Let me back up a bit. When you are a well known RA expert, no one, and I means NO ONE, ever wants to buy you books as a present. They all know you love books, they all know you think books make a great gift, but they also all know that they would never be able to pick out something perfect for you that you haven’t all ready read. I am also vocal about not needing or wanting to own many books. I work at a public library and can get any book in the world delivered to me for free and I don’t ever have to pay fines.
But sometimes there are perfect gift books, and it is those my husband scopes out and finds to give me. This year he scored a slam dunk with The Best of McSweeney’s (Deluxe Edition). Below I have reposted the description from their site. Between the stories and the ephemera, this is a perfect gift for the true lover of stories in your life. It is a bad choice for libraries but a great choice for you to give to your favorite librarian or book lover.
I cannot wait to read the Coover story--rearranged.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
To commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of the journal called “a key barometer of the literary climate” by the New York Times and twice honored with a National Magazine Award for fiction, here is The Best of McSweeney’s—a comprehensive collection of the most remarkable work from a remarkable magazine. Drawing on the full range of the journal thus far—from the very earliest volumes to our groundbreaking, Chris Ware–edited graphic novel issue to our most popular project yet, the full-on Sunday-newspaper issue known as San Francisco Panorama, The Best of McSweeney’s is an essential retrospective of recent literary history. With full-color contributions from some of the pioneering artists and illustrators featured in our pages over the years (Marcel Dzama, Art Spiegelman, and many more) and a breathtaking array of first-rate fiction (and some incredible nonfiction, too), this is a book to be pored over, and lasting proof that the contemporary short story is as vital as ever.
Along with a 624-page hardcover, this special, slipcased deluxe edition includes a custom cigar box filled with the following extras:
- A broadsheet comics section from the newspaper of your dreams, with work by Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, and many more
- A tiny hardcover fable by Nathan Englander
- A catalog for plural clothing, designed to be worn by no fewer than two people at a time by Brian McMullen
- A lost novel-fragment from Michael Chabon
- Stephen King’s baseball reportage
- A rearrangeable story by Robert Coover, printed on playing cards
- A collaborative novella by Ann Beattie and Harry Mathews
- Postcards by Ian Huebert
No comments:
Post a Comment