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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Switchblades, bicycle chains and adventuresome tailors": Colson Whitehead on Brooklyn literary culture

As a last treat before you start your weekend, you gotta read this brilliant piece by Colson Whitehead about being a writer in Brooklyn. He lives here (in Fort Greene), he loves it, but he hilariously pierces the hype about "Brooklyn writers." Sometimes it's a relief to admit it's just the same here as everywhere else. And Whitehead ends with an extended metaphor from The Warriors . What could be better? Enjoy, you kooky literati borough-dwellers. And happy reading.
Read more

Link-Mad Monday: BEA 2007 and On!

Image
Sorry about the lack of post on Friday -- the day got crazy, as is likely to happen more often as the wedding date (June 30!) approaches. I'll give a shot at recapping my BEA, with some extra linkage for fun. Wednesday Joined the rest of my fellow booksellers at the Brooklyn Marriott for a celebration of Brooklyn . Saw my old boss and mentor Toby of Three Lives and other familiar faces. And David McCullough's opening address -- man can that guy write. The author of 1776 and The Great Bridge expounded upon his own writing career, the Battle of Brooklyn, and the moment he knew he wanted to write about the Brooklyn Bridge. His previous book about the Johnstown Flood had been about the worst of humanity ("just because people are in positions of responsibility doesn't mean they're acting responsibly" he observed, presciently), and he wanted to write about the opposite, a great effort of idealism and civilization that succeeded. The bridge, he postulates, is such
Read more

House.

Image
  One of the best things about being a bookseller, wherever you are, is the possibility of developing relationships with authors that have the potential to go beyond fandom. Because of the serendipity of where I live, I happen to be neighbors to some of the contemporary greats.  It's not without its pitfalls though.  I remember having a nice chat with a nice lady named Jennifer in the bookstore sometime in Year 1, finding out she had written a book, and picking it up -- and gradually becoming aghast that I had been treating this person as a normal human neighbor, when in fact they were a terrifying genius. The book was A Visit From The Goon Squad , which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.  Luckily Jenny Egan seemingly forgave me for treating her like a regular neighbor (and for all my other faux pas, including vastly under-ordering for the Goon Squad launch party, which we've hopefully made up for by selling hundreds of copies every year since then and shipping signed copies t
Read more