• Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
• The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
• The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
• The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
• The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor
• The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
• Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
• Native Son by Richard Wright

This week I found a link on tumblr to the handmade bags of Olympia le Tan (incidentally, my parents planned to name me Olympia – because I was born during the 1984 Olympics, gimmicky I know  … anyway! sometimes I still wonder whether life would have turned out differently if I’d been named Olympia. Would my nickname be Oly? Pia? Lympy?) via the We Love You So blog, and was intrigued with the idea of a purse embroidered with the first edition cover of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Then I found the price tag. You, too, can pick up one of these little darlings for $1,500. Let me just repeat that for you. $1,500. Honey, you could get an actual first edition of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – possibly even signed by Carson herself – for that kind of money, and let’s face it that’s surely going to be more of investment in the long run.