Jeremy Mercer on Capote and Dostoevsky

Time Was Soft There is Jeremy Mercer's story of how—if I can be glib for a moment—he fell in love with the Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Co. while on the run from gangsters. As a former bookstore employee myself, I'm always up for tales of life among the stacks...and, like any good bookstore employee, Mercer couldn't quite work his recommendations down to a single volume. But that's okay...

For me, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood is one of the most important books I've read and among the dozens of people I've urged to read it, there has never been a complaint. Capote is going through a renaissance, with two films about his life in the cinemas, and this is just recognition for a man who changed the face of American literature. In Cold Blood may be the first example of creative non-fiction, and even if he is accused of taking minor poetic liberties, it buttresses one of my central beliefs: True stories are always more stunning and emotionally moving than anything an author can imagine. On a personal level, the book opened a new perspective on my work. I was a crime reporter when I read it, and was sinking in the mire of empty murders and drunken car wrecks. Capote taught me these tragedies could be turned into something beautiful.

As my own book is an homage to George Whitman and his wondrous Shakespeare and Company, I would also suggest a copy of Dostoevsky's The Idiot. This is George's favorite book and he considers himself a real-life version of Prince Myshkin. Set between a cold Moscow winter and the white nights of a St. Petersburg summer, it is a stark but enchanting look at idealism and love and what sometimes gets lost when they collide. I guarantee if you walk into George's shop with a well-thumbed edition under your arm, you will be soundly embraced and offered a warm bowl of soup.

Carolly Erickson on Lost Horizon

If you've already read today's NYTBR review of The Hidden Diary of Marie Antoinette, you don't need to be told much about Carolly Erickson. For the rest of us, I'll merely point out that her first foray into fiction is proving to please critics as much as her histories and biographies of figures like Henry VIII, Catherine the Great, Empress Josephine, and Queen Victoria.

James Hilton's Lost Horizon warms the heart with its vision of a purer, simpler world. A planeload of travelers from the West crashes in the mountains of Tibet, and then are miraculously rescued and taken to a remote valley high in the Himalayas. The travelers bring all the stresses and anxieties of the sophisticated, modern world with them—only to discover, as they grow accustomed to life in the magical valley, that a better way of life exists. They shed their cares as they join the community and contribute to its wellbeing. One of the travelers, a seeker, discovers that the community conveys not only the gift of inner peace and outward harmony but of extraordinary longevity.

But all is not well in the valley of Shangri-La. One of the travelers begins to doubt the authenticity of the claims made by the monks who govern the valley. He and his brother—the seeker—leave and return to the outside world, only to meet with danger and disillusionment. The seeker, true to the vision he has found in the Himalayan paradise, slowly makes his way back to that charmed zone of peace and hope. Lost Horizon is a modern fairy tale, and like all fairy tales, it lifts us out of our limitations and allows us to glimpse the paradise we could make—if only we would.

Chelsea Cain on Veronica

You may recall Chelsea Cain's Author2Author feature with Susan Kandel earlier this year. You should definitely track down her Nancy Drew parody, Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, which is a full 180 degrees from her holiday gift recommendation...

Veronica, by Mary Gaitskill: A National Book Award finalist (I know!  A risky pick on my part!), Veronica is a twisted, beautiful, grotesque, graceful, lyrical little masterpiece in which a beaten-down former model ruminates about her life.  Hint: It's not happy.  But it's sooooo good.  I am confident that I will write the rest of my life, and not come up with five sentences as good as any in this book.

Some of My Holiday Shopping Ideas

• If you've already bought The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane! and are looking for something else to give your film buffs, try Alain Silver's The Samurai Film. It's so good, I wish I'd written it, not least of all so I could have seen all those amazing films for research.

• I love Nicholson Baker's The World on Sunday (which, I should disclose, is published by the same folks who do Stewardess!) because I'm a sucker for old newspapers, and these giant-sized illustrations, mostly from the New York World, are absolutely gorgeous, like this magazine section cover from 1907 (left).

• By now, with The Complete Peanuts four volumes in, you don't need me to tell you to go out and get the 1957 and 1958 strips, but did you know that Fantagraphics is also republishing the collected Dennis the Menace strips of Hank Ketcham? 1951 and 1952 are available now, and if you've been bored by the daily strip for years, let me tell you: In the '50s, this kid really was a menace. Ketcham's sense of humor—and the stunts Dennis pulls—are a lot more wicked, the parents actually have flashes of personality, including dark sides, and when he was at his peak, Ketcham was a master draughtsman.

• Before The Time Traveler's Wife made her a famous novelist, Audrey Niffenegger was primarily a visual artist—and the "illustrated novel" The Three Incestuous Sisters shows off both sides of her talent to awesome effect. You don't have to be an Edward Gorey fan to fall in love with her pictures, but it'll definitely up the odds...

More recommendations soon...and keep an eye out this weekend for some gift ideas from other writers!

Michelle Cunnah on The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody

Our weekend tribute to LiteraryChicks.com concludes with a recommendation from Michelle Cunnah, whose most recent novel is Confessions of a Serial Dater.

This year I was delighted to pick up what must surely be one of America's forgotten treasures: The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody by Will Cuppy. According to the afterword, Cuppy himself was a quirky eccentric, spending much of his time as a hermit on Long Island. Ironically, he died in 1949, shortly before this book was published. It spent four months on the NYT bestseller list the following year.

Decline is an entertaining, lighthearted romp through history, with laugh-out-loud facts about figures such as Cleopatra, Attila the Hun, Lady Godiva, Hannibal and those elephants, and many more. It truly is one of the best books I've read this year.

Ron again: Wikiquote has some great Cuppy quotes, including one of my favorites from when I found a battered paperback of Decline years ago: "The Bayeux Tapestry is accepted as an authority on many details of life and the fine points of history in the eleventh century. For instance, the horses in those days had green legs, blue bodies, yellow manes, and red heads, while the people were all double-jointed and quite different from what we generally think of as human beings." Although I'll never stop stumping for 1066 and All That.

Alesia Holliday on Teacher Man

The second member of LiteraryChicks.com to provide us with a holiday gift recommendation is Alesia Holliday, the author of American Idle and Nice Girls Finish First. She's also got a novella in the anthology The Naked Truth, out this month. Then there's her first mystery, Blondes Have More Felons, coming next spring, plus all the YA fiction she writes as Jax Abbott...clearly Alesia's one busy woman!

For the perfect holiday gift for any teachers you know, knew, or might someday know—or, really, just for anyone who ever went to school, my recommendation is Teacher Man by the amazing Frank McCourt. Anybody who knows me knows I'm in awe of the talent of this author for his gift of stripping story down to its essence; painting word portraits with brutal honesty and piercing, poignant humor. Mr. McCourt won the Pulitzer for Angela's Ashes; I think he should win Teacher of the Century for Teacher Man.

Lani Diane Rich on gods in Alabama

Just like last year, Beatrice will be marking the post-Thanksgiving holiday season with a round of holiday gift ideas from authors. (It doesn't matter which holiday you give these gifts for, should you choose to follow their advice—we at Beatrice are an ecumenical bunch.) This year, I thought I'd use the three-day weekend to recognize the women behind LiteraryChicks.com, a group blog of "chick lit" writers with eight novels between them...and then there's the contributions to anthologies, the books written under pen names... Let's start with Lani Diane Rich, since her third novel, Ex and the Single Girl, was published just last week as part of Warner's launch for its new 5-Spot imprint. And because she's one of the first writers to take the National Novel Writing Month challenge and go on to turn that manuscript into a literary debut (Time Off for Good Behavior).

One of the best books I've read this year, and indeed one of my favorite books ever, is Joshilyn Jackson's gods in Alabama. What makes this a great gift book is that it's one of those books that everyone can enjoy—men, women, Grandma, the Grinch. It has something for everyone: Sex. Secrets. Lies. Murder. Humor. Kudzu. Tequila. Jackson's prose is engaging from go. Get a load of this opener:

"There are gods in Alabama. Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus."

I mean, come on. That speaks for itself. Get a copy for everyone on your list; it's better than another scarf.

Lani's not the only writer to fall in love with gods; earlier this year, Beatrice hosted a conversation between Joshilyn Jackson and Helen Ellis.