Book Your Stocking with John Kenny

Book Your Stocking: December 12

Well, December keeps moving along, and with it a new edition of Book Your Stocking, a new holiday reading series in which readers of all sorts share their Reading Wish-Lists and/or Give-Lists. (All titles are linked to their publishers or IndieBound/your nearest bookstore.) 

Please welcome today's reader, John Kenny.

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My Reading Wish-List:

1. A Natural History of Hell by Jeffrey Ford. Had the privilege of meeting Jeff here in Dublin last Summer for a couple of drinks. Really nice guy. I've read isolated short stories by him over the years and really liked them. Time I investigated his work properly.
2. The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro. Loved his The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. I'm told The Unconsoled is the other must read.
3. Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan. Been meaning the read this guy for years and a friend has been extolling his virtues to me recently, so I really should take the plunge.

 

My Give-List:

1. The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. This novel blew me away because the time and interests of the main character really resonated with me. It's a largely autobiographical novel and the author is the same age as me, so I guess that's part of the reason I found it so affecting.
2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. A tour de force novel that covers a forty year span of time and really brings the New York of the 40s to 70s to life.
3. Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. A collection of linked stories featuring a supremely unreliable narrator.

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About today's reader: 

John Kenny,
photo used by permission

Winner of the 2014 Independent Literary Industry Award for Best Editor, John Kenny works as a freelance writer, editor and creative writing tutor in Dublin, Ireland. His short stories have appeared in Revival Literary Journal, The Galway Review, The World SF Blog, Jupiter, First Contact, Woman's Way, Emerald Eye (an anthology of the Best of Irish Imaginative Fiction), Transtories, Fear the Reaper and many other venues. John has been co-editor of Albedo One since its inception in 1993. Prior to that, he wrote extensively for Stargate, the magazine of the Irish Science Fiction Association, and was editor of FTL, the successor to Stargate. He is editor of original horror anthology Box of Delights for Aeon Press, Writing4All: The Best of 2009, and Decade 1: The Best of Albedo One. 

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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Book Your Stocking with Donna Miscolta

Book Your Stocking: December 11

Welcome back to Book Your Stocking, a new series this holiday season, in which readers of all stripes share their Reading Wish-Lists and/or Give-Lists. (All titles are linked to their publishers or to Indiebound/your nearest bookstore.)

Please welcome today's reader, Donna Miscolta, author of Hola and Goodbye.

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Gift-Giving List

 

Novel: The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel, who brings the reader directly against the beating hearts of her characters.

Story collection: In the Country by Mia Alvar, whose powerful and moving stories about the diaspora of Filipino migrants and asylum-seekers I’m constantly recommending.

Poetry: Killing Marías: A Poem for Multiple Voices by Claudia Castro Luna, whose commitment to social justice and art are beautifully rendered in this book.

Non-Fiction: Lolas' House: Filipino Women Living with War by M. Evelina Galang, who provides
a grim, but fearless and necessary look at women’s lives that must not be forgotten.

Also, these novels: 

A book I’m enjoying now is Pretend We Are Lovely by Noley Reid about family, its fragility and tenacity, and about the bonds of sisterhood.

A book I look forward to reading is Daughters of the Air by Anca Szilagyi, whose writing I admire.

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Donna Miscolta, photo by Meryl Schenker
(used with permission)

About today's reader: Donna Miscolta’s short story collection Hola and Goodbye was selected by Randall Kenan for the Doris Bakwin Award for Writing by a Woman and publication by Carolina Wren Press in 2016.  It won the Independent Publishers gold medal for Best Regional Fiction and an International Latino Book Award silver medal for Best Latino Focused Fiction in English. She is also the author of the novel When the de la Cruz Family Danced (Signal 8 Press, 2011). Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, most recently in Moss and Blood Orange Review. She lives in Seattle with her husband, their daughters having left to make their way in the world, one in Los Angeles and the other off to Ecuador soon.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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Book Your Stocking with Michael Noll

Book Your Stocking: December 10

Every day of December, readers are sharing their reading wish-lists and/or give-lists. To support publishers, writers, and local bookstores, all books are linked to their publishers or IndieBound.

Please welcome today's reader, Michael Noll.

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Buckskin Cocaine by Erika T. Wurth. A story collection in which every character is involved one way or another in the Native American film industry. If you know that industry well, you'll obviously love this book. But if your knowledge of Indians in film and television consists of old Westerns, Dances with Wolves, and that one actor from The Red Green Show, then this collection will show you something you've never seen. In each story, a different character speaks in voices that are sharp, funny, angry, sad, and utterly captivating.





Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown. A novel about everything awful in today's America but set a couple of decades in the future, when everything has gotten worse but the technology has improved. A young woman from the Upper Midwest is working as a government lawyer and gets sent back home to investigate a rebel group that includes her own, sort of, brother. Together they fight through militias, drone strikes, and environmental wastelands using only their wits, some unexpected combat skills, and an underground technological innovation involving TV static.





Witchtown by Cory Putman Oakes. A YA novel about a teenage girl and her mother living in an America in which witches exist and have been confined/segregated to small, walled-off communities. The two go from town to town, scamming and robbing the residents out of their valuables. But then they arrive at the most famous of the towns, Witchtown, and find that things are not as they appear. It's a cool premise, and Oakes has an incredible talent for quickly setting up intriguing character relationships and can't-put-down plots.

The Dog Man series by Dav Pilkey. If you have kids, then you've likely heard of Pilkey, whose Captain Underpants books have sold a bajillion copies and inspired a not-very-good movie this summer. If you care about interesting characters and plots, that's not why you're buying these books. Instead, you're doing it because reading was really easy for you yet, inexplicably, it isn't for your kids. Or, you've got a first-grader who can read pretty well but not well enough to tackle an actual novel or most of the graphic novels out there. So, you need something easy to read, zany in that mind-numbing scatalogical way of little kids, and with pictures that kids love. Plus, the Dog Man books have cleaned up "girls are gross and dumb" misogyny that was under the surface of the Captain Underpants books. As an adult, will you like these books? Probably not. Will your kids? They'll love them.

Any of the picture books by Don Tate. With picture books, I'm hesitant to recommend one because there are so many and it depends upon your kids' taste. But with Don Tate, you can't go wrong with any of them. They're mostly nonfiction, about interesting individuals from history. Tate has long been known as an incredible illustrator, and now he has begun writing his own books.  Recent titles (written and/or illustrated) include Strong as Sandow: How Eugen Sandow Became the Strongest Man on Earth, Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions, Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton, and The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch.

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Michael Noll,
used with permission

About today's reader: Michael Noll is the author of The Writer's Field Guide to the Craft of Fiction, due out February 27. He's also the editor of Read to Write Stories and Program Director at the Writers’ League of Texas. His short stories have been published in American Short Fiction, Chattahoochee Review, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Indiana Review, and The New Territory, and been nominated for New Stories from the Midwest. His story, “The Tank Yard” was included in the 2016 Best American Mystery Stories anthology. He lives in Austin, TX, with his family.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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Book Your Stocking with Ira Gardner

Book Your Stocking: December 9

All December, readers of all stripes will share their reading wish-lists and/or give-lists. Note on book links: all titles are linked to their publishers or IndieBound, in order to support writers, publishers, and local bookstores. If you are rural and without bookstores, share this post with your librarian or library's Facebook page.

Please welcome today's reader, Ira Gardner.

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Reading Wish-List

1. Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache Paperback by Kevin Basso
2. Down and Out in Patagonia, Kamchatka, and Timbuktu: Greg Frazier's Round and Round and Round the World Motorcycle Journey
3. Jupiter Travels: Four Years Around the World on a Triumph by Ted Simon

  

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Ira Gardner,
used with permission

About today's reader:

Ira Gardner has been a professional photographer since 1989 and is an avid essayist as well. He's currently a member of the Richmond Artist Collective, and teaches photography and Digital Media Production at Spokane Falls Community College. Mountain Intervals and the Stoddard Lecturese encompass his love for travel and poetic imagery. He lives in Spokane, WA. View a selection of his photography at www.iragardner.com.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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Book Your Stocking with Chelsea Martin

Book Your Stocking: December 8

All December, readers of all stripes will share their reading wish-lists and/or give-lists. Note on book links: all titles are linked to their publishers or IndieBound, in order to support writers, publishers, and local bookstores. If you are rural and without bookstores, share this post with your librarian or library's Facebook page.

Please welcome today's reader, Chelsea Martin.

Give-List

Boundless, Jillian Tamaki
Present, Leslie Stein
Literally Show Me A Healthy Person, Darcie Wilder
Cosplayers, Dash Shaw
Person/A, Elizabeth Ellen
The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, Jillian Weise
I, Parrot, Deb Olin Unferth and Elizabeth Haidle
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, Samantha Irby

 

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Chelsea Martin,
photo used with permission

About today's reader:

Chelsea Martin is the Spokane-based author of five books, including Caca Dolce: Essays from a Lowbrow Life. Her website is jerkethics.com

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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Book Your Stocking with Marilynn S. Olson

Book Your Stocking: December 7

All December, readers of all stripes will share their reading wish-lists and/or give-lists. Note on book links: all titles are linked to their publishers or IndieBound, in order to support writers, publishers, and local bookstores. If you are rural and without bookstores, share this post with your librarian or library's Facebook page.

Please welcome today's reader, Marilynn S. Olson.

Two Thoughts:

Jefferson's Daughters: Three Sisters, White and Black, in Young America.  (Catherine Kerrison)

Akata Warrior. (Nnedi Okorafor)

The second entry is the (just published) second book in a fantasy series set in Southern Nigeria; the first was Akata Witch.  Many of my students have been waiting for this one because I often teach Okorafor, and it has proved a very fruitful classroom book. 

The first is actually coming out at the end of January, I think.  I've been talking to the author about the education of Jefferson's daughters and grand daughters, and it seems to me that I've stumbled into a really rich new field of information.

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Marilynn S. Olson,
used by permission

About today's reader: Marilynn S. Olson, a children’s and young adult literature specialist, is a professor and director of advanced studies in the English department at Texas State University. She is the author of the book Children's Culture and the Avant-Garde: Painting in Paris 1890-1915.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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Book Your Stocking with Julia Drescher

Book Your Stocking: December 6

All December, readers of all stripes will share their reading wish-lists and/or give-lists. Note on book links: all titles are linked to their publishers or IndieBound, in order to support writers, publishers, and local bookstores. If you are rural and without bookstores, share this post with your librarian or library's Facebook page.

Please welcome today's reader, Julia Drescher.

List

Black and Blur (Fred Moten) (so far, so fucking good!)
Dark Ecology (Timothy Morton)
Lay Ghost (Nathaniel Mackey)
MyOTHER TONGUE (Rosa Alcala)
Winter (Ali Smith)
The Oblivion Seekers (Isabelle Eberhardt)
The Chandelier (Clarice Lispector)
The Passion According to GH (Clarice Lispector)
Elena Ferrante (re-reading Neopolitan novels and The Lost Daughter-which has one of the greatest last sentences!)
This is the Place: Women Writing About Home (Anthology)
Kith (Divya Victor)
Saidiya Hartman (very much waiting for her _Beautiful Lives, Wayward Experiments_)

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Julia Drescher,
photo used with permission

About today's reader: Julia Drescher lives in Colorado where she co-edits the press Further Other Book Works with the poet C.J. Martin. Her work has appeared most recently in ‘Pider, Entropy, Likestarlings, Aspasiology, and Hotel. Her book of poems, Open Epic, is available from Delete Press. 

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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