Melanie McNair’s Faves
In the past, I was one of the people who suddenly filled the gym and yoga studio each year in January. Something would happen to break my routine and my resolution would fade into memory. I now have a more literary approach to new starts.
Books are great reminders of the intentions I set for myself. I like to have a stack on my nightstand that I can dip into whenever I am ready for the kind of gentle coaching only a book can offer. Here are some of my choices to help start on new paths and open new doors in 2016.
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert – a gentle and uplifting look at the creative life.
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron – a time-tested road map to creative recovery.
Rising Strong by Brene Brown – to help recover from the inevitable stumbles along the way.
The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde – a beautiful reminder of why it is so important for you (all of you!) to use your gifts.
One more thing: creativity is more fun when shared within a community. Find your tribe in 2016! Malaprop’s events and book clubs are a good place to meet like-minded folks.
Emoke B’Racz’s Faves
I am walking into my 68th year on this beautiful planet, and my 45th as a bookseller! I am not ready to be in the great blue yonder, but I have been reading Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and have been amazed at the wide array of blue-ness around us. Through her contemplation of the color, the many meanings of blue can emerge to us as readers, some familiar, others new.
#81
What I know: when I met you, a blue rush began. I want you to know, I no longer hold you responsible.
#105
There are no instruments for measuring color: there are no “color thermometers.” How could there be, as “color knowledge” always remains contingent upon an individual perceiver? This didn’t stop Horace Bénédict de Saussure from inventing, in 1789, a device he called the “cyanometer,” with which he hoped to measure the blue of the sky.
The New Year brings a new book by amazing science fiction master China Miéville. His new title This Census-Taker, is astonishing and dazzling, inviting deep contemplation.
Our friend Natalie Goldberg has gifted us with a new book, The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and this Zigzag Life, in which she shares her ideas on living a good life. How do we live better and do better for the life around us and within us? If you remember Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind you will want to read this new title.
I also recommend Jhumpa Lahiri’s newest book, In Other Words. She wrote this book in Italian to relearn the essence of words and writing.
Motivated by her feeling that language has become both too complex and too easy to express what she needs to say, she takes on the challenge of learning a new language she loves.
I find that she expresses what I have not before been able to articulate: that to know and learn a language one has to be inside the language. It always fascinates me when we are thinking and writing from one language to another.
In Other Words will be available by the time you finish en-joy-ing the previous titles I mentioned: the release date is February 29.
I wish that we all may keep our hearts open, joyful, and peaceful to meet the challenges of everyday life as it unfolds for every one of us in this new year. As we say in Budapest: B.U.É.K!
Stephanie Jones-Byrd’s Faves
Just in time for the 2016 election cycle home stretch – An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments: The Lost Art of Making Sense by Ali Almossawi. Whimsical illustrations by Alejandro Giraldo illuminate logical pitfalls for anyone interested in identifying, avoiding or enthusiastically engaging in them.
Looking to add some life to your presidential debate viewing party? Take a drink every time you hear a “Straw Man,” “False Dilemma,” “Slippery Slope,” “Appeal to Fear,” or any of the other 15 bad arguments in this wonderful little book. Make sure there’s a designated driver.
Hannah Richardson’s Faves
Ready to make 2016 count? Read Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn. I promise, it’s worth every moment of your time, though you may end up like me, closing the book and walking straight to your computer to start making monthly donations to your new, favorite international organization. It was one of the most unexpectedly educational, enlightening and uplifting books I have ever read.
A cookbook will rarely enter and exit Malaprop’s without first passing through my hands. I love them almost as much as I love actual food and will swoon over recipes titles out loud to co-workers. Many of the new cookbooks are not only created to be visual food porn, but the writing makes you feel like you’re just swapping recipes with an old college roommate.
I love that authors don’t assume I live in a neighborhood with a grocery store that could please every member of the United Nations (because I don’t), and most recipes include food that a four-year-old could recognize and pronounce. One glorious thing about food is that it can be both beautiful and unpretentious.
Here’s a list of the cookbooks that I’ve (figuratively!) drooled over this year.
- Good and Cheap by Leanne Brown
- Isa Does It by Isa Moskowitz (vegan)
- Mark Bittman’s Kitchen Matrix by Mark Bittman
- Soup Night by Maggie Stuckey
- The Best of America’s Test Kitchen
- Plenty (mostly because the pictures are beautiful), by Diana Henry
- A Year of Pies by Asheley English
- Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky
Virginia McKinley’s Faves
For the New Year, I look forward to reading a few dozen poetry books published in late 2015 and throughout 2016. I will be selecting at least three dozen for our new series of Poetrio events. Poetrio features three different poets each month, at 3 p.m. on the first Sunday of the month.
Mark your calendars now and plan to attend the first Poetrio event of the year on Sunday, January 3, 2016 at 3 p.m. We’ll be hosting Phillip Barron, reading from What Comes From a Thing, Eric Nelson with Some Wonder, and Dee Stribling with Appalachian Picture Book.
Begin the new year with poetry, and join us in Malaprop’s Bookstore Café for Poetrio!