Isak

Quick Hit: Morbid Charles Dickens

Drawing from the new "biography of a writer as writer" from Yale University Press, Adam Thirwell's essay on Charles Dickens in The New Republic turns on the dark dimensions of the author who was by turns a mimic, a moralizer, a magician, a manic, and a mope.

BOOK REVIEW: After Reading Moby-Dick: Or, The Whale

 I'll miss reading Moby-Dick for the first time. Since June, Herman Melville's masterpiece has been my constant companion. I was in no rush. I read it in sips, I read it in gulps. I took a break from it and listened to the music it inspired, from Led Zeppelin to Laurie Anderson to Thomas Chapin. I paused to copy paragraphs that are especially striking. I set down a chapter to look up images and videos and songs of whales.

Finally, last night, in my bed, beneath a yellow lamp, past midnight, I read the last page for the first time and I literally exhaled a quiet 'ohhh ...'

It was impossible to read a novel with such an outsized reputation and not have heard first what others think of it. Some of what others say is true: this is a dark and strange novel, slippery and mournful, a haunting tale--truly, a tale in the old-school sense--of obsession and mutated faith.

But what is perhaps less well-known about Moby-Dick is that it is also wildly funny. The early chapters of Ishmael and Queequeg's growing friendship are especially hilarious, as is the candor of our narrator's storytelling. The book is witty and clever and provoked me to out-loud laughter. As a novel, Moby-Dick toys with the absurd--those extended forays into the culture and science of whaling were not only palatable but rather fun because of the absurdist tone that threads through them. Ishmael is in on the joke, and invites us in too. Melville plays with different literary forms: some chapters are written as plays, complete with stage directions, some as soliloquies, some remind me of arias. Many chapters are only a paragraph or so long, while others linger on a tangential story that, say, Ishmael tells years after the events of the novel to two enthusiastic listeners in Peru.

In the meantime, the expansiveness of this novel--its way of exploring tangents and finding its way back to the story--builds heat.

Much commentary about Moby-Dick is fixed on dissections of "theme" and "symbolism" and so forth. While some of this is valid and interesting, lost in the clamor is the fact that the novel is at heart a breathless adventure story. Victor LaValle knows what's up:

... I sat down to read Moby Dick again. I hadn't read it since college and, to be frank, I didn't like it much then. I hardly remembered the damn thing, really. But this time I found myself tearing through the book. When I read it in school it had been assigned and it was 'important' and our examination of the text had been as ponderous as the term 'important' would suggest when applied to a novel. But this time, on my own, I got about a third of the way through and I had a revelation: this is goddamn adventure book! And those adventures were broken up by more thoughtful (rather than ponderous) sections that described the practice of whaling, or how machinery on the whaling ship worked, or a sermon from a mad old preacher. And, to quote a great song, this time "the combination made my eyes bleed."

I know people complain about the whaling bits in the book, but I found that Melville used a perfect structure for his big book. The whaling bits are there to put the brakes on the mad adventure stuff, the craziness of Ahab's quest, the riveting fights to catch and kill the whales, the frightening battles of will amongst the men on the ship. The scene where Tashtego (one of the crew members) falls into the head of a whale they've killed and is rescued by Queequeg is truly thrilling.

And let me set that statement on a new line so I can write it again. In Moby Dick there's a scene where a man falls into the hallowed out head of a whale. That head is being suspended against the side of the ship but this man's weight causes the ropes to break and the head falls into the sea. The head sinks, with Tashtego still trapped inside. Then one of the other men, Queequeg, leaps into the water and rescues his crewmate by cutting a hole in the whale's head while it's underwater!

If I told you that plot point, on its own, and asked you to identify it you'd be just as likely, more likely I bet, to say it was a scene out of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. And that's exactly my point. Melville (like so many "classic" or "canonical" writers) didn't shy away from extreme drama, over the top action. And he also didn't think that such dramatics made it impossible to indulge sincere and scintillating philosophy on the page. These things can be put together on the same page, in the same story. In fact, each is often served by the other. Flannery O'Conner knew this. Gloria Naylor does too (check out Mama Day or Linden Hills).

And finally, the narration of Moby-Dick is full of glee and elegance, words that are as rhythmic as waves, or prayers.

I am madly in love with this book.

Related:
American Icons: Moby-Dick (Studio 360)

Get Your Collagist Right Here

The December issue of The Collagist is up and out and looking great. My video book review takes on All Fall Down, by Mary Caponegro (Coffee House Press) --- a collection of stories that incited strong and mixed feelings.

UPDATE: Adam Robinson at HTMLGiant has nice things to say after reading the latest issue of The Collagist:

This is a must read online journal. Every issue so far has struck me with how completely realized it is, how each piece — especially the stories and non-fiction — is smooth and well-thunk, creating a total, culturally relevant package. I mean, seriously, like, this journal is quickly surpassing big lit joints on the order of The Paris Review and becoming something that it seems all intelligent people (and not just writers) ought to care about. Also, it strikes me that The Collagist is calmly answering the question about how an online magazine ought to differ from a print publication. While much of the work there is, y’know, just a story that could easily appear on the page, they also feature a video book review by Anna Clark. Now the video even has some chintzy music to start the thing, and then incorporates images of the author and contextual pics interspersed with the reviewer talking about and reading from the book in question. Pretty cool. I like that they don’t rely on comments or links to make it hypertextual.

Choose Books: Reluctantly Alice

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low. Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful.

In this series, you can look forward an ongoing guide to books as gifts; at the end of the season, it will be collected as an attractive PDF for you to download. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about this series here. 

Reluctantly Alice
By Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Alice McKinley is starting the seventh grade at a junior high school in Maryland ... and things aren't going well. Between fending off a bully and navigating the romantic entanglements of her widowed father and much older brother, Alice's attempts to be helpful and have everyone like her prove to be more complicated then she expected.

What makes this book extraordinary is the vital and realistic portrayal of Alice and the surrounding characters. I have rarely seen twelve-year-olds written about in such an authentic way. The book is by turns hilarious and heartbreaking, wise and rousing, and sharply honest.

Want proof? Naylor's Alice books are among the most banned books in the nation (#1 in 2004), ostensibly due to sexual content, offensive language, and being "unsuited to age group."

In truth, Naylor's writing gives great credit to the intelligence and compassion of young people; she in no way condescends to Alice or her young readers, or tries to feed them simple stories that are 'good for them.' In fact, this Newbery-winning author is an antidote to all that.

Reluctantly Alice is one of many books that Naylor has written about the growing up of Alice McKinley (inspiring a vibrant online community) ... but as the first one I read, it remains my favorite. I read it as a teenager and felt such a kinship with Alice, it was almost embarrassing. It was named one of School Library Journal's best books of the year and a Children's Book-of-the-Month Club Featured Selection.

Consider this book as a gift for people who are one or more of the following:

• Young people on the brink of (or the thick of) the ravages of middle school
• Folks that made it through the ravages of middle school ... and would like to be assured that not all young adult fiction is like Gossip Girls
• People with siblings/nieces/children/nephews who are at the beginning of teenager-hood
• People who can't sing. You'll see why when you read it.
• Fans of Katherine Paterson, Judy Blume, Laurie Halse Anderson, Jerry Spinelli, Louis Sacher, E.L. Konigsburg, Walter Dean Myers, and/or Norma Fox Mazer.

Recommended Edition:

Simon & Schuster
Paperback / $5.99

This is the new 2008 edition of the title that was originally published in 1991. It is 208 pages and even more affordable than lunch at your local sandwich shop.

Other Available Editions:

Simon & Schuster
Hardcover / $16.95

At the price of paperbacks aimed for adults, this edition is very affordable while offering the specialness of a hardcover. It is 192 pages.

Where To Buy:

Your local independent bookseller. Find the shop nearest to you here. You might also want to prowl the used bookshops for treasures. If the book you want is not in stock, the bookseller will be happy to order it for you (almost always sans shipping); just ask! If there are really, truly no indie booksellers near you, consider ordering online from an independent bookseller, such as Brookline Booksmith or Powell's, and having it delivered to your doorstep. Another option: order online directly from the publisher.

Image Credit: Creative Commons, by khrawlings.

Damn You, Nielsen Business Media ...

... for "ceasing operations" for Kirkus Reviews and Editor & Publisher.

Some facts that you perhaps forgot when you made this decision:

Editor & Publisher was one of the oldest magazines in the United States, founded in 1884, and has long been a strong voice for First Amendment rights, the rights of journalists, and has held media accountable to the highest standards. (It didn't take its current name until 1901, which is why many eulogies for the publication describe it as being "only" 108 years old.) It covered "all aspects of the North American newspaper industry, including business, newsroom, advertising, circulation, marketing, technology, online and syndicates," as it describes it. For most of its life, it published weekly, though in 2004 it became a monthly publication (with a vibrant online presence). (UPDATE: There's a great interview at the Columbia Journalism Review with Greg Mitchell, E&P's editor-in-chief that discusses the publication's demise. Mitchell points to its much-awarded coverage of the Iraq war, very early vision for how media can make use of the internet, and its attention to regional media--not just the big guns--which is something I have personal experience with.)

Kirkus was founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus and was published biweekly. It reviewed about  5,000 titles per year, including fiction, mysteries, sci-fi, translations, nonfiction, and children's and young-adult books. While it never had a huge audience, it was remarkably influential. Its book reviews were honest, full of sincere admiration and astute criticism wherever it was warranted. As Ed notes, it was one of four primary all-review publications that booksellers and libraries depend upon. It was also known for paying its reviewers well--a rarity.

There's no sidestepping it: this is a huge blow to all of us who care about a vibrant literary culture and a sharp, dynamic, accountable media. I urge people to do whatever they can to change the tempo of this game, whether it's starting your own (sustainable) publication, or committing to writing thoughtful book reviews on any platform, or supporting indie media outlets, or shopping at indie bookstores, or starting a reading series, or speaking back to media outlets that do exist (and advocating for policy that stops favoring media consolidation).

This matters.

Choose Books: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low. Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful.

In this series, you can look forward an ongoing guide to books as gifts; at the end of the season, it will be collected as an attractive PDF for you to download. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about this series here. 

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
By ZZ Packer

"This is the old time religion of storytelling."

That's how The New York Times Book Review praised ZZ Packer for this collection of eight vivid stories. Packer must have been pleased, as this sentiment rhymes so well with the epigraph she chose for her book, written by Alex Haley in Roots: "Join me in the hope that this story of our people can help to alleviate the legacies of the fact that preponderantly have been written by the winners."

In "Brownies," (one of my favorites), we follow a Brownie troop of black girls who face off with a troop of white girls. Its first line begs you to read on: "By our second day at Camp Crescendo, the girls in my Brownie troop had decided to kick the asses of each and every girl in Brownie Troop 909." Meanwhile, in "The Ant of the Self," my other favorite Packer story, we meet a studious young man who goes with his father to the Million Man March, wrestling along the way with caged exotic birds and where to place his loyalty (first line: "'Opportunities,' my father says after I bail him out of jail.")

Other tales follow an isolated student at Yale who disdains her classmates (you can read this story here); a group of drifters in Japan; a nurse with dreams of religion and romance; a girl who runs away to meet her crack-addicted mother in Atlanta; an inspired young girl in 1961 who decides to stage her own one-person sit-in at a segregated diner; and a young woman who leaves Kentucky to teach at an urban school in Baltimore--and it's not just her students that bring her to her defeat.

Packer's writing is versatile and insightful, edgy and fierce, and it is powered by a strong storytelling voice. The stories wrestle with ideas of race, religion, belonging, family, education, rage, indifference, and longing. In all, this collection moves between the humorous and the wise -- and is altogether memorable.

I'm not the only one who loves ZZ Packer's stories: Drinking Coffee Elsewhere was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; an ALA Notable Book; a finalist for the Atlanta Choice Award; winner of the Alex Award; a New York Times Notable Book; and the San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. John Updike choose it as a Today Show Book Club pick. See also: Robert Birnbaum and ZZ Packer did a wonderful and funny interview together shortly after this collection was published.

Consider this book as a gift for people who are one or more of the following:

• People who are great verbal storytellers, who can have a table laughing with some tales and, with others, have the group hushed and attentive.
• People who laugh and hush before those great verbal storytellers.
• Former Brownies and attendees of the Million Man March.
• Fans of Percival Everett, Flannery O'Connor, Richard Bausch, Allan Gurganus, Eudora Welty and/or Edward P. Jones.

Recommended Edition:

Riverhead Books
Paperback / $15.00

This edition of the 2004 paperback is 288 pages.

Where To Buy:

Your local independent bookseller. Find the shop nearest to you here. You might also want to prowl the used bookshops for treasures. If the book you want is not in stock, the bookseller will be happy to order it for you (almost always sans shipping); just ask! If there are really, truly no indie booksellers near you, consider ordering online from an independent bookseller, such as Brookline Booksmith or Powell's, and having it delivered to your doorstep. Another option: order online directly from the publisher.

Image Credit: Creative Commons, by psd.

Choose Books: War Talk

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low. Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful.

In this series, you can look forward an ongoing guide to books as gifts; at the end of the season, it will be collected as an attractive PDF for you to download. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about this series here. 

War Talk
By Arundhati Roy

Sure, you remember Arundhati Roy for her splendid 1997 debut novel, The God of Small Things, which won the Booker prize and a whole lot of deserved international attention.

It's the only piece of fiction that Roy has published.

Since The God of Small Things, Roy has embraced the form of the essay. She's published quite a lot of collections, almost entirely with independent publishers. War Talk is one of them. In a series of plainspoken essays, Roy examines the ideas of "democracy and dissent, racism and empire, and war and peace," as South End Press describes it. First published in 2003 and drawn from her Lannan Foundation lecture on the first anniversary of 9/11, Roy's essays pay special attention to the United States wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given the recent announcement of a series escalation of troops, Roy's examination of militarism is hardly dated.

War Talk turns expansive in its look at the rise of religious and racial violence, frightening government tactics against Muslims in India, and nuclear aggression between India and Pakistan. At its base, the book questions what it means to be a nation, to be part of an ethnic group, to be a writer, or an activist.

Roy writes in the title essay:

The last question every visiting journalist always asks me is: Are you writing another book? That question mocks me. Another book? Right now? This talk of nuclear war displays such contempt for music, art, literature, and everything else that defines civilization. So what kind of book should I write?

What might be onerously heavy material is, in Roy's hand, accessible and clear, first-person and honest. War Talk benefits from concise writing in simple language; its origins as a speech intended to be delivered out loud are apparent. Also apparent: Roy's passion and conscience, which gives every page energy. This is an eloquent collection from the writer who was jailed in India after she refused to comply with attempts to silence her criticism of the government.

Essays include:

• "Ahimsa"
• "Come September"
• "The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky"
• "Confronting Empire"

This book was a finalist for the 2004 Independent Publisher Awards in Essay/Creative Nonfiction.

Consider this book as a gift for people who are one or more of the following:

• People who made anxious comments after the announcement of the recent escalation of the war in Afghanistan.
• The folks who carpooled with you to anti-war protests.
• People who send you links to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" speech, or of Dwight Eisenhower calling out the military industrial complex in his farewell speech.
• People who loved The God of Small Things.
• People who care about war and violence, but perhaps feel like they don't have the "facts" to support their opinions. That is, the folks who say, "I don't know enough" when Iraq comes up-- and are intimidated to read large academic tomes on the subject.

Recommended Edition:

South End Press
Paperback / $12.00

A slim, attractive paperback, War Talk is 154 pages. For a more hefty gift, perhaps for the person you know who is especially a fan of Arundhati Roy, you might consider giving the cloth edition of the book -- though it's much pricier, probably because it's intended for libraries.

Where To Buy:

Your local independent bookseller. Find the shop nearest to you here. You might also want to prowl the used bookshops for treasures. If the book you want is not in stock, the bookseller will be happy to order it for you (almost always sans shipping); just ask! If there are really, truly no indie booksellers near you, consider ordering online from an independent bookseller, such as Brookline Booksmith or Powell's, and having it delivered to your doorstep. Another option: order online directly from the publisher.

Image Credit: Creative Commons, by John Loo.

Choose Books: Sugar

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low. Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful.

In this series, you can look forward an ongoing guide to books as gifts; at the end of the season, it will be collected as an attractive PDF for you to download. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about this series here.

Sugar
By Bernice L. McFadden

In a literary world of shrinking space for book reviews, Sugar has gotten an impressive share of the attention. The Dallas Morning News compares author Bernice L. McFadden's storytelling to Zora Neale Hurston (a fact that piqued my interest). The Chicago Defender admires McFadden's "amazing talent." Ebony is impressed with its "unforgettable images, unique characters, and moving story that keeps the pages turning until the end." And don't even get me started on the effusive customer reviews that I've spied online ...

So what's all the fuss about?

Sugar follows the "anti-heroine" of the title through mid-century America, from an Arkansas bordello, to St. Louis, to Detroit, and back to Arkansas. Raised by a trio of prostitutes, Sugar's heart hardens as she moves from place to place. When she returns to Arkansas after her mother's death and practices the world's oldest profession in the small town of Bigelow, the local woman turn against her. Meanwhile, Pearl--Sugar's neighbor--has her own haunting story and her own reasons for wanting to go against the town sentiment to make friends with Sugar.

Sugar is McFadden's first novel and it won several awards, including the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award; the Gold Pen Award; the Black Caucus Ala Literary Award; and the Black Writers Alliance Award. You can read an excerpt here. Since this book's publication, McFadden has published five other novels. Oh, and incidentally? December happens to be National Buy a Book By a Black Author and Give It To Somebody Not Black Month. This pick could be your purchase.

Consider this book as a gift for people who are one or more of the following:

• Folks who like strong narratives that don't forget the art of storytelling, especially folks who have an affection for front-porch storytelling.
  
• People interested in fiction with strong, vibrant landscapes that both intersects with the fortunes of its characters.
• Those who have an interest in fiction set in the South and in gossipy small-towns.

Recommended Edition:

Penguin
Paperback / $14.00

This is the most recent edition of the book originally published in 1999. It is 240 pages.

Other Available Editions:

This Bitter Earth
Paperback / $14.00

You might consider giving Sugar along with its sequel, This Bitter Earth. In the follow-up, Sugar leaves Bigelow, Arkansas and returns to her hometown of Short Junction, where she discovers the strange stories about her past.

Where To Buy:

Your local independent bookseller. Find the shop nearest to you here. You might also want to prowl the used bookshops for treasures. If the book you want is not in stock, the bookseller will be happy to order it for you (almost always sans shipping); just ask! If there are really, truly no indie booksellers near you, consider ordering online from an independent bookseller, such as Brookline Booksmith or Powell's, and having it delivered to your doorstep. Another option: order online directly from the publisher.

Image Credit: Creative Commons, by hoyasmeg.

Choose Books: Lies My Teacher Told Me

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low. Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful.

In this series, you can look forward an ongoing guide to books as gifts; at the end of the season, it will be collected as an attractive PDF for you to download. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about this series here. 

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
By James Loewen

Be ready: This one is a socks knocker-offer.

This provocative book zooms in on eighteen of the leading high school American history textbooks and discovers exactly how much dull misinformation and empty-headed storytelling that we require young citizens to rotely learn. What's missing from the standard history we expect of the people who will be voting and leading our nation? Nearly all ambiguity, passion, conflict, questioning, and drama from our past (to paraphrase from the book's publisher).

A true passion for history comes to the fore in Lies My Teacher Told Me, as it compares historical myths of America's origins--from Christopher Columbus to the Pilgrims, Abraham Lincoln to Vietnam--with an honest and vibrant account of our past that is grounded in truth. Chapters include:

• Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making
• "Gone With the Wind": The Invisibility of Racism in American History Textbooks
• Watching Big Brother: What Textbooks Teach About the Federal Government
• Down the Memory Hole: The Disappearance of the Recent Past
• Progress Is Our Most Important Product
  

This book is a persuasive call for clarity in our foggy contemporary time; a lively and powerful handbook for anyone who thinks that what happened in our nation--and what is happening--matters. Because of this, and because of Loewen's dynamic writing, this book is the sort that becomes an underground favorite, passed from hand to hand, the spark for a thousand conversations. For my part, I couldn't get the book out of my mind. It inspired an article I wrote where I compared how history was taught in three high schools with very different demographics--an experience that brought the book to life and underlined how much is at stake.

Lies My Teacher Told Me won both the American Book Award and the Oliver C. Cox Anti-Racism Award, that last of which is given by the American Sociological Association.

Consider this book as a gift for people who are one or more of the following:

• People who are in any way connected with the education world, be they teachers, students, advocates, school board members, regents, policymakers, or, hell, even coaches.
• People who dug A People’s History of the United States—or would dig it, if they read it, but are perhaps put off by the heft of Howard Zinn’s book.
• The ones who you catch watching The History Channel, or "Roots," or "Band of Brothers."
• Activists, and others engaged with politics--from get-out-the-vote types, to government employees and military servicemembers, to elected officials.

Recommended Edition:

Touchstone
Paperback / $16.00

This trade paperback edition is the 2007 re-issue of the original 1995 book. It is 464 pages and contains updated material and revisions that look at the George W. Bush administration, the Iraq War, and 9/11.

Where To Buy:

Your local independent bookseller. Find the shop nearest to you here. You might also want to prowl the used bookshops for treasures. If the book you want is not in stock, the bookseller will be happy to order it for you (almost always sans shipping); just ask! If there are really, truly no indie booksellers near you, consider ordering online from an independent bookseller, such as Brookline Booksmith or Powell's, and having it delivered to your doorstep. Another option: order online directly from the publisher.

Image Credit: Creative Commons, by Boris SV.

Choose Books: Fugitive Pieces

Why Choose Books for your gifts this holiday season? Glad you asked. It's because there are few things more fun than giving someone a book they fall in love with; it lasts longer and matters more than, say, necklaces or sweaters, while rarely being more than about fifteen dollars. What's more, your purposeful choice of books, purchased from indie booksellers, supports a vibrant and dynamic literary culture in a time when the book world is struggling and even literacy is horrifically low. Choose Books because you really can make a difference. Choose Books because it is joyful.

In this series, you can look forward an ongoing guide to books as gifts; at the end of the season, it will be collected as an attractive PDF for you to download. More than a mere list of my personal favorites, Choose Books is outward-looking, featuring outstanding books of very different styles for very different tastes (and ages). Learn more about this series here. 

Fugitive Pieces
By Anne Michaels

When people ask me what my favorite book is, after I pish-tosh and qualify, I often name Fugitive Pieces as being one of the books I most love. That’s a fact that surprised me; I never picked out this novel for myself. It came to me in the mail one day, a gift from a British fellow who I only knew for a short (and romantic) time. I had never heard of Anne Michaels—even though the Canadian writer had published two acclaimed books of poems before she wrote her first novel in 1998, and even though that novel won the Orange Prize (and the Guardian Fiction award, the Trillium Award, the City of Toronto Book Award, the Lannan Literary Fiction award, the Jewish Book Award, and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year - whew). To me, though, she was a stranger.

Perhaps that unfamiliarity contributed to the sense of astonishment that I felt as I moved through this magnificent, haunting novel. It takes such a strange story—beginning from the moment that real-life poet Jakob Beer, then seven years old, broke out of the mud burying his Polish city in 1940. (He had been hidden from soldiers who proceeded to murder his family). He is rescued by a Greek geologist who doesn't at first recognize the boy as human until he begins to cry. The geologist--the intellectual Athos--smuggles the boy out of the country and eventually to Toronto where he raises him, rivaling Atticus Finch as one of my favorite fictional father figures. The book follows Jakob's life as his wildness spills into his life as an artist, while at the same time splitting the novel to also follow the story of Ben, a younger man on the brink of his own brand of transformation, spiritual and otherwise. 

Said Publisher's Weekly about the novel:

Searing the mind with stunning images while seducing with radiant prose ... this novel will make readers yearn to share it with others, to read sentences and entire passages out loud, to debate its message, to acknowledge its wisdom.

In all, Fugitive Pieces is a story of ghosts, art, and memory. It was made into a movie in 2007, directed by Jeremy Podeswa.

Consider this book as a gift for people who are one or more of the following:

• People who liked Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. While that is a very different novel, something in the haunted storytelling seems to rhyme with Anne Michaels’ project.
• People who are into historical stories, especially ones that are connected to World War II.
• Folks who are hungry for a book that lets them surrender to gorgeous language while it is at the same time intellectually interesting.

Recommended Edition:

Random House
Paperback / $14.95

I've also seen this 304-page paperback available for $12.00. You can digitally page through the book here.

Where To Buy:

Your local independent bookseller. Find the shop nearest to you here. You might also want to prowl the used bookshops for treasures. If the book you want is not in stock, the bookseller will be happy to order it for you (almost always sans shipping); just ask! If there are really, truly no indie booksellers near you, consider ordering online from an independent bookseller, such as Brookline Booksmith or Powell's, and having it delivered to your doorstep. Another option: order online directly from the publisher.

Image Credit: Creative Commons, by John Loo.