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If you neglect thanking my grandmother for a gift, after a week or so, rest assured the thank you note will be requested. This used to seem bonkers to me until I became a grownup (ah, like so many things!) who sometimes had to occasion to send people presents and then found myself wondering if they ever received them or if I needed to call Lifesize Balloon Animals Ltd and demand my money back.

There's also the little matter of how to properly write a thank-you note. There is the school of thought that the exact gift and its uses ought to be detailed, but I admit that sometimes I feel uncomfortable writing things like, "Thanks for the money!" And of course, there is the phenomena of uber-polite people like my mother-in-law who will actually write you a thank you note for your thank you note. (Where does it end?)

All of which is to say, what is the right way to thank a person? In her interesting piece on The Millions, novelist Henriette Lazaridis Power writes about that most literary of thank yous, the authors' acknowledgements: "Every book comes with a second narrative, that of its creation."

Every Monday, we'll be letting you know about new releases the editors at O and Oprah.com couldn't stop reading. This week, the unique short story collection:


In this collection of eight vivid stories, Melissa Pritchard introduces you to the most fascinating people you've never heard of, placed in situations that seem stolen from fairy tale...except that they really happened. For example, meet Norbert Pearlroth, the researcher for Robert LeRoy Ripley (as in: Ripley's Believe it or Not) who spent a lifetime in the New York Public Library, leafing through 364,000 books into order to come up with earthy splendors like a timetelling horse and a world champion chicken picker. Or Pelagia Ivanovna Surin Serebrenikova, a 19th century holy "fool" of a girl  who spun around Russia, raising her skirts to every man in town (only to become, later, a local saint). The star of the book, however. is ho-hum Captain Brown who is put in charge of the Royal Victoria Hospital during the invasion of Normandy in World World II—a mammoth dinosaur of a building with therapeutic swimming pools and a museum-quality taxidermy collection, but no heat or medication. Brown's efforts to save not just the American and English wounded, but also the life of a female French Resistance Fighter—end up presenting him with the hardest kind choices: to love or not to love, to be courageous or sit by. Though all the stories in the collection display the whimsy and intelligence of a writer at the height of her powers, there is novel in the short tale of Captain Brown, one that illustrates how even the most ordinary feelings are sufficiently fantastical to transform a life.

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When I was a college senior, I motivated myself bright and early one icy January morning to stop by the rec center before my challenging Creativity Workshop "morning" class at 10 am.  I felt extremely, ridiculously proud of myself. An elderly lady, naked as the long-ago day she was born, sidled up to me in the locker room. "We see a lot of your types in January," she said, cynically. Feeling abashed and overdressed in my bathing suit, I protested, "You'll be seeing a lot of me all year!" My new early morning swimming habit was no resolution-based romp! I was for real!

At least for the next few weeks. And so it goes in the world of New Year's Resolutions. Which is why I was so pleased to learn about the 50/50 challenge. The 50/50 challenge is the kind of year-long-commitment that actually sounds fun and enriching and—what!—like I might actually do.

The idea is to read 50 books and see 50 movies in 2012. (That's about one book and one movie a week, mathematicians.) You can sign up on the website, but don't be scared by words like "commit" and "rules." You don't have to know what you're going to read or watch. They don't even have to be "good." As the website says, "Go ahead, read Kardashian Konfidential, we won't tell."

Tintin Image from Conde Nast Traveler

When I was a kid my hero was Little Orphan Annie. While this must have been unsettling to my alive-and-well parents, the girl had freedom and sass, a scrappy dog, a rich patron, and a killer red dress. What else do you need? What makes this even worse is that the version I liked was from the 1982 movie. This Annie didn’t even do anything other than sing, dance, and be very brave.

So I could really relate to the wonderful piece that Lev Grossman wrote for Conde Nast Traveler about his childhood hero, who inspired in him a lust for travel–not his parents, or even anyone he actually knew, but the moon-faced comic book teenager Tintin.

Grossman loved Tintin for his sense of adventure  go-getter attitude, and choice of exotic conveyances (seaplanes!). But also, “Like me, and so many other children of the American suburbs, Tintin was nobody, and he lived nowhere, and he did nothing. In order to do anything or be anybody, he had to travel.” Like Annie, Tintin was fearless and unfettered by the rules binding most kids–bummers like school and parents. Even better, Tintin is "about as close to a cipher as a hero can get.” On this relatively blank canvas, Grossman suggests, anyone can project his or her own self.

After all, there are the usual heroes— firefighters, astronauts, legendary presidents, famous do-gooders, reality show stars – those brave wonders who do what most of us can only dream of—and then there are those heroes (sometimes 2-dimensional and blank-eyed) who inspire us because they allow us to imagine that we too have within us such potential.

Read Lev Grossman's whole essay at Conde Nast Traveler for more on the lost romance of travel, and what’s great about the Tintin stories.

See the trailer for the Tintin movie, opening December 21st.

What if you were locked in your body, without a way to communicate with the world around you? What would be your first words after being “unlocked”? This is what Kate Winslet asked some of her famous friends, from Anna Wintour to Meryl Streep to Ricky Gervais, including their responses along with self-portraits with the hat in question in her new book, The Golden Hat. The book, a moving attempt to raise awareness for autism, was inspired by Winslet’s work narrating a documentary about a mother seeking help for her non-verbal autistic son.

I can’t get through the documentary trailer without getting weepy. The documentary focuses on Margret, a mother who embarks on a quest to get help for her 11-year-old son – she’s not even sure he understands what’s happening around him, or what is going on in his head. What these families go through, having kids they can’t communicate with – what the kids go through, unable to interact with the people around them! The thought of not being able to communicate makes me immediately, dramatically uncomfortable, maddeningly squirmy in my own skin. I’m sure that my first words after being “unlocked” would be, “Thank you.” 

A Mothers Courage trailer from Amothers courage on Vimeo.

Visit the Golden Hat foundation website to learn more, and to read the heartbreaking origin story of the golden hat itself.

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This is probably a terrible thing to admit, but whenever I am considering a book, I read the first page, and then, inevitably, I flip to the author photo. Why? Why in the world do I care what the author looks like, if the author is young or old, what kind of glasses the author wears? A lifetime of reading and writing ought to have taught me that none of this matters. After all, my experience with a book is a personal one, the meeting of my imagination and the author's. Especially if the author is an attractive man in cute glasses. (Kidding!)

Still, there is something about seeing that image that makes the author human, that reminds us of the mind behind the world we are about to enter. Which is why, let's admit it, we all peek, and feel disappointed when a publication is too sensible to include an author photo. It's also why we are always looking for new images of beloved authors like Shakespeare and Jane Austen, who had the bad manners to live before Google Images. Luckily for lovers of all things Austen, a new portrait of her has been found. Dr. Paula Byrne, the Austen biographer who found the image, told the BBC that right away she recognized the long, straight "Austen nose" and that the pencil sketch presents a very professional woman writer at the height of her creative powers." It certainly presents a different image than the sweet, bonneted Jane we are used to seeing reproduced on mugs and totes the world over.

As to why there aren't more images of the celebrated novelist, "When Jane Austen was writing, she wrote her novels anonymously. People didn't really know who she was at all and even after her death, when her name appears in print for the first time, she's not at all popular." Apparently, she didn't even tweet, either. Check out the BBC story for more on the controversy over authenticating the image, and to see the picture itself.

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A new book by Jane Austen (sort of).
Celebrities share the classic books that changed them.

Photo: HarperCollins

Oddball statistics, random facts, weird comparisons -- trivia has this amazing ability to disarm and delight. As the season of holiday mixers and family gatherings kicks into high gear, I've watched a well-timed bit of trivia diffuse a tense stalemate on reproductive rights (Did you know elephants gestate for 22 months!?), curb turkey-day grousing (Six hours on a bus, huh? During migration the bar-tailed godwit bird flies 6,800 miles -- without stopping to sleep or eat!), and spark a lively little game during a dull dinner (Who can name the most famous folk who were adopted? Nelson Mandela, Steve Jobs, Ingrid Bergman, Priscilla Presley)

Trivia is also weirdly memorable. Why, despite considerable effort, could I never memorize the Pythagorean thereom in school, but I can still recall from history class that Abraham Lincoln was the tallest U.S. president (6'3") and James Madison the shortest (5'4")? Our brains, it seems, have an endless capacity for quirk. And isn't quirk more fun? Aside from a bright smile and a warm hug, I'd argue that nothing trumps trivia when you're making small talk. So imagine my delight, as we enter the Month of Making Yueltide Small Talk, at cracking open the new book Listomania: A World of Fascinating Facts in Graphic Detail, an engrossing (and sometimes gross) buffet of trivia.

From the top 14 beauty-queen scandals through history to the countries with the greatest number of Nobel Prizes per capita (go, Faroe Islands!) to the most popular ways locals from around the world eat their hot dogs (think: shrimp salad, sauerkraut, carrot sticks), the book touches on topics both significant and, well, trivial. To prep you to deliver a surprising left turn to the next "So, where are you from?" question, consider these random bits: It takes 30 seconds for killer whales to mate, 21 days to sun-dry a grape into a raisin, and 5 months for a newborn to recognize its own name. You can thank us post-party.

Photo: Thinkstock

I love a good mixtape. The mix cd my husband made for me when we first started dating is firmly lodged in my car's cd player (yeah, cds!), and I probably even have somewhere the actual tapes my best friend and I exchanged in high school, complete with collaged covers. I'm always happy to come across a great playlist, that newfangled cousin of the late, great mixtape. But what, I know we've all asked ourselves, would our favorite fictional characters listen to?

Flavorwire knows. Here, from the wish-I'd-thought-of-that files, are literary character mixtapes. Characters like Elizabeth Bennet, Captain Ahab, Nancy Drew, and The Little Prince are given their own playlists of songs that so perfectly capture their essences you just have to laugh, stream the songs, and pick up your well-worn paperbacks to read along. The song choices are spot-on, and you have to love commentary like, "We think a donkey who counts the days since anyone spoke to him would nod glumly along with the intro to this song." (That's Eeyore, loving "Comfortably Numb," by Pink Floyd)

And not to be completely nerdy (too late, I know), but it occurs to me that imagining playlists like this would be a great project for reading-averse students or even writers trying to flesh out a fictional character. Or someone who just really wants to commune with her inner Lady Macbeth. Or, you know, Tigger.

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Great short stories
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Photo: Thinkstock

My husband and I are engaged in a long-standing cold war of clutter. I try to sneak objects out of our home, and he finds them in the trash and brings them to me with an accusatory, "How can you get rid of this [snow globe/Japanese dog toy/dial-up modem? Don't you remember [insert nostalgic tale here]?" In his mind, the things we have accumulated tell the story of our lives together. In my mind, the only story they are telling is that of modern-day Collyer brothers.

A new book suggests that, awfully enough, my husband might be onto something. Can objects tell a story, or even the history of the world? This is the conceit behind the British bestseller called, accurately enough, A History of the World in 100 Objects, now out in the United States. The book's author, Neil MacGregor, is the director of the British Museum (where all the objects in the book currently live), and he recently spoke to Jeffery Brown at PBS News Hour about the selection of objects and what stories they tell, One of the objects they discussed was one of the oldest tools in existence, a 2-million-year-old stone chipped into a sharp edge that MacGregor said is the "kind of tool that lets us all leave Africa and live everywhere, because this lets you strip the meat off the animals to get more protein, break the bones to get the marrow...This is what lets us...become us."

From here, they discuss objects as diverse as the Rosetta Stone and a solar-powered lamp, each of which has implicit in it an entire story about a certain time and place. As MacGregor puts it, "a single object lets you explore a world that you want to know about....a thing lets you journey immediately into another world. And it's a thing made by somebody like you with hands like yours, a mind like yours. And you're on a journey of poetic imagination to a place that you could never reach otherwise."

This got me thinking about the objects with which we surround ourselves. It's that old "alien archaeologists" scenario (that's an old scenario, right?)—essentially, what is the story the aliens would construct about my life based on the objects in my home?  It's the toaster oven we use to make our toast; it's the dog bed we picked out and purchased for the mutt that lives in our house. As MacGregor puts it, "if you take one object and go into it in-depth, then you learn a lot about the people that made it, why they made it, the world it was for, and what it is to be a person needing objects and making objects." It could  be that my husband has a point, that our things tell the story of our world. (Which is why I'm still throwing out that old dial-up modem.)

For more, including a video of the interview and a photo essay, check out PBS NewsHour's Art Beat blog.

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