Category Archives: favorites

June 07, 2013   Rachel   children's books, favorites, fun, Rachel S., reading  
2

Old, but not forgotten.

There’ve been a whole lot of nostalgic lists and posts floating around the internet lately, particularly geared towards those that grew up in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. It’s gotten almost ridiculous—there are only so many times you can get excited reminiscing about Gushers, Legends of the Hidden Temple, super soakers, Dunkaroos and Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

That’s not to say the lists aren’t fun—they are—but they can get a little tired and repetitive after a while. I remember in college, if you ever were at a loss of what to talk about with a group of people you didn’t really know (that happens a lot in college), the go-to was just to bring up old Nickelodeon TV shows. The conversation was ever and always the same, but for some reason, it got everyone interested and vying to put in their two cents about Clarissa Explains it All and Are You Afraid of the Dark?

I always pretended to contribute to these conversations, but the truth is, I wasn’t allowed to watch any television growing up outside of PBS. I was one of “those kids.” I’m sure it helped a little to shape me into who I am today, but I’m not here to wax poetic about the values of a childhood not in front of screens, nor about the evils of too much TV* (‘cause I sure did get my fill of Arthur, The Magic School Bus and Zoom until my eyes near fell out). What I’m getting at here, is that the best “remember that” conversations I ever had always had to do with books.

As with television shows, there’s a commonality in the books we all read growing up. As kids and young adults, there were only so many options. Talking about favorite snacks, toys, games and television shows can only get you so far. The experiences with each of those had to have been fairly similar. With books though, as ever, there’s a real individuality for every reader. I re-read books so much more as a kid than I do now, and my connection with my favorite protagonists was fervently strong. Because it’s a subject talked about less frequently, it’s much more exciting when someone casually mentions a favorite book or character from their childhood and there’s a sudden explosive “YOU READ THAT, TOO?!?!” that comes from whomever is in earshot. The conversation, then, can be different and valuable every time.

The other weekend, a friend and I took the trip down to South Jersey, where I grew up, to spend the weekend (not exactly beach weather, but nice nonetheless). She was staying in the guest room where many of my books have been relegated over the years. As a child of an Irish mother, we spent a lot of time overseas in the summer, and it was a special treat for me to bring home books every August that I couldn’t buy in the States. Additionally, my dad would order me Irish-published books from a catalogue one or two times a year (I thought this very cool). Though many of these books became favorites as well, they’re never part of the conversation when reminiscing about old literary friends, as no one had even heard of most of the authors, let alone individual titles.

I had completely forgotten about all of this until my friend, who I should mention now is from Ireland as well, started gushing over my bookshelf. It seems that there was a commonality in the books Irish children read amongst themselves, too! “Your shelf almost exactly matches mine at home!” My friend has been in America for several years now and has surely not had anyone to talk about her favorite characters with for some time. It was a fun trip down memory lane for the both of us, and I couldn’t believe how long it had been since I’d thought of some of those titles.

While I’m sure the readers of this blog have all grown up in different eras, I’d love to know what some of your favorites were as a kid—what characters you wanted to befriend and what stories you read over and over. Unlike Froot by the Foot and Don’t Wake Daddy, I bet there’s a lot more to talk about here.

*That was definitely a Berenstein Bears book, though.

October 16, 2012   Brenna   biography, Brenna, favorites, great books, trends  
5

Lincoln Love

I can’t say that I’m much of a history buff, but there was an interesting article that caught my eye in the Wall Street Journal last week about the overwhelming amount of books there are in the market about President Lincoln. Of course it’s clear that books about Honest Abe sell nicely—just take a look at Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard’s Killing Lincoln or Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals. And according to the article, a minimum of 20 more books about Lincoln are set to be published in the next year!

But what I hadn’t thought about before that the article explained so well is how one subject—or one person, really—can reach such a wide audience. Besides for the obvious fascinating and fatal historical events, Lincoln as a man was beyond extraordinary. For one, he’s the perfect example of someone who achieved the American Dream, all while experiencing personal tragedies. But, part of what makes him so interesting is that, as the article points out, he is still mysterious: “Scholars continue to debate how and when he came to the decision to end slavery.”

But, if you’re already sick of him, the buzzed about Lincoln movie with Spielberg directing and starring the masterful Daniel Day Lewis is sure to rekindle the flame!

What about you all? Are you a Lincoln buff or is there someone else in history that you prefer to read about?

October 10, 2012   Miriam   favorites, fun, Miriam  
4

Bookworm=nerd (or does it?)

My son and I were having a conversation about nerds recently.  Another second grader had told him that being a nerd was a bad thing.  I explained that I was a huge nerd growing up and that his father, despite his athletic prowess and popularity with cheerleaders, was also a bit of a nerd.  My kid was intrigued.  “Why were you a nerd?” he asked, and the answer, irrefutable and incontrovertible: “I was obsessed with books.  Still am.”

Of course, plenty of non-nerds love books.  And not every nerd is obsessed with literary pursuits (just think of your friend the techie who has memorized every line from every Star Wars movie).  But, books and nerdiness have a delightfully symbiotic history.

This piece in Flavorwire made me think fondly of the books that I’ve loved in spite of and a little because of their high nerd quotient:  Borge’s Labyrinths, Celine’s Journey to the End of the Night, Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy….you get the idea.   These are not books you discuss with your girlfriends over wine and nachos like you would an episode of CSI: Antarctica.  These are the kinds of titles that cause people to roll their eyes at you in disbelief at your pretentiousness or, in a different setting, that will set off endless tedious deconstructions of literary tropes and themes.   As much as I relish my pulp fiction, my popular nonfiction, and my scandalous bestsellers, I still define myself as a nerd because of those, well, nerdy books I read.

So, what books do you love that mark you as a nerd?

August 15, 2012   Miriam   authors, classics, critiques, favorites, fiction, fun, Miriam, opinion  
7

The sense of a beginning

As we’ve discussed many times on this blog, a truly great opening line to a novel is the holy grail for those who read and write for a living.  A beautiful, evocative, powerful first sentence can mean the difference between committing to a 600-page journey or picking up the remote.  The truth is, most novels, even the ones we decree to be masterpieces, don’t have particularly memorable opening lines.

For instance:  “The madness of an autumn prairie cold front coming through.”

Or, “When the lights went off, the accompanist kissed her.”

Or, “The play—for which Briony had designed the posters, programs and tickets, constructed the sales booth out of a folding screen tipped on its side, and lined the collection box in red crepe paper—was written by her in a two-day tempest of composition, causing her to miss a breakfast and a lunch.”

These are the first sentences of three of my favorite novels of the past decade or so.  Solid openers, certainly, but nothing of the caliber of “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”  I believe that these three books (The Corrections, Bel Canto, and Atonement in case you hadn’t guessed) will become classics (if they haven’t already) despite the fact that Franzen, Patchett, and McEwan didn’t knock it out of the park with their first swing.

I just started reading Gone Girl and because it has been hyped to the heavens by everyone I know who’s read it, I was looking for a brilliant start.  And…it’s fine.  It made me want to keep reading but it didn’t grab me in a vice grip and drag me into the book.  To be honest, it felt a bit forced and writerly.  So far, however, the novel’s terrific and living up to the reviews.

My point, and I do have one, is that the first line doesn’t have to be mind-blowing.  It just needs to be good, intriguing, well written.  It should pique your curiosity even if it doesn’t turn you into a quivering mass of anticipation.  Ah, but the next 90,000 words need to keep you interested.   And, then you can try again—with a stunning closer that stays with you long after you’ve finished the book.

Of course, if that’s all too much trouble, you can do what these folks did and write some truly gruesome first sentences.  They will definitely grab someone’s attention.

What are the first lines from novels you’ve loved that didn’t exactly knock your socks off?  And why did you keep reading anyway?

May 18, 2012   Lauren   children's books, favorites, fun, Lauren  
2

The strangest thing

To me, one of the most exciting elements of children’s publishing has got to be the school visit.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I was pretty enamored with anyone remotely famous who showed up to my elementary school.  I can only remember one author ever coming to town, but he earned my undying affection for it.  I read a whole bunch of his books in short succession and managed to get his autograph on my absolute favorite.  And then I told every adult who would listen for ages that I knew a famous, important author.

And who was that man?  Daniel Manus Pinkwater, author of many truly absurd children’s books including The Hoboken Chicken Emergency.

Imagine my delight, then, to see him turn up on this Flavorwire list of the 10 weirdest children’s book authors of all time.  Weird is Pinkwater’s thing, and he’s a master of it.  I’m not sure I’ve read anyone odder before or since.

Pinkwater’s not my only beloved childhood hero to make the list.  All kids everywhere love The Stinky Cheeseman, surely.  Fighting over that one at quiet reading time was a favored pastime in my elementary school classrooms.  And Louis Sachar’s Wayside School books were the most fun a person has ever had doing math.

Maybe as a weekend treat, I’ll go pick up copies of all these now for a trip down weirdness memory lane.

 

April 25, 2012   Miriam   classics, favorites, fun, great books, Miriam  
11

The second time around

The stack of new books perched precariously on a child’s stool by the door in my bedroom is taller than my six-year-old and gaining on my 5’4” height fast.  My e-reader is full to bursting with books, manuscripts, my renewed subscriptions to The New Yorker  and Vanity Fair (which will be less entertaining and provocative now that Christopher Hitchens is gone), episodes of Mad Men I never seem to be able to watch when they run on TV and the awesomely addictive Words With Friends app.  So, perversely, I’m thinking about books I’ve loved or that have been game changers for me that I want to re-read.

I think I’d start with The Good Soldier, Ford Maddox Ford’s perennially underrated masterpiece, move on to some lighter reading with the deliciously unsettling Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier, and, if I’m still in re-tread mode after that, dive into the prodigiously brilliant One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Thing is, if I go down this road, Jeffrey Eugenides will have finished another novel before I go back to my tottering pile.

What is it that makes us have to go back and re-read, sometimes obsessively so, our favorite book(s)?  What magic or comfort or insight do we find there the second of fifteenth time around?  Most book lovers I know have at least one title they revisit time and again and clearly it’s a widespread phenomenon.

So, what books do you find you go back to over and over again?  Maybe your choices will inspire my own.

April 11, 2012   John   favorites, fun, John, opinion, poetry, trivia  
4

The murderous beats

This past Sunday afternoon, several parents from my son’s preschool organized an Easter Egg Hunt for the kids in Riverside Park near Columbia University. With the park in full bloom and the children remarkably well behaved for so late in the day, we must have presented just about as wholesome and innocent a portrait as you can get here in the Big City.

Yet who would have guessed our kiddies were scrounging for eggs on the site of a legendary literary murder?

Not me, until I read this piece in the Times about the Beat writers and how Lucian Carr, mentor to Ginsberg and Kerouac at Columbia, murdered the childhood stalker who had followed Carr to New York from St. Louis. Afterwards, Carr dumped the body in the Hudson—and must have dragged it right through the spot where we were picnicking 68 years later!

Well, morbid connections aside, I love this story for a few reasons. One, I’ve been a big fan of the Beats since high school when my lit-mag friends and I would traipse down to Café Reggio on MacDougal Street and pretend we were hipsters over cappucinos—though, full disclosure, I didn’t actually read any of their work until post-college. But when I did, I was hooked, and even now I’ve probably re-read HOWL and ON THE ROAD more than any other books on my shelf.

Two, it’s always fun to hear a new story about literary heroes, especially a nicely lurid one like this. But I especially love how it places the rowdy, anti-establishment Beats firmly in the Columbia literary culture—somehow, it makes them more relatable without deflating their impact, sort of like Thoreau heading home from Walden for dinner.

And three, it reaffirms my book-love for NYC. I mean, you could walk down virtually any street in any borough and there’s some kind of literary connection—a scene from a favorite book, the residence of a famous writer, the site (or former site) of a bookstore or writers’ bar or some other hangout. And in a few instances, like Riverside Park, something much more sinister…

April 06, 2012   Lauren   favorites, fun, Lauren, opinion, reading  
8

Ah, the folly of youth

I’m the first to admit I have some obsessions that are potentially embarrassing.  I would never play my music on shuffle for a roomful of people, and at least half my DVD collection is thoroughly ridiculous.  My tastes are ¼ snob, ¼ misguided snob, and ½ philistine.  And that’s the way I Iike it.

But books?  I don’t know.  I mean, yes, I was into Anne Rice’s vampire oeuvre to a perhaps extreme degree.  And it’s possible that I’ve tried to convince many inconvincible people that The Outsiders is not just a fond childhood memory, but also a work of real art.  But am I embarrassed by either?  I don’t look back and laugh at young Lauren’s appreciation of those things.  I’d happily re-read The Outsiders this weekend and report to you how my heart breaks for the greasers.  (Especially the thoroughly underappreciated Sodapop.)

I just don’t have the “oh, man, I loved that, didn’t I?” mortification when any book bubbles to the surface in my mind.  So when Rachel shared this post from The Awl in which writers reflect on their cringe-inducing early book loves, I couldn’t really come up with my own.  Even though I loved, loved, loved some of the books mentioned (Rice, VC Andrews, Camus, Sweet Valley High), I’m not embarrassed at all to have felt that way.  And ever since I read The Fault in Our Stars a few months ago, I’ve wanted to go out and buy a truckload of its tackier, formulaic cousins, the Lurlene McDaniels books.  When it comes down to it, that stuff all seems like harmless fun or an attempt to aspire to some lofty intellectual heights, and I just don’t see what’s to be embarrassed about in either.  I hope I never reach the day when I’m troubled by my own love of trashy fun or pretension, because I’m going to have so much shame to live down that I’ll probably just have to move into a therapist’s office.

Whether or not you have cringetastic books in your past, it’s worth checking out the link, even if just for Justin Halpern’s response.  Who among us can say they’re not kind of curious to read that one now?

For the record, I’m pretending The Perks of Being a Wallflower didn’t appear on that list.

P.S.  Stay gold.

December 14, 2011   Stacey   favorites, fun, Stacey, words  
15

What’s your favorite line?

I’m reading a new middle grade novel from a client, and I came across a line I just love. In it, he is describing a pack of dogs on the attack: “They were a boiling wave of flailing paws and arching backs.” It’s so juicy and descriptive and intriguing. In just a few short words, it says so much about what’s to come.

Great writers amaze me with their capabilities at taking simple words or phrases and turning them into sentences that blend together seamlessly to form the books we love. But, even within a favorite novel there are always a few lines that jump out, that demand to be read again, and that are remembered when you think back to that book in the future.  Miriam talked about favorite last lines on the blog this summer, and it was a fun exercise. When I was young, I remember underlining lines I liked in books as I was reading (in pencil, of course!).

I’d love to hear what your favorite lines are. The ones you go back to or quote or think about fondly when remembering where you were and what you were doing when you were reading that great book. Sometimes it’s harder to remember lines from books than it is song lyrics or movie quotes (some days, I can barely remember my kids’ names), but see what you can come up with, and please share!

November 22, 2011   John   favorites, great books, holidays, John, opinion, reading  
2

What a year!

Well, I’d hoped to stave off the holiday season for just a few more days—at least until Santa lumbers down Broadway on Thursday morning at the end of the Macy’s Parade. But the Times just released their 100 Notable Books for 2011, so I guess there’s no escaping now…

Of all the year-end best-of lists, I find the Times list the most instructive. Perhaps it comes with being the Paper of Record, but typically they go for the popular, consensus picks of the best in a given year, and so it provides a good picture of what worked, both artistically and commercially. For me as an agent, it’s especially useful to look at the nonfiction list and review the categories that got them excited—lotsa history, lotsa memoir this time out. And, of course, it’s always fun to grouse about the omissions—ahem, cough, Steve Jobs, ahem?

But this year more than any other, the list make me realize just how loooong this year felt. Didn’t Swamplandia! come out a zillion years ago? The Tiger’s Wife? I could swear I was talking about Malcom X with the editor back in 2010…

For sure, having a newborn at home has certainly dragged out the days (and nights). On the other hand, coming to the end of my first full calendar year as an agent, I’ve handled a lot more projects than I did as an editor, and with a much faster rate of turnover, too—so in that respect, news quickly becomes old news, and old news seems that much older.

Hence, for once, I’m actually grateful to the Times for reminding me of books that are way off my radar at this point—and that I won’t be hopelessly out of date if I tackle some of them over the holidays!

Any thoughts on the list? Other glaring omissions? Anyone else feel like 2011 went on forever?

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