1.) Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books - Francesca Lia Block

So first of all, these originally started out as 5 small individual novels and were compiled into one book down the road Dangerous Angels. This is my most favorite book and was the most defining magical piece of literature that I have ever read. Francesca's writing style is so poetic and magical I have read everything by her, multiple times over. This book spoke to me when I was a teenager and was finding myself, my sense of style, exploring those hard, weird emotions and coming to age. The adult fairytale writing she does is incredible and vivid. In college I got to hold her original versions of Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, and Missing Angel Juan where you can see in red pen editing that was being done and they were signed. They were in a larger museum/library we visited for an illustration class, but they had a little batch of Young Adult material that I sifted through and happened to come across, it was magnetic and deeply moving to me to hold an earlier versions and the illustrations for the original single release books.

I re-read it once a year minimum as I like to re-kindle my magical experience with it. I am also sharing it with my boyfriend, because I believe that if you read books that speak to someone you understand that person and how their thought process works. He is loving it so far as well, even as a male reader. We also read books to each other aloud, often, so we have taken turns reading chapters aloud to one another. It is an intimate thing to pour your mind to someone.

2.) Smoke and Mirrors - Neil Gaiman

I have loved Neil Gaiman for years as well, I met him when he did a reading of The Graveyard Book when he was touring and promoting it, he is a lovely author and I enjoy so many pieces of his work. I have not had the chance to read this yet, but I love when he does short stories and compilations. It is sometimes hard for me to carve out enough time to devote to finishing a book. This way I can finish a story within the book like a long chapter and not fixate on rushing to finish the entire thing. You can kind of tell I have a thing for fairytales done in an adult fashion or twist. As that is the theme of this as well, some bordering on more horror/sexually explicit. I'm excited to read it!

3.) Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman

So, when I said I really love Neil Gaiman I wasn't joking, and this is another anthology that holds a bunch of short stories done by him. I really get encouraged to read when I don't feel so daunted by the time commitment, because life is crazy and busy. I do love to read on my own though, just between work, shoots, social life, there isn't much time. This list though is going to be a great motivator to take time for myself and catch up with some favorite authors! <3

4.) Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

I actually need to finish this! I got about 90 pages in years ago and didn't have the time to finish it. It is also in my opinion a very difficult read. Pynchon's writing style is incredibly post-modern, the content is over the top, and with it being themed around war it has made it hard for me to relate to or appreciate. I do want to finish it though, because I enjoy the work of Zak Smith, an artist that did a series of illustrations of Gravity's Rainbow. But the book itself features tons of characters that are hard to keep tabs on, it randomly inserts German and French with no translation, and in general was hard to follow along with. The overall plot of the book is a little bizarre as well. Hopefully I finish this one off just so I can cross it off the list and the illustrations will mean more to me!

5.) The Geek Feminist Revolution - Kameron Hurley

I specifically want to read this because of the Hugo Award Winning article/essay Hurley wrote, but all of this is relevant to my interests. I tend to read more fiction/fantasy/fairytale related pieces, because they are more imaginative and fluffy on the mind. That being said, I am interested to take in what Hurley has to say about fields and topics I care about. I have heard that she has a brutal honesty to her writing and this author is the great-granddaughter of resistance fighters from France and studied resistance movements in South Africa for her Master's degree. She has won the Hugo Award twice now, like I mentioned earlier for an article enclosed in this book. I'm quite interested on what she has to say about pop culture and the state of affairs with the sic-fi/fantasy community, how to keep pushing progressive change, and maybe I can learn a thing or two.

@missy @rambo