books

beautiful things for spring

Vintage UK has a beautiful new edition of The Night Circus as part of their Vintage Quarterbound Classics collection. It will be available starting today wherever books are sold in the UK. There are links here for retailers. (Some bookstores should have signed bookplates.) It is both immensely flattering and a bit surreal to have this book included in such company.








I had the honor of writing the introduction for the Folio Society centennial edition of Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter. My copies have just arrived and they are so incredibly stunning. This centennial edition is illustrated by Julie Dillon and also has a foreward by Neil Gaiman and the whole presentation is just gorgeous, from the slipcover to the endpapers. It is such a delight to see this story wrapped in such an incredible package. I now have five different editions of this book spanning a century and they are all enchanting in their own ways. (If you’ve never read The King of Elfland’s Daughter I highly recommend it, it is wonder-filled and wonderful.)

Spring is disguising itself as winter around here, with hail yesterday and a fresh coating of snow today. It is doing nothing to improve my sense of time but it is very pretty. Spending these unseasonably cold days writing and playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 and waiting for things to bloom.

By erin, ago

books illustrated’s the starless sea

Absolutely over the moon to be collaborating with Books Illustrated and Anne Yvonne Gilbert again as they work their magic on The Starless Sea.

This very limited special edition will be published in 2024 for The Starless Sea’s fifth anniversary. To keep up with the process as it unfolds including all future news regarding ordering information please sign up for the Books Illustrated Starless Sea mailing list here. 

By erin, ago

signed books now available

I have been trying to figure out a good system for ordering signed, personalized books for years and I finally have one, I am so very grateful to everyone who helped make this happen.

Signed and personalized copies of The Night Circus (in both paperback & hardcover) as well as signed and personalized pre-orders for The Starless Sea are now available from The Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Massachusetts. They will ship internationally.

More information is available over here on their website.

By erin, ago

october things

pumpkins

The end of September went by very quickly because my new niece decided she wanted to be a September baby and not an October baby as scheduled so she was early, but she is also adorable. I have already started buying her all sorts of books.

One of my very favorite authors from when I was young passed away yesterday, Zilpha Keatley Snyder wrote a great many books but my favorites were The Headless Cupid and The Egypt Game. I loved The Egypt Game so much I used to build temples in my backyard. I should do that again if I ever have a backyard.

I will be at New York Comic Con this weekend but I am not doing anything official. I will be flouncing around in a corset and wandering aimlessly and looking for the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab booth and possibly buying comics. If you see me, feel free to say hello.

This upcoming Monday is October 13th, which is of course the anniversary of opening day of the circus. To celebrate I thought I might do something I rarely do over on Tumblr & retumble some of the gorgeous circus-inspired stuff that’s floating around over there. (True confession: I never look up circus things because it makes me weirdly shy and also just looking turns up good things and bad things and for every thing I’m glad to see there’s usually something that makes me sad so I just don’t do it. But I peeked the other day and there’s really too much gorgeous not to share.) So all day on Monday I will be retumbling circusy things on my tumblr page. I’ll try to remember to tag things, I’m bad at tagging.

I haven’t been apple picking yet this year. I shall have to rectify that soon. Mostly I am writing a lot and wondering why this year insists on going by so quickly.

By erin, ago

station eleven

STATION ELEVEN by Emily St. John Mandel comes out today in the US & Canada, and I believe tomorrow in the UK, which makes this both STATION ELEVEN Day and STATION ELEVEN Eve depending on location.

I loved this book.

LOVED.

I have post-apocalypse fatigue and I still loved this book, because it’s so much more than that. I don’t want to tell you too much about it, because simply describing it would never do it justice.

This is going to be one of the stories I carry in my imagination for the rest of my life. It will come to mind again and again and again in theatres, in airports, in Toronto in the snow.

Please read it.

Once in a very long while a book becomes a brand new old friend, a story you never knew you always wanted. STATION ELEVEN is that rare find that feels familiar and extraordinary at the same time, expertly weaving together future and present and past, death and life and Shakespeare. This is truly something special.

– Erin Morgenstern

By erin, ago

august internet hiatus & magicians

I am taking the entire month of August off from the internet. 

What this means: no blog posts, no twitter unless important information sharing, no tumblr. I am shutting off the wifi connection on my laptop from tomorrow until Sept 1st. (I spend 90% of my computer time on the laptop.)

I will be checking my personal email periodically.

I will still be Instagramming because Instagram lives in my phone.

I hope you all have a lovely month.

***

On Tuesday August 5th two very cool things happen:

1. The Magician’s Land is finally released, hurrah!

2. There will be this magical event in Brooklyn. I will be there. I don’t know what I’ll be doing, that’s pretty much up to Lev. It will probably involve talking of some sort. I don’t know if there’s an official non-Lev signing for anyone but I will bring a pen and I will happily sign things if asked.

At the moment it is my only scheduled appearance this year which I am doing because Lev asked me to and because I really loved this book.

Here’s the official Morgensternian blurb:

Lev Grossman has conjured a rare creature: a trilogy that simply gets better and better as it goes along. The Magician’s Land is sumptuous and surprising yet deliciously familiar, a glass of rich red wine left out for a hungry ghost. Literary perfection for those of us who grew up testing the structural integrity of the backs of wardrobes.

Here is the author-studded crowd-sourced book trailer:


And here is an extra bonus outtake from when I recorded my section back in April. Filmed in Toronto. There are puppies. Also this is when I realized I needed to cut my hair. I miss my jacket, it’s too hot now.

By erin, ago