Here's Molly and the first chapter book she ever read by herself. It was some book!
These stories will sneak up on you, invite you in, lead you on a chase, get you drunk, tear your heart out, and still keep you coming back for more. Joy Williams is masterful. Read this collection if you dare, and you should.
These "lectures" meander through subjects -- poets and the moon, the joys and sorrows of reading, fear, and irreverence, to name a few -- with a voice full of wonder, wit, and wisdom. Guaranteed to inspire any writer, dreamer, creative soul, or lover of words, Madness, Rack, and Honey is the book I always wish I were reading again for the first time.
Whether you're diving into the wondrous world of Angela Carter for the first time or your appetite for her work is already insatiable (there is no in between), this is a collection to treasure. It includes the re-worked fairy tales for which she is probably best known (The Bloody Chamber) and the hard to find and equally, if not more, amazing collections (Saints and Strangers and American Ghosts and Old World Wonders being my favorites).
A quick and haunting read about crossing borders of all kinds: between the U.S and Mexico, and also across language, gender, and reality and other-worldliness.
Swimming Studies is a gorgeous love note to water and the practice of swimming. Meditate in this book's cool, chlorinated depths, and you'll see swimming differently when you come up for air.
All I can really say about this book, a big, beautiful novel that spans generations of an American family, is that every single person I know who has read it has loved it, and we all talk about the characters as if they're old friends. What makes a novel so beloved? It's hard to say, but this one just is.
Another Country pulls you into its big world and tugs your hear along with it. An unforgettable book that I think everyone should read.
The Poetics of Space is a classic work of philosophy that reads like a familiar dream. Bachelard explains our attraction to certain homes, the satisfaction of a well-made box, the nest and shell as metaphor, and all that we hold dear about interior spaces. A dense read to be sure, but a stunning testament to our nostalgia for home. Reading it, to me, felt like arriving there.
Anne Carson -- poet, classicist, novelist-in-verse -- seems to know something about everything. So she's uniquely qualified to write these perfect little prose pieces about, well, everything. On where to travel. On why some people find trains exciting. On Ovid. On trout. On rain. On hedonism. On who you are. These short talks are kind of indescribable and definitely brilliant.
This book is a haunting lullabye, a gale force wind, a nourishing meal.