To purchase a copy of the book, or to read ‘The Creative Gift’ – an article about The Piano Teacher by Janice Y. K. Lee, click here.
A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore,
Personal Days by Ed Park,
Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon
We hope you’ve enjoyed this feature, and if any of the recommendations inspired your christmas purchasing, we’d love to hear from you!
Click here to read other author’s wishlists.
We will be taking a short break over Christmas while we celebrate the holidays. Why not add our RSS feed to your iGoogle homepage and be reminded when new content is up. Alternatively, follow FifthEstate on Twitter.
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Charlie Brooker - The Hell of it All]]>Showing absolutely no nepotism whatsoever, three of the books on Ariane’s list are written by co-contributors to the Atheist’s Guide. (I wouldn’t let that put you off though – they are on my wishlist too.)
Charlie Brooker – The Hell of it All
Derren Brown – On Deception
Jon Holmes and Mitch Benn - The History of the World Through Twitter
AC Grayling – Ideas That Matter: A Personal Guide for the 21st Century: Key Concepts for the 21st Century
Andrew Mueller – I Wouldn’t Start From Here
Click here to read other author’s wishlists.
Click here to go to the Amazon page where you can buy the book or watch a short video about The Atheist’s Guide. Click here. Or go the Atheist’s bus campaign’s official website.
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Top of my Christmas wish list: Jeanette Winterson's new book The Battle of the Sun. I've read everything she's written, so I guess this is an obvious choice.
]]>You can also read Caroline’s great blog here .
Top of my Christmas wish list: Jeanette Winterson’s new book The Battle of the Sun. I’ve read everything she’s written, so I guess this is an obvious choice.
Number 2: Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball. This book came to my attention after a number of people emailed and tweeted that it was a must-read and I’d be sure to love it. I’ve a feeling that I will.
Number 3: A book that has been on my wish list for a few months now. Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame dedicated his book Pygmy to Amy Hemple. He raves about her simplistic style and suggests she may be the most underrated talent of our generation. Time to find out I think, so The Dog of the Marriage: Collected Stories by Amy Hempel is on my list.
Number 4: Wetlands by Charlotte Roche. Another book that has arrived on my radar thanks to my cyber-friends. I’ve read mixed reviews and look forward to forming my own opinions. Again, I’ve a feeling I’ll love it. 
And my final choice: As a Geordie lass I simply can’t resist, Ooh! What a Lovely Pair: Our Story by Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly.
Click here to read other author’s wishlists.
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- The Twilight saga because my niece has told me to read it (and so did India Knight in last week's Sunday Times and I always do what India recommends)
]]>Paula Byrne
Paula Byrne was born in Birkenhead and has a PhD from the University of Liverpool. Her second book, Perdita, was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick. Her most recent book, Mad World, was published last year to critical acclaim.
On my Christmas list are the following books:
- The new biography of the Queen Mother by William Shawcross (especially after hearing all the hullaballoo on Woman’s Hour)
- Selina Hasting’s The Secret Life of Somerset Maugham
- Behind Closed Doors: at Home in Georgian England by Amanda Vickery
- The Twilight saga because my niece has told me to read it (and so did India Knight in last week’s Sunday Times and I always do what India recommends)
- James Lee Milne by Michael Bloch
Christopher Hirst
Christopher Hirst wrote the witty ‘Weasel’ column in the Independent for over a decade and was nominated for the Glenfiddich Best Food Writer Award in 2007. His book, Love Bites: Marital Skirmishes in the Kitchen, is published by Fourth Estate in March.
To give:
- Leviathan by Philip Hoare
- Edible Seashore by John Wright
- The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes
To be given:
- Larousse Gastronomique
- A Gambling Man: Charles II and the People of the Restoration by Jenny Uglow
Tash Aw
Tash Aw’s debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel, as well as being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent book, Map of the Invisible World, is published in paperback next year.
To get or to give…
Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
The Education of a Gardener by Russell Page
The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross
Shark’s Fin & Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dunlop
Don Quixote (translated by John Rutherford).
We hope you’re enjoying our Christmas Wishlist feature. Click here to read other author’s wishlists.
]]>Last Christmas friends gave us Caroline Clifton-Mogg's Secret Gardens of London (Thames and Hudson). I've leafed through it several times this year, in the hope that it might help transform our very small back yard.
Last Christmas friends gave us Caroline Clifton-Mogg’s Secret Gardens of London (Thames and Hudson). I’ve leafed through it several times this year, in the hope that it might help transform our very small back yard.
Maybe some kind soul will give us Alexandra D’Arnoux’s Secret Gardens of Paris this year, although I fear the back yard will remain a yard throughout 2010.
I love reference books so perhaps another generous friend will poney up for the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary? At £250 they will have to be quick since the price rises to £275 after 31st January.
Finally, I’ve been slowly and selectively repurchasing memorable books which I sold during a rough patch. Things like Gregory of Tours History of the Franks (Penguin).
I’ve always been interested in late antiquity/the early Middle Ages, so any sources from those times would be very welcome, since I plan to revisit them in my dotage.
I’d also like the several volumes of the Pentagon Papers which I need for a future project…..should anyone have a set hanging idly around.
Click here to read other author’s wishlists.
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We asked some of our brilliant authors for books they’d like to give- or get – for Christmas. The next installment of our Christmas wishlist series is from Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan.
I'd give Jeremy Mynott's beautifully compendious Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience (Princeton University Press) to my friend Dennis Minsky, naturalist extraordinaire on Cape Cod, because I'd like him to stop correcting my Anglo-centric spelling of bird names.
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We asked some of our brilliant authors for books they’d like to give- or get – for Christmas. The next installment of our Christmas wishlist series is from Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan.
I’d give Jeremy Mynott’s beautifully compendious Birdscapes: Birds in Our Imagination and Experience (Princeton University Press) to my friend Dennis Minsky, naturalist extraordinaire on Cape Cod, because I’d like him to stop correcting my Anglo-centric spelling of bird names.
I’d give Hal Whitehead’s Sperm whales: Social Evolution in the Ocean (University of Chicago Press) to everyone I know. It’s an eye-opening, life-changing account of the world’s largest predators; animals possessed of the biggest brain ever known, yet whose nature remains vastly misunderstood. Dr Whitehead’s book is the Moby-Dick for our times. His final chapter, which posits the idea that sperm whales may have evolved their own religion, is truly astounding.
Dr Whitehead’s book would be aptly partnered in my present-giving with John Burton’s Ta-ra, Johnny Boy: Boy whaler to Rainbow Warrior, a self-published memoir which is a salutary lesson in the way our relationship with whales has (thankfully) moved from whale hunting to whale watching. Burton’s account of the eyes of a harpooned and dying sperm whale looking up at its assailants will haunt me for the rest of my life.
On another note, I’m eagerly awaiting the lustrous new catalogue to this year’s Tate St Ives’ The Dark Monarch (Tate publishing) exhibition, because it sums up all that I find fascinating in artists as (ostensibly) disparate as Derek Jarman and Cecil Collins. The British neo-romantic period of painting is one of my favourites – a lost England, as evoked in the films of Michael Powell and the writing of Denton Welch.
But the one book I really can’t wait to get my hands on is John Waters’ forthcoming ‘memoir-in-homage’, Role Models (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux). Waters is one of the greatest ironists America has produced, and in this new volume, he promises to spill the beans on his muses. We’re promised chapters on Rei Kawabo, high priestess of Japanese minimalism and creator of Comme des Garcons (for whom the filmmaker occasionally models), as well as less ‘tasteful’ essays on Charles Manson. But then, what you expect from a man who, as a teenager, re-enacted the Kennedy assassination his parents’ front lawn in Baltimore?
Leviathan is the story of a man’s obsession with whales, which takes him on a personal, historical and biographical journey – from his childhood to his fascination with Moby-Dick and his excursions whale-watching.
Leviathan is also the winner of the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize. Get your copy here.
Click here to read other author’s wishlists.
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