~ BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS ~
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It's gritty, profane, and luminous: full of beauty and acceptance. My book of 2012. Complex-.
“It seems inadequate to call ‘Dear Sugar’ an advice column, because it exists in a category all its own . . . Part memoir, part essay collection, the aptly titled Tiny Beautiful Things gathers together stunningly written pieces on everything from sex to love to the agonies of bereavement. Strayed offers insights as exquisitely phrased as they are powerful, confronting some of the biggest and most painful of life’s questions. . . . . In her responses, Strayed shines a torch of insight and comfort into the darkness of these people’s lives, cutting to the heart of what it means to love, to grieve and to suffer.” —Ilana Teitelbaum, Shelf Awareness
“Typically an advice column might not be the first thing to come to mind when considering examples of fearless first-person writing. But Cheryl’s Dear Sugar column is a major exception in that way. In the majority of her column entries, she boldly delves into her own life, to places where she’s had to overcome obstacles similar to those her letter-writers have experienced. Her understanding and compassion are real and hard won, rooted in her own experiences. And so is her sometimes butt-kicking advice. ‘If I was able to do this,’ she seems to be saying, ‘so can you, sweet pea. Now get off your ass and do it.’ The stakes may have seemed lower when she was writing the column anonymously. But Cheryl says she always knew she’d eventually reveal herself—which she did in April. Now many of her best Dear Sugar columns have been gathered into Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection that goes on sale this week (and is available through The Rumpus). Her name is on it; the revelations, the fearless admissions are hers. And I’m awed.” —Sari Botton, The Rumpus
“It seems inadequate to call ‘Dear Sugar’ an advice column, because it exists in a category all its own . . . Part memoir, part essay collection, the aptly titled Tiny Beautiful Things gathers together stunningly written pieces on everything from sex to love to the agonies of bereavement. Strayed offers insights as exquisitely phrased as they are powerful, confronting some of the biggest and most painful of life’s questions. . . . . In her responses, Strayed shines a torch of insight and comfort into the darkness of these people’s lives, cutting to the heart of what it means to love, to grieve and to suffer.” —Ilana Teitelbaum, Shelf Awareness
“Typically an advice column might not be the first thing to come to mind when considering examples of fearless first-person writing. But Cheryl’s Dear Sugar column is a major exception in that way. In the majority of her column entries, she boldly delves into her own life, to places where she’s had to overcome obstacles similar to those her letter-writers have experienced. Her understanding and compassion are real and hard won, rooted in her own experiences. And so is her sometimes butt-kicking advice. ‘If I was able to do this,’ she seems to be saying, ‘so can you, sweet pea. Now get off your ass and do it.’ The stakes may have seemed lower when she was writing the column anonymously. But Cheryl says she always knew she’d eventually reveal herself—which she did in April. Now many of her best Dear Sugar columns have been gathered into Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection that goes on sale this week (and is available through The Rumpus). Her name is on it; the revelations, the fearless admissions are hers. And I’m awed.” —Sari Botton, The Rumpus
favorite author tie
Dark fiction meets sacred memoir
margaret atwoodClick image to open author's website.
I've read 12 of her novels, 3 poetry collections, and 2 non-fiction books. She's my favorite Tweeter: hysterical and unflinching. But what I prize most in The Queen is her complex inter-textuality and language.
Meaning: I can study one sentence and find several layers. Meaning: Digging into an Atwood gives and gives back. Mmm. Her word choice is sharp and cutting; she'll draw blood and make me laugh at the same time. I'm horrified. How did I laugh? Why can't I stop laughing? Oh my god. Stop. She's poetic--rhythmic. Her writing is force of nature. Like, Atwood herself has physically assaulted me with her words. Thrown me on the floor. Smack! Stimulation. She's unafraid. She will confront you. You will be toast. She will deposit a pile of unsavory right.there in all it's meaty steaminess, and you will be glad. Start with Oryx & Crake, The Blind Assassin, The Handmaid's Tale, or Alias Grace. "So many queendoms, Margaret Atwood has, and so few rivals. Every Western reader knows her name, and nobody’s wrong, when they hear it, to think of feminism or futurism or environmental activism. Atwood might have devoted her life’s work to any one of these spheres, so highly does she rank in each. And yet, it’s the collision—and collusion—of all these worlds that makes her novels, stories, poems, essays, and even tweets endlessly compelling." Margaret Atwood on ‘Positron’, Writing Habits, and Her Pre-Feminism Feminism Oryx & CrakeClick image to open.
Not for the faint-hearted reader. Horrific black-humor. Satire.
Complex+. Fast-paced. Two narratives with alternating chapters. Themes: Identity, Loneliness, Dystopia, Science, Environment, What's Real?, Performance, Consumerism, Porn, Language, Sex-Trade, Religion. Like 1984 or Brave New World on steroids in an alternate universe. My favorite book of 2008. Read Mary Whipple's review. the blind assassinClick image to open.
Gothic. Winner of The Man Booker Prize, the highest literary achievement in the English speaking world. Like our Pulitzer but hella more prestigious.
Complex++. Pacing: slow, deliberate, rich. Four plot lines. Includes a book within a book. Themes: Family, Destiny, Gender Relations, Hidden Stories. Like a sweeping Small Island in a gothic Canada with more poignancy and less hope. Nevermind. Like The Satanic Verses without the magical realism. Read Linda L. Richards review. handmaid's taleClick image to open.
Disturbing dystopia. More black-humor. Rich language. Satire. Wowing. Depressing.
Complex. Moderate Pacing. Themes: Control, Gender Relations, Identity, Fundamentalist Religion, Oppression. Like 1984 or Brave New World on steroids. (But not as many steroids as Oryx & Crake. Earth steroids. But legal. And healthy, you know. Don't do drugs.) Read Charlotte Newman's review. Margaret atwood - april 2013After everyone disappeared we talked for 20 minutes. And I was a bumbling awkward fangirl, and it was the moment of the year and my #1 bucket list in the most glorious fashion. Can you imagine? Love her. Also... she never intended Offred to be June.
terry tempest williams - february 2013Present for the writing workshop and reading.
She's incredibly gracious and kind. Hurry now, run to the bookstore. Get you some Tempest fix. |
terry tempest williamsClick image to open author's website.
Terry's writing is a recent full-hearted passion. I read Refuge a decade ago but didn't return to her work until When Women Were Birds came out in paperback.
This little book struck me so hard I immediately collected everything she's ever written. I even went up to the U's Rare Book Collection to read a volume of poetry that wasn't available anywhere else. Williams' is the kind of author that generates connection and alters perspective. What's important? Personal excavation, surviving trauma, the power of voice propelling us away from exploitation and numbness, toward attention and empathy and passion. Terry is anti-jading juice. Don't disconnect, she seems to say. Look at this Avocet or Bosch's mind-bending Garden of Earthly Delights. Do you really see the people around you? Have you remembered names? We are all so many stories. Her writing has an ethereal, meditative quality: at once soft-spoken and bold. Perhaps her courage is more striking because the content is personal. Perhaps because she is in every way about unearthing the hidden, in herself and in you. In Refuge, Williams found a sanctuary that could withstand her mother’s death. In Leap she grappled with her belief and ultimately transitioned from religion to spirituality. Finding Beauty in a Broken World came after September 11th, when Williams faced the ocean in Maine and asked how to pick up the pieces. “And the word the sea rolled back [was the art of assemblage] . . . m o s a i c.” Which brings me back to When Women Were Birds. Without betraying the impetus, you can know there was a darkness only a mother could heal. And on her deathbed Diane Dixon Tempest left all her journals to her daughter, extracting a promise from Terry that she would save them for after the funeral. Shelves and shelves of journals: footprints, presence, comfort. They were all blank. How to translate such emptiness into awe? Terry Tempest Williams’ words are a salve and a gift. I’ll leave you to the journey. when women were birdsClick image to open.
My Book of 2013 and current overall favorite of all time.
One of the only books I've immediately started re-reading the same day I finished. The only book I can imagine re-reading forever without sating. Complex-. Pacing: slow. A luxuriant savoring of language and memory. Themes: Identity, Language, Silence, Voice, Story, Nature, Mother, Fear. With the spirit of a Marilynne Robinson novel, if Marilynne wrote memoirs. The San Francisco Chronicle said, "as the pages accumulate, her voice grows in majesty and power until it become a full-fledged aria." Read Rebecca Joines Schinsky's review. leapClick image to open.
"When naturalist writer Williams was a child staying over at her grandmother's house, she would sleep beneath images of Paradise and Hell thumbtacked to the wall above her bed, symbols of the "oughts and shoulds and if you don'ts" of her Mormon upbringing. Years later, as an adult, Williams rediscovered those prints in Madrid's Prado Museum--they are the wings of Hieronymus Bosch's 15th-century triptych, The Garden of Earthly Delights. But why had the erotic center panel been hidden from her childish eyes? The question leads Williams on a prolonged meditation contemplating the painting's meaning, her own childhood and the place of religion in life." - Publishers Weekly
finding beauty in a broken world"Ecologist and writer Williams composes gracefully structured inquiries lush with unexpected and revelatory correspondences. In her most far-reaching and profoundly clarifying work to date, Williams considers the complex beauty of brokenness and the redemptive art of creating wholeness from fragments in a triptych of explorations. She begins in a mosaics workshop in Ravenna, Italy, and then brings the understanding gleaned from working with tesserae to her day-by-day observations of a beleaguered Utah prairie dog town. Williams marvels over this tunnel-building, highly communicative species and dubs them “prayer dogs” for their habit of standing and watching the sunset. Prairie dogs are crucial to the biodiversity of the grassland ecosystem, a living mosaic, yet they have been brutally massacred and driven to the brink of extinction. The story of her brother’s death entwines with Williams’ riveting account of her trip to Rwanda with visionary artist Lily Yeh to help create a genocide memorial. Brokenhearted in this land of bones and sorrow, Williams gathers shattering stories of death and resilience with the help of an extraordinary survivor who becomes her son, bearing witness to the horror of neighbors slaughtering neighbors in an attempted annihilation. Scientific in her exactitude, compassionate in her receptivity, and rhapsodic in expression, Williams has constructed a beautiful mosaic of loss and renewal that affirms, with striking lucidity, the need for reverence for all of life." -Booklist
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irresistible novels
It became my favorite book of 2011 the instant I listened. French accents! Gorgeous. Full of hope, connection, meaning, and friendship. It made me cry. B.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l writing. Two narrators: a 12-year-old girl determined to kill herself in one year because adults lose the joy, and an older woman who lives by herself in the same building. Complex-.
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Hysterical "Jewish" satire. Incredible writer. Jaded. Ironic. Winner of The Man Booker Prize, and how! It could win a dozen Bookers! Confronts aging and identity and otherness. Self-delusion. Paradox. And it's wry, and you'll love it.
Complex. |
tasty truth
young Adult - yes!
Scale of Required Effort
Complex- - Complex- Complex Complex+ Complex++
Complex- - Complex- Complex Complex+ Complex++