Hello, your author is still alive–battered and bowed by an impending book deadline and an impending work deadline, both of which are impending all at once, but, here and breathing nonetheless. I am superstitious about talking about the second book until contracts are officially signed, so, here are some other people's books I've recently read and enjoyed which you might as well:

(FTC disclaimer: I received no remuneration for recommending these books)

–Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain's Visionary Music, Rob Young. A survey study of British folk, folk-rock and psychedelic music from the turn of the last century to this one. You can read my long, embarrassingly effusive review of it in the blog entry just previous.

–The Children's Book, A.S. Byatt. Sprawling study of a fractious British family from the late Victorian era through World War One, but actually a cautionary tale of how stories and storytelling can save us for a while, then turn around and destroy us. I have less than no interest in Victorian history–steampunk makes me sneeze–and I still deeply enjoyed this and all the educational asides about the era.

–Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese. Set in Ethiopia–with some side trips to India and the Bronx–the story of orphaned twin brothers discovering their destiny as healers. A long, eloquent love letter to both Ethiopian culture and the medical profession, and a good old-fashioned ripping yarn to boot.

–White Teeth, Zadie Smith. Yes, I am the last person on Earth to read this, in fact. I still prefer Hanif Kureishi but it was still very good.

–A Dance to the Music of Time, Anthony Powell. Go read this. Yes, it's twelve books and four volumes long. Read it anyway. You'll thank me. And you'll understand why when I was originally reading it, half my Twitter feed from beginning to end was my yelling in utter disbelief, "WIDMERPOOL!"

–Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, Lynda Barry. Read this with the lights on, and then seek out every possible collection of her Ernie Pook's Comeek you can find. You'll thank me.

–Kensington Gardens, Rodrigo Fresan (trans. Natasha Wimmer). Surreal, twisty-turny tale of children's novelist Peter Hook, child of sixties rock royalty and Peter Pan obsessive, intertwined with the actual story of J.M. Barrie and the Llewelyn Davies boys. I just started this one but thus far it is exceedingly and trippily good.

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Dust is at last count in over 350 library systems, including Alaska (hello, Wasilla!), Hawaii, the UK, Germany and Australia. That's a very trippy thought in and of itself, being all over the world when there hasn't even been a foreign edition of it released yet, but planetary domination was right there in the original contractual riders so I'm not complaining in the least.

–JFT, 10/21/10