Monday, February 18, 2019
Saturday, January 5, 2019
Book Your Stocking: Recap 2018
2018 Book Your Stocking
It somehow became 2019, so quickly, in fact, that you may have missed the 2018 Book Your Stocking Series. For much of December, writers and readers shared the one book that they'd love to discover in their winter stocking or sock drawer. So, here's the list of all the contributors. Click a name to find out the recommended book, then add it to your own book list, or your 2019 resolution reading list.
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Monday, December 24, 2018
Book Your Stocking with Henry
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| Book Your Stocking 2018 |
Book Your Stocking: December 24
It has been a thrilling ride on Book Your Stocking this holiday season, and to close out the book-recommendation series that you look forward to all year, is Henry, age 5.
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Henry: Give a Mouse a Cookie
Why would you want this book?
Because I have it at school.
What do you like so well about it?
I want to read it all nights until Christmas.
What is it about?
The mouse that wants cookies.
Also, I would want a book that Give a Moose a Muffin. They're painting and then a lot of paint splashed on the moose. [Uncontained laughter.] The moose fell and then boom, the pig fell also. The moose fell and the pig fell right on the moose. Oh man. They painted after the moose had a muffin.Learn more about this series here: https://www.mousecookiebooks.com/books/
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| Henry |
Henry is five and lives in Spokane.
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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors:
Sunday, December 23, 2018
Book Your Stocking with Aileen Keown Vaux
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| Book Your Stocking 2018 |
Book Your Stocking: December 23
Clearly, you're standing in the bookstore reading today's book recommendation because this is the last Sunday before stockings are stuffed, and because you're using Book Your Stocking as your virtual book-list. Good.
Now that we have that established, please welcome today's reader, Aileen Keown Vaux, with your day-before-the-eve book-wish.
Prepare your stockings.
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| Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala cover |
The book I would want to see in my stocking this year is Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala a memoir written by an economics professor who lost her family (parents, husband, and two sons) to the 2004 Sri Lankan tsunami. Wave is exacting in its recall of events from that day, along with memories of Deraniyagala's past life, and her subsequent recovery.
I checked this book out from the public library last fall on a whim and haven't stopped thinking about it since. The book is as much a celebration of her family as it is a chronicle of devastation and those two aspects combined make for one of the most haunting reading experiences I've had in awhile.
Wave is a testament to one woman's strength, but also a record of how important language is to convey our realities to others.
- Find Wave at your bookstore.
- Discover Wave at your library.
- Learn more about the book from the publisher website.
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| Aileen Keown Vaux |
Aileen Keown Vaux is an essayist and poet whose chapbook Consolation Prize was published by Scablands Books in 2018.
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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors:
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Book Your Stocking with Maya Jewell Zeller
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| Book Your Stocking 2018 |
Book Your Stocking: December 22
'Tis the last weekend for book-buying before the biggish day, so it's good you're here for another reading recommendation for your stocking and the stockings of people you love or like.
Maya Jewell Zeller is here to help.
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Daniels explores subjects with a lyricism I admire; her deft weaving of Sergei Esenin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Leonard Wolf, and her own narrative offers a poetic rendering of the topic of mental illness. She also portrays the images of the world through a lovely slanted lensing.
- Find Ladies Lazarus at your bookstore.
- Discover Ladies Lazarus at your library.
- Learn more about Piper J. Daniels at her website.
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| Maya Jewell Zeller |
About today's reader:
Maya Jewell Zeller is the author of the interdisciplinary collaboration (with visual artist Carrie DeBacker) Alchemy For Cells & Other Beasts (Entre Rios Books, 2017), the chapbook Yesterday, the Bees (Floating Bridge Press, 2015), and the poetry collection Rust Fish (Lost Horse Press, 2011). Recipient of a Promise Award from the Sustainable Arts Foundation as well as a Residency in the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Maya teaches for Central Washington University and edits poetry for Scablands Books.
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Book Your Stocking with Sharma Shields
Book Your Stocking: December 20
Here we are, twenty days into December and no sign to the end of books that could appear in your stocking or the sock drawers of your favorite people. And, so, let's keep this daily book-wish experience going.
Please welcome writer, publisher, and avid reader, Sharma Shields.
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| The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani, cover |
THE PERFECT NANNY by Leïla Slimani
I've already read this title, as a checkout from Spokane County Library District, and I would love to own a copy. It's a dark, dark book (it begins with the aftermath of a brutal murder of two children, so don't gift this to a lighthearted reader on your list), but it's also a blunt and perfectly executed commentary on parenthood, privilege, race, and class. An expert study in pacing, it's impossible to put down, but also multi-layered, even-toned, and smart as hell. Translated from the French; it's always a great idea to gift women writers in translation.
- Find The Perfect Nanny at your local bookstore.
- Discover The Perfect Nanny at your library.
- Learn more about Leila Slimani here.
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| Sharma Shields, photo by Rajah Bose |
About today's reader:
Sharma Shields's newest novel is The Cassandra, out soon from Henry Holt. She is the founder of Scablands Books, began the annual reading series and anthology Lilac City Fairytales, and works actively to connect writers to readers and readers to each other. Learn more about Sharma and her writing at http://www.sharmashields.com/
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Book Your Stocking with Barbara Williamson
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| Book Your Stocking 2018 |
Book Your Stocking: December 19
You're back, Stocking Reader. Good. You know where you are, but if you are not you, but new, you've reached Book Your Stocking, the annual holiday series in which avid readers share the books they'd love to discover in their stockings, or leg warmers, or sock drawers.
Please welcome today's guest, film and literature professor, Barbara Williamson.
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Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
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| Educated by Tara Westover |
I haven’t read this book yet, but it seems to ping many of my buttons: cultism, survivalism, local area issues, childhood trauma, the meaning and power of education, and the ability to overcome against the odds. Named one of the 10 Best Books of the Year by the New York Times, Educated: A Memoir, recounts Westover’s experience growing up isolated in an abusive, rural Idaho home with a father who believed public school was indoctrination. Eventually, she earns her Ph.D. from Cambridge, and this book is her journey. I am attracted to such books, I think, because I wasn’t supposed to make something of myself, so watching that process of transformation in others is both heartening and inspiring, and I think we need inspiring at this point in history.
- Find Educated at your local bookstore.
- Discover Educated at your library.
- Learn more about Tara Westover at her website.
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| Barbara Williamson |
Barbara Williamson is both a high-school dropout and a proud community-college graduate. She eventually moved on to earn other degrees, including a Ph.D. with a triple emphasis: Popular Culture with an emphasis in film, Women’s Literature, and 20th Century American and Canadian Literature. She loves teaching film, cultural studies, literature and writing, particularly at a community college, and particularly at Spokane Falls, because she believes teaching at a community college is an act of revolution.
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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors:
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Book Your Stocking with Sarah Bartusch
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| Book Your Stocking 2018 |
Book Your Stocking: December 18
You've found yourself at Book Your Stocking, the annual reading series in which writers and readers wish for the book they most want to discover in their stocking or sock drawer this year.
Please welcome Sarah Bartusch to today's edition.
Please welcome Sarah Bartusch to today's edition.
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| Calypso by David Sedaris, cover |
So, I really struggle to make time for myself to read. However, I really, really enjoy David Sedaris's books, essays, diaries, and so on. I love his dry, dark humor. I almost need a diaper when reading his stuff. He says what I think--only funnier.
I read that Calypso is Sedaris' "top read," and if I love all of the other books that I've read so far, then this must be an amusing riot!
- Find Calypso at your bookstore.
- Discover Calypso at your library.
- Learn more about Calypso and David Sedaris at his website.
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About today's reader:
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| Sarah Bartusch |
Sarah Bartusch lives in Terre Haute, Indiana where she works as a psychotherapist, writes poetry, and lives with her daughter and husband. She also runs 'th Poetry Asylum, a monthly poetry-reading series in its tenth year of existence. Learn more about the series at its Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/thpoetryasylum/
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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors:
Monday, December 17, 2018
Book Your Stocking with John Kenny
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| Book Your Stocking 2018 |
Book Your Stocking: December 17
For those celebrating the pagan, religious, or some mix of Christmas, we've now entered the last full week before that big day. So few days to write that book you want to give everyone, but enough time to order a book someone else wrote and hide it in your favorite person's stocking or under their pillow or wherever book-surprises happen where you live.Here to recommend such a book is John Kenny, all the way from Dublin.
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| Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector |
- Find Hour of the Star at your local bookstore.
- Discover Hour of the Star at your library.
- Learn more about the author here.
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About today's reader:
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| John Kenny |
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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors:
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Book Your Stocking with Tatiana Ryckman
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| Book Your Stocking 2018 |
Book Your Stocking: December 16
Welcome back to Book Your Stocking, the annual reading series in which readers and writers share the book they most want to discover in their stocking this year, whether that's a book they've read, want to read, or wish existed.
Today's reader joins us from Austin, TX by way of a childhood in Cleveland, OH. Please welcome Tatiana Ryckman.
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So Sad Today + Melissa Broder
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| So Sad Today: Personal Essays Melissa Broder |
I often just think the name of this book as if it's an explanation for something, or an independent thought (similar to Heti's How Should a Person Be?--a question I ask myself often). I've seen the book in shops, I've heard it mentioned by friends, it just seems so ubiquitous and yet I haven't taken the plunge and bought the thing. It's starting to feel absurd that I haven't read it yet. I'd like to put my eyes where my brain is, I guess.
- Find So Sad Today at your local bookstore.
- Discover So Sad Today at your library.
- Learn more about Melissa Broder at her website.
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About today's reader: |
| Tatiana as a child in Cleveland, OH |
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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors:
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