably be worth reading.

It is.

It is fun and funny and just plain enjoyable. It has mysterious books and thievery and Google (the place!) and it reminded me a bit of Ready Player One in tone. It celebrates both the old and the new in delightful ways.

And it has the honor of being the first book of 2013 to make me cry, completely unexpectedly. Happy tears of that good-book-sucker-punch-to-the-place-in-the-heart-where-the-booklove-lives sort.

Also, it glows in the dark.

(If there was ever a reason to get the paper book instead of the e-version, there you go.)

So since that was my weekend, I was extra delighted this morning to hear that it received an Alex Award, hurrah! (I haven’t read any of the other winners, bad me. More to add to the to-read list.)

By erin, 11 yearsJanuary 28, 2013 ago