JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Studies show that merchandise looks more appetizing to the consumer when displayed on a table. Like food. This is my reading backlog at the moment. Fine, I can’t lie to you, it’s a quarter of the backlog. I’ve been preoccupied lately.

From the top row, left corner: The Hare With Amber Eyes is a non-fiction book by the famous ceramic artist Edmund de Waal. The hare of the title is a matchbox-sized Japanese carving called ‘netsuke’, one of 264 pieces the author inherited from his great-uncle Iggie, who’d lived in Tokyo for many years. He began to investigate how the netsuke had ended up in his uncle’s flat, in the process uncovering two centuries of family history spanning Odessa, Paris, Vienna and Tokyo. Rapturous reviews.

I’ve never read a James Bond book and Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love seems like a good place to start. This edition is part of the Penguin Ink Series—books with new covers by illustrative artists. This cover is by the tattoo artist Chris Garver. (Available at National Bookstore, P609.)

Design was one of two reasons I got this copy of Suttree by Cormac McCarthy. Consider these covers by David Pearson.

Thanks to the pernicious influence of design-oriented friends, I now care how a book looks. Gone are the days when I could happily read a brown paper bag—blast this newly-acquired taste.

The other reason is that I think I’ve sufficiently recovered from reading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian last year. That was one of the most intense reading experiences I’ve ever had, and the most harrowing. It reminded me of something old man Nietzsche said that is often quoted by the profilers of serial killers: “When you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.” It’s horrible, it’s ugly, it props your eyelids open with matchsticks and forces you to see the face of evil.

Blood Meridian is regularly referred to as a masterpiece. Well it’s not. Blood Meridian is a fucking masterpiece, it’s an insult to skip the expletive. Fine, I’ll read Suttree. (Available at National Bookstore along with McCarthy’s other works Cities of the Plain, No Country For Old Men, Child of God, Outer Dark, The Orchard Keeper. P535 each.)

James Hamilton-Paterson is the British author of two of the finest books ever written about the Philippines: Playing With Water, an account of his life on an island in Marinduque, and America’s Boy, a history of the Marcos era. He’s also written the Whitbread Award winner Gerontius and the hysterically funny Cooking With Fernet Branca (and its scurrilous sequels Amazing Disgrace and Rancid Pansies—the title an anagram of ‘Princess Diana’). A bestseller in England, Empire of the Clouds is a history of the British aircraft industry from its postwar golden age to its crash in the late 1960s. I’m not a big fan of anyone’s aviation, but I would read anything James Hamilton-Paterson writes. I would read his scribble on the backs of used envelopes. In fact I have read his scribble on the backs of used envelopes, and it was thrilling.

Second row, from left: How can you resist a book entitled The Official C.I.A. Manual of Trickery and Deception? According to the authors the agency hired a famous magician to train their operatives in sleight of hand and secret communications techniques. There’s a chapter called Operational Applications of the Art of Deception.

“A person who seems to be interested in what it is he is doing will not be noticed but one whose interest is directed toward what others are doing will attract attention. For instance, little attention will be paid to the individual who, when alone, seems absorbed in the book or newspaper he is reading, and when with others devotes his interest to his companions and has but casual interest in his surroundings. One who seems interested in everything except his paper, or his companions, or seemingly is looking for someone who hasn’t yet arrived, will always attract attention. . .”

It does sound like a manual! (Available in hardcover at National, P1049)

The good-looking volume of Orwell from HMH contains two of his finest non-fiction works: his account of the Spanish Civil War, where he went as a volunteer in “a fight for common decency” and his memoir of being penniless in two great cities. War and poverty, the eternal subjects. Fans of exposés on the restaurant business will enjoy Down and Out in London and Paris, a piece which should test your intestinal fortitude. (Hardcover, P895)