Book Your Stocking with Sarah Bartusch

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. 

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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:

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: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Book Your Stocking with John Kenny

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

I’d like to pop Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector into other people’s stockings. It’s the story of Macabea, a young woman living in the slums of Rio who may or may not be real according to the author, Rodrigo, who may or may not be the author Clarice Lispector. It’s a short novel that is as much about the author, fictitious or real, as it is about Macabea; it’s about the act of writing, and of trying to avoid (or not) imposing a writer’s preconceived notions onto a life; it’s about fiction and the truth of fiction as opposed to reality, or so-called reality. It is at times a maddeningly frustrating read and yet, despite the digressions and the author’s hand very deliberately showing, the story of Macabea’s life shines through in all its splendid constraint; even as we witness the author’s intrusion and artifice, the reader feels for the person of the young woman and her lack of self-awareness and aspiration.

• 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:

John Kenny

John Kenny is a writer, editor and creative writing tutor in Dublin, Ireland. His short stories have appeared in Revival Literary Journal, The Galway Review, Woman's Way, Emerald Eye (an anthology of the Best of Irish Imaginative Fiction), Transtories, Fear the Reaper, Uncertainties Vol 1 and many other venues. John was co-editor of Albedo One from its inception in 1993 until 2013. He is editor of original horror anthology Box of Delights for Aeon Press, Writing4All: The Best of 2009, and Decade 1: The Best of Albedo One. Learn more at https://johnrichardkenny.com/

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Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html