books

books in tower form

I am quite frequently asked about books. Usually about books I like or that I’d recommend and I’ve been meaning to do book posts for the blog for ages, so December is going to have lots of them and this is the first one, featuring a tower of books.

This is not an ideal bookshelf or an all time favorites or any sort of thoughtfully curated list. This is what happened when I wandered around my apartment searching my bookshelves for the books that seemed like they should be in this pile to be blog-shared.

Caveats: there is nothing in this pile that I read in 2012, that post is separate and forthcoming (a preview: I fell in really deep booklove with Kate Atkinson this year). There are a lot of old favorites here, one of them is so old it has my signature inked inside the cover to distinguish it from when I first read it in high school, several have been read many times over. I purposefully did not choose multiple titles by single authors (though Smoke & Mirrors, Fingersmith & all the other Amphigoreys tried really hard to get in on the book tower action).

Also, I’m not going to go on about why I love every book in this pile. For one thing, this post would get far too long, and for another, booklove is a personal sort of thing and it doesn’t always fall easily into short sentences or even words. I hugged my copy of Einstein’s Dreams when I pulled it off the shelf, that’s probably all you need to know.

So here is Erin’s Tower of Books She Loves & Hopes You Might, Too. Presented in easiest-to-stack order and followed by a list of titles & authors.

From top to bottom:

Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

The Litte Stranger by Sarah Waters

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Griffin & Sabine by Nick Bantock

Tales From Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan

Amphigorey by Edward Gorey

By erin, ago

the vanishing act

I am still working on a long post about books that is not post-shaped yet but in the meantime I am delighted that I can finally recommend a book I read months and months ago now and promptly fell in love with and then pouted quite a bit when I realized I wouldn’t be able to push it properly on people until September.

And now it is somehow September, so now you can read The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen.

I’ve had trouble explaining the book to people. I mostly just want to hand it to potential readers and smile and walk away. The Vanishing Act is about a girl named Minou who lives on a small island with her father, along with a man known as Boxman (so dubbed because he builds boxes for magicians, of the sawing-ladies-in-half-variety), a priest and a dog called No Name. A year ago, Minou’s mother disappeared along with the turtle.

It feels like a fable. It has so many of my favorite things on one tiny snow-covered island wrapped in melancholy.

I’m going to share several covers because I can. It has been out in Australia for a while so I was given the Australian version back in February. I made a pot of cherry green tea and curled up in my office and read it in one sitting. I am not a particularly fast reader but it is a perfectly sized one-sitting sort of book. That cover looks like this:

I’ve been getting a lot of books to possibly blurb, you know, those quotes from other authors that boil down to “yay, you should read this!” A lot of them I simply haven’t had the time to read but I’ve also learned from this process that while I like a lot of books the ones I love are fewer. And in order for me to send a quote it has to be a book I both love and wouldn’t mind having my name on, because it seems my name could very well end up on it.

I am delighted and honored to have my name on The Vanishing Act.

This is my entire unedited blurb, for the record:

This book is a precious thing. I want to keep it in a painted box with a raven feather and sea-polished stones, taking it out when I feel the need to visit Minou on her island again. The best stories change you. I am not the same after THE VANISHING ACT as I was before.

By erin, ago

only a few days left for start here!

Hey, remember how everyone was all excited that I’m going to write a chapter about how to start reading Neil Gaiman for BookRiot‘s Start Here project?

Well, if it doesn’t reach its funding goal, it won’t happen. There are only three (3!) days left and less than $5,000 to go. So please, if you think this sounds like a nifty, worthwhile project, contribute even a little bit. There are very cool rewards, too.

Tell your friends! Help reach the in-sight goal! Otherwise, I shall never reveal what I think is the best route for wandering into the wonderful world of Gaiman. And I do have a decent idea of what I’m talking about here:

By erin, ago

start here

You may have already heard about Book Riot‘s Start Here project. If not, you can click the picture or the link or read this helpful description that I’m going to cut and paste for you:

There are so many fantastic authors and great books out there that sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin.

Say you’ve always wanted to read something by William Faulkner. You probably know a bunch of his books: The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying; Light in August; Absalom, Absalom! Maybe you’ve even come close to buying one. But every time you think about it, there’s that big question:

Which should you read first?

Start Here solves that problem; it tells you how to read your way into 25 amazing authors from a wide range of genres–children’s books to classics, contemporary fiction to graphic novels.

Each chapter presents an author, explains why you might want to try them, and lays out a 3-4 book reading sequence designed to help you experience fully what they have to offer. It’s a fun, accessible, informative way to enrich your reading life.

Start Here will be available both as an ebook (compatible with Kindles, iPads, Nooks, and a variety of other devices) and as a printed edition.

 

Fun, right?

I thought it was a fantastic idea to begin with, and I knew Joe Hill was writing a chapter and anything Joe Hill does seems like it’s probably cool, and now the section introducing the varied and wondrous worlds of Neil Gaiman will be composed by yours truly.

I am delighted and honored to be involved. I am still pondering my suggestions, as the collected Gaiman is vast and eclectic. It’s kind of like starting someone out on sushi when they’ve never had it before, there are a lot of tastes and textures to set up before we start setting things on fire.

(I really did have sushi that was on fire last week. It said “torched at table” and I expected maybe they’d pull out a little crème brûlée torch but instead it arrived aflame and continued to burn for quite a while and it was delicious.)

My Gaiman guide may end up having a slightly unconventional approach (I already know I’m not going to suggest starting with American Gods, for one thing) but I think it will be a lot of fun and also gives me an excuse to page through my gorgeous Absolute Sandman editions again.

If any of this sounds appetizing to you, you can help kickstart Start Here here.

 

By erin, ago

in lieu of a post that was not a post, books.

I seriously just spent a considerable amount of time writing a post that was mostly little bits of things and also a list of things that I am going to post about in upcoming proper posts and then there was some sort of draft-saving internet hiccup and now that post has vanished.

So, as I do not have time to rewrite it today, I instead give you a fraction of that missing post in the form of the pile of unintentionally color-coordinated books I bought today. I blame the fact that the text in Sacré Bleu is actually blue for ending up with a very blue bunch of books.

By erin, ago

coffee table/books

This is my coffee table. My coffee table has not been this clear since before the book tour. I am far too pleased about the clearing of the coffee table, even though it quite possibly involved cluttering other tables not pictured.

I am having one of those days where I have a lot to do so I am procrastinating by cleaning off my coffee table and eating chocolate very seriously as though by treating the chocolate eating as something important it becomes a more productive activity.

Anyway, on to something somewhat productive, I have been meaning to do a post of my favorite books of 2011. Note that they are favorites and not bests. I shall break them in to categories.

 

Favorite book published in 2011. (This one is a tie.)

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I lived in this book for a good month, because it is three books and a total of nearly 1,000 pages. I had a very battered galley copy by the end and now my gorgeous hardcover is sitting next to it on the shelf. I was worried that I wouldn’t be satisfied with the ending after so much time and so many pages but  I really was. It’s hard to explain, it’s like 1984 but different. It’s surreal but in a realistic way. It’s a book to live in for a while, sometimes stopping and looking up at the sky to count the number of moons.

Habibi by Craig Thompson. This book is gorgeous. Gorgeous. It is a book to pet and “oooh” over before you even get to the story within it that is equally beautiful. The lines of Craig Thompson’s artwork make me weak in the knees and the lines of the art in this book are so fluid they almost seem to move, as though the ink has yet to dry and wants to stay in motion. Calling it a graphic novel doesn’t properly express what it is, it’s a work of art. Also, Craig himself is lovely and huggable. I know because I’ve hugged him and the fact that I have hugged the person who created this lovely thing amazes me.

Favorite book published in 2011 that I have not technically read. (Though it is on the aforementioned coffee table.)

Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton. Okay, so I haven’t read the book but I have read and loved it in internet form (harkavagrant.com) so I know what kind of brilliance is contained within these pages. I have two book tour regrets and they both involve not meeting people despite being in meetable proximity, one of those people is Ron Charles and the other is Kate Beaton, I know she was at IFOA in Toronto at some point but our paths did not cross which is probably good because I might have fangirled all over her.

Favorite book I read in 2011 that was published in a year other than 2011.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. This book had been on my to-read radar (hadn’t even made it to the to-read shelf) and when I was in Mississippi I happened to have enough time to browse books at Turnrow Book Company and found this lovely little edition that happened to be signed and since it was small enough to fit in my bag I had to get it. It then became travel reading and I loved it to bits, for a book that is so much about music it feels like music, soaring and heartbreaking, grand and intimate all at the same time.

Other favorites published in 2011 that I will not elaborate upon to save space:

The Devil All The Time by Donald Ray Pollock

The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

Other favorite books read this year but published in years other than 2011:

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson

Every novel ever written by Dashiell Hammett.

That’s the list, though I didn’t read much that I disliked this year. Fables should have some sort of honorable mention even though I’m still working my way through, and I’ll be surprised if Angelmaker doesn’t make the list next year since I’ll be finishing it as 2011 turns into 2012. And now you probably have a better understanding of what I mean when I say my taste in books is eclectic.

By erin, ago