Literary Reflections

Sometimes I think it's sheer self-indulgence that I give so many books as gifts, because it gives me a chance to prowl around for what I want. My friends and family know that shape isn't a box--it's a book. I guess I'm predictable. But like any bookworm I can't fathom not being excited by a new tome to crawl into and these are the tomes I return to, again and again.

Blood Sugar, by Nicole Blackman

Blackman has long been praised by hipster newspapers like Village Voice for being a visceral poet who has this urban Gothic sensibility to her work. I love her because she was a Christmas gift from a dear friend years ago, and Blackman was the first contemporary female poet I found who simply writes and doesn't have the descriptor "chick lit" anywhere near her. Blackman's day job was doing PR for bands, and her kinship with music is easily found in the cadences. From the poem Breath Control: "The hardest part is the music,/the songs that pour out of the elevators and taxis,/with voices that crawl between our ears and say/This one's about you, babe./This one's all about you." Blackman's words make the perfect gift for musicians (she's done work with KMFDM), poets, and secret writers.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

This book remains in today's world of panty-less starlets and daytime TV and, while true, the most shocking thing to me is that Lolita is still unsurpassed in its fluidity. It's poetry wrapped up in paragraphs: "Lo. Lee. Ta. The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta." Nabokov made Humbert Humbert, the morally bankrupt protagonist and narrator, such a sympathetic character that he writes for him one of the most poetic deaths in all literature. The book is reviled and studied all around the world some 50+ years later. Lolita is a great gift for a stodgy relative you'd like to shock or for an elitist friend who needs some shaking up.

Making a Literary Life: Advice for Writers and Other Dreamers, by Carolyn See

Quite possibly the best book I've ever read on not just how to write but how to be a successful writer. It's easily broken down into chapters (like Plot, which is self-explanatory) and See takes you through even how to set up your money and what to wear on your first trip to New York on business. This book was recommended to me by a poet, and after I read it I bought five more to give as gifts, to great success. See is a successful novelist, as was her father, her two ex-husbands, and one of her daughters, so she knows exactly what she's speaking of. This book doesn't make you feel silly for wanting to spin words for a living; in fact, it makes you feel like that's exactly what you should be doing right now. Great gift for artists in any other medium, as well.

Any Bloom County book, by Berkeley Breathed

After Walt Kelly's Pogo and before Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes there was a cartoon called Bloom County where a penguin, a hedgehog, a rabbit, a drug-addled cat, a lawyer, and three boys lived in a huge boarding house and had existential conversations and adventures. It's as weird and great as it sounds! They survived alien kidnappings, formed a successful death metal band that testified before Tipper Gore and her parental advisory board, and worked at the Bloom County Picayune. Breathed's drawings are stylized seemingly without effort and no one has found such deftness and sweetness in the daily papers since he pulled it some 15 years ago. Great gift for folks who like either of the aforementioned cartoons or just, like me, love weird stuff.

Busman's Honeymoon, by Dorothy L. Sayers

I'm a sucker for the English mystery novel, and no one did it better than Sayers. She was an Oxford graduate and Dante scholar who made her living writing about Lord Peter, a WWI veteran and absurdly talented gentleman who solves crimes. Somehow Sayers made it all seem not as precious and silly as it sounds when balanced with a whole lot of literary allusions and humor. In this novel, Lord Peter solves a crime that will either make or break his relationship with Harriet Vane, the novelist (natch!) he's been chasing for five long years and has just married. They come to their newly bought honeymoon home and find a dead body in the cellar. Perfect gift for crime aficionados, anglophiles, or as a wedding gift for a couple with a strong sense of humor.