News & Blog
Daniele’s HAPPINESS JAR, from Chile!
Daniele's HAPPINESS JAR, from Chile!
Photos of Elizabeth Gilbert
Liz , as I've said in a comment I'm with you in all the Happiness Jar idea . Here is my little jar . Thank you for inspiring .
I love this! My house is also overrun with stray books…
I love this! My house is also overrun with stray books…
Photos of Elizabeth Gilbert
Hi Elizabeth: I thought you & you fans might get a kick out of this…..
HELLO FLORIDA! Dear Sunshiners — Please come see me and my dear friend Rayya E…
HELLO FLORIDA!
Dear Sunshiners —
Please come see me and my dear friend Rayya Elias at Books & Books in Coral Gables this Wednesday May 1 at 7pm…I'll be introducing her and her incredible memoir "Harley Loco", and she'll read and play some kick-ass music, and then we will both sign books and hang out and be cool.
(OK, Rayya will be the one being cool, because she is naturally very cool, and I will be the one hanging out and being over-excited, because I am naturally over-excited. But it's gonna be great.)
This is our third and last gig together…the previous two (in NYC and Detroit) have been truly beautiful. Also, Books & Books is a stunningly beautiful and super hip bookstore.
Don't miss it, South Florida! Strap your Sunpass onto your car and drive over to see us! (Do you like that SUPER specific regional reference I just made, about the Sunpass? See how I curry favor with you, by dropping that reference in there? Now doesn't that make you want to come to the reading? See how I did that? IT'S HYPNOTIC, right?)
See you there, my friends!
Wednesday night!
Be cool!
Hang out!
https://www.booksandbooks.com/event/rayya-elias-harley-loco-gables
xo
Liz
AND NOW FOR SOME ADULT LITERATURE… Dear Ones — I received a lovely notice re…
AND NOW FOR SOME ADULT LITERATURE…
Dear Ones —
I received a lovely notice recently, and wanted to share it with you all.
My new novel "The Signature of All Things" is just starting to inch its way out into the world (at this point in early review copies only, sent out by my publisher to various critics and booksellers.) We just heard news from the owner of one of my favorite independent bookstores in the country — Watermark Books, of Wichita, KS — that she'd gotten ahold of a copy, and loved it. The bookseller's name is Sarah Bagby, and I've always admired her immensely.
Here is what Sarah wrote about my book:
"The family of botanists Elizabeth Gilbert has created in her new novel "The Signature of All Things" enchanted me from page one. Alma, our vulnerable, yet tough-as-nails heroine, escorts us through a unique history of the 19th Century.
We travel the world with the botanical hunters and gatherers of the day, smelling the earth on our dirty hands. We have our hearts broken by unrequited love and feel the stress and joy of a successful family business. We feel the intensity of the charged bond between sisters. We toil and revel in the process of scientific discovery.
Alma thrives in the cloistered world of her father's Philadelphia botanical empire until mid-life when she embarks on a remarkable journey of self discovery. An arduous trip to faraway Tahiti is a time of reckoning and enlightenment.
Gilbert is a master storyteller and readers of her non-fiction will delight in "The Signature of all Things."
I love this book."
WOW.
AND I LOVE SARAH BAGBY AND WATERMARK BOOKS!
Thank you for this marvelous endorsement!
If any you eager readers out there would like to pre-order the novel, and fall as soon as possible into Alma's world, you may do right here:
https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/books/
Gratefully yours,
Liz
Books | Elizabeth Gilbert – The Official Website | ElizabethGilbert.com
www.elizabethgilbert.com
"The Signature of All Things" Indiebound Amazon (USA) Amazon (UK) Bookworld (AU) Barnes & Noble (USA) Amazon Barnes &am
MORE ON CHILDREN’S LITERATURE! Dear me, how I love this conversation! Thank y…
MORE ON CHILDREN'S LITERATURE!
Dear me, how I love this conversation! Thank you all for chiming in with your great (and nostalgia-inducing) lists of the wonderful children's books of your lives! Made me feel like I was a kid again — right back at the Oliver Wolcott Library (that building which was my babysitter, my muse, my other mother) buried in a pile of stories, hiding from the world.
Reading all the old familiar characters and titles again inspired me to compile this response — my flash-response mini-reviews/reactions to those dear old classics. Here goes, and feel free to sing out your own reviews and memories!
The Wizard of Oz — My origin story.
Alice in Wonderland — My nightmare.
Nancy Drew — My compulsion. (Although I always identified more with cowardly Bess than stalwart Nancy, I'm afraid.)
Pippi — My hero (although she also intimidated me a bit, because she was so INCREDIBLY brave. She reminded me of the really ballsy girls on the playground whose jungle gym antics alarmed me so much.)
Laura Ingalls Wilder — I identified with her so hard, I forgot that I wasn't her. She does not exist separately from me, in my memories of childhood.
Anne of Green Gables — My secret imaginary best friend.
Ramona — My secret imaginary little sister.
Jo March — The little woman I aspired to someday be. (I still aspire to be her.)
Lucy Pevensie — I was terrified for her. But I loved her.
Meg Murray — I was terrified for her. But yes, I loved her, and I loved her wrinkle in time.
ANYONE IN A JUDY BLUME BOOK — My twin, my anguish.
ANYONE IN A ROALD DAHL BOOK — My id.
ANYONE IN A JOAN AIKEN BOOK — My dark fantasy.
Wendy — A goody-goody. Annoyed me. Preferred Peter Pan.
Max — I have never wanted to go Where the Wild Things Are. (Again: fear of chaos. Though I liked that one monster with the big human feet because he reminded of my dad.)
Velveteen Rabbit — Just kill me now. How is this even a children's story? It's SO F-CKING SAD!
Watership Down — Destroyed me. But I loved it. I will start sobbing right now if I read even 3 pages of it.
Hermione — I only met her as an adult, but I feel like I knew her as a child. She has a bit of the eternal about her.
Fern — God bless dear patient Fern, and Charlotte, and Wilbur, and mostly God bless E.B. White. (Remind me to someday tell you my favorite E.B. White story.)
Walter the Lazy Mouse — Identified with him completely. I was a lazy child, and, after reading this book, feared my parents would forget that I existed and abandon me.)
Boxcar Children — Wanted to be one!
The Littles — Wanted to be one!
Harriet the Spy — Terribly bad influence on me. (I imitated her and got in huge trouble. I think this happened to a lot of girls. Somehow I missed the moral lesson in the end, and had to learn it myself.)
Amelia Bedelia — Filled me with joy.
Toad and Mole and Rat — Filled me with a pleasantly boring sense of pastural English peace.
Peter Rabbit — Ditto.
Harold and the Purple Crayon — TERRIFYING. (He steps into the VOID, people!!!)
Cat in the Hat — A horrifying, dangerous anarchist. He gets children in trouble! From the age of 3, I knew to fear and loathe both him and the disorder he brings.
Horton — On the other hand, a good guy. Totally solid, that Horton.
LASTLY, I have to dedicate this post to a girl who is not a character of books, but born of TV, but whom I perhaps identify with most of all, above and beyond all others:
Ms. Lisa Simpson — The Self of My Self, The Center of My Center.
Magic dreams,
Liz
PS — Hey, can I borrow some of your kids to read to? This conversation is making me long for a fresh-from-the-bath child in footie-pajamas to perch in my lap.(Or maybe I am just want to BE a fresh-from-the-bath child in footie-pajamas, perched in someone else's lap! Can I borrow a lap, then?)
