150: Holiday Recommendation Extravangaza!

In This Episode:

It’s the big 1-5-0 and since it also happens to be the holiday season and folks are getting a head-start on their shopping, we opened the phone-lines to some of our Patreon supporters to help recommend some books for their wishlists or to pick up for their loved ones! Imagine Christopher and Drew in a big ol’ telethon studio, with phones ringing off the hook and the number flashing across the bottom of the screen… except they’re in their respective homes, doing this on Zoom.

The Ep. 150 Bookshelf

Moti (Montreal, QC — check out ArgoBookshop.ca for his store!) was looking for horror-reads for a friend, so we recommended…

Hark the Herald Angels Scream edited by Christopher Golden
Tiny Nightmares edited by Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto
Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories

and when he asked about some ideas for himself, he told us the last three books he read…

Barn 8 by Deb Olin Unferth
Territory of Light by Yūko Tsushima, trans. by Geraldine Harcourt
What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell

so we recommended…

The Constant Rabbit by Jasper Fforde
Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg

Jacob (Pittsburgh, PA) asked about some ideas for himself. He told us the last three books he read…

Last Days by Brian Evanson
Wittgenstein’s Nephew by Thomas Bernhard
Norma Jean Baker of Troy by Anne Carson

so we recommended…

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
The Claire DeWitt books by Sara Gran

Bonnie (Middletown, CA) was looking for messy female protagonist novels for herself, so we recommended…

The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine
Jillian by Halle Butler
The New Me by Halle Butler
Self Care by Leigh Stein

Erin (Portland, OR) was looking for fantasy books or series for her brother, so we recommended…

Ambergris by Jeff VanderMeer
The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher
Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill

Chris (Columbus, OH) was looking for a new author whose catalog he could explore. He’s recently read through most of the work of…

Patricia Highsmith
James Baldwin
Haruki Murakami
Toni Morrison

so we recommended…

Iris Murdoch
Muriel Spark
Graham Greene
Ira Levin
Shirley Jackson
Octavia Butler

Lee (Brooklyn, NY) was looking for novelizations of plays — a tough one! — so we recommended…

Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie
The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
The Shapes We Make With Our Bodes by Meg Whitford and other works from Plays Inverse

Charlie (Cullman, AL) asked about some ideas for himself. He told us the last four books he read…

Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit
Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich
Warlight by Michael Ondaatje
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Elliman

so we recommended…

Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Memorial by Bryan Washington
Fup by Jim Dodge

Veronika (San Jose, CA) asked about some ideas for herself. She was interested in Wodehouseian fun-times and Thrillers/Mysteries, so we recommended…

Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames
Rally Round the Flag, Boys and Barefoot Boy with Cheek by Max Schulman
The Virgins by Pamela Erens
The Searcher by Tana French
The Claire DeWitt novels by Sara Gran
The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

Michael (Portland, OR) asked about some ideas for books that might be experimental in design and some books on writing, so we recommended…

From Ninepin Press:
The Family Arcana by Jedediah Berry
Lianna Fled the Cranberry Bog by GenaRose Nethercott
From Visual Editions:
Composition No. 1 by Marc Saporta
Featherproof Books
Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine by Stanley Crawford

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
On Writing by Stephen King
How Fiction Works by James Wood
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith
Plotto by William Wallace Cook
Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer
Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum

ALSO MENTIONED:

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson
The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing
My Struggies by Karl Ove Knausgard
Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett
Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight
Luster by Raven Leilani
Hench by Natalie Zina Walchots
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
the works of Terry Pratchett
the works of Ursula K. Le Guin
the works of Christopher Moore
the works of Neil Gaiman
the works of Iain Banks
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
The Office of Historical Corrections by Danielle Evans
Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Nutshell by Ian McEwan
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

The Damn Bar