TBR Pile

Claire Vaye Watkins’ latest novel, Yellow Pine, is a love letter to a forbidding landscape she’s always held dear: the Mojave Desert. Hot, dry, occasionally nuked by its own government, this region, known for desolation actually brims with life: elusive, tenacious – and threatened – life. "It's a place that's been treated like a wasteland for a really long time, and that story has been very cooperative and convenient for extraction and exploitation of its natural resources," Watkins told Terry Gross in a wide-ranging conversation on Fresh Air, which also touched on her writerly insecurities and her dad’s young experiences with the Manson Family.

Daniel Mason’s new novel, Country People, with its digressive humor suited for midsummer, reminded critic Maureen Corrigan of a truth often forgotten: “Silliness for its own sake is an underrated virtue in art.”

Mailbag!

Last week, we talked about treating books as collector’s items and asked about your own “shelf trophies” – here’s what some of you said:

Maris J. wrote: “I remember walking into a used bookstore in Jackson Hole, Wyo. and finding a beautiful first edition of The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss for $15. When I met the author at a signing a few years later he was pleasantly surprised and added a special inscription. This book has both personal meaning to me *and* is rather valuable now. I don't have any plans to part with it.”

Katie G. wrote: “My ultimate Shelf Trophy is a 1992 hardcover edition of the fable The Thief of Always by Clive Barker. My older sister brought it home from the library when I was almost 10, and we took turns reading it over and over again until we had to return the copy … Later in my early 20s, a friend gifted me a copy of the exact edition for me to read and reread; after falling into the hands of a guy I was casually dating, I never saw it again and learned the hard way which books to loan out. I was devastated. Then, as I was approaching my 30s, I visited Powell’s Books in Portland, Ore. for the first time and came upon a used copy of that edition! One of the best purchases I’ve ever made!”

Phil K. wrote: “As a life-long baseball fan I regularly track both fiction and nonfiction baseball-related releases. In 1982 I learned of a baseball fantasy novel written by a relatively unknown author that had recently been released. I tracked down a copy of Shoeless Joe and thoroughly enjoyed the redemptive story of fathers and sons and, of course, baseball. A few years later I learned the author, W. P. Kinsella, was appearing at a local independent bookstore and would [be] available to sign copies of his book ... I left with an inscribed copy of Shoeless Joe and a wonderful memory of an afternoon well spent. Shoeless Joe continues to occupy a place of honor in my library after more than 40 years.”

That’s it for now. See you next week!

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