new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Holiday Gift Suggestions, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 23 of 23
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Holiday Gift Suggestions in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
Here it is... unveiled, unleashed, uncorked and unwrapped!
My "Best of 2010" Story Hour Picks List (and Holiday Gift Guide). For those of you who are local, Barrington Books, where I host a weekly Thursday morning story hour, has the list printed out and the books in stock!
Titles were chosen on their merits as wonderful books to read aloud to little ones—either on a lap or in a group—story originality, and fabulous illustrations. (All titles were released in 2010.)
* The age range for this gift suggestion list is 2-8 years.
Llama Llama Holiday Drama
written and illus. by Anna Dewdney
Snowmen All Year
written and illus. by Caralyn Buehner and Mark Buehner
(*Also check out: Snowmen At Christmas newly released in board book!)
We Are In A Book – An Elephant and Piggy Book
written and illus. by Mo Willems
A Bedtime for Bear
by Bonny Becker, illus. by Kady MacDonald Denton
Children Make Terrible Pets
written and illus. by Peter Brown
The Quiet Book
written by Deborah U
An annual (at least 3 or 4 years now) tradition--offering literary related holiday gift suggestions, and hopefully pulling many other literary types into the fray and getting their suggestions as well.
Okay, a little self serving here, but no worries, there will be at least one of these per day on up through December 24 from me, and hopefully many guest posts as well during that time.
The first EWN 2011 Holiday Shopping Guide suggestion is going to be that you visit the Dzanc Books website and see that they have a Holiday Sale going on with a few special deals:
Order any trio of Dzanc titles at the low cost of $30 and we will ship them for free.
Order any five Dzanc titles at the low cost of $40, and also receive free shipping. We will also be happy to split this order, and send the books to two separate addresses to make gift giving easier. In either case, if you'd like the books gift wrapped inside the postage packaging, we will be happy to take care of that for you. Just let us know if the send to address is one different than your own.
Buy a gift eBook Club membership, and we'll also send you a print book for free! Give a friend 17 books over the course of the next 12 months (5 immediately and one per month) for $50 now, and later be billed just $5 per month for the last six months June through November 2011. For more information about the Dzanc eBook Club and our first month's selection--as well as the five eBooks your friend will receive as soon as you sign him or her up--click here.
* the photo of gifts has been pulled from an old AARP newsletter that didn't appear to have been copyrighted--as it will be being used throughout the month, I thought I should at least give that much credit to it.
This HSG from a fellow indie publisher - a great editor, a great writer, a great eye for great writing - listen to her:
Stephen Elliott, The Adderall Diaries (Graywolf Press)
I rarely
read memoirs, and have been known to complain that their current
popularity has made what was already a difficult climate for literary fiction
all the more perilous, as readers flock to consume sensational
tell-alls. Yet while as startlingly intimate and raw a look at a life
out of control (sometimes deliberately so, as only through sexual
submission does Elliott seem to feel temporarily comforted, whole,
loved) as any memoir could likely get, The Adderall Diaries is far more
than the usual navel-gazing confessional. Weaving in a complicated
murder case--that of tech celeb Hans Reiser's
Russian wife Nina--and a possible murder committed years ago by
Elliott's estranged father, alongside stark revelations about the lives
of runaways and the brutal conditions of group homes, The Adderall
Diaries bears more in common with In Cold Blood
than with most addiction tell-alls. Yet make no mistake: one shouldn't
buy this book "in spite" of its portrayal of S/M or drug culture but
precisely because Elliott reveals, in a style no other American writer
ever quite has, the way the lives of those on the so-called fringes
echo wider cultural truths about memory, violence, self-invention,
forgiveness, and the human quest not to find someone to love us, but to
find within ourselves the ability to love. If Elliott's tale is
sometimes shocking to those who have, say, never visited a dungeon or
dated a professional dominatrix, it is never gratuitous and always
somehow reveals more than it "tells." With a perfect sense of what
needs to be included vs. what narrative holes the reader can fill in
alone, Elliott mesmerizes with deceptively simple prose and a high-wire
layering structure that feels, almost impossibly, as natural and
seamless as though he were in our living room telling us a story . . .
which is exactly what the writer has been doing on his recent book
tour: visiting homes and reading to small groups of friends, then
blogging about it on The Daily Rumpus. For anyone who ever thought of
Graywolf as a stuffy press, this should set the record straight, and
for those who think they are not "into" memoirs, this brilliant book
may not change your mind on the entire genre, but will definitely set
you on an Elliott reading binge as it has me. Kudos, too, to Elliott
for placing this with an indie publisher even after the success of his
novel Happy Baby. (Note: Happy Baby is also a daring and wonderful
read I would highly recommend, but with The Adderall Diaries Elliott
has come into his true powers as a storyteller and craftsman. One can
hardly imagine what he will do next.)
Gina Frangello is the author of the novel My Sister's Continent (Chiasmus 2006) and 
Ah, where the ruse the I "know" a lot of people starts to fade, when I do more than one project here at the EWN at a single time and the same names pop up in each one. Alyson Hagy is quite possibly THE reason there is an Emerging Writers Network, for a plethora of reasons. My own suggestion - if she's making a literary suggestion, I try to pay attention:
I've been in a hybrid mood lately. And these books have really refreshed my sense of what language and form can do.
Incident Light by H.L. Hix. Etruscan Press.
This book is a kind of "imaginary biography," a lyrical description of
a life rendered by the poet Hix in response to a friend's discovery
that the father who raised her from birth was not her biological
father. Hix as a master of formal innovation. He's also just a darn
fine poet. A great book for readers who like Anne Carson and other poetic ringmasters who mesh narrative with lush imagery.
Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine. Graywolf Press. This book isn't 
new, but I've read it twice and it still dazzles me. Autobiography? Poetry? Fiction? Meditation with photographs? I'm not sure what
genre it is, and I don't really care. It is voice. It is anxiety and love and grief. It is 21st century
America in transition, unsure of itself, unsteady, unusual. If you're
looking for a book that knock a reader off her pedestal of
expectations, this is it.
Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald.
Sebald doesn't need extra praise from me. He is (rightfully)
well-known among serious readers and writers. But I haven't been able
to shake this book. (Or the equally impressive The Rings of Saturn.)
Sebald is obsessed with history and destruction and loss. This novel
(should I call it a novel?) is as mournful as the best of Thomas Hardy.
Yet it's fill
For those of you, like me, that think now it is almost time to start shopping, here are a small flurry of last second literary suggestions, first up is from Sarah Joy Freese:
When considering the best holiday movies of all times, Die Hard clearly
makes the 
list. In the same way, when considering 2009’s greatest
holiday books, Allan Shapiro’s The Butcher and the Breather,
makes EWN’s Holiday Guide list. Sure, there is no Santa Claus in his
novel. Nor are there Jingle Bells or dreidels. Rudolph cannot be found,
either, but it is obvious that this novel should rank among the top
choices for holiday book buyers, if only because Allan’s protagonist—a
cigarette smoking, Terminator watching, grocery store clerk at Food For
All—is named Irving Schmuckowitz; his writing is stunningly reminiscent
of Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist; and the book begs the question, “Is
that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”
But those aren’t the only reasons. Clearly, Allan knows how to write, and I don’t mean letters to Santa.
Nicole
is at the sink doing the dishes. I am standing in the doorway of the
kitchen with a gun in my hand. At any moment she’ll be done and she’ll
turn around and see me standing there in the doorway of her kitchen
with a gun in my hand. At any moment my phone will ring. At any moment
everything will begin again.
And then my phone rings. And then the gun goes off.
It is louder than I expect. My ears are ringing and I try to pop them
by opening and closing my mouth. Then I stick a finger in one of them.
Then I shake my head as if I had water in them. Then I see Nicole
slumped on the floor in front of the sink and she is holding her
stomach and the blood is already everywhere and she sounds like someone
trying to breathe in a vacuum and it reminds me that my phone is
ringing and I wonder if I should answer my phone. Then our eyes meet
and there are tears in her eyes and tears come to my eyes and I love
her more than I ever have before and I hate myself even more. The
second shot hits her in the chest and then I don’t hear anything
anymore. I go to the bathroom and I lock the door.
When I stare at
myself in the bathroom mirror, I realize that I no longer have to worry
about my heart stopping since I now have the ability to stop it myself.
The gun is still warm in my hand. Then it is still warm in my pocket.
Then I sit on the toilet and wait for Nicole to call.
She doesn’t.
When I leave the bathroom, the sink is still running, but there is
nobody on the floor in front of it. There is no body. The television is
still on though there is nobody to watch it. The door is still open.
I return to the Cadillac to find the butcher smoking another cigarette.
I get in the car and take a deep breath. Then I realize what I’ve done.
Then I ask if it would be okay if I have cigarette.
The butcher smiles. The butcher says, ‘Now don’t you feel better.'
So,
if you’re looking for a stocking stuffer; a Chanukah gift; or a book to
accompany you on your crazy holiday travels, consider The Butcher and
the Breather. You won’t be disappointed. In the words of Bruce Willis
as channeled through John McClane a la Die Hard, “Yippee Ki-Yay,
Motherfucker!” Perhaps more poignantly, in the words of Allan Shapiro
as cha
This HSG comes from author, Martin Clark (and he's right, it's no surprise to me what book he suggests based on previous interviews and/or guest posts by Mr. Clark):
No surprise here, I'd
select Larry Brown's Big Bad Love as the best literary gift possible, inasmuch
as it's the finest collection of short stories ever printed, better even
than John Cheever's and Miss Welty's.
I'm grabbing this bio from Martin's website. It might be a tad more 
detailed than others from this series, but it compensates for the brevity in his suggestion.
Martin Clark is a Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate
of Davidson College and a 1984 graduate of the University of Virginia
School of Law. In 1992 he was appointed as a juvenile and domestic
relations district court judge for the Twenty-first Judicial Circuit
and currently serves as a circuit court judge for the Virginia counties
of Patrick and Henry and the city of Martinsville, Virginia, a job he
has held since 1995. Martin's first novel, The Many Aspects of Mobile
Home Living, was a New York Times Notable Book for the year 2000, a
Book-of-the-Month Club selection, a finalist for the Stephen Crane
First Fiction Award and appeared on several best-seller lists. The New
York Times Magazine called Many Aspects "arguably the funniest legal
thriller ever written" and declared Martin to be "the thinking man's
John Grisham." Additionally, the screenplay for Many Aspects is being
written by Pulitzer Prize finalist Jerry Mitchell and his writing
partner Mike Roden.
Martin's
second novel, Plain Heathen Mischief, received starred reviews from
Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, was chosen as a selection of the
Quality Paperback Book Club and, prior to release, appeared on both
Amazon's and Barnes and Noble's Top 100. Mischief was nominated for
several 2004 literary awards.
Martin’s
third book, The Legal Limit, was selected by NPR as one of its "Summer
Reads" and was featured and excerpted in the July 2008 edition of
Readers Digest. Reviewers stated that The Legal Limit is "the new
standard by which other works of legal fiction should be judged" and
"the best courtroom story ever." The New York Times Book Review called
it "a novel of ample graces." With multiple printings to its credit,
Limit appeared on the SIBA best-seller list for five consecutive weeks
and spent thirty straight weeks on Amazon's legal thriller best-seller
list, rising as high as number two. Also, the book was named to several
"Best of 2008" lists, including those compiled by The Washington Post
and Bookmarks Magazine, and it won The 2009 Library of Virginia's
People's Choice Award for fiction. Rights have been sold to Bela Bajara
at CBS/Paramount fo
These fine suggestions come via Dawn Raffel:
Enormous
Changes at the Last Minute by Grace Paley
Anyone
my age or older (please don’t ask) recognizes Paley as a master of the short
story, but I’ve been stunned to discover how few of my otherwise very well read
students are aware of her (that is,
before I get my hands on them). If you have not read Paley, spike your gift
list for a moment and buy this for yourself. Very few writers are both
hilarious and heartbreaking (despite the crap publishers write on the flap
copy) but Paley is. She can fit the whole world in a cramped kitchen in a
single short story.
Surprised
by Joy
by C.S. Lewis
(Barnes
& Noble reissue, not on Amazon)
Lewis’s
journey toward Christianity might sound like an odd pick from someone who is
Jewish but I recommend this spiritual biography regardless of your faith. Read
it for the rigorously laid-out argument for religious belief; for the vivid
(and moving) depiction of an early Twentieth Century education in Ireland and
England; for a better understanding of the intellectual and spiritual
progression of a major Twentieth Century thinker; and for the sheer pleasure of
Lewis’ effortlessly elegant prose.
Triangular
Road by
Paule Marshall
Andrew Scott recommends South of the Big Four by Don Kurtz
One book I often
give to friends is South of
the Big Four by Don Kurtz. I first read this novel in the fall of 1996,
when I signed up for my first fiction writing workshop, taught by Patricia
Henley. Had I not read this book at that crucial time, perhaps I would not have
become a fiction writer. I only majored in creative writing because Purdue
University, the only college to which I applied, didn’t offer a comic book
engineering degree.
South of the Big Four was the first book to give me permission
to write about my corner of the world. Set in the farm country just north of my
hometown of Lafayette, Indiana, the book is narrated by Arthur Conason, who has
recently returned to his family’s abandoned farmhouse and started working as a
hired man for Gerry Maars, who might be the last farmer from the old days and
old ways.
From the jacket
copy: “Physically strong and emotionally reserved, Arthur falls into several
casual but disruptive affairs. Gradually he comes to accept the love of a young
waitress who can see past her uncaring husband and four children to a life they
might someday share. He is also won over by Gerry Maars’ creed of endless
prosperity and optimism. It is only as Gerry’s enterprise begins to fail and Arthur’s
own past can no longer be ignored that the fates of these unforgettable
characters become clear.”
Are you a
reader/gift-giver who cares about blurbs? Very well, then. Feast on these:
“South of the Big Four is a rich,
complex, achingly beautiful novel.”
—Richard Russo
“Uncompromising,
unsparing, fiercely honest, South of the
Big Four is the real thing—a work of lasting literary merit.”
—Robert Boswell
The following Holiday Shopping tip comes from author, Caleb J. Ross:
Gifting a book is a potentially dangerous idea. Books still
connote a certain intellectualism that may be perceived as an affront,
depending on the receiver. But as with most things, the degree of danger is
equal to the degree of satisfaction to be had.
Ideally, the gifted book will say more about the giver’s
relationship with the receiver than about either person individually. But,
since I don’t know who you are, or who you are giving to, I’ll offer a bit of
commentary along with each recommendation.
First, ditto to Roy
Kesey’s The Wavering Knife
recommendation. And should the person on your list be both a fan of
Evenson’s stark fiction 
and a book
collector, go for Evenson’s newest, a limited print, hand-bloodied (yes,
bloodied) copy of Baby Leg. The giver: “I want to
nurture your book-collecting habit, and I love you, despite your aversion to
books about escaped human science experiments with unwarranted distrust toward
atrophied limbs.” The receiver: “A hardback Evenson WITH BLOOD! Thanks for
accepting me for who I am.”
We all have the relative who prides himself (usually a himself, yes) in being a trivia
repository, able to oust anybody’s knowledge on any subject with an 
irreverent
detail. Steven Johnson’s, The Invention
of Air takes a kernel of trivia and expounds upon it; the kernel being that
a man named Joseph Priestley is one of America’s unacknowledged founding
fathers. The giver: “Your lust for story-topping, nay, story-stopping, with
your unrelated facts is one of the reasons I love you. But did you know that
Joseph Prie—” The receiver: “—stly is one of America’s little-known founding
fathers. Yes, but I don’t know much else about him. Thank you for helping me
further destroy the next conversation of which I am but an onlooker. This book
will help me look smart and be annoying simultaneously.”
You ask someone, “have you read [blank] book?” He says, 
Here we have some suggestions from Ander Monson:
I have been in the mood for short things recently. These also make for
good presents. At one point I wrote a lot of flash fiction, or what
other people called flash fiction, but that was a while ago. I don't
know why I stopped writing it, or if I wrote it at all. I did read
quite a bit of flash fiction when I taught fiction, because flash is
great to teach when you don't expect your students to have 
actually
read anything before they come into class, which probably means you
need more and better students. So then I eventually stopped teaching
flash because my students dwindled (it was probably my facial hair I
realize now), and soon there was only one really short kid in the class
who called himself El Charro and scowled a lot, and he kept writing
disingenuous ratemyprofessor.com ratings to keep others from taking the
class because "This class was easy as a high school dance when you're
34," whatever that means, and eventually he stopped talking to see what
I would do, if I'd still keep lecturing and asking questions and trying
to rephrase my questions so as to elicit a more pleasing response. What
did I do? I killed him. And then I was alone. I realized that if I
wanted to get some more students, I would have to appeal to them with
words. The words I used were that of Sean Lovelace and his book How
Some People Like Their Eggs. I will admit that I didn't expect
much, because Sean runs fast and as you know it shrinks the brain and
other organs. But it turns out the stories are inventive as hell and
transformative and smell sometimes like Palmolive, which probably has
something to do with the ink they use to print it, but I am not a
specialist. It makes me want to write flash fiction again. If I were
buying a book for someone who doesn't know how to read, but really
wants to, this would be my choice. As a result, several students came
back. They were just as good-looking and pony-eyed as before but this
time they liked to read books. I think this can work for you too. One
then posted the following on the internet about my class: "Even retards
will eventually be hoisted on their own petards." I don't know what
this portends, but I am looking forward to finding out.
Another short book that I read this year was Kathleen Peirce's The
Ardors, which 
I discovered in the middle of the night in a
prehistoric forest at the
This HSG comes from Roy Kesey!
The answer to the
question as to the identity of the ideal book for 
holiday gifting—that is, what
I'd get you if you were me and I (you) didn't already have it—is Brian
Evenson's The Wavering Knife. There are many, many, many reasons why
this is so, and if you are 
interested in knowing any of them, I encourage you
to track down the current issue of The Cincinnati Review, wherein all is
revealed. Seriously, all. We're not even wearing pasties.
A different question:
What books did I, having realized just in time that not everyone is me,
actually get for other people? Well, now. My sister, I thought, would enjoy a
few of those complicated sweet/bitter laughs that Lorrie Moore 
is so good at,
so she gets Birds of America. Mom's a big 
Kingsolver fan, so The Lacuna was an easy call. Dad, as much a sucker as I am
for real-life explorers who traipse interestingly into jungle and fail to
return, gets David Grann's The
Lost City of Z. And my cousin Tim, who has spent most of the past
several years dealing with sand and bullets, gets a little bit of complex
gorgeous green: Bruce Chatwin's In
Patagonia, perhaps my favorite of those travel books that need their own
nook-shelf somewhere between fiction and non-.
Roy Kesey did not supply me with a bio so I'm winging it. He currently
Today's Holiday Shopping Suggestions come from Kelly Cherry:
Three books of poems knocked my socks off, even the one that
will go on the mantel:
Shadow Box by Fred Chappell (L.S.U. Press, cloth and paperback).
Chappell is a poet extraordinaire, and in his newest volume he gives us poems
that do things poems have never done before. Really. You need to
read them to find out what and how, and anyone curious about what newness might
be left for poetry in our time needs to read 
them now.
News of the World by Philip Levine (Knopf). One of Levine's best,
this book may be read as the capstone to a stellar career; it is the kind of
book a master writes after he has shed all illusion about art and life.
Waiting for the Alchemist by Mark Perlberg (L.S.U. Pr). Perlberg died
before this book, his fourth, was published, and publicity was no doubt
curtailed. It is beautiful, sweet, gentle, playful, and haunting and readers
will love it. "What is memory?" he asks, and says: "Praise it.
Praise its strings and loops / of orchids floating in the night above the old
Mexican town-- / and yesterday--that pair of eagles, drifting, / floating above
the island, dallying with the wind."
Kelly Cherry is the author of nineteen books of poetry, novels, short stories, 
criticism, and memoir--including this year's Girls in a Library: On Women Writers and the Writing Life and The Retreats of Thoughts: Poems--eight chapbooks, and two translations of classical plays. Her short fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O.Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, and New Stories from the South, and her collection The Society of Friends: Stories received the Dictionary of Literary Biography Award in 2000 for the best short story collection of 1999. For her body of work in poetry she has received the Hanes Prize from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She is Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and has held named chairs and distinguished visiting writer positions at a number of un
This Holiday Shopping Guide comes from Terry Blackhawk:
I was grateful this year to discover Anne-Marie Oomen’s
first poetry collection, Un-coded Woman,
Milkweed Editions (2006), which immerses us in the lives and landscapes of
northern Michigan. Essayist and dramatist, Oomen teaches in the
creative writing program at Interlochen
Academy and is no
stranger to the nature and culture she renders.
We learn the physical and psychic chills of long winters and the
struggles of characters as they attempt to survive poverty and personal
deprivation. Oomen’s exquisitely crafted
lyrics take their titles from the maritime International Code of Signals. Poems such as “00 My Direction Finder Is
Inoperative,” and “FZ 1 I Am Continuing to Search” (accompanied by graphics of
each semaphore) remind of the search for personal safety as well as the dangers
of Great Lakes navigation. This carefully organized book unfolds like a
novel, through a variety of voices, as its main character Beatrice (nicknamed
Bead, “a thing so small it should be forgotten”) discovers her strength and
comes to terms with a brutal past. I
have visited northern Michigan
many times, yet came away from this book of poems with a deeper, internalized
understanding of the region. Perhaps Un-coded Woman’s linguistic beauty
despite the harsh subject matter helped to convey this. It’s a work of fine craft and compassion, but
ultimately, I think that Un-coded Woman
is a profoundly political book—tracing, without preaching, ripples of economic
neglect as they wash through individual lives.
I also recommend two long-awaited collections: Linda Nemec Foster’s third full-length
collection, Talking Diamonds, New
Issues Press, and Sophia Rivkin’s The
Valise from Mayapple Press. Foster
takes many of her poems from visual art, ranging from the visual image into meditations
on family, memory, and the lives of others.
I especially love “Red Amaryllis, 1937,” (after Georgia O’Kee
We start off the week's Holiday Shopping Guide with some fine suggestions from Brian Evenson:
1. Ceridwen Dovey, Blood Kin
Though the title might make you think this is a vampire novel, Blood Kin
is in fact the story of a political coup in an unnamed country from the
perspective of three men and three women employed by or close to the
deposed president. The language is wonderfully precise, it pulls no
punches, and its revelations are done with a great deal of care. Blood Kin
is certainly the best and most clearheaded description of the dynamics
of power that I’ve read this year, but in addition it has all the
satisfactions of a well-written lyrical novel. An excellent choice for
a smart family member who habitually reads Latin American or African
History who you’d like to see branching out into fiction.
2. Peter Straub, Ed. American Fantastic Tales, Vol 1 & 2
(I’ve got a piece on one of these two volumes, but am recommending them
in spite 
of that since I don’t think there’s anything else quite like
this out there.) Library of America has been very quietly changing the notion of what “canon” and “literature” means, including Chandler, Hammett, Lovecraft, and Philip K. Dick
in a series that for years seemed staunchly committed to high
literature. These two volumes, edited by Peter Straub, continue that
trend, offering a tradition of the American Fantastic beginning with Charles Brockden Brown and Poe, moving through the pulps and ending in volume two with writers such as Kelly Link, Michael ChabonTim Powers.
Straub mixes literary and non-literary figures, offering some
unexpected by excellent stories; the result is a collection of
fantastic tales that if you read it from end to end reveals some
surprising links and a robust tradition of the American fantastic.
3. J. G. Ballard, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
This definitive collection of Ballard’s stories reveals a startlingly
ec
Sorry for the delay today, was out of the house around 7 a.m. and just got back in not long ago. Anyhow, today's suggestion comes from Laura van den Berg:
Allison Amend’s debut collection Things That Pass For
Love (OV Books, 2008) is
nothing short of unforgettable—the perfect holiday gift for lovers of the short
story (or readers that need converting). Her voice is fearless and funny and
heartbreaking; her characters will linger with you long after their stories have
come to a close. You don’t even have to take my word for it, since the
collection drew critical praise from a variety of top-notch venues.
In a review for Booklist, Carol Haggas wrote: “The
terrible impact of bodies falling from the sky, the shrill thwack of a golf ball
hit out-of-bounds, the elusively tender caress upon a faithful dog's head. Such
tactile, sensory imagery infuses Amend's lustrous collection of short fiction
that celebrates the forlorn and isolated, the disgruntled and misunderstood, the
least guarded and most apprehensive among us.” And Lynna Williams, writing for
the Chicago
Tribune, said:
“The strangeness of the stories
in Things That
Pass For Love
give them a particular kind of 
universality; we believe in these characters and
situations even as we’re made a little uncomfortable at how easily we recognize
them.” I love this book, and whether it’s a gift for the
readers in your life or for your own library, you won’t be sorry you took a
chance on Things That Pass For Love.
Bonus question: what do
The following book suggestion comes from the author, John Domini:
To lend weight to the holiday, never mind the turkey
and nog. Instead set out the novel ST. JOHN OF THE FIVE BOROUGHS, by
Ed Falco, published this past fall on Unbridled Books. Falco here goes
for a heft and complexity new to him, a saga of a family ruptured and
an artist discovering herself, in which far-flung elements knit
together skillfully, movingly -- and not a little frighteningly. As
always in Falco, the drama is dominated by its women, seen frankly yet
with empathy. Early missteps all but hobble the women here, younger
and older. But this winning accomplishment, a new benchmark for its
author, reminds us that few things can be so beautiful as a scar.
John Domini has won awards in all genres, publishing fiction in
Paris Review,
Ploughshares, and anthologies, and non-fiction in
GQ,
The New York Times, and elsewhere, including Italian journals.
The New York Times
has praised his work as "dreamlike… grabs hold
of both reader and
character," and Alan Cheuse, of NPR's "All Things Considered,"
described it as "witty and biting." Richard Ford called his ’07 novel,
Earthquake I.D., "wonderful… a rich feast," and the Emerging Writers Network, in a four-and-a-half-star review, called that book and
A Tomb on the Periphery,
in '08, "back-to-back stunners." Domini has worked as a visiting writer
at many universities, including Harvard and Northwestern, and Grinnell.
Italian publication for
Earthquake I.D., is through the house that was the first to translate
Don DeLillo, and they will also be handling
A Tomb on the Periphery.
Today's suggestion comes from the fine author, Peter Markus:
The Red Truck by Rudy Wilson is one of those late-80s Knopf books edited by 
Gordon Lish
that I found remaindered one day in some TV
appliance-warehouse-turned-bookshop that is now a place that sells
tires. I took it home and immediately could feel the sensation of
something new running through my hands. I think it's a brilliant book,
a one of a kind book,
a book that wouldn't have been made into a book had it not found its
way into Lish's hands. I think the story goes behind it that Lish cut
the manuscript in half (sort of what Lish did to Barry Hannah's
revved-up Ray). I suspect what Lish did was find the core engine of
Rudy's Red Truck and cut away much of what a much younger Wilson
thought was needed to hold the wheels together. For me it's a novel
that is pure hallucination. Each time that I take a ride in The Red
Truck I come unglued and then am put back together in 
new ways. The Red
Truck is the rarest and realest of deals. You can get it now from
Ravenna Press along with a brand new book of short fiction by Wilson
called Sonja's Blues. And while you're loitering around at the Ravenna
website, do yourself a 
third favor and nab Norman Lock's The Long
Rowing Unto Morning, an equally dreamy and necessary book.
Peter Markus is the author of three short books
of short-short fiction, Good, Brother (AWOL Press/reissued by Calamari
Press), The Moon is a Lighthouse (New Michigan Press), and The
Singing Fish (Calamari Press). He also published the novel, Bob, or Man on Boat (Dzanc Books) and has a short story collection, We Make Mud (Dzanc Books) due in 2011. His work has been published in a number
o
It's been brought to my attention that I seem to only have asked females to participate in the HSG program here at the EWN. It may seem that way for now, but there are also posts from males coming soon. Just not now. This particular suggestion, or set of suggestions, comes from Elizabeth Ellen:
Recommendations
For Surviving The Dreaded "Holiday Season" With A Little Less
Self-Loathing And A Bit More Cheer
First
off, and perhaps most importantly, John O'Hara's Appointment in Samarra (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935 - though the photo is from the Vintage, 2003 version). This
novel opens on Christmas morning and concerns the self-destruction (and
prolonged inebriation) of its protagonist, Julian English. It was written in
the 30s, which means Julian self-destructs with a great deal of humor, style,
and alcohol. Even his self-loathing comes off as charming (quite a trick! just
try it!). In the second chapter we learn, via Julian's wife, that he has ruined
their good social standing in town (Julian owns a Cadillac dealership) by
throwing a highball in the face of one Harry Reilly (a person, we gather, of
even higher social standing) at a party the previous evening, though Julian
himself is hungover and slow to remember. Things go delightfully downhill from
here. So delightfully downhill you're apt to momentarily forget your own
self-destructive tendencies and the shambles your life has been thrown into
because of them and focus instead on Julian's, which is precisely the point.
Here is a top-notch example of what I'm talking about:
"He
laid a lot of records out on the floor without looking at their titles. He spun
a spoon around, and when it stopped he would play the record to which it
pointed. He played only three records in this way, because he was pounding his
feet, keeping time, and he broke one of his most favorite, Whiteman's Lady of
the Evening, valuable because it has the fanciest trick ending ever put on a
record. He wanted to cry but he could not. He wanted to pick up the pieces. He
reached over to pick them up, and lost his balance and sat down on another
record, crushing it unmusically. He did not want to see what it was. All he
knew was that it was a Brunswick, which meant it was one of the oldest and
best. He had a drink out of the glass. He used the vase for resting-drinking,
and the glass for moving-drinking. That way he did not disturb the main drink
while moving around, and could fill the glass while getting up and sitting
down. Unintentionally he lay back. 'I am now,' he said, 'drunk. Drunk. Dronk.
Drongk.' He reached like a blind man for the fresh bottle and with eyes that he
knew were sober he watched himself pour himself a drink. 'No ice I get drunk
kicker. Quicker,' he said that aloud. To himse
This installment of the Holiday Shopping Guide comes from Molly Gaudry:
This past Thanksgiving weekend, I listened to the first half of Anthony Doerr's About Grace on
my eight-hour drive home and saved the second half for the return trip.
This is the first audio book I've ever listened to, and it was a
strange experience because I couldn't skip ahead and read the ending,
which is something I pretty much always do. I could have skipped ahead
and listened to it, sure, but I didn't. In any case, this is a
book about fatherhood, plain and simple. It is also about forgiveness,
hope, and the unavoidable nature of the future. Best of all (for a
seasonal selection), it is also about snow. Snow in a way you've never
seen or thought about before. The snow alone is reason to recommend
this book, but here's a final thought: women will probably like this
book but men might like it even more.
Bio: Molly Gaudry is the author of We Take Me Apart (Mud Luscious 2009), and she is the 
book reviewer for East&West Magazine, which is based out of Hanoi, Vietnam. Find her online at http://mollygaudry.blogspot.com.
Today's suggestions come from Pamela Ryder:
In the Year of Long Division, by Dawn Raffel
This amazing collection of stories should not be missed. With language
as clear and crisp 
as the dawning 
of a clear new day, the characters
reveal themselves and the workings of their most mysterious hearts.
Nightwork, by Christine Schutt
Death,
loss, love are rendered to perfection in 
this collection of exquisite
stories. Motives are revealed, not by explanation, but by the exacting
language of intimacy and daring.
Pamela Ryder is the author of
Correction of Drift: A Novel in Stories (FC 2, 2008), and the forthcoming short story collection,
A Tendency to be Gone (Dzanc Books, 2011) and has had her stories widely published in literary journals, including
The Black Warrior Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Conjunctions, The Texas Review, and
Quarterly West.
Today's guest shopping suggestions come from the fantastic Jonathan Evison:
I've been on a one man crusade recently to bring the male reader (en masse) back to the novel, and it's certainly not because I find anything lacking with the middle-aged college educated women readers who are the bread and butter of literary fiction—thank God for every one of them! There's just not enough of them. I don't want to stand by and watch the novel die a slow death because fifty percent of the world's readers (who just happen to have penises) aren't paying attention. And I don't wanna' reduce this to the women are from Venus, men are from Mars paradigm. I think the bottom line is guy readers are harder for publishers to target. If you're a guy, and you're reading this post, you're obviously not the problem. But you probably know a dozen dudes who stopped reading fiction in college. So anyone interested in joining the crusade, here are two books that came out this fall which would make excellent Christmas gifts, and I feel offer just the sort of fare to get these sad-sacks off their asses, put their joysticks down, and join the legion of educated women out there edifying themselves with fiction:
Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply: A thrilling puzzle of an identity theft novel by one of our very best writers. Chaon knows when to stop writing and tell a story. This novel has great depth, yet it's not the sort of depth that weighs the story down, but the sort of depth that harries the reader to plumb deeper and deeper. In short, un-put-downable. And it'll haunt you, too. It's a hardback, it'll set you back about twenty-five bones with tax, but I promise you it's a gem.
Hesh Kestin's The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats: Best gangster novel ever, without 
any of the well-worn tropes of the genre. This novel is whip-smart, thrilling, suspenseful, and masterfully written. Great stuff about the mob and the Kennedy assassination, two subjects that generally appeal to dudes in a big way. That said, my wife loved this book as much as I did. This is a trade paper original, and thus a bargain, in the fifteen clam range.
Jonathan Evison is the author of
All About Lulu (Soft Skull 2008) and the forthcoming
West of Here (Algonquin, Fall 2010).
He likes rabbits and beer. He lives on an island in Puget Sound, where he spends a lot of time in sweat pants, petting rabbits and drinking beer. He also does some
great blogging of his own.
This Holiday Shopping Guide suggestion comes from Lori Ostlund:
In 2006, I attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference,
where I had the opportunity to hear Richard Siken read “Litany in Which Certain
Things Are Crossed Out,” from his poetry collection Crush (Yale University Press, 2005), which won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets
competition. I cannot put into words
how I feel about this collection, except to say that it terrifies and
exhilarates me, and when I am feeling discouraged, especially when I am feeling
discouraged about my own writing, I take this collection out and read from it
to myself, aloud. There are some poems
that I return to repeatedly, poems such as the one that I heard Siken read that
afternoon at Bread Loaf, which begins as follows:
Every morning the maple leaves. Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out You will be alone always and then you will die. So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog of non-definitive acts, something other than the desperation. Dear So-and-So, I'm sorry I couldn't come to your party. Dear So-and-
Well, I don't have a fancy avatar to go with this (yet), but today through Xmas Eve will have the EWN offering you a Holiday Shopping Guide that focuses on books or the literary world. Tis the season after all and as it's a little after 5 a.m. on Black Friday, the stores have opened. The bulk of the shopping suggestions will be coming from well established authors or editors over the next 30 days but the first one comes from me:
Temporary People: a Fable by Steven Gillis
It's a title I've touted here before and can't really see myself stopping any time soon. It's really a perfect storm book for the EWN - written by a great friend, published by a Dzanc imprint, and, oh yeah, it's freaking great! And don't trust just me, the reviews the book has received by those that found it have been stellar.
"Temporary People by Steven Gillis is one of the best fiction novels published over the past few years." - Lene Vanelslander
"The satire is effective. Gillis is successful in painting the madness,
the irrational behavior of an oppressive government, the mass fear in
response, and the distortion of reality that taking away basic
liberties must involve when one manipulates the many. If this echoes of
current political scenarios, it should. In his characters, Gillis
illustrates different forms of resistance and rebellion: indifference,
self-serving cowardice, passive and active resistance, heroic if
perhaps misguided protest and bloody coups. All done with a touch of
Hollywood." - Zinta Aistars
It's a book that I read in manuscript form when Steve completed it, on my computer screen, straight through, something I'd never done before, and haven't since, with any other manuscript or book. The language is exciting, the plot borders on being a page turner. The novel was prescient in the story line of babies being born with the effects of a company/government looking for big profits, and reminds the reader of what it means to follow your conscience, and personal ethos.
It's a book I've read three or four times now and am sure I'll return to time and again in the years to come. And I know from insider information that its publisher, Black Lawrence Press, as an imprint of Dzanc Books, happens to have a big Holiday Sale going from now through Xmas.
Come on back throughout the next month and see what others are suggesting you consider giving as gifts, be it to yourself, or others.
By: Dan Wickett,
on 11/25/2010