Time for my seasonal reading suggestions and as usual, I’ve tried to cover the gamut.

For no other reason that to eavesdrop on some of the biggest celebrities of the last few decades, pick up Everybody Loves You When You’re Dead by Neil Strauss. Journalist Strauss goes back over former interviews and pulls out (sometimes) shocking and often unexpected narratives from interviews never published. Read how Strauss shoots guns with Ludacris, gets kidnapped by Courtney Love, makes Lady Gaga cry,  shops for Pampers with Snoop Dogg, goes to church with Tom Cruise…and that’s barely cracking the surface. Unbelievable!

One measure of a great book for me is if it sends me out in search of more. In the case of Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland, I checked out 5 books on Tiffany glass, upon completion of this book, to learn more about the incredible works of Clara Driscoll and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Set in New York, near the end of the twentieth century, Vreeland takes fact – Tiffany’s debut at the World’s Fair, his employment of women in a largely dominated male field and Driscol’s idea for the now infamous Tiffany Lamp – and layers fictional scenes to create an engrossing and cultural read. Hear author Vreeland on npr discuss how it all happened.

For all you fantasy readers, run – don’t walk – and pick up a copy of A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. No matter what you thought of previously published vampire books, this one takes it up a notch. Read the rest of this entry