Free Books

Back when I was a kid in my twenties, I worked in book publishing. This was one of the worst paying jobs you could get in the late eighties, but it did have one great side benefit. Free books! The problem with this at holiday time was no one wanted books from me, because they thought I could get them all free! Which I could! I used to find Christmas kind of overwhelming (we are a Christmas-celebrating family). I come from a broken home, so there's always excessive planning and inter-personal white water involved. In fact, one Christmas back when I was a kid working in the publishing business, I had a rather scary panic attack on Christmas. This indicates the level of dread involved. What helped make the holidays less difficult over the years for me was nieces and nephews. I have five of them. Their sense of excitement and anticipation at the holidays has become contagious for me. Now I really like the holidays.

Since I'm no longer working in book publishing, though, I have to pay for my books. I already bought books (hardcovers!) for all four of my parents, and some for my wife's parents. I don't want to give anything away, so I'm going to advocate here for books that I haven't given my immediate family. This holiday season, I figure everyone should take a crack at reading William Vollmann's Europe Central. It didn't win the National Book Award for nothing! I'm also very enthusiastic about David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster, a book of essays by an indisputably great writer of essays. I haven't read Veronica by Mary Gaitskill yet, but I'm going to. Julia Slavin's recent Carnivore Diet was great, as was Amy Hempel's Dog of the Marriage. And I also want to recommend to you two books that aren't going to be published until the New Year, books that are really luminous and beautifully written: Eat the Document, by Dana Spiotta, and Duchess of Nothing, by Heather McGown. So if the holiday season ends with a resolution to read more (as it should), here are two novels on which you can feast.