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It should come as no surprise that here at Quirk, we like to read. A lot. I mean, you can’t make books if you aren’t reading them too, right? Emails are frequently sent around the office about this book or that, and finished books usually end up in our lobby, free to a good home.

Below, you’ll find some of our favorite reads of the year. Some are new, some aren’t. But all of them are great.

The Odds by Stewart O’Nan: I’ve read all of Stewart O’Nan’s novels and his latest, The Odds, is one of my favorites. The story concerns a marriage on the brink of collapse; Art and Marion Fowler are unemployed fifty-somethings, drowning in debt and facing foreclosure on their home. In a last-ditch effort to save their marriage, Art plans a second honeymoon at a Niagara Falls casino, where he intends to gamble every last penny of their retirement savings on a “can’t-miss” roulette scheme.

Maybe you have to be married to fully appreciate this book (and the longer you’ve been married, the more you’ll enjoy it). It’s a short novel, only 192 pages, and I read the entire book in a single night. The suspense of the final chapters (when Art finally embarks on his roulette scheme) caught me off-guard. I realized I really cared about these characters; I really wanted them to win, even though I knew the odds were stacked against them. The last line is perfect. – Jason Rekulak, Creative Director

Dream More: Celebrate the Dreamer in You by Dolly Parton: I love Dolly Parton’s new book. It’s a slim little volume that outlines her philosophy of life, based on her 2009 commencement speech to graduates at the University of Tennessee. But if you haven’t read any of Dolly Parton’s books yet, I’d have to recommend starting with her 1994 autobiography, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. It’s a great read.

And her Imagination Library is an excellent charity dedicated to fostering a love of reading among preschool children by mailing them high-quality, age-appropriate books directly to their homes. All children deserve books, regardless of their family’s income. As Dolly always says, “Never let a rhinestone go unturned.” – Margaret McGuire, Editor (@oinkoink)

Part of Snowman Week in Sarah Goldschadt’s Craft-A-Day, mini-snowman cupcake toppers are the perfect way to while away a chilly winter afternoon with the young people in your life. Get creative with your snowman topper—make a family of snow-people for Frosty, or have a contest to see who can make the most interesting outfit! Don’t forget the corncob pipe, and why not add a scarf and perhaps some icy jewelry while you’re at it? Plaid is all the rage in snowman fashion these days!

The possibilities are endless with Craft-A-Day’s simple handmade blue prints for projects for each day of the year.

Happy holidays, and get crafting!

Photo by Paul Carroll

Winter is coming. And not in that fun "I'm quoting Game of Thrones" sort of way. In the omg-it-is-freezing-outside-I-hate-my-life kind of way. But with the cold comes a lot of fun, what with snowball fights, skiing, snow angels, and ice skating.

For those of you psyched to go skate like you're in a Charlie Brown Christmas, be careful. Those tempting open lakes can be dangerous.

To help you be prepared, today we've got an excerpt from The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel by David Borgenicht and Joshua Piven. Because hey, you never know. 

Photo by Paul Carroll

Winter is coming. And not in that fun "I'm quoting Game of Thrones" sort of way. In the omg-it-is-freezing-outside-I-hate-my-life kind of way. But with the cold comes a lot of fun, what with snowball fights, skiing, snow angels, and ice skating.

For those of you psyched to go skate like you're in a Charlie Brown Christmas, be careful. Those tempting open lakes can be dangerous.

To help you be prepared, today we've got an excerpt from The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Travel by David Borgenicht and Joshua Piven. Because hey, you never know. 

Hey there booklovers!

As the year comes to a close at the Quirk HQ, I’m looking to bring a few more freelance bloggers onto the Quirk Books website. I have a few on here already, writing about everything from recipes to books, pop culture to comics. Scope out some posts from Elizabeth Quirino and Thom Dunn for fantastic examples. Please note, it’s best not to click on Elizabeth’s recipe links before lunch.

I’m looking for bloggers interested in writing anything and everything, from quirky editorial on pop culture to delectable recipes, Top 10 lists to fun photo roundups, spotlights on crafts to music playlists… you get the picture. We’re also looking for bloggers interested in writing about parenting, for our Raising Quirk community. If the stories have a bookish slant, even better. I want them. Take some time to flip through the Quirk website to get an idea of what we like to post.

As for requirements, you should:

* Be passionate about books.

* Have a decent presence on major social media networks. Twitter, Facebook, etc.

* Be willing to promote your posts on those networks.

Yes, we’re paying bloggers for their posts. It’s not a lot, but it’s something. Pay varies depending on the sort of content you’re creating, whether you’re working on simple short posts (ie: recipe posts, craft spotlights) or in-depth featured pieces (top 10 lists, lengthy editorial). We will discuss.

Interested? Drop me an email at [email protected]. Tell me a bit about yourself, what you’re interested in writing about, and include a few links to some writing samples. No resumes please. Just a friendly email and links to clips will do.

Nicolas Cage as Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation

Note: In writing this, I realized that I appear on film with 2 of these writers, which is starting to make me wonder if I’m actually a fictional character myself. My girlfriend insists I’m real, but I’m still not entirely convinced, despite the fact that she poked me a lot and it really hurt.

It’s generally accepted that there’s a fine line between reality and fiction, but sometimes it gets particularly difficult to tell just where that line is — and these authors don’t help. We’re told not to confuse the artist and the art, that a first-person voice is not necessarily that of the author, that the views and opinions of the characters do not necessarily reflect those of the person that created the characters.

But then sometimes, the person who created the characters is a character, and then things just get all like super confusing and meta-heady-wackiness ensues and you’re not really sure where one thing starts and the other begins. And so without any further ado, I present to you 6 real-life authors who are also fictional (by their own pens, no less).

Jason Schwartzman as (fictional) Jonathan Ames

Jonathan Ames: Jonathan Ames the writer first appeared on the literary scene in 1989 in his debut novel I Pass Like Night, which recounts the narrator’s various sexual exploits in ways both shocking and hilarious. Some of these encounters are later recounted (albeit with some differences) in his debut graphic novel The Alcoholic, which explicitly features a protagonist named Jonathan A, who is also a novelist.

Later, Jonathan Ames (the writer) created a TV show called Bored To Death (based on his own short story of the same name) which focuses on the misadventures of a novelist-turned-amateur-detective named Jonathan Ames, whose debut novel is called I Pass Like Night (also you can totally see me in the Season 2 finale at the Brooklyn Comic-Con). As Ames himself has said in many interviews, “Whenever I wrote fiction, people always seemed to think that what I wrote was true, that it was entirely autobiographical. And when I would write non-fiction, they often accused me of exaggeration and fictionalization…so I decided to give it a try and thoroughly confuse my few readers.”

And I think he has succeeded at that.

Kurt Vonnegut: Much of Vonnegut’s work features, or at least alludes to, a fictional sci-fi writer named Kilgore Trout, who is generally believed to be a fictional image of Vonnegut himself. But then sometimes Vonnegut himself also ends up in his own stories — occasionally even accompanied by Kilgore Trout. He appears as a character in the novel Breakfast of Champions, observing and even interacting with several other fictional characters in the story.

But it’s Vonnegut’s final novel, TimeQuake, where things get trippy. As explained in the first chapter of the book, the original idea for the novel TimeQuake was that the universe began to momentarily shrink, but then changed its mind, forcing everyone to re-live the last 10 years (give or take) of their lives, precisely as they happened the first time. According to Vonnegut, he had some difficulty turning this into an actual interesting narrative, so the idea was scrapped, and the book that ultimately became TimeQuake was a combination of autobiographical anecdotes, and elements of what would have been his original intended story (with Vonnegut essentially telling readers what would have happened in the book he was trying to write).

However, Vonnegut still recounts the autobiographical parts of the book in terms of the timequake from the original plot — rather than simply recounting memories of the last ten years, he tells these personal stories in terms of having re-lived them on autopilot, thanks to the effects of the fictional timequake. And so, one presume that while the stories themselves are non-fictional, the timequake itself was a piece of fiction…or was it? (Image via Letters Of Note).