HEATHER SELLERS ON FACE BLINDNESS AND BOOKS FOR HOLIDAY GIVING

Missed today's live Book Babes program? You can find it archived at wmnf.org. The show included an interview with Heather Sellers, author of "You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know: A True Story of Family, Face Bindness, and Forgiveness (Riverhead Books), and book picks for the characters on your holiday gift list.

Here are our recommendations:

ELLEN:

FOR THE PERSON WHO STILL THINKS "TEXT" MEANS A BOOK: "I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works: Why York World, Work, and Brain Are Being Creatively Disrupted," by Nick Bilton (Crown Business).

    In this thought-provoking read, the technology writer for The New York Times shows how hand-held devices like the iPhone and Android are the totems of a massive shift in consumer thinking and the culture at large.

 

FOR THE ARMCHAIR PSYCHOLOGIST: "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl: Stories" by Yiyun Li (Random House).

     Li draws uses Chinese and Chinese-American enclaves as her backdrop, but the characters she creates are less bound by societal constraints than their emotional hang-ups, most particularly in the opening and longest piece, "Kindness," in which an unmarried school teacher looks back and confirms a mentor's words: "One's fate is determined by what she is not allowed to have, rather than what she possesses."

FOR THE BIG THINKER:  "Travels in Siberia," by Ian Frazier ((Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

     Siberia is less a place than a state of mind, Frazier tells us at the beginning of this thick, discursive work based on his travels and fascination with that harsh and sparsely populated part of Russia that none of us wants to be exiled to. This is not heavy-duty analysis, but a more relaxed approach that manages to make the paradox wrapped in an enigma a little less so.

MARGO:

 FOR A FRIEND WITH A SHORT ATTENTION SPAN BUT FINE LITERARY TASTE: "The Thing Around Your Neck," short stories by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Anchor Books).

     I loved Adichie's "Half of a Yellow Sun," her wrenching novel about the Biafran war. Here she offers up 12 stories that reflect the collision of her own experience, caught between Nigeria and the United States. The title story, deftly written in the second person, is a bite-size gem.

FOR NATURE LOVERS OR ANYONE WHO PREFERS TO REMAIN PRONE: "The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating," by Elisabeth Tova Bailey (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill).

      Bailey was struck by a disease that knocked her flat -- literally. When a friend gave her a pot with a snail in it, she began to observe the little creature. Who knew snails were so interesting?

FOR CAT LOVERS WHO ALWAYS SUSPECTED THAT THEIR CATS KNOW HOW TO TALK (AND CAN SOLVE MYSTERIES): "Cat Coming Home," by Shirley Rousseau Murphy (William Morrow).

     Okay, I was skeptical. Cats who talk? Murphy made me a believer, but, more importantly, entertained me with this clever. But, hey, I was a Mr. Ed fan.

 

Comments

[William Boden]

Hello Book Babes!
I add an under-the-radar masterpiece of writing as my recommendation for the holidays. Paul Harding's 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "Tinkers." It's a story that flawlessly unfolds, providing page after page of poetic pleasure. Enjoy.

[newport cigarettes]

i would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth.