Simply Sunday - Book lists and spine art

Book lists, spine art, and Illustrate Your Week prompts

Jul 09, 2023

Book lists, spine art, and a desert island

Hello and happy Sunday, although you might open this on any other day.

My continued attempts at “Landslide” on guitar notwithstanding, it’s been a quiet week. The quieter it gets, the louder it feels.

Yesterday, I was thinking about this week’s Illustrate Your Week prompts, and about markers this week in my house, and trying to think ahead to what I might want to record. I never fit in all the things I think about for a week. That’s a good thing, really. Too many ideas should mean that there is always something to draw. In reality, this doesn’t mean that some nights I don’t sit with my sketchbook in my lap and wonder what to draw. When I don’t know what to do, the answer is almost always “a portrait.” That’s typically what I most want to draw, but it isn’t always the right answer since my journal isn’t simply a collection of portraits of random people (although it might sometimes seem that way to others). A toy is often my next pick, or a stuffed thing, or some small object, especially if it’s quirky or whimsical. Graphic novel panels typically are in my head to capture some simple occurrence that probably took ten seconds and that my brain wants to stretch out into a half dozen panels. The desire to render moments or memories this way is always there, but it is much harder for me to wrangle.

I was thinking about the coming week because there is a birthday, one that feels especially sad to me this year. I am still trying to sort out how to fulfill a lobster roll request. Everything is a bit more complicated than it seems.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the 100+ days I did in a Wool& dress, how reinvigorated I felt by the process. Summer isn’t ideal, but I am thinking about a new span of days in the fall.

I am missing something. Missing a lot of somethings. I am missing.

I sense that my morning mood could easily slide to maudlin. It might, in fact, be the best thing for me, to write it all out. To say this might be the last ____. To say that I’m constantly worried about ____. To say I don’t know what to do or how to do or when or why or where.

It might be the best thing for me, but no.

There are many hawks in the area. We hear and see them often, especially perched on light posts. Today, as I walked down the hall through the living room, I saw a red-shouldered hawk sitting in my tree, the tree that frames my morning view. There are many hawks in the area, but they don’t tend to appear in my tree. It was a magical moment. I looked at its warm cream body, its black and white wing bands showing on the sides. I first moved slowly to the window to snap a picture. Then I moved across the window, and it followed me with its head. It clearly was watching me through the window. I stopped, and it stared back at me, totally still, its dark eyes piercing and direct, ancient. (How do I explain how much I thought of my dog in that moment?)

I pulled a tarot card this week. I actually pulled two, and the second was The Hermit. (I know it fit a prompt, and I also know that I pulled it.)

There are symbols everywhere. There is synchronicity. There are cycles and patterns.

Today, some book stack talk and some spine art. It’s all related, but it breaks down into:

A book for an island
Spine art
Picking a stack
A short list
The Illustrate Your Week prompts for Week 28

A “Top” Book List

I was thinking recently about book stacks and what books I might list as “top” books for me, books I have reread or would reread, books that I have particularly loved or have found instrumental, life changing, transformative. It’s the classic hypothetical, "what one book would you take to a deserted island?" (I like to think of it more as what five or ten.)

Cheryl Strayed took Adrienne Rich’s The Dream of a Common Language with her on her hike of the Pacific Northwest Trail in Wild. Think about deciding what one book to carry along. What book has that kind of lasting significance and power? What book means enough to you or is thought-provoking or entertaining enough?

I definitely am not ready to choose just one. But I find it a good mental exercise to think about lists and stacks, a lullaby of titles that have soothed and inspired through the years.

Most of us have an assortment of titles swimming in our heads, spilling off our shelves, and filling our Kindles. We may have favorite genres but still read somewhat broadly. My favorite genre is SF/fantasy, with a liberal candy-coated sprinkle or dollop of graphic novels, but when I started thinking about the specific “list” that brought all of this up, I was thinking about creative books, art books, and life books. I was thinking about books I would recommend to someone looking to start or rekindle creative habits and build a sustaining creative, mindful, thoughtful, and intentional life. I was thinking, too, about a stack of books I would recommend for those interested in creative documentation, sketchnoting, drawing, the graphic novel format, and illustrated journaling.

So many of the books I’ve talked about on the podcast have made a real impact on me. There have been so many good books. But all-time favorites? That is harder. I have trouble with that kind of list. I always worry about a “favorite book” question in a job interview. (I think it happened once, and I froze. A writer and ex-English lit person, and I froze.)

What books would make your list of all-time favorites? If you had to pick five? Or ten?

Spine Art

In thinking about goals and a “list” for this year, I immediately started thinking about books (and movies and television shows) I might revisit. Those become easy targets around which to map a year. That led me to thinking about a “best of” or “favorites” book stack and, of course, that led to spine art.

I always think of a show about Oliver Jeffers and a book with an orange edge when I think of book “spines.” That was Episode 363: Orange Spine. Ironically, that was almost exactly four years ago. I think I was sitting in the parking lot after visiting the Yoda Fountain the day I wrote that show. (Is my memory correct on that? There’s a hazy Polaroid image in my head of that book in the car passenger seat. It is strange the little threads of memory that lodge and become part of the larger nest. The memory of looking at that book is intertwined with standing in front of that fountain, with the feeling that the year would be an adventure, a turning point, and an embrace.)

The orange-spine book moment comes to mind, but the real spine art show was Episode 348: Book Art about Jane Mount’s Bibliophile.

Bibliophile is an extraordinary collection of spine art. It’s beautiful to look at, but I especially love it as a visual index of books in certain categories. It’s stunning. (Picking and reading through a stack pictured in the book was even a list goal at one time.)

Many people draw or paint book stacks. I remember years ago seeing Sketchbookbuttons routinely record her current stack as part of her journal pages. It’s a prompt I’ve used now and then, and I see others record their stacks in all kinds of creative ways. I thought about drawing stacks one time as a way I might better handle the process of divesting of hundreds and hundreds of books. (I never did it, but I always found it a comforting thought, especially for books from the Winnie-the-Pooh-collaged bookcases in the boys’ room. It still might happen.)

Kiersten, who draws in my weekend group, does beautiful commissioned book stack paintings. I find these paintings enchanting! You can see an example here from her Instagram feed:

Book stack art example from Kiersten Short — **Book stack art created by Kiersten Short.**

Picking a Stack

It always amazes me that people can narrow in and settle on a small, special, meaningful, curated set of titles they would put on a stack, especially on a commissioned stack.

Even if I don’t remember them all now, my whole life has been built around books. Hearing or seeing the titles of many of my graduate school books still causes a twang, some vibration like an out-of-tune string plucked on a guitar. The Pink Guitar (ironically) is one of those titles. There was a time when it was a touchstone book for me. It wouldn’t be on a stack now. It would be in a different me stack, maybe a past life stack. For the titles alone, I would have to include H.D.’s Palimpsest and Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, but these fall into the poetry of the spine art more than anything else. It is hard to escape that the spines become a found poem. That list would be long and deep and poetic and wide. Names and titles immediately start rising, fireflies from the dusk. Margaret Atwood and Joyce Carol Oates, Jeanette Winterson, Marge Piercy, May Sarton, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson’s Letters, Writing Down the Bones, Carole Maso, Stone Diaries. A lifetime ago.

As someone who has trouble with decisions, making a stack, any stack, would be hard. Even now, I keep splintering off smaller stacks and sub stacks (substacks!), and forgotten titles keep popping up. This is an overthinker’s nightmare. But when it comes to the "creative titles" list, I know some of the titles or authors that would be in the “recommended reading” pile.

When you start to think about crafting a stack, it can get confusing quickly. Do I really love that one enough to claim it? Did I even finish that book? Does it matter if I didn’t? What about this one or that one? Some of my favorites don’t seem very exciting, and who knows what colors the spines are.

There are so many options, and you might find, as I did, that titles float up out of nowhere, titles that you know at one time held your heart, even briefly, and they drift into place in the “thinking” about titles and stacks and spine art.

A Short List

This is not my spine art list. If I ever make that list, it will be a different blend. It will include a different mix and surely things like Little Women and Anne of Green Gables and Lumberjanes, along with favorite fiction/sf/fantasy. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and The Starless Sea might show up. This isn’t that list, but here are a few of the books, mostly creative or art-focused, that came up either in my hypothetical creative “re-read” list or in my “influential” creative titles list:

Creative License (Danny Gregory)
Syllabus or Making Comics (Lynda Barry)
Principles of Uncertainty (Maira Kalman)
Making Comics (Scott McCloud)
Dear Data (Giorgia Lupi)
The Sketchnote Handbook (Mike Rohde)
The Crossroads Between Should and Must (Ell Luna)
Who Needs Donuts? (Mark Alan Stamaty)
How to Be a Wildflower (Katie Daisy) (there is also a How to be a Moonflower)
All Over Coffee (Paul Madonna) - he has a new one
Here (Richard McGuire)
The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book (Bill Waters)
Something by Mary Oliver (I would have to think about which, but maybe a catch-all like Devotions)
Fun Home or Are You My Mother? (Alison Bechdel)
365 Days (Julie Doucet)
Wander Society (Keri Smith)
The Infinite Wait and Other Stories (Julia Wertz) - a newer title
Meanwhile, in San Francisco (Wendy MacNaughton) - or even Lost Cat
Anything by Peter Reynolds, but I would probably put The Dot on a list
Draw Your Day (Samantha Dion Baker) - her work is incredibly beautiful; also see Draw Your Day for Kids and Draw Your World
Last Things (Marissa Moss)
Bon Appétit: The Delicious Life of Julia Child (Jessie Hartland)
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Natalie Goldberg)
Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel)
The Starless Sea (Erin Morgenstern) - from our book club year

I made a much longer list. I made several lists. I looked at overlaps and how I see things branch off. I made a list of kid books and manga. I made a list of fiction. I made a list of books I keep "meaning" to fully read, books I would like to be able to fully claim on a list. I definitely want to make a specific list of graphic novels. I included a few, but many come to mind.

All of this spine art-inspired list thinking was a good thing to do. The litany is comforting, and the process brought some titles to mind that I had forgotten and enjoyed remembering were part of my life at one point, even silly things like Baby Mouse.

🎯 What would make your list? What one, five, or ten book(s) would you tote in a backpack to the island?

And, yes, of course, we need a blank book to write our own story. We’re all artists and writers and documenters of life. But tell me what books, already written, you would choose to carry along.

In this moment, if I had to pick just one, all I know is I would want something long. Very long. That doesn’t mean I would choose Infinite Jest or Gravity’s Rainbow. It probably means that something like Stormlight Archive (1 or 2) would make sense. Or Mists of Avalon. Or maybe I should actually crack Ulysses. (Probably not.) Goldfinch? A Harry Potter omnibus? Maybe I should look at Ursula LeGuin's The Found and the Lost. Or Haruki Murakami's IQ84. Most likely I wouldn’t risk my pick on something I hadn’t read before. Stormlight, Harry Potter, or Mists… those would work.

Most of the books I read for pleasure are in series, the longer the better, and I would happily read some of these series over and over again. (The series I read last year was 17 books long, but it wouldn't count as a single pick for the island. I'm in a 5-book one now, and I have a 10-book one lined up after that.)

What I do notice is that my pick for the island would not be nonfiction.

Tell me your short list. Your stack.

Knowing your answer to the desert island question might also be good for small talk at a party or for a job interview. You never know.

I think our stacks, our picks, the book titles we tote out when asked for a favorite or a recent read, also tell us something about one another.

Draw Your Own

You should definitely draw your own stacks. Multiple times. Multiple configurations. Draw what you have on a nightstand or coffee table or what you flip through at the library. Every current stack is a spine art poem of now. So draw them. Paint them.

Think about the stack you would make for your kids. Think about stacks for grandchildren. You might find a thoughtful and sentimental gift in book stack art. If you don't want to paint the stack yourself, commission someone like Kiersten to do it for you!

Crafting our stacks, even thinking about what would go into a stack, I think is a way of crafting a self-portrait. In some cases, maybe the stack is partly a portrait of who you want to be. It also might be a portrait of who you were. But keep thinking. What goes in your "who I am right now" stack?

I definitely could build a reading list for the next year out of some of the titles I'd like to re-flip, some I'd like to properly "finish," and some popular ones I'd like to finally read (even though I know the gist). There are a number of productivity and writing titles that fall into those categories. I need to "get to it."

After listing all the titles here and thinking about others, I am going to keep thinking on what a truly short “this is my list” stack might look like.

Have a good day.

Go draw something.

Amy

PS: For those interested in Bibliophile, Mount has a few others, too:

My Ideal Bookshelf
Bibliophile: Diverse Spines
Books Make Good Friends: A Bibliophile Book (a forthcoming children's book)
Postcards

Check your library!

Illustrate Your Week — Week 28

The new prompts for Week 28 have been posted.