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!
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.
On the New York Times bestseller list for over 20 weeks * A New York Times Notable Book * A National Book Award Finalist * Named a Best Book of the Year by Fresh Air, Time, Entertainment Weekly, Associated Press, and many more
“If you’re looking for a superb novel, look no further.” —The Washington Post
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, comes the instant New York Times bestseller that is a “wildly inventive, a humane and uplifting book for adults that’s infused with the magic of childhood reading experiences” (The New York Times…
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.
'Made me almost tearful with gratitude that a book as clever as this could give such uncomplicated pleasure ... And when you find a book like this, you grab it, and you hold it close.' JOHN SELF
'A delight ... As funny and vivid as Dickens, as moving and memorable as Nabokov ... An extraordinarily large-hearted work.' THE CRITIC
Picked as a 'Book of the Year' in the Guardian ____________________________________ mountweazel, noun: a fake entry deliberately inserted into a dictionary or work of reference. Often used as a safeguard against copyright infringement.
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.
"No one writes like Ruth Ozeki-a triumph." -Matt Haig, New York Times bestselling author of The Midnight Library
"Inventive, vivid, and propelled by a sense of wonder." -TIME
"If you've lost your way with fiction over the last year or two, let The Book of Form and Emptiness light your way home." -David Mitchell, Booker Prize-finalist author of Cloud Atlas
Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction
A boy who hears the voices of objects all around him; a mother drowning in her possessions; and a Book that might hold the secret to saving them both-the brilliantly inventive new novel…
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.
"The Shadow of the Wind is ultimately a love letter to literature, intended for readers as passionate about storytelling as its young hero." -Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice)
"One gorgeous read." -Stephen King
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been…
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.
'Life affirming, triumphant and tragic . . . masterfully told. . . but also a wonderful page-turner' Guardian 'Brilliant and hugely ambitious' New York Times 'Extraordinary' Telegraph ___
HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE
1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.
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.
Willem and Jurriaan have a miserable childhood thanks to their cruel, controlling mother—Louisa Veldkamp, a world-renowned pianist. Dad turns a blind eye. One day, Louisa vanishes without a trace during a family vacation.
Adoptee Anneliese Bakker survives a toxic childhood and leaves home, vowing never to return. While searching for her biological mother, she meets the adult Willem, and they fall in love. Pregnant and engaged, she moves into the family mansion, wanting nothing more than to create a loving family for her child. But the Veldkamps are cold and distant. And why is Louisa a taboo subject?
An expectant mother gets more than she bargained for when she marries into a seemingly perfect family in this gripping debut novel–a must read for fans of A. J. Finn and B. A. Paris.
After surviving a nightmarish childhood, Anneliese Bakker is on the mend and searching for her birth mother. But when she meets Willem, she falls madly in love and finally finds a safe place to land. Engaged and expecting her first child, she moves into the Veldkamp mansion on a stately, tree-lined avenue in Amsterdam. And yet, nothing about Willem’s family is as it seems. Instead of…
