I am a bibliophile. I love words, books, librarians, and independent bookstores. Both my novels describe the reading life of my main characters. To hold a book in my own hands generates an excited anticipation that both challenges and comforts me. So when I am reading a novel with a book within it as a character I double my reading fun! Like many readers, I fell in love with reading when I was very young and remember the smell of the modest musty library that my father used to take me to when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. So many books...so little time!
I wrote...
Seven Locks
By
Christine Wade
What is my book about?
A farmer disappears without a trace, abandoning his wife and children in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains on the eve of the American war for independence. The local villagers believe that the farmer’s wife, who has the reputation of being a scold, has driven her husband away, but a darker version of an iconic American folktale unfolds. “The future is a book with seven locks,” a mother tells her daughter, quoting a Dutch Proverb, as she undertakes desperate journeys and ambitious explorations of secrets to ensure a family’s survival. Kirkus review called Seven Locks...a spellbinding depiction of the hardships faced by a woman fighting her own war of independence.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Books I Picked & Why
Cloud Cuckoo Land
By
Anthony Doerr
Why this book?
This is a time-travelling collection of tales braided through fragments of a Greek work of speculative fiction contrived so very long ago. I identified with all the book-loving characters from Constantinople in 1453 to small-town Idaho in the late twentieth century, to those seeking a future in outer space. I loved the fantasy and the adventure as well as the character's commitments to the magic and wisdom of written words, as well as to the translators who expand them and the librarians who conserve them.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Liar's Dictionary
By
Eley Williams
Why this book?
This book is the story of etymology: words and the mystery of their origin and utilization by writers and speakers. And of course, the story of the books that officially collect and define them. I made a list of new words, arcane and whimsical. It was amusing to guess which were legitimate usage and which were contrived to aid the narrator’s search for what is true and real. Wordplay is the name of the game. Obsessive main characters with a supporting cast of a lackadaisical cat and oddly motivated associates of the dictionary compilation project amused me up until the surprise ending.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Book of Form and Emptiness
By
Ruth Ozeki
Why this book?
The Book of Form & Emptiness actually speaks aloud, explaining life’s conundrums, asking existential questions, and dispensing advice. It is a book (as in my fourth and fifth picks), that comforts a young bereft narrator who has endured unspeakable loss. Narrators I almost always fall for are young readers that find books to be a life-saving solace. Benny is one such teller of tales who finds a refuge at the library where he can hear books speak aloud, soothing him as his world spins out of control and he fears losing his somewhat peculiar mind.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Shadow of the Wind
By
Carlos Ruiz Zafón,
Lucia Graves
Why this book?
The book begins with an introduction to the book of the title to a young boy who can no longer remember his mother’s face. His father takes him to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books as a consolation. He then becomes absorbed in the mysterious fates of both the book and its author, and then falls in love with a blind girl. Set in post-war Barcelona it is a romp with a cast of charming and eccentric characters whose chatter and wisdom often made me laugh out loud.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Book Thief
By
Markus Zusak
Why this book?
This is a story of a young girl who is saved from the horror of her historical circumstance by an unlikely read of The Grave Digger’s Handbook. What book could be a greater teacher to a young lonely girl who braves dislocation and danger at the hands of the Third Reich just as she is coming of age. She becomes such a bibliophile that she steals books as she can and book lovers like you and me are entirely sympathetic to her teenage impulses, as she lives at a crucial moment when for some the only safety is found between two book covers.
