THERE'S ART IN HERE!

The five year old happened upon CARNIEPUNK. While I'm thankful that he can't yet read all the words, he was pretty thrilled with the look of the book ("there's art in here!"). You, too, can be thrilled by the look of the book on July 23rd. :)

THE LIBRARY IN HEAVEN

It must be massive, Heaven's library. I thought at first that maybe everybody got their own, full of the crispest, most beautiful editions of all their favorite books. But now I think it must just be the one library, so that the denizens can roam the endless rows during their endless stay, tracing their greaseless fingertips (even if they just ate chocolate and barbeque, because there must always be chocolate and barbeque in Heaven, but nobody will ever be smudged).

They can discover any book or all the books or just peruse.

Imagine days spent stringing together first lines together into a story unto itself.

Weeks learning about the river deltas of the world below.

And of course, all books would be instantly translated and understandable, 'cause Heaven's a little bit Star Trek, too.

5 MODERN WRITER COMPLIMENTS

It used to be, the greatest compliment you could pay a writer was that they kept you up reading all night. I remember pretending to fall asleep until my parents went to bed, then switching the bedside lamp on to surreptitiously read. I'd close the book on the last page, and look up to find the clock displaying 3:00 a.m., or daylight glowing on the other side of the curtains.

Things are different now. Following are five modern compliments for compelling writers:

• I stayed up until 2:00 a.m. to download your new book on release day.
• I signed up for a Pilates bootcamp because the studio provided day care during classes. I didn't do the Pilates. I just dropped the toddler off for an hour and read your book in the locker room.
• I paid airline wireless fees because I couldn't wait another two hours to read your next book.
• I didn't check twitter/facebook/blog stats once while reading your book.
• I made a taxi pull over before crossing into Canada so I could download your newest title onto my Kindle.

I have happily done at least three, and possibly four of these things.

Tweets that Brightened our Day

Apparently Susan Orlean was ruminating on a book that had gotten into her head and refused to leave, tweeted about it with the simple yet profound hashtag #booksthatchangedmyworld, and opened a font into which readers everywhere could gush.

I live in Alaska. I'm four hours behind New York City and an hour behind Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. So when I woke up, hours after Ms. Orlean's tweet, I had screens and screens of amazing, interesting and revelatory tweets to read through. I loved that she did not tag this "books that changed my life" or "books that changed the world", which would likely have been a smaller, more repetitive list and possibly would have resulted in flares of self-righteous hostility. And also, titles like that would have had nothing to do with the singular effect a harmless-looking book might have on an individual.

No. #booksthatchangedmyworld was the perfect tag for, in some ways, the most personal, idiosyncratic and subjective of pastimes (or lifestayles, if you prefer).

The first book I listed was Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown. I have a hardback 1984 edition, the jacket long since lost. It is signed by Robin McKinley, but the inscription wishes the best to my older brother, and another inscription indicates that my grandmother gave it to my older brother in 1986 (sshhhhh - don't tell him). I love this book. I love Aerin, the gawky, determined heroine. I love Gonturan, her sword, and Talat, her reformed war horse. I love her adoring but puzzled father, her beautiful, selfish rival Galanna and her complicated and distant mentor (and then some) Luthe.

I gobbled up The Blue Sword, the sequel to The Hero and the Crown. It is a fine book, but did not affect me so profoundly. And I loved Sunshine, which is mostly unrelated except for the author (and which has just come out in paperback dressed in a dramatic new cover), and has affected me in other ways.

I read this book still, a couple of times a year, slipping through the simple elegance of the writing into a world of stone castles, sleeping dragons and huts full of axe handles. The Hero and the Crown did not change my life. I have not attempted to proof myself against dragon's fire or charged into battle on the broad back of a stallion. Hell, I haven't ridden a horse in years. Likely, this book hasn't changed the world either except to make it a little richer, a little more lovely. But as soon as I saw that hashtag repeating after an eclectic mix of classics and epic love stories and tales of tragedy, I knew what my first #booksthatchangedmyworld would be.

And what, gentle readers, were yours?

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the End

So I was reading a (what else?) folk tale in a translation of Italo Calvino’s Italian Folktales. Something happened. It might have involved cat and/or child, a glass of wine and a momentary lapse in motor skills. I dropped the book, but thought I caught it on the page I had been reading. I finished the story. In true Calvino style, it was clever, utterly ridiculous and told with a kind of deadpan straightforwardness that somehow seals the deal on makebelievability.

Later I realized I had not caught the book on the right page, but rather had begun one title and finished another. They each had a spoiled princess as the protagonist. Oddly, I feel no need to go back and finish the first story or begin the second.