Book Your Stocking with Michael Wolfe

Book Your Stocking: December 19

Welcome back to a new edition of Book Your Stocking, a month-long reading series celebrating books. Every day a new reader shares his/her/their holiday to-give/to-read lists. 

Please welcome today's reader, Michael Wolfe.

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Fiction:

Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

The Night Ocean by Paul LaFarge

(Both are strange, unexpected, dreamy) 

Poetry:

Look by Solmaz Sharif

(Urgent, visceral)

Nonfiction:

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

(Devastating)

This is an Uprising by Mark Engler and Paul Engler 

(Essential)

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Michael Wolfe,
photograph by Lisa Robinson
(used with permission)

About today's reader: 

Michael Wolfe’s work has appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Phoebe, Bloom, American Book Review, Cool Thing, and elsewhere. He is a founding editor of Front Porch (frontporchjournal.com) and has taught creative writing at Southwestern University and the University of New Mexico. He lives in Los Angeles and online at www.wolfewrites.com.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Michael Martone

Book Your Stocking: December 18

Welcome to a new week in December, and with that, a new featured reader who, like many instructors the world over, is spending his holidays reading in preparation for the next gatherings of students.

Please welcome Michael Martone.

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Reading List 

These are the books I am reading over break for my class on the Prose Poem and Short Short Prose in the New Year.

Holy Land, Waldie

Bluets, Nelson

The Jokes, Thomas

Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Rankin

 

Heating and Cooling, Fennelly

Stories in the Worst Way, Lutz

Tsim Tsum, Orah

Short Talks, Carson

Break It Down, Davis

The World Doesn't End, Simic

The Man Who Stands in Line, Halpern

Short, edited by Zeigler

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Michael Martone

About today's reader: Michael Martone grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and is the writer and editor of many books, from fiction to non-fiction, most recently Four for a Quarter, Michael Martone, and Double-Wide. He's a professor of Creative Writing at University of Alabama.

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Melissa Stephenson

Book Your Stocking: December 17

Welcome back, book lover. Book Your Stocking is a month-long reading series in which an array of readers share their Reading GiveLists/WishLists. 

Please welcome today's featured reader, Melissa Stephenson.

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WishList

1) The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac : A Novel (Sharma Shields)
My son and I have a thing about Sasquatches. Since he was four and watched a TV show about sasquatch-hunting at a friend's house, he's believed peanut butter is the perfect bait. But mostly, I hear great things about this book and Sharma Shields, and I am in dire need of escaping into a novel.

2) A Home in the World: A Memoir (Joyce Maynard)
As a memoirist myself, I've had some words ascribed to Joyce Maynard pinned over my desk, on a notecard, for the past two years: "Write like you're an orphan." Recently, while speaking in front of a group of people, I referenced these words and referred to Joyce Maynard as J.D. Salinger's former girlfriend. A kind poet laureate in the audience approached me afterwards and said she knew Joyce, and that Joyce was not Salinger's "girlfriend." He was well into his 50's during their relationship, and she was only 18. She was groomed. So, I think it's about time I dig into the real story, Joyce Maynard's story.

3) Whereas: Poems (Layli Long Soldier) 
I'm a poet, too, but I don't read enough poetry. This book is one I've heard about so often that I must get my hands on it. It was also a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award.

4) On Homesickness: A Plea (In Place) (Jesse Donaldson)
I won't lie--the author of this book is a friend, but I am lucky to have a lot of friends who write books, and I am a slow reader, and I don't get to them all. But this narrative explores every county in the state of Kentucky, a state just across the Ohio River from Indiana, where I was born and raised. My son was born in Kentucky, and I have a feeling this book is going to hit home on several levels-- from place, to mid-life changes, to parenting, to my deep affection for lyrical sentences.

5) The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage (Phillip Pullman)
Because I read the entire "His Dark Materials" trilogy while my first child took long nursing naps, and these characters are imprinted in some of my nearest and dearest animal memories, so I am not going to stop following them now.

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Melissa Stephenson,
photo used with permission

About today's reader:

Melissa Stephenson’s writing has appeared in publications such as The Rumpus, The Washington Post, ZYZZYVA, and New Letters. Her memoir, Driven, is forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2018. She lives in Missoula, Montana with her two kids.

Enjoy more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors, here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Amelia Gray

Book Your Stocking: December 16

Welcome back to Book Your Stocking, a new holiday series in which all sorts of readers share their GiveLists and/or Wishlists.

Please welcome today's reader, Amelia Gray.

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Here's a short list of books that inspired and absorbed me this year:

Made for Love by Alissa Nutting
Eat Only when You're Hungry by Lindsay Hunter
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
The Grip of It by Jac Jemc
The Mothers Brit Bennett
The Job of the Wasp by Colin Winnette (out Jan 2018)
Valparaiso Round the Horn by Madeline ffitch
Nicotine by Nell Zink

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Amelia Gray,
photo used with permission

About today's reader:

Amelia Gray is the author of five books, most recently Isadora (FSG). Her fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Tin House, and VICE. She is winner of the NYPL Young Lion, of FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She lives in Los Angeles.

Enjoy more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors, here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with Regi Claire

Book Your Stocking: December 15

Every day of December, readers of all stripes and literary inclinations are sharing their To-Give and To-Read lists. Please welcome today's reader, Regi Claire.

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My Reading Wish-List

Bark by Lorrie Moore (stories) 
Stone Mattress: Nine Wicked Tales by Margaret Atwood
The Girls by Emma Cline
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Dalila by Jason Donald
Robicheaux: You Know My Name by James Lee Burke

 

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My Reading Give-List 

I hardly ever read non-fiction, but The Girl with Seven Names: Escape from North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee held me spellbound. Life truly is stranger than fiction, almost unbelievably so in Hyeonseo’s case. I have bought a stocking copy for my mother.

Nora Chassler’s Madame Bildungsroman’s Optimistic Worldview is the perfect gift for anyone who appreciates reading between the lines: a near-poetic sequence of fragments and aperçus – witty, moving and searingly intelligent. I purchased an extra copy for just such a friend.

T. C. Boyle's The Relive Box and Other Stories is a wild, funny and deadly serious collection of futuristic fictions I got for my husband, with an ulterior motive (I’ve already made room for it on one of my bookshelves…).

Talking of my husband (Ron Butlin), his new YA novel Steve and FranDan Take on the World appeals to all those who can’t help indulging their inner child. I have set aside a copy for an eighty-seven-year-old lady with a sense of fun and adventure.

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About today's reader:

Regi Claire, photo by Dawn Marie Jones,
used with permission

Regi Claire is a Swiss-born novelist (The Waiting, The Beauty Room) and short story writer (Fighting It, Inside~Outside) based in Scotland. Her work has twice been shortlisted for a Saltire Scottish Book of the Year award and longlisted for MIND Book of the Year and the Edge Hill Prize (for best collection). She is the recipient of several writers’ bursaries and a UBS Cultural Foundation Award.
Her work has appeared in Best British Short Stories and numerous other anthologies and literary journals in the UK, Europe, Australia and the USA.
Regi is an alumna of Château de Lavigny International Writers’ Residence in Switzerland and a former Royal Literary Fund Fellow and RLF Lector for Reading Round Scotland.
She is an experienced creative writing tutor (eg National Galleries of Scotland, Universities Scotland, Zurich University for Teacher Training) and runs her own writing and reading groups in Edinburgh, where she lives with her husband and their golden retriever.
She is currently completing her third collection of stories. www.regiclaire.com

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Want to grow your own reading wish-list? More recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors, here: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

WSJ reviews The Whole World at Once: Words with the "strength of tempered steel"

So, here's some good news that all of us missed in May: The Whole World at Once received a write-up in The Wall Street Journal. And a good write-up, to boot:

(excerpt from "Shelf Help" 

by Sam Sacks, 5/19/17)

 Cheers!