Graphic lit, gifts

My occasional column in Shelf Awareness on "graphic lit" ('cause they're not all comics, and they're not all novels... but I'm pretty okay with all terms, interchangeably) ran yesterday, with my suggestions for gift-worthy graphic lit. There's an abundance of delicious new and collected comics out there this season, and this is just a small sampling. One of the titles I didn't get to include is the first and second collection of Moomin, the comic strip by Tove Jansson featuring an endearing hippo-like creature and friends. Whimsical and surreal, childlike and socially conscious, bizarre and totally intuitive, the strip has tremendous appeal -- but since I've only read it in bits and pieces (while I probably should have been doing other things) on the sales floor, I can't say I've experienced the whole thing. It's one of the gifty new collectios that works for kids and adults, so I thought I'd throw it in as a bonus for you blog readers.

Speaking of brilliant gift books -- I was gifted the new Poetry Speaks Expanded by a pal at SourceBooks, and the ALP and I spent a lovely evening trolling through the CDs and the book listening to our favorite serious and silly poets reading their work. There's a lot of overlap with the original Poetry Speaks (which was one of the ALP's first gifts to me, back in 2001), but the new edition has a lot more poems printed and recorded. What an incredible gift for a poetry lover, I think.

Off to work, for tomorrow we feast! A very happy Thanksgiving to everyone -- and here's hoping Friday is very black indeed in all indie bookstores.

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