books

twitter-sourced blog post the first

I wasn’t sure what to blog about today and for the sake of experimentation, I asked Twitter.

Twitter gave me lots of suggestions, so I am going to try to address as many of them as I can, likely over 3 or so posts. This is the first one. (I’ve broken out all the circus/new book stuff to talk about together.) I will get to the rest of them soon(ish).

So, here we go:

 

Pizza.

So this sad thing happened about three years ago or so. I read an article about gluten allergies and on a whim decided to avoid it for two weeks and in that two weeks I lost over five pounds and felt way better than usual so I decided maybe I should continue avoiding.

But of course that makes all the wonderful delicious gluten-filled foodstuffs difficult. Luckily gluten-free seems to be quite trendy at the moment but proper pizza is still difficult. There was a restaurant in Boston I used to get rather good gluten-free pizza from (Nebo, for the curious, the zucchini one is my favorite), haven’t found one in NYC yet. I did find good frozen gluten-free “pizza crusts”  that are questionable if you go classic red sauce on but really good if treated more like flatbread. I do pear/goat cheese/honey things or bbq chicken or fig and prosciutto.

My favorite regular pizza topping is pineapple, though.

 

Any tips for Camp NaNoWriMo?

I think my Camp NaNo tips are likely the same as my regular November NaNo tips except possibly with more iced beverages. Don’t re-read. If you want to delete something turn the font color to white instead and keep going. Always meet your daily wordcount minimum. Get a head start if you can. Remember you can go back and make things better afterwards. Surprise yourself.

My official NaNoWriMo pep talk is over here.

 

Won’t this be your first summer living in NYC? I’d like to hear what excites you most about it! (I’m moving here in July)

Hurrah, I hope your move goes smoothly! It is my first NYC summer, indeed. So far it seems more exciting than winter in NYC (which was about hibernating) and spring in NYC (which was rainy). I have already read in Central Park on a blanket in a shady spot on a hot day, which reminds me a bit of being at an oceanless green beach. I am also completely enamored of all the fantastic outdoor dining/drinking spots. Right now my two favorite rooftops are Gallow Green and the rooftop at pod39.

In general, the things that excite me most about NYC are food or drink related. Also parks.

 

I think the witch in Hansel&Gretel inherited her tasty house and only hates kids b/c they’re always destroying it. Thoughts?

I have always thought those kids were terribly rude for eating someone’s house without so much as asking first. Makes me wonder if they’d just knocked on the door and said “Hello, we are lost and scared and hungry” would they have been given a proper balanced meal and everything would have been happy ever after. This makes me want some sort of re-imagining where Hansel & Gretel are polite and the witch adopts them and they become little fledgling cannibals.

 

blog about the first piece of creative writing you ever did

This is likely proof that I never set out to be a writer: I can’t really remember. I vaguely recall writing crayon stories when I was very small though they weren’t very long and I doubt they had plots. I do remember writing a short story when I was maybe 12 or 13 for a creative writing class at arts camp that was a re-telling of the Frog Prince where the frog just sang Village People songs and said snarky things and then stayed a frog at the end.

 

An anecdote about your favorite book growing up. Or a bookstore you remember or a library.  &

I second the favourite book growing up suggestion. Or favourite NYC bookstores. Any new discoveries?

I had a lot of favorite books growing up. The ones I really remember vividly are Mail-Order Wings by Beatrice Gormley (the girl in the book orders wings from an ad in the back of a comic book, and the comic itself is a version of The Metamorphosis, so I had my first exposure to Kafka when I was about 8 years old) and The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. That’s the one that probably ensnared my imagination the most. I used to build Egyptian temples in the woods behind my house, with sticks and rocks and feathers and things. This is how I know I am not allergic to poison ivy.

My closest library when I was little was this one:

 photo from http://www.townofmarshfield.org

The Clift Rodgers Library in Marshfield, Massachusetts. (I’m not sure I ever realized when I was young that it was Clift and not Cliff.) It’s a tiny little space in a beautiful old white house that has been a library since, I believe, 1897. Upstairs is a consignment shop, so I still associate libraries with old things and mysterious treasures.

My favorite NYC bookstore so far, despite the fact that it intimidates me, is probably The Strand. So many books! I get book shopping anxiety there but sometimes it’s worth it. My favorite new discovery is Kinokuniya near Bryant Park, it has books in English as well as Japanese and lots of other delightful things. I’ve been very tempted to get the new Murakami even though I can’t read it.

 

That’s it for part one! Thank you for the topics! Parts two & three forthcoming.

By erin, ago

miscellaneous post of miscellany with fluffy cows

This post has no rhyme or reason unless accidental rhymes sneak in and also there’s a cow at the end. But I had a lot of things to post so I figured I would put them all in one post and they can keep each other company.

Firstly and likely most importantly, the high-pitched noise of utter delight you may have heard resonating around the internet yesterday was me being asked to interview/converse with Neil Gaiman for his upcoming NYC event at Symphony Space for The Ocean at the End of the Lane (which I loved) on June 19th. I am honored and elated and a little bit nervous, but I have two weeks to calm down. I will post more information when I have it. The event is already sold out. My apologies.

(Since I’ve been asked, I will absolutely hang out while Neil is signing All The Things and I will have a pen in case anyone wants something circusy signed, and they might have copies of the circus for sale, I’ll let you know. But I am primarily there to be a fangirl. I mean an interviewer.)

ocean1

Other things!

I saw this video floating around the internet before today and I didn’t click it at first because I am the last person in the world who hasn’t read any John Green (though I know who he is and I’ve been meaning to!) and I don’t follow him on Twitter or Tumblr but after seeing it linked & re-posted by people I know and read and admire, I clicked.

 


I love this so much I’m not sure if I can explain it. So many of my own feelings about books and publishing in one lovely, impassioned speech with emphatic swearing and I am going to go buy myself some John Green books from bookstores with booksellers now.

Speaking of books and not reading them: Game of Thrones. No spoilers, I promise. But it seems a good time to mention that I watch the HBO show even though I haven’t read George R. R. Martin’s books. While I am normally a supporter of reading books before watching adaptations in this particular case I’m actually glad I haven’t read them because I’m enjoying the story in the show more not knowing what’s going to happen. I like to be surprised. I may be one of the only viewers who rather liked the unexpectedness in the last episode, and also thought it made sense within the narrative. I could probably write an entire spoiler-filled post about it, but I’m supposed to be writing a novel myself.

And finally: fluffy cows. FLUFFY COWS. It delights me that they exist. I want to write them into something but I don’t know what. Maybe if I ever get back to that fairy tale thing.

fluffy cow

More about the cows over here on Laughing Squid. Photo via Lautner Farms.

By erin, ago

sea & salt & submersion

So last week the power of Twitter manifested Neil Gaiman’s upcoming The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

I said this:

 

Truthfully I thought maybe someone at his publisher would have a spare ARC, and if I were lucky I’d get one in a few weeks.

Before the end of the day I’d played Twitter tag with publishing types in both the US and the UK and then one lovely person led to another and then the name “Neil Gaiman” turned up in my email inbox, so a couple of days later I had these:

ocean

Top one is the US version (I love that cover) and the hardcover beneath it is a special edition proof from the UK. They are both beautiful and they are being treasured and petted and read.

I am a very, very lucky girl and I didn’t have to make out with anyone, but if any of the lovely people who led to this want to take me up on that, that’s totally cool.

I curled up with it over the weekend and I wasn’t sure what to expect because I knew nothing about it. Read it in one sitting and loved it. As I said on Twitter afterward, it is soaked in myth and memory and salt water and it is so, so lovely.

It feels as though it was always there, somewhere in the story-stuff of the universe, and I’m glad Neil captured it on paper so well.

And it made me want to write again.

I’ve been working, sorting through notes and drafts and the last of the cardboard boxes, but I haven’t really been doing much raw storytelling writing in that itchy to put things on paper way and this lit that spark again, which is impressive since it lit it with water.

And I got to email Neil Gaiman and thank him personally for that, which is delightful and yet more proof that Twitter is magic.

(I promise to only use the power of Twitter for good and books and not abuse it.)

So I have had oceans on the brain and then yesterday my teal chairs finally, finally arrived (they’d been held hostage in a warehouse and no one thought to call to arrange delivery until they were inquired about, several times) and they are even more gloriously teal and deco than I’d expected and I love them.

And they made me realize that my decorating concept is basically Bioshock.

I can think of worse decorating concepts than “underwater art deco city.” And I like it, it’s cozy. It’s a flavor I can work in.

bioshocky

I’d been thinking about the new novel as an air and glass sort of thing, where the circus was very much paper and fire and earth. And it has been curled up near the sea but I hadn’t thought of it as a water creature until now, and in its way it really is.

It’s very much like figuring out the soup you are cooking needs more salt. It seems too simple but it’s true.

It took oceans on the brain and teal chairs to realize it, even though I think it was there all the time.

Now that I’ve finally had the time to write I’ve been gathering up all my ideas and bits and pieces of scrawled drafts and I’ve been dipping my toes back in to get myself re-acclimated. I think I hadn’t been sure what this story was or wanted to be and over the last week I’ve had a couple of those salt water epiphany sparks and while I don’t know what it wants to be, exactly, I have a better idea.

I figured out over the last two years that while I can write little bits of things I can’t develop a whole novel-world unless I can shut everything else out and live in that world. I need that full-on imagination submersion. And for various reasons I’m only now getting to the point where I can do that.

I’m remembering how to breathe underwater so I can properly submerge myself.

I know I have something here, and I want to get it right.

By erin, ago

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:

giant arc pile with bunny

 

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.

resurrectionist

 

resurrectionist blurb

 

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, ago

read this.

penumbra

 

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:

harkaway blurb

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, ago

books i read in 2012 & particularly enjoyed

2012 was a weird reading year for me. I feel like I didn’t read quite as much as I did last year. I read bits of things and more non-fiction than I usually do, there was more grazing than proper book devouring. I still got through a decent number of books. I didn’t, however, keep a proper list so I spent a lot of time staring at my shelves trying to remember if I read things this year or last year. For 2013 I will attempt to keep a proper list.

This is in no way, shape or form a “best of” list. This is stuff I read in 2012 and liked a lot. Most of them were not published this year.

There are two books in here that ended up with my name on them. There are a couple that had been on the to-read shelf for years. There’s a book that I read in its entirety in all of 15 minutes last week. There’s a cocktail book.

And a whole lot of Kate Atkinson.

Here is your visual aid*:

2012 books

Let’s start with the Kate Atkinson, shall we? My reading year was Atkinson-themed, I’d acquired Case Histories in Canada during my 2011 book tour and I took it on an airplane this year partially because it was a good size to fit in my bag and I got kind of obsessed after that and read all the Jackson Brodie books. I adore the way she writes, and I love a good mystery, and I love a multi-faceted narrative where everything feels disparate at first but then everything connects. They’re my new favorites to push on people, because sadly not nearly enough people in this country have read her books, but I hope that changes.

Rest of the tower, in order from top:

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories is filled with tiny bits of wonderment and delicious illustrations and it only took me 15 minutes (possibly less) to read but I know I will read it again and again.

The Vanishing Act by Mette Jakobsen. First of the two with my name on them, I read this book before it was published in the US, curled up on a February afternoon with a pot of tea. I simply adore it, I’ve pontificated about it before, I recommend it to people whenever I can, book evangelist, etc. LOVE THIS BOOK. Love.

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Had been sitting on the to-read shelf far too long, partially because I was avoiding circus books in general while working on The Night Circus. Finally read it and loved it this year, both a little bit sorry that I waited so long and a little bit glad because I think I read it at the right time for me.

The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry. This was given to me by a lovely bookseller at Politics & Prose last year but I didn’t get around to reading it until this year, after several other people had recommended it to me, usually after hearing that I’m working on a fantastical detective-esque book-thing. It is a delightfully surreal detective story, and having spent a great deal of time reading a lot of classic, not-so-surreal detective stories lately I loved it all the more.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. I meant to get to this last year but didn’t actually get a hold of it until it was out in paperback though I am pleased about that because the paperback is such a pretty color. This was one of those books I couldn’t put down and then couldn’t stop thinking about afterward, though it made me oddly melancholy.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. True confession: I have owned it since it came out in paperback but I only finally got around to it because I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. People have been recommending this to me for years knowing my taste in books, so I think I expected to like it a bit more than I did. I loved certain sections, I only liked others, but the book as a whole is astonishing. (I liked the movie, too.)

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. As I mentioned, I have been reading a lot of detective stories. I also have apocalypse fatigue. I was primed to not like this book and I loved it. I especially loved the treatment of the impending end of the world, which felt nuanced and real and yet never overwhelmed the mystery, only informed it.

The PDT Cocktail Book by Jim Meehan & Chris Gall. I think it is fair to say that I drank more cocktails this year than I read books, but I did also start collecting more cocktail books which should count for something. This is one of my favorites, because beyond having fantastic cocktail recipes it’s an interesting, gorgeously illustrated book.

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler & Maira Kalman. The Basic Eight remains one of my all-time favorites, and this book reinforced my belief that Daniel Handler is or has been an adolescent girl, even though I’ve met him and he appears convincingly manly in person. This would be a brilliant, bittersweet story on its own but the Maira Kalman illustrations of the contents of the break-up box turn it into something extraordinary.

Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway. Read as 2011 turned into 2012 and I said last year it’d likely make the 2012 favorites list and it did, of course. And it has the honor of being the very first book I ever blurbed, which makes it special. Also, it’s shiny. Also also, it truly did give me a raging crush on a fictional lawyer.

 

*Other books I enjoyed in 2012 that are not pictured for various reasons:

Vermilion Sands by J.G. Ballard, lent to me and thus not in the pile. First Ballard I’ve ever read and some of the imagery will be in my head forever, I’m certain.

Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer, because I read it before everyone found out he was a lying liar who lies and I loved it then, and I still love a lot of the ideas behind it.

The Resurrectionist by E.B. Hudspeth. I read a PDF galley and I cannot wait to see the finished book when it comes out next year. Beautiful and macabre, one of my very favorite combinations.

 

By erin, ago