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Thank you for picking up the 2019 Skylight Books Holiday Catalog! We’re delighted to present our hand-picked favorite books of the year, featuring lots of excellent gift ideas. Whether you’re looking for fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, children’s books, books on the arts, graphic novels, or poetry, our staff has you covered with their recommendations from around the store. We’ve also featured some great non-book gift items and small-print-run magazines you won’t easily find elsewhere. We hope you’ll stop by the store during this holiday season to browse our full selection and talk to our team of booksellers, who are eager to help you find just the right gift for everyone on your list. And as always, anything you buy here we’re happy to gift wrap for free! Thank you for shopping at Skylight Books and letting us be your neighborhood bookstore these last twenty-three years. We’re all so grateful for the support of our book-loving community. Happy holidays!
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Skylight Books 1818 N. Vermont Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90027 (323) 660-1175 www.skylightbooks.com Holiday Hours: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily EXCEPT Thursday, November 28 CLOSED Tuesday, December 24 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, December 25 CLOSED Tuesday, December 31 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday, January 1 Noon to 10 p.m. Friday, January 3 CLOSED for our annual inventory
Mary
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong 9780525562023 $26.00 (Penguin Press) Written in jaw-droppingly beautiful prose, and framed as a letter from a son to his illiterate mother, this novel was my favorite of 2019. Vuong (who’s also a poet) draws from his own life in telling the story of a boy raised by a mother and grandmother who’d survived the Vietnam War, and the cycles of violence and trauma that follow their family to the U.S.
Exhalation by Ted Chiang 9781101947883 $25.95 (Knopf)
Coventry by Rachel Cusk 9780374126773 $27.00 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
A truly remarkable collection, from the author of the story adapted into the movie Arrival. These nine stories are perfect little jewels—mind-benders filled with moral quandaries and dawning realizations. Totally brilliant, and perfect both for scifi aficionados and those who last dipped into the genre five years ago with Annihilation.
Anyone who’s read Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy of novels won’t need convincing to pick up her essays; her beautiful, precise sentences are just as captivating in her nonfiction. My favorite is the title essay, in which Cusk starts with an anecdote about her parents not speaking to her and expands that into an examination of the many kinds of silence in relationships. A great gift for anyone who wants to be wowed by perfect sentences and piercing insights.
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez 9780735219458 $16.00 (Riverhead)
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead 9780385537070 $24.95 (Doubleday)
I’m not a dog book person, but this isn’t your typical dog book. It’s also the funniest book about grief that I’ve ever read. A woman’s mentor dies, leaving her his Great Dane, a dog she doesn’t want and which is decidedly too large for her apartment. But as time passes, she and the dog grieve together, bond, nearly unravel, and finally heal. The novel is an absolute delight.
An incredibly powerful novel about two boys sentenced to a reform school in Jim Crow–era Florida. Whitehead is a masterful storyteller, and through the experiences of idealistic Elwood and his cynical friend Turner, he explores the durability of the human spirit in the face of cruelty and evil. A dark book, yes, but one of the very best novels of the year.
Steve
Crossover the Edge: Where Hardcore, Punk, and Metal Collide by Alexandros Anesiadis 9781909454750 $27.95 (Cherry Red Books) If you know someone that thinks reading the record reviews in Maximum Rocknroll (RIP) or Razorcake is the most fun one can have on Wednesday night then this is the book for them. Especially if they were around in the 1980s. This encyclopedic brick will give hours of satisfaction either in nostalgia or searching to hear the sounds of the unknown underground fun some kids were banging out while melding genres.
In Waves by AJ Dungo 9781910620632 $18.95 (Nobrow) A moving story of grief and surfing. Now that I have read it, I cannot open the book without bits of water collecting in my eyes. The style is smooth—clean and graphic but also muted in just the right way. The heartbreak of the death of AJ’s girlfriend is mixed with the story of surfer, inventor, and hero Tom Blake.
John Fante “Palm Tree” Tote Bag $11.95 Designed in house with permission from the Fante family, our special “palm tree, palm tree, palm tree…” tote bag commemorates the eightieth anniversary of Ask The Dust, the iconic Los Angeles novel. These totes are limited so get them before the go the way of old Bunker Hill.
I Used to Be Charming: The Rest of Eve Babitz by Eve Babitz 9781681373799 $18.95 (New York Review of Books) I find it impossible to not be charmed by Eve Babitz’s writing. These articles and essays feel so immediate. Her observations radiate better because she is so interesting (and the people she comes in contact with feel this too). I love seeing the world through her eyes, and who doesn’t want to hear stories about the early days of the Troubadour or being on the set of The Godfather Part 2?
The Balcony by Melissa Castrillon 9781534405882 $17.99 (Simon & Schuster) A gorgeous children’s book about nature and making friends. The colors are gorgeous and pack the entire page with information in this simple story that needs few words to get the emotions and narrative across.
Charles
High Weirdness by Erik Davis 9781907222870 $24.95 (Strange Attractor Press)
Rusty Brown by Chris Ware 9780375424328 $35.00 (Pantheon)
Davis is a scholar of religious studies who has authored a number of books that are popular here at Skylight. His work specializes in the intersection of Western mysticism with contemporary music, architecture, information technology, and counterculture in general. High Weirdness is a perfect and fascinating example of this kind of esotericism as it delves deeply into the radical perspectives and psychedelic experimentation on the part of three famous Psychonauts: Terence McKenna, Robert A. Wilson, and Philip K. Dick. If you know who those guys are then this book is definitely for you.
Another masterpiece by Ware, the winner of many awards (including multiple Eisner Awards) and an undisputed master in the form of sequential art. Anything by this artist is not to be missed.
The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft: Beyond Arkham by H.P. Lovecraft, edited by Leslie S. Klinger, introduction by Victor LaValle 9781631492631 $39.95 (Liveright Publishing) This second volume of annotated works by Lovecraft deals head on with his most controversial works, which are sometimes rejected from inclusion in anthologies. The choice of Victor LaValle, an African American horror novelist, to write the introduction was an excellent idea as he is perfectly qualified to defend Lovecraft’s place in the canon while also dealing head on with his embarrassing racism and reactionary content. A collection perfect for fans of the super-creepy who are also completionists.
Occult Features of Anarchism: With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples By Erica Lagalisse 9781629635798 $15.95 (PM Press) It’s almost impossible to tell what this book is about by looking at the front or back cover. Lagalisse is an anthropologist from the London School of Economics. She has bravely decided to work against the grain of her peers here in order to deal directly with the history of prevalent conspiracy theories, the occult, Western radicalism, and how all these things are tied together through history and/or misinformation. Actually, her main agenda is to clarify these complex intersections in service to a strong feminist argument against the hidden patriarchal tendencies in Western culture and politics that she traces all the way back through St. Augustine to the ancient Hermetic tradition. Still, I know this is not conveying how fascinating this book is. It’s concise, easy to read, and packed with ideas and observations that are jaw dropping. In that sense, it’s the most exciting thing of its kind that I’ve found since I discovered Hakim Bey’s TAZ or David Graeber’s Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. If any of this seems vaguely tantalizing you should just trust me that this book is awesome.
Agnes
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi 9780525647072 $17.99 (Make Me a World)
Looking for Lorraine by Imani Perry 9780807039830 $17.95 (Beacon Press)
Emezi’s novel Freshwater was one of my favorite books last year. Then they came and talked at Skylight, and my crush deepened. Pet is about a trans teenager in an American town. A great gift for the young person in your life who does not flinch and talks to monsters.
Lorraine Hansberry was thinking intersectionally before anybody had found the word intersectional. I thought I knew her because I knew A Raisin in the Sun. This book sent me to her other plays, and to the example she set as a writer, thinker, advocate, and friend.
Overthrow by Caleb Crain 9780525560456 $27.00 (Viking)
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell 9781612197494 $25.99 (Melville House)
My favorite novel this year. Crain is nudging a toe toward the edge of what life is now, and asks gorgeous questions about how we carry our hearts in the face of ever-expanding digital surveillance and social crisis. A page-turner, a heart-squeezer, a rush of meticulous prose, and an orchestra of ideas all at once.
This is a book about politics, ecology, place, art-making, community, and the spirit. Bits of it are always coming back to me. And it’s given me a framework for thinking about how to channel political rage and anxiety—not toward “nothing,” per se, but away from the channels that only sink us deeper into isolation and helplessness.
Touch Me Not: A Most Rare Compendium of the Whole Magical Art edited by Hereward Tilton, translated by Merlin Cox 9781527228832 $49.95 (Fulgur Press) A beautifully printed facsimile edition of a late eighteenth-century book of witchcraft. Think images of monsters, witches, and dogs, with strangely transfixing text. For the person whose reading habits frighten you just a little bit.
Alex
Scratches 2 edited by Joost Swarte and Hansje Joustra 9789492117755 $36.00 (Scratchbooks) Joost Swarte, a frequent contributor to RAW, has created his own anthology, showcasing experimental comics from Europe. This issue features comics from Brecht Evens (Panther), Helge Reumann (Elvis Studio), and Tiger Tateishi
Rusty Brown by Chris Ware 9780375424328 $35.00 (Pantheon)
Pits of Hell Ebisu Yoshikazu 9781911081081 $35.99 (Breakdown Press)
Happy Holidays! Chris Ware has gifted the world another sad story, this one involving Rusty Brown, his crappy dad, his new best friend Chalky, and his sister, his teacher, and his bully Jordan Lint. Includes one of my favorite stories, “The Seeing Eye Dogs of Mars.”
The first English translation of these absolutely insane Japanese underground comics. Ebisu Yoshikazu created these comics as a rejection of the commercial manga industry in the ’80s. These nine stories are hyper violent absurd fantasies dealing with life in the city.
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Ken Price: Drawings by Ken Price 9781944929220 $60.00 (Matthew Marks Gallery) The Los Angeles–based sculptor Ken Price originally studied illustration, but abandoned the practice to start experimenting with sculpture. You can see some of his sculptural forms in many of his drawings, set against barren desert scenes or surreal abstract washes of color. He also catalogued Los Angeles, drawing traffic jams, palm trees, and voyeuristic apartment scenes all rendered in bright pinks, yellows, blues, and orange.
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Club Sandwich #3: Pickle Issue
Cloakroom
Mind of the Mound by Trenton Doyle Hancock 9783791358215 $45.00 (Prestel Publishing) The first retrospective of the fantastically weird Houston artist Trenton Doyle Hancock. This catalogue of his show at MASS MoCa includes drawings, paintings, sculptures, installations, and conversations with people that influenced his art. The show/catalog also acts as an intro guidebook to the Moundverse and its inhabitants.
Andie
Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera 9780593108178 $17.99 (Dial Books) This coming-of-age novel is all about owning your identity and coming into your power as a young, queer woman. Protagonist Juliet captures your heart and invigorates your feminist spirit from the first page.
With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo 9780062662835 $17.99 (Harperteen) I first fell in love with Acevedo’s writing when I read The Poet X, a heart-shattering, lyrical novel. Acevedo’s brilliant, relatable young adult writing continues in With the Fire On High. With a fusion of delicious recipes and a poignant perspective on teen motherhood, lead protagonist Emoni’s reevaluates what it means to be “successful” as a young woman in today’s society, and how one can pursue their dreams while also honoring their culture and family.
How to Be Alone: If You Want To and Even If You Don’t by Lane Moore 9781501178832 $16.00 (Atria) Lane Moore’s book delivers gut punches and brain pops left and right, with her insightful and empathetic approach to those of us (which, let’s face it, is all of us!) who struggle not only in relationship to others, but more importantly, ourselves. Moore dives into the effects that our childhood experiences can have on our ability to develop self worth, healthy boundaries, and a strong relationship with our inner self. A must read for anyone looking to better understand their own psychology and find peace with who they are.
Arlo
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo 9780802156983 $17.00 (Black Cat)
Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi 9781948226943 $16.95 (Catapult)
All twelve characters seem so real to me, and different from each other; how does she do that? And the writing feels like it moves, naturally, from one scene, one drama, one person, to the other, unencumbered, sometimes even in the space of a paragraph, so the whole story gets told. And on top of all this, this is just a really, really…enjoyable book. Check it out!
I was captured by the power and clarity of Alharthi’s book, which won the 2019 Man Booker International Prize and is the first book written in Arabic to win it (and Alharthi is the first Omani woman to have a novel translated into English). Don’t miss the opportunity to let this important new book sweep you away!
Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon 9781501125669 $16.00 (Scribner)
The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays by Esme Weijun Wang 9781555978273 $16.00 (Graywolf Press)
Maybe one of my favorite memoirs ever. Important for any time in the history of this country and important now.
Takes you right into the author’s life and opens new ways of looking at mental illness. Brilliant, sensitive, erudite, enthralling, and revelatory.
Pittsburgh by Frank Santoro 9781681374048 $29.95 (New York Review of Books) This is a wild puppy of a book. Like it says on the back cover: made with markers, tape, scissors, paper. That someone could craft such a beautiful, living, moving story of an entire family and a city out of the materials we use and love to use as kids is touching (and so fitting for this story of a child and parents).
Beau
Conversations with FilmMakers by Jonas Mekas, edited by Anne Konig $50.00 (Spector Books) 9783959050807 This volume archives dozens of interviews conducted by cineaste Jonas Mekas (1922–2019) with many of the era’s most compelling anti-establishment filmmakers, including Agnes Varda, John Cassavetes, and Dušan Makavejev. It’s very gracefully designed, and it’s a perfect choice of gift for film nerds.
A Sand Book by Ariana Reines $24.95 (Tin House) 9781947793323 “I am tired of the ruse of emptiness that fills / My sexual imagination when I feel beauty // Of a certain kind being done to me / And tired also of the job of performing // Sovereignty according to these old rules / Some of my favorite people seem to be fueled // By pure rancor. By rancor alone. / I can’t say I’m the same // The sun warms my writing hand / I forget all the time // That the sun is our friend / I often forget that I have friends // I taught myself to surrender / It was strategic, like going out // Of your body while somebody fucks you / And you don’t want it // Every woman knows what this is like / I don’t know a single one who hasn’t done it // But I taught myself another kind of surrender too / I did it in the off hours, in whatever time and space // I could steal from my career. All I can say is / Once you have surrendered like that // It becomes hard to care about magazine feminism / Though I find myself looking back at it // Like the doomed woman from the myth / And looking back at everything else too”
Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown $16.00, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 9780374538392 Oh my God, I was so demonpossessed by this while I was reading it ... and for weeks afterward. And I want to read it again. I had never even heard of Princess Margaret, Elizabeth’s tragic and evil younger sister (OK they’re both evil, to be fair). This book finds exactly the right form for her ridiculous life story. It’s hilarious, bizarre, Warholian, insanely bitchy, strangely moving.
The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care by Anne Boyer $26.00 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 9780374279349 The suffering of the sick is a source of vast profit. Anne Boyer’s The Undying, to my mind the best book of 2019, is a work of great beauty and wit that addresses itself to that factual monstrosity. Her style is A-grade poet-prose, her learning (Marxist-feminist, classical) deployed instructively. It’s a cancer memoir—but it’s intensely, thoroughly enjoyable. Perhaps Boyer would loathe that statement. She questions commonplaces with steely grace. She writes, “I was diagnosed with breast cancer”—but then, “That sentence with its ‘I’ and its ‘breast cancer’ enters into an ‘awareness’ that becomes a dangerous ubiquity.” (One is tempted to quote the whole book.) She would “rather write nothing at all than propagandize for the world as it is.” This is the rare book that might change the world, if everything was different.
Ben
Something Deeply Hidden by Sean Carroll 9781524743017 $29.00 (Dutton)
The Essential W.S. Merwin by W.S. Merwin 9781556595134 $18.00 (Copper Canyon Press)
Sula by Toni Morrison 9781400033430 $15.00 (Vintage)
For that person in your life who thinks they know a lot about quantum mechanics. Or, equally, for the person in your life who really does know a lot about quantum mechanics. Both a beginner text and explicator of the state-of-the-art, this is a delightful read that’ll get your head around multiple universes and the nature of reality.
This great poet of climate and humanity developed into a kind of modern-day Emersonian transcendentalist in his late career, dedicated to the conservation of nature (his estate in Hawaii is itself an ecological reserve) and of language (his lines are pure language, almost punctuation-less). Sadly, he died this year, but he had a long career that spanned the many zeitgeists of American poetry in the last half-century—this book is a testament to a singular voice and a history of the form.
This complex and controversial novel tells the story of Sula, a black liberated woman who lives outside of societal norms and pays a certain price for it. For those interested in getting back in touch with or getting to know Morrison’s career, this is an essential work, one that hints at the grand vision of Beloved, but also demonstrates her wrestling with the politics of writing. On a sentence level, nearly every page stuns.
The City-State of Boston by Mark Peterson 9780691179995 $39.95 (Princeton University Press)
Milkman by Anna Burns 9781644450000 $16.00 (Graywolf Press)
A fascinating book that not only depicts with startling clarity the ways and means of early American life, but also argues the case for an autonomous city-state Boston whose integrity was undermined by the formation of the U.S. Whether or not this offbeat premise makes any sense, 1630 in New England is rendered in a kind of technicolor that’s hard to match.
Despite winning the 2018 Man Booker prize, this novel goes underlooked and underappreciated. It’s a devastating work of political suppression that unfolds at the level of language-consciousness in Samuel Beckett-esque stylistic brilliance. Art meets life meets words in this haunting tale of Troubles and pipe bombs, forbidden love and rebellion. This one is not to be missed.
David
Tears of the Trufflepig by Fernando A. Flores 9780374538330 $16.00 (MCD x FSG Originals) Trufflepig is a narcocorrido for The Island of Dr. Moreau. It’s Roberto Bolaño and Gloria Anzaldúa dropping acid and staring into the desert sun. It’s a metaphysical detective story about genocide, corruption, and families. It’s unlike anything you’ve read this year.
Tentacle by Rita Indiana, translated by Achy Obejas 9781911508342 $13.95 (And Other Stories) Try imagining a time-traveling, waterlogged eco-disaster satire written by a cyber-voodoo priestess and you’ll still come up short. Tentacle is raunchy, violent, flamboyant, and propulsive. It’s something just short of a miracle.
Where We Come From by Oscar Casares 9780525655435 $25.95 (Knopf) Where We Come From is a thrilling border story that takes place almost entirely in one location. It’s one of the most powerful novels I’ve read in years. Simply jaw-dropping.
Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz 9781616209131 $26.95 (Algonquin Books)
My Time Among the Whites by Jennine Capó Crucet 9781250299437 $17.00 (Picador)
Ordinary Girls is beautiful and tragic and written with searing honesty. Fans of Mary Karr, Saeed Jones, and Kiese Laymon, take note of the name Jaquira Díaz.
I love Jennine with all of my heart. After reading these essays, you will too.
Dylan
The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt 9780811225502 $18.95 (New Directions)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa 9781101870600 $25.95 (Pantheon Books)
This book changed how I think about fiction! It’s beautiful and affecting and funny and idiosyncratic in a way that feels totally true to DeWitt. It is, and I can only think of a few other novels I’ve read that I would also describe this way: truly a work of genius.
This is an incredible novel about what it means to write and make art and keep friends in uncertain times. It’s haunting and elegiac, packed with the little defiances that make it possible to maintain normalcy in the face of an oppressive regime/set of circumstances.
Tao Te Ching translated by Ursula K. Le Guin 9781611807240 $16.95 (Shambhala)
My Movie Ideas by Clark Allen $12.00
We could all use a little more thoughtfulness, and peace with contradictions, in our life. Le Guin’s feminist translation embraces the irreconcilable nature of life and is less about making the Tao “useful” in any western or capitalist sense and more about exploring, just living, ya know?
For the cinephile in your family. These movie ideas are unimpeachably good. They are the cream of the crop. The mac daddy, if you will. The first person to turn one of these into a feature-length film is guaranteed a sweep at the Oscars. That’s the Dylan Brown guarantee.
A subscription to Skylight’s Imaginary Friends Reading Club $62, $120, or $236 Once a month the fine booksellers at Skylight select a newly released fiction paperback and send it to your doorstep (or that of someone dear to you!). Think of these as “deep cuts,” titles you might not hear about otherwise but that definitely deserve a wider audience. Past titles include Natalia Ginzburg’s The Dry Heart, and Fernando A. Flores’s Tears of the Trufflepig. This subscription comes in 3, 6, or 12-month blocks and is part of a balanced book diet that keeps voracious readers feeling well-fed and satisfied.
Elisa
The Beautiful Ones by Prince 9780399589652 $30.00 (Spiegel & Grau)
Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli 9780525520610 $27.95 (Knopf)
Who doesn’t want to wake up to Prince this holiday season? I mean…
A kaleidoscope of a novel which merges the politics of the border with the collective dreams of families both real and imagined. Luiselli was a 2019 recipient of the MacArthur genius grant, and this work of fiction clearly demonstrates why.
Abolish ICE by Natascha Elena Uhlmann 9781949017212 $16.95 (OR Books)
Go Ahead in the Rain by Hanif Abdurraqib 9781477316481 $16.95 (University of Texas Press)
A small book that provides a concise history of ICE alongside valuable information on how to confront the system itself and how we can begin to dismantle it.
The only thing better than reading this book by Hanif Abudurraqib, is listening to, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm really loud in your headphones. You should do both.
Frieda
Natural Pine Thumb Piano $25.95 (Mountain Melodies Manufacturing Corp.) I just discovered this old school instrument. Many were familiar with this lovely item. I love the sound of it. It’s soothing. They come in many colors and in odiferous cedar. One comes “amp ready” for $60. Songbooks are available too.
Lingo Playing Cards German $15.95 (Lingo)
Table Tennis $38.95 (Ridley’s Games Room)
Berlin is one of my favorite cities. Actually, it is my FAVORITE. I need to learn German, and this is a great way to learn a language and win a lot dough in a poker game. We carry Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, and French.
Table tennis is more fun than beer pong! Likely story. But this set is so smart and so fun! The net attaches to almost any table and once that’s set you’re good to go! The packaging is great and the equipment is very nice. We also sell Ridley’s Backgammon and Chess and Checkers.
Build Your Own Human Skeleton 9783836572545 $40.00 (Taschen) Sure, you have your own real skeleton, but how much do you know about it? Assemble this and attain skeletal wisdom! My favorite bone is the iliac crest. Sounds regal. Skylight folks put one together and it was a window dweller for last Halloween.
Paper Pinhole Camera $11.95 (Kikkerland) Speaking of Berlin, I was there about nine years ago and a student from Art Center had turned his studio into a giant, room-sized pinhole camera. It was mind blowing to see a projection of Budapester Str. fill a 20’ x 30’ room! Upside down, of course. This klein kamera really works! It’s important to make sure it’s light-fast (no light can get in).
Heather
The Comet: The Journey of Rosetta by Jean-Pierre Bibring and Hanns Zischler 9782365112123 $70.00 (Editions Xavier Barral) Surprisingly sculptural and hauntingly high-res images of the comet upon which we humans landed in 2014. Includes blow-up shots of bits of dust that have remained the same for *literally* billions of years, since the formation of the solar system itself.
The Grand Hotels (of Joseph Cornell) by Robert Coover 9781886224520 $14.00 (Burning Deck) Heirs to Calvino’s Invisible Cities, Coover’s rich vignettes read like travel brochures for artist Joseph Cornell’s fantastic boxes.
The Annotated Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott 9780465011230 $19.99 (Basic Books) You can enjoy this 1884 math-based sci-fi story without explanatory notes, but a full understanding requires the annotated version.
Time Travel: A History by James Gleick 9780804168922 $17.00 (Vintage)
The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake 9780879516284 $29.95 (Overlook Press)
A consistently interesting blend of scientific discovery with literary criticism that had me looking forward to evenings curled up reading with my cat—after reassuring her that I would never, ever put her in a box, not even for a thought experiment.
Hunker down for cooler weather with the cast of more-or-less human but extraordinarily grotesque characters who inhabit a world inside one sprawling, ruined castle. It’s more Dickens or Faulkner than Tolkien, if you ask me—but the publisher didn’t, so it remains a classic of the Fantasy genre.
Ian
Giant Days, Vol. 1 by John Allison and Lissa Treiman 9781608867899 $9.99 (Boom Box)
Welcome to the Monkey House: The Special Edition by Kurt Vonnegut 9780812993608 $18.00 (Dial Press)
If you’ve ever enjoyed any sort of British comedy, be it Spaced, Red Dwarf, or Are You Being Served?, you’ve got to read Giant Days. This comic series follows the lives of three young women attending university in England and their misadventures in class, love, and pubs. Filled with dry British wit and a cast of characters whom you’ll wish were your mates in real life, it’s no wonder Giant Days won big at the comic book industry’s prestigious Eisner awards this year. Start with the first volume and you’ll not want to stop. Cheers.
We exist in a society where our best friends are in computers, our favorite singers are in masks, and our reproductive rights are in peril. Who could have predicted the absurdity that is our lives? Kurt Vonnegut, that’s who. This anthology of some of his best short stories will leave you wondering whether art imitates life or vice versa.
The Art of Asking: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help by Amanda Palmer 9781455581092 $16.99 (Grand Central Publishing) Amanda Palmer is many things: musician, activist, performance artist, crowdsourcer, and author, and that’s just to name a few. This book will take you on the fascinating journey of her life, from her early struggle with her band The Dresden Dolls, to later when she crowdfunded over a million dollars to record her second solo album. Along the way you’ll meet some unforgettable faces, such as her mentor Anthony Martignetti, her bandmate Brian Viglione, and her husband Neil Gaiman. Read it and discover what can happen for you when you’re not afraid to ask.
Jamie Hewlett edited by Julius Wiedemann 9783836560931 $60.00 (Taschen) If ever there was an artist in need of his own art monograph, it’s Jamie Hewlett! You may recognize the colorful and twisted art style from his most well-known creations, like the comic book Tank Girl or the band Gorillaz, but he’s produced so much more mind-bending material over the last twenty-five years, much of it on public display here for the first time anywhere. Some highlights include his concept art for the Mandarin Chinese–language opera that he created with Blur frontman Damon Albarn, his series on climate change that he painted after an eye-opening trip to Bangladesh, and the collection of erotic film posters he photographed for a fictional exploitation film. Pick up this oversized monster, forget the coffee table, and go straight for the coffee.
Jenn
Toni Morrison Boxed Set: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved by Toni Morrison 9780593082164 $45.00 (Vintage) You can give the gift of this boxed set to the person who has never read Toni Morrison, to the person who hasn’t read her in many years, and to the person who is a devoted fan. It is a good gesture to make this holiday season, to send Morrison’s books out into the world and into the hands of the people you love.
A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa by Andrea D’Aquino 9781616898366 $17.95 (Princeton Architectural Press) A celebration of one of my very favorite artists, for the kids! I’m so happy that this exists, and I think that Ruth would be, too, as she was deeply invested in arts education for children.
M Is For Movement; aka Humans Can’t Eat Golf Balls by Innosanto Nagara 9781609809355 $19.95 (Triangle Square) Reading this reminds me of spending time with my grandparents as a child, listening to stories from their lives that laid a moral groundwork for us growing up. Innosanto Nagara’s stories, told as a fictionalized memoir, contain an incredible wealth of lessons for the middle grade readers who are going to help move things forward.
Initiated: Memoir of a Witch by Amanda Yates Garcia 9781538763056 $27.00 (Grand Central Publishing) I know that you are curious about how and why a person becomes a witch nowadays, and what their practice involves. If you follow Amanda on her personal journey, your questions will be answered in the most readable way, with perfect honesty and good storytelling. As a bonus, you will come out the other end with historical perspective and a feminist objective to re-enchant the world. I have been waiting for this book for one million years!
Chirri & Chirra, Underground by Kaya Doi, translated by David Boyd 9781592702442 $16.95 (Enchanted Lion Books) Chirri and Chirra books are absolutely the best bedtime stories—this book is for that magical transitional moment when the listener starts blinking slowly, reality starts to blur, and then they get to take a bike ride through a series of badger tunnels to comfy, yummy, cute, and exciting underground places.
Jinny
Toni by To 97805 $45.00 You c Morri is a de books
Journal of a Novel by John Steinbeck 9780140144185 $16.00 (Penguin)
The Hanging on Union Square by H.T. Tsiang 9780143134022 $17.00 (Penguin)
Beside his first draft of East of Eden sat a pile of letters Steinbeck wrote to his editor Pascal Covici. What a blessing, that we get all of Steinbeck’s neurotic nuttiness in one paperback. We all have a writer friend that does zero writing but all the navel-gazing. This, them. Trust.
Homeboy spits some serious game! Tsiang was a wiggy Chinese-American weirdo writing in the 1930s. His work was rejected ad nauseam, but nothing was gonna stop this glorious gadfly from being heard—dude even wrote on some toilet paper when he got detained on Ellis Island!
What Pete Ate from A–Z by Maira Kalman 9780142501597 $7.99 (Puffin Books)
Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada 9780811225786 $16.95 (New Directions)
Maira Kalman is best known for her contributions to the New Yorker—if you don’t think you know her work, you know her copycats. What Pete Ate is the perfect A-to-Z book that’ll tickle you just as much as whatever kid you’re stuck with this winter. If you can dare say to me that this ain’t whimsical and delightful AF, then I will give you $0.50.
Polar bears as famous writers and circus performers in Cold War-era East Germany, living among human society. What a lovely little runt of a book! Imagine it as a Wes Anderson stop-motion movie fragranced with that Japanese sensibility— no, not that landfill dog movie, this book and your imagination!
Initia by Am 97815 $27.00 I know nowad journe hones histor waitin
M is by Inn 97816 $19.95 Readi listeni Innosa wealth forwa
Chirr by Ka 97815 $16.95 Chirri that m starts to com
Kaveh
Dublab: 20 Years of Future Roots Radio edited by Alejandro Cohen, J.C. Gabel, and Mark “Frosty” McNeill 9781732056145 $50.00 (Hat & Beard Press)
Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience by Michael S.A. Graziano 9780393652611 $28.95 (W.W. Norton & Company)
For twenty years Dublab has expanded and then blown our minds with musical programming beamed in from the outer rims of our collective imagination. A true blue L.A. institution.
Maybe it isn’t so complicated after all. Graziano makes a convincing case for the simplicity of his theory and the fussiness of others’. His speculations on possible future applications are equal parts intriguing and worrisome.
Star by Yukio Mishima, translated by Sam Bett 9780811228428 $11.95 (New Directions Publishing)
Josef Koudelka: Gypsies photographs by Josef Koudelka, text by Stuart Alexander and Will Guy 9781597114738 $30.00 (Aperture)
For admirers of Perfect Blue and Opening Night, the scalpel-slim story of a movie star teetering on the edge of derealization and collapse. Disarmingly tender.
Koudelka’s first collection, from 1975, is a wonder. Photos taken with such a keen sense of composition, light, and subject they seem palpably alive. The downside: not a single picture of Stevie Nicks. :\
Graciela Iturbide’s Mexico: Photographs photographs by Graciela Iturbide, text by Kristen Gresh, contributions by Guillermo Sheridan. 9780878468584 $49.95 (MFA Publications) The earthly and the uncanny are one within Iturbide’s serene and spectral gaze.
Maddie
The Immortal Jellyfish by Sang Miao 9781911171799 $17.95 (Flying Eye Books)
Another by Christian Robinson 9781534421677 $17.99 (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Sadness can be beautiful.
Do you suspect there is another world, with another you in it? You’re right.
My Papi Has a Motorcycle Mi Papi Tiene Una Moto (Spanish-language edition) by Isabel Quintero 9780525553410 9780525554943 $17.99 (Kokila)
Out of This World: The Surreal Art of Leonora Carrington by Michelle Markel 9780062441096 $17.99 (Balzer + Bray)
So full of life it zooms right off the page. Read this aloud with your family gathered round.
Pair with Leonora Carrington’s collection of surreal children’s poetry, The Milk of Dreams, for a strange and delicious afternoon.
Making Comics by Lynda Barry 9781770463691 $22.95 (Drawn & Quarterly) Barry’s hilarious and profound survey of creativity will buoy anyone struggling through the mucky muck of making.
Mick
Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Colleen Doran 9781506709796 $17.99 (Dark Horse Books)
Smart Baseball by Keith Law 9780062490230 $16.99 (William Morrow & Company)
I like Neil Gaiman best when he’s working with collaborators, and this flipped-script look at Snow White is a great example why. Gaiman wrote this as a short story in 1994, but the talented Colleen Doran’s artwork makes this a truly great and chilly horror read.
Lots of baseball statistics are dumb. Batting average, RBI, ERA … all terribly flawed metrics for evaluating baseball player performance. This book tells you exactly why, and what rubrics we should be using instead. Great for baseball fans, especially the stat-heads and analytics freaks.
The Japan and India Journals by Joanne Kyger 9781937658434 $18.95 (Nightboat Books)
Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi 9781524732622 $26.00 (Knopf)
Last year, Leonora Carrington was revived as the unsung heroine of the Surrealists. I’d love to see a similar popular re-appreciation for Joanne Kyger’s work in the Beat poetry movement.
A very fine memoir about coming up in fine dining (and Top Chef), with some excellent recipes following each chapter. Read it before the A24 adaptation with Lakeith Stanfield comes out!
Ramiro
The Walking Dead Compendium Volume 1 by Robert Kirkman 9781607060765 $59.99 (Image Comics)
Made In Mexico: The Cookbook by Danny Mena 9780847864690 $40.00 (Rizzoli)
Never have been interested in zombies, not in movies or books, but this isn’t only about zombies or apocalyptic times. This series is about a group of individuals trying to stay alive and survive. One of the best writers of this genre.
Not only is this a great cookbook, but it is also a marvelous travel guide to many of the central restaurants located in Mexico City. It never fails to amaze me the wonderful cookbooks that are released during the holidays.
Howard Stern Comes Again by Howard Stern 9781501194290 $35.00 (Simon & Schuster)
Vamos! Let’s Go to the Market by Raul the Third 9781328557261 $14.99 (Versify)
I have been a fan of this man for many years. This is a compilation of some of the best interviews he’s done. I stopped listening to the show after his move from terrestrial radio to Sirius, and I’m sad that I didn’t get to be witness to his positive transformation.
A perfect gift for the bilingual child in the family or for the child–parent combo who wants to learn Spanish together. A classic that reminds me so much of a Richard Scarry book. In my opinion, one of the best children’s illustrated books of this year.
Sydney
Heavy by Kiese Laymon 9781501125669 $16.00 (Scribner)
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado 9781644450031 $26.00 (Graywolf Press)
The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter 9781937512811 $17.99 (Two Dollar Radio)
Heavy is a visceral and potent telling of Laymon’s life story, wherein he reckons with the metaphorical and literal weight that trauma, racism, addiction, and the pursuit of radical selfhonesty brings.
Carmen Maria Machado’s courageous, chilling, and utterly compelling memoir details an abusive relationship and demonstrates how queer abuse is often marginalized in discussions on domestic violence. Machado’s distinctive brand of gothic fabulism takes on an eerie immediacy as we come to understand how a house becomes haunted.
A surreal heartache of a book, one that makes real the experience of living in a body that doesn’t always feel like your own.
Morning Glory on the Vine by Joni Mitchell 9780358181729 $40.00 (Houghton Mifflin)
The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher 9780865473928 $17.00 (North Point Press)
A gorgeously illustrated collection of Joni lyrics, first assembled in 1971 as a gift for her friends.
The Gastronomical Me details M.F.K. Fisher’s sensual awakening and culinary adventures as she travels the world, eagerly exploring the gastronomical delights of France, Germany, Mexico and the transatlantic steamers that ferried her between. We meet her first as a young bride, and later as a wise, self-possessed woman, sure of herself and her hungers. Reading this book is like talking to your warmest and wittiest friend. (It will also make you very hungry!)
Yves Cruel Fiction by Wendy Trevino 9781934639252 $16.00 (Commune Editions) Wendy Trevino’s poetry is direct in its resistance and interrogation of the violences of borders, nation, race, and gender, as well as cultural figures like Selena and Anzaldua. This collection of poems serves as a good entry point into unravelling.
So Many Olympic Exertions by Anelise Chen 9781885030351 $17.95 (Kaya Press) Navigating being a grad student is already so taxing, but with the suicide of a friend, it becomes unimaginable. Anelise Chen’s book is a beautifully moving combination of memoir and sports theory. I’ve never gasped so much while reading a book. I’ve never been so intrigued by sports.
Unreasonable Whole by Giulia Bencivenga $9.00 A haunting meditation on illness, the pervasiveness of suffering, and gendered violence. “They will ask my profession when I go to the ER… / Each time I defiantly say POET! .../ The doctor will look at me and say No wonder. / He’s Plato, casting me out because he knows I’m worse than evil — I’m useless.”
Bob Odenkirk This year I read a lot, but only a few rose above. I was disappointed in My Struggle: Book Six, but I loved 1–5, so try those out, especially if you’re a guy who's an artist of some kind and dealing with marriage and family balance, and had a shitty father, and live in Sweden (but grew up in Norway). I recommend...
Travel Light, Move Fast by Alexandra Fuller 9781594206740 $27.00 (Penguin Press)
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino 9780525510543 $27.00 (Random House)
The Cult of Trump by Steven Hassan 9781982127336 $27.00 (Free Press)
I have read two of her other books, including the excellent Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and, since this book is about her dad, I thought it might be too much retreading—IT’S NOT THAT, IT’S GREAT. She is simply an exceptional writer; very entertaining, able to share so much of herself as she talks about the other compelling people in her interesting life.
Smart, clever, cynical, hip, fun to read. Thinking on another level about all the zeitgeisty stuff that everyone’s talking about. A delightfully smart and smartass writer … just crack it open and sample the essay on “Seven Scams.”
Oh, man, not another book about that orange sinkhole-of-ahuman … but it’s an important one because the challenge every right-thinking person should be taking on is turning this titanic around, not bitching about how the cap’n is a dink. We need to speak to the MAGA moonies.
Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark 9781250178954 $24.99 (Forge)
Will Not Attend by Adam Resnick 9780147516213 $17.00 (Plume)
Funny, sad, crazy, and brave. These women share their stories of bad choices and growth, very entertaining, super good gift for the 14–25 year old young woman you know who needs to notice how important she is.
AND, as always, the FUNNIEST BOOK EVER, my friend ADAM RESNICK’S WILL NOT ATTEND. This will stay on my list forever.
Cookbooks
Food Artisans of Japan: Recipes and Stories by Nancy Singleton Hachisu 9781743794654 $35.00 (Hardie Grant Books)
In Pursuit of Flavor by Edna Lewis 9780525655510 $29.95 (Knopf Publishing Group)
Nothing Fancy: Unfussy Food for Having People Over by Alison Roman 9780451497017 $32.50 (Clarkson Potter Publishers)
Maangchi’s Big Book of Korean Cooking: From Everyday Meals to Celebration Cuisine by Maangchi 9781328988126 $35.00 (Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery edited by TJ Smith 9781469654614 $39.95 (University of North Carolina Press)
Whole Food Cooking Every Day: Transform the Way You Eat with 250 Vegetarian Recipes Free of Gluten, Dairy, and Refined Sugar by Amy Chaplin 9781579658021 $40.00 (Artisan Publishers)
The Savoy Cocktail Book by Harry Craddock 9780486828411 $24.95 (Dover)
Oaxaca: The Food of the Region, and of L.A.’s Legendary Restaurant Guelaguetza by Bricia Lopez & Javier Cabral 9781419735424 $40.00 (Harry N. Abrams)
Tartine: A Classic Revisited: 68 All-New Recipes + 55 Updated Favorites by Elisabeth M Prueitt and Chad Robertson 9781452178738 $40.00 (Chronicle Books)
Annex Picks Tan & Loose Press
CoConspirator Press
Expirements in Joy: A Workbook by Gabrielle Civil $10.00
Hildegard von Bingen by Hildegard von Bingen 9788857240152 $55.00 (Skira)
Eye Cue 2 by Gabriel Alcala $15.00
Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication by Meenadchi $20.00
Art-Rite Walter Robinson 9780991558575 $40.00 (Primary Imformation)
Midnight Picnic by Audrey Helen Weber $12.00
The Creative Black Woman’s Playbook by Veronica C. Ratliff $10.00
Cindy Sherman Postcards by Cindy Sherman 9780847867424 $18.95 (Rizzoli)
The Smudge Tan & Loose $5.00
gifts
Clear Fountain Pen EF, F, M Pilot $14.95
Writer Candles Fly Paper $14.95
These are designed for learning how to write with a fountain pen. As you master this tool you can up your standards into Monte Blanc, Lamy or any other fancy, pro-fountain pen.
When we opened the Kerouac we expected the stench of BO and booze. No so fast! These hand poured soy wax candles are beautifully scented. Of course a Bukowski might not have made the grade due to olfactory overload.
Games Room Festive Holiday Ridley/Wild & Wolf $12.95 Tipple some egg-nog and break out the game. Family and friends can team up or work alone. It’s festive AF. Amirite?
Made by Staff Book Cover Place Holders Jenn $5.00
Earrings Jenn $15.00
Jenn keeps an eye on all of stock and makes these little drawings to hold the place of books that are sold out. When the books come off display she saves these for customers to enjoy.
These earrings are handmade by Skylight staffer Jenn. They are adorable.
FAR Leather Goods Made from vegetable tanned leather, each wallet, passport holder, and pen holder has been debossed, using a letterpress, and hand-stitched.
Corner Bookmarks $8.95 FAR (Frieda And Rob)
Pen Holder w/elastic band $15 Large $12 Small FAR (Frieda And Rob)
Wallet $42 FAR (Frieda And Rob)
Children’s Books
Intersectionallies by Chelsea Johnson 9781948340083 $18.95 (Dottir Press)
An ABC of Equality by Chana Ewing 9781786037428 $14.99 (Frances Lincoln)
Up Down Inside Out by JooHee Yoon 9781592702800 $18.95 (Enchanted Lion Books)
How Mamas Love Their Babies by Juniper Fitzgerald 9781936932009 $16.95 (Feminist Press)
Seeing Stars by Sara Gillingham 9780714877723 $24.95 (Phaidon)
The Revolution of Birdie Randolph by Brandy Colbert 9780316448567 $17.99 (Little Brown & Co)
Arm In Arm by Remy Charlip 9781681373737 $19.95 (New York Review of Books)
The Acrobat Family by Anouck Boisrobert and Louis Rigaud 9783899558357 $23.95 (Little Gestalten)
Incredible Bugs by Roberts Rurans 9789887850151 $17.95 (Victionary)
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