The gift-giving season is fast approaching, and many of us have dedicated readers on our lists, right? While a good book is the easy and obvious choice, you can follow another path and become a crafty enabler—a sympathetic benefactor who supports and encourages the habit of reading. Here are a few suggestions.
A colorful stack of books that doubles as a coffee mug is a novelty that will span the seasons with its usefulness. You can find them all over the internet, but this sparkling sample is available at walmart.com for $20.99. Made of painted borosilicate glass, it can withstand temperatures from below freezing to boiling hot, is dishwasher safe and holds 12 ounces.
From The Unemployed Philosophers Guild, an online site offering “smart and funny gifts for smart and funny people,” comes Much Ado About Nothings, a little booklet bearing the Bard’s image on the cover that contains hundreds of sticky notes in an assortment of sizes and colors. The price is $9.95, available for order at philosophersguild.com.
The Literary Tastes Dish Towel is an 18-by-25-inch all-cotton towel decorated with 18 perhaps not-so famous quotes from well-known authors as diverse as Maurice Sendak and Kurt Vonnegut that offer commentary on the virtues of food. Here’s a sample from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”: “Beautiful soup, so rich and green, waiting in a hot tureen!” I found mine at a local bookstore, but you can order it online from the Weitzman Museum in Philadelphia for $13.99. Check it out at shoptheweitzman.org.
This little Skinny Minnie with her nose deep in a book has her own light source beaming down on her from directly above. The Reading Girl Lamp, from the Signals catalog, is made of sculpted resin with a fabric shade that offers a warm light when a 25-watt bulb (not included) is inserted. It stands a mere 15 inches high at a width of 8 inches, making it a perfect bedside accessory. It sells for $119.95 at signals.com.
A fighter remembered: News of the untimely passing of Bay Area disability rights activist Alice Wong on Nov. 15 at the age of 51 put me in mind of her most revered predecessor, a man who undoubtedly inspired her, Berkeley’s Ed Roberts. The quadriplegic founder of the Center for Independent Living, a polio survivor whom Jerry Brown appointed the director of the California Department of Rehabilitation (an agency that denied him employment earlier in his career), Roberts was a familiar figure at the State Capitol as he rolled around its halls in his motorized chair cheerily lobbying every politico he encountered. Also a leading proponent for the passage of the national American with Disabilities Act, which he saw enacted five years before he died in 1995, Roberts left a legacy of passionate advocacy that endures today. Now he is getting some much deserved posthumous recognition with the publication of “An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights” (University of California Press, $29.95, 432 pages). The author of the first biography of Roberts, special ed teacher and scholar Scot Danforth, will speak about the book at two upcoming Bay Area appearances: 2 p.m. Dec. 6 at the Berkeley Public Library at 2090 Kittredge St. and 2 p.m. Dec. 7 at the Burlingame Library, 480 Primrose Road.
And the winner is …: This year’s Booker Prize, announced in London in mid-November, goes to “Flesh,” a spare but powerful novel by British-Hungarian author David Szalay that tracks a flawed character’s life from his youth as a shy and reticent Hungarian immigrant through an illicit affair, a stint in the military and upwards into the company of the rich and powerful in 21st-century London, all while being buffeted by forces he but dimly apprehends. A statement from the judges panel, chaired by Irish author Roddy Doyle, declares: “’Flesh’ is a disquisition on the art of being alive, and all the affliction that comes along with it. The emotional detachment of the main character, István, is sustained by the tremendous movement of the plot. The pace of this novel speaks to one of the greater themes; the detachment of our bodies from our decisions.” The Booker Foundation had also previously posted on its website video excerpts from the six prize finalists read by known figures in the British entertainment world. Find British rapper, singer and songwriter Stormzy performing this reading from “Flesh” here.
Also announced in November, at the organization’s 76th annual ceremony in New York on the 19th, were the National Book Award winners. Bay Area readers already familiar with his work (2013’s “An Unnecessary Woman”) will be pleased to see the prize in fiction going to San Francisco’s Rabih Alameddine (who splits his time between here and his native Lebanon) for his novel “The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother).” The nonfiction award went to Omar El Akkad for “One Day Everyone Will Have Alway Been Against This.”
Restored to righteousness: Look who’s back in the good graces of the British Library, after 130 years. Banned from his right to use what was then the British Museum reading room in 1895 over his conviction for “gross indecency,” gay Irish poet, playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde has had his reader’s card reissued by a penitent institution. Earlier this year, according to the BBC, the British Library rescinded the decision, while acknowledging “the injustices and immense suffering” endured by Wilde, who had been sentenced to two years of hard labor after his libel trial against Lord Queensberry went drastically south on him. The Library gave the new card an expiration date of Nov. 30, 1900, the date Wilde died of cerebral meningitis. The new card was accepted at a formal ceremony on Oct. 16 by his grandson, Merlin Holland, who called the reissue “a lovely gesture of forgiveness.” Holland, Wilde’s only grandson, is the author of “After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal,” which will be released in the United States by Europa Editions in April.
Happy birthday, Jane: Dec. 16, 1775 was revered British novelist Jane Austen’s birthday, and at least a couple of Bay Area independent bookstores are taking major note of its upcoming 250th anniversary. At Rakestraw Books in Danville, the felicitously monikered Austentatious Book Club is meeting at 5:30 p.m. Dec. 4 to discuss “Persuasion.” In honor of her upcoming anniversary, they have been on a march to read not just all six complete novels she published (“Sense and Sensibility,” “Pride and Prejudice,” “Mansfield Park,” “Emma,” “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion”), but also six modern novel adaptations of her work. Meanwhile, Orinda Books has reserved the exact birthdate to hold a tea-and-biscuits remembrance, free to all fans, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. In addition, all Austen titles will be 10 percent off for the occasion. Orinda Books is at 276 Village Square; register for the event at orindabooks.com.
Hooked on Books is a monthly column by Sue Gilmore on current literary buzz and can’t-miss upcoming book events. Look for it here every last Thursday of the month.