Book Your Stocking with Sharma Shields

Book Your Stocking: December 3

All December, readers of all stripes will share their reading wish-lists and/or give-lists. Note on book links: all titles will be linked to their publishers, or if this isn't an option, to IndieBound so that you can support local bookstores. If you are rural and without bookstores, share this post with your librarian or library's Facebook page.

Please welcome today's reader, Sharma Shields.

Give-List

For the epic literature lover: KINTU by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Incredible epic set in Uganda, filled with magic realism, history lessons, and criticism of colonialism ala Midnight's Children and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

For the poetry lover: Tracy K. Smith's Life on Mars, since she was dubbed our new poet laureate this year. Also, NASTY WOMEN
POETS: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse , edited by
Grace Bauer & Julie Kane and published by Sandpoint, Idaho's venerable Lost Horse Press, a perfect antidote to all of the shit women have to take day in and day out.

For the teen in your life: the Ms. Marvel comics series, featuring Kamala Kahn, Marvel's first Muslim superhero to headline her own series. Written by G. Willow Wilson and drawn by Adrian Alphona.

For the middle-grade reader: HiLo: The Boy Who Crashed to Earth, by Judd Winick. My son loved this series, filled with adventure, heart, bravery and kindness.

For the lover of fairy tales, at any age: Fairy Tales and Fables by Gyo Fujikawa. Famous and obscure fairy tales from around the world, complete with gorgeous drawings.

For the Early Reader: The Elephant and Piggie series by Mo Willems. Willems draws expressions so deftly and with such humor. Both my 5 and 8 year olds love reading these books again and again. The simple language is perfect for the beginning
reader.

For the preschooler: Du Iz Tak by Carson Ellis. Filled with whimsical creatures and made-up but intelligible words, this is such a blast to read aloud to young children.

For the baby: A subscription to Babybug, the (chewable) magazine for the youngest of kids, filled with poetry and simple rhyming tales.

For the book-lover/community lover: A donation to the local library friend's group in their name, such as the Friends of the Spokane Public Library or the Friends of the Spokane County Library District.

📚🎄

Sharma Shields, 

photo by Astrid Vidalon

About today's reader: Sharma Shields is the author of a short story collection, Favorite Monster, and a novel, The Sasquatch Hunter's Almanac. Henry Holt will publish her next novel, The Cassandra, in early 2019.

🌲

Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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

Book Your Stocking with Tom Noyes

Book Your Stocking: December 2

All December, readers of all stripes will share their reading wish-lists and/or give-lists. Note on book links: all titles will be linked to their publishers, or if this isn't an option, to IndieBound so that you can support local bookstores. If you are rural and without bookstores, share this post with your librarian or library's Facebook page.

Please welcome today's reader, Tom Noyes.

Give-List

In fiction, I'd give Melissa Fraterrigo’s Glory Days (University of Nebraska Press) and in poetry, Cameron Barnett’s The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water (Autumn House).

🎄📚

Tom Noyes,
used with permission

About today's reader: Tom Noyes' newest book, Come by Here: A Novella and Stories, won the Autumn House Prize in Fiction and the Gold Medal in Short Fiction from the Independent Press Publishers Awards.  He is the author of two other story collections, Spooky Action at a Distance and Other Stories and Behold Faith and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for Stanford Libraries’ William Saroyan Award. Currently, he teaches in the BFA program at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College, where he also serves as Assistant Director of the Humanities and as Consulting Editor for the literary magazine Lake Effect.

🌲

Check out more recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: 

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

Book Your Stocking Series: Holiday Reading Wishlist/GiveList 2017-2018

Book Your Stocking: December 1

It's Friday and the first day of December, and now that I read books again, I'm motivated to create reading lists. So, not only would I like to share my  Reading Wish-List and Give-List for this holiday season, but every day in December another reader will also share their list(s), in a series I'm calling Book Your Stocking. Check back each day to expand your own reading wish-list and give-list.   

🎄📚

My Reading Wish-List:
1. The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles by Michelle Cuevas and Erin Stead (children's)
3. Saville (Jenny Saville's art)
4. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Abram X. Kendi

My Reading Give-List:
1. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
2. Collected Stories of Eudora Welty

🎄📚

Want to grow your own reading wish-list? Check out other recommendations from Book Your Stocking contributors: http://www.erinpringle.com/p/book-your-stocking.html

Holiday Ornaments for Children who Love to Read Books

My four-year old and I began our Sunday morning by cleaning out and organizing his art shelves. In the midst of doing this, we came across a few scenes from Where the Wild Things Are meant for a project that did not turn out, despite high hopes. Rather than recycling the pictures, I moved them from here to there, since everything can be used for a craft. When the art shelves were organized, we started cutting out these saved pictures. I took out the new roll of contact paper. And suddenly we were making Christmas ornaments. 

One thing led to another, and Henry and I found ourselves back at the computer, searching for scenes from his favorite books. Thank you, Google Images. A few times, Henry would run back to his room and scan his bookshelf, then run back and tell me which books we loved. Oh, yes! I'd say. And we'd find more. 

Then we printed, cut, sandwiched each between clear contact paper, cut and taped string and voila! we have lovely little literary ornaments. Quite a few, actually. Perhaps some will become presents for his teachers?

It was a good project because Henry could take part fully in each step, from selecting the pictures, to cutting them out, to measuring the string and taping it to the back. When he wanted to try a different step, I continued working on the step I was on. The last step of hanging the ornaments on the tree was very fulfilling. He chose several to hang on the little tree in his bedroom, too, which is definitely the mark of a successful project. 

This is not necessarily a super creative project, but we enjoyed doing it, and I'm glad that we've commemorated the books we have loved so well. I most enjoyed his picking out the pictures and hearing him tell me the part of the story associated with the picture, as I didn't realize, though I should have, how closely he has been listening--and memorizing--as we read and re-read. His favorite part of the project seemed to be pulling the tape off the dispenser and wrangling the embroidery thread into ornament loops.

These could serve nicely as gift-tags, too, though I don't know that the time-investment would be worth it, especially if you don't require an oath that gift-receivers will keep the tags.

Here are a few samples. Do you know which books these come from?

  

Book Your Stocking: The Whole World at Once on Cyber Monday

Celebrate #CyberMonday by purchasing The Whole World at Once for all of your friends. All of them. 

The Whole World at Once is a collection of stories that trace rural landscapes and the journey of mourning and how that affects those who have experienced loss. A soldier returns from multiple tours of war, only to plant landmines in the back yard; a sister searches for her sister among cornfields and fairgrounds; a daughter counts time by her tire swing.

A few reviews: 

"This is an astonishing collection, beautifully written, heartrending, and deeply affecting." Read the full review here.

"People who grew up in rural areas will feel an eerie sense of stories they've grown up hearing or stories they've lived, a sense that this could happen or has happened here, and yet the pervasive thread of grief opens these stories up to anyone." 

Continue reading the review here.

"The characters dream intensely, waking in terror, and the stories themselves have a dreamlike intensity heightened by Pringle’s lyrical voice. [. . .] Readers willing to immerse themselves in sorrow, and sometimes in narratives that twist and shimmer before taking definite shape, will find reflected in these stories the unsteady path of coming back to life—or not—after loss." Continue reading at Kirkus Reviews.  

Pick up your copies of The Whole World at Once at any of these places:

From Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Whole-World-Once-Stories/…/1943665575

From your local bookstore (better): https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781943665570

From the publisher (best): http://wvupressonline.com/node/668

If you'd like a signed copy, message me via Facebook or my website: 

http://www.erinpringle.com/p/contact-her.html

So, I've been reading . . .

My last post was a narrative about my fall-from and return-to reading book-length works. Since writing it, I've since been reading non-stop. The Thanksgiving holiday helped, too. But it has been a good November for reading.

I also stopped annotating while reading, for the first time in nearly twenty years. It can be done, amazingly. I may return to marking lightly, though, because I do remember better when I've made notes.

As I finish each book, I've posted little summaries or thoughts on my Facebook page, which I've now assembled here, beginning with most recently read. My head is now so full of words and worlds that I may need to take a few days to absorb all I've read.

1. Monsters in Appalachia by Sheryl Monks


2. Our Daughter and Other Stories by Wendy Oleson



3. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward


4. Hollow by Owen Egerton


5. In the Language of Miracles by Rajia Hassib


6. The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman