In this special series, we asked writers we admire to share a book they're giving to their friends and family this holiday season. Check our blog daily to see the books your favorite authors are gifting.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert is best known for her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. Her latest book is The Signature of All Things. In 2008, Time magazine named Gilbert one of the most influential people in the world.
Well, this year I am celebrating ridiculousness by giving copies of The Stench of Honolulu, by Jack Handey, to pretty much everyone I know. It's a perfect Christmas book, on account of the fact that it can be read in one sitting (on Christmas afternoon itself, perhaps) and because it will reduce absolutely any reader of any age or background to fits of crazed laughter. Lots of books try to be funny, but this absurd, frenzied romp of a fake action-adventure mystery tale is funny on every single page. In fact, it is usually funny in every single sentence. It's as funny as a perfect Simpson's episode — that fast, that stupid, that awesome, that cartoonish.
When I read The Stench of Honolulu for the first time this summer, I was laughing so hard that I kept jumping up and reading bits of it aloud to my husband, who would also burst out laughing. My husband then decided to read the book for himself, which meant that he kept jumping up and reading bits of it aloud to me — and even though I had just read those exact same passages to him only THE DAY BEFORE, I didn't care, and kept laughing anyhow. Which either means that I am losing my mind or that Jack Handey is a mad genius. (I hope Jack Handey is a mad genius.)
You know what? People don't really want to read big, important, serious books at Christmas. The holidays are stressful enough. So make people happy. Give them The Stench of Honolulu.
Jess Walter
Jess Walter is the author of eight books, including Beautiful Ruins and We Live in Water. He's been a finalist for the National Book Award and PEN/USA Literary prize and won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best novel.
I'll be giving my brother a book of short stories, Jim Gavin's Middle Men (unless my brother reads this blog post; then he's getting what I usually get him: a $7 gift certificate at the Booze Barn).
These funny, naturalistic stories are about the kinds of people we grew up with (or maybe the kind of people we grew up to be) — characters a less nuanced writer might depict as life's losers. But Gavin writes with such ease and generosity that a genuine poignancy bubbles up.
There is a terrific basketball story in this collection called "Play the Man" with a coach who seems dreamed up by a low-rent Wodehouse, and a perfect one-word description of the high-desert town of Victorville, California — Tatooine.
Robin Sloan
Robin Sloan is the author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. He studied economics at Michigan State and cofounded a literary magazine. Since then, he's worked at Poynter, Current TV, and Twitter, figuring out the future of media.
I think the ideal gift book, particularly in winter, should satisfy the following conditions: (1) It should be hefty. (2) It should be, additionally, engrossing — a story that settles heavy and warm across your brain. And finally, (3) it should be pure pleasure. A gift shouldn't feel like homework.
By this rubric, Hild, the new historical novel from Nicola Griffith, is beyond ideal. To summarize, briefly: it's a story set in seventh-century England, tracing the life of its namesake, the woman known today as St. Hilda of Whitby. Early reviews have compared it to George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire, and there is, indeed, plenty of court intrigue here, but I think Hild is both subtler and less cynical than Martin's saga. It's a grown-up tale that could nonetheless sit comfortably alongside books by Susan Cooper, Rosemary Sutcliff, and Susanna Clarke (all favorites of mine).
Anyway, I got my hands on an advance copy of Hild earlier this year and found myself utterly absorbed. It's been a while since I was so happy reading a book this fat. Maybe you'll recognize this feeling: you're a few hundred pages in, head spinning with everything that's happened, hungry for more but now reckoning with the reality that no book lasts forever... until you realize, with delight and even a bit of disbelief, that you're not even to the halfway point yet.
There really needs to be a word for that feeling. A long German word.
So, Hild had me lost in its pages for days and, yes, buckling under its weight somewhat. I've ordered three more copies earmarked as Christmas gifts; after delivery, I expect not to hear from their recipients for a while. That's as it should be. This is the time of year to surrender without struggle to the pleasure of a big, bountiful book.
No comments:
Post a Comment