00:00These are the books that are my first editions, my first love, some of my childhood books,
00:05and I really cherish a lot of the items in this room.
00:15Do you know something that I hate? Like, I really hate this.
00:18When book snobs make fun of people for color coordinating their shelves.
00:24And I'm here to tell you, as your friendly local witch, that color is one of the most important things
00:31in your life.
00:32And honoring color in your life is something that you should be doing.
00:36And for people like me, who have a photographic memory, I might not be able to remember the name of
00:42an author or the exact name of a book,
00:44but I promise you, I remember what color the cover is.
00:48So I know how to come back and find things many, many years after I've read them.
00:54So I think it's very, very important to give credit where credit is due.
00:59And there is a mystical woman out there who wrote a book that really changed the course of my life.
01:07This book, Italian Folk Magic.
01:11Mary Grace Faroon is a nurse, a family woman.
01:16She lives in Canada.
01:17She is a member of her community.
01:20I don't know that you would know that she's a witch.
01:24And that's what I loved.
01:25It is all about her family's Italian heritage, about the magical thinking that she inherited from all the women in
01:33her family,
01:34about the matriarchs, about the rituals and traditions and the way of looking at things,
01:40whether it's religious or superstitious or magical or really like sincere and holy to you.
01:48I think that there is a generational and cultural gift here that I really felt like I was lacking.
01:56And so I read this book and I was so happy for her that she had people in her life
02:00to walk her through her birthright.
02:03But then I wanted to find my own.
02:04And I did that by writing Grimoire Girl.
02:09Because if you don't have it, but you want to pass it on to your kids, sometimes you just got
02:15to make it up.
02:16And that's what I did.
02:18So thank you, Mary Grace.
02:21I don't know what I would have done without this book.
02:23It was a game changer.
02:24This next book, oof, oh, I just cry looking at it.
02:28I really do.
02:30It means so much to me.
02:32Ray Bradbury wrote this book, Dandelion Wine, about his hometown.
02:36And it was a tribute to community and the elders in the community and the children of the community and
02:43the folklore of the community
02:45and about finding magic and just those stupid, silly, little everyday things.
02:50And as my hometown was being taken over by big business and very quickly disappearing,
02:57to read this total stranger's account of their home that was written with so much love,
03:03it changed what I thought writing was for.
03:07And I strive to live up to that expectation.
03:12But this book makes me cry so much because my husband knew how much I loved this book.
03:18He's seen me read it dozens of times.
03:21And so for Christmas, he got me this first edition that is signed by Ray Bradbury.
03:31July 15th, 1958.
03:34For Sid, with admiration for a fellow teller of tales.
03:38All right, now speaking of novelists that I love,
03:42this writer and I actually share a very deep affinity for Ray Bradbury, for public libraries.
03:49We've talked about this at length, but Alice Hoffman, the author of Practical Magic and, oh God,
03:59the Red Garden is so good.
04:01She knows how to tell a story about unlikable people so that by the end of it, you're rooting for
04:07them.
04:08And as someone who feels unlikable sometimes, I like that there is someone in this world like Alice Hoffman who
04:15can find redemption.
04:17She sent me just the single most gorgeous book.
04:22This is a special edition leather-bound copy of Magic Lessons, which is a part of the storytelling of the
04:31Owen Sisters.
04:32So if you like practical magic, Magic Lessons goes all the way back to the root of the Owen Sisters
04:39story.
04:40And it is just lush and fabulous.
04:44And Alice is someone who I want to celebrate every opportunity I get.
04:49Okay, these last couple books are so near and dear to me.
04:54One of the questions in the list of questions that I could answer for this shelf portrait was,
05:00am I an e-book reader or do I like paper books?
05:04And I think it goes without saying that I like paper books because I think that we attach energy to
05:08things.
05:09And I know I want to absorb the energy that I get from certain books, but I also want to
05:15imprint my own and then pass them on to other people that I care about.
05:19And so these books have meant a great deal to me.
05:23Edna St. Vincent Millay, I talk about her a ton in Grimoire Girl.
05:28She is someone who I am just so inspired by and who, if she lived today, would still be considered
05:35audacious and exceptional.
05:37And so this is her collection, Renaissance and Other Poems.
05:41And it is a first edition.
05:43And when I got it, it was important to me because my publisher is Harper One and her publisher is
05:53Harper and Brothers.
05:54And so to think that I have been able to accomplish something that my hero did, pretty cool.
06:04This other book is from Truman Capote.
06:07It is The Grass Harp.
06:09It is a story about a young boy who runs away with one of his aunts and her best friend.
06:17And they live in a treehouse and they come up against some oppression from the town and from standards and
06:29normal behavior.
06:29And they push back against that.
06:31And I love Truman Capote for finding the radical color in a small community.
06:39It's my favorite kind of storytelling.
06:41And this book is signed by him.
06:44Look at his little teeny tiny handwriting.
06:46Oh, God, I just love him.
06:49Whoever Rita, Rita Allen is who this book is, too.
06:52God bless Rita.
06:54And then this last book is a first edition copy of The Grapes of Wrath and was a wedding gift
07:02from our dearly, dearly loved Willie Garson.
07:07And it was something that I wrote about in my book because it meant so much to me.
07:11And I have words from the note he wrote along with this book tattooed on my arm.
07:20My favorite childhood book is this series, Katie John.
07:27I didn't grow up in a family that had a lot of money.
07:29And so we just hung out at the public library.
07:31And there was this set of books about a tomboy named Katie John who left the big city and moved
07:38to a historic home, kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and encountered ghosts and a lot of mischief.
07:45And if all of that is sounding very familiar to you, I feel like I've modeled my life after this
07:52book series.
07:53It really made a mark on me and our Sterling Park Public Library knew exactly what direction to point me
08:01in.
08:01And I'm going to divulge a secret right now, and I swear to you, if any of you steal this
08:06intellectual property or come from my story, I'm going to fist fight you.
08:10But I read this book, The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll.
08:14It is the life story of Dare Wright.
08:16I read it when it first came out.
08:18I have been obsessed with it.
08:21Dare Wright was a children's book author who split her time between New York City and the Outer Banks, which
08:28I'm very in love with.
08:29And she wrote really interesting stories for kids.
08:33Some of them have been controversial, but she was such a weird little fairy of a human.
08:38And telling her story is something I've always wanted to do.
08:42And so when I start directing, this is something that I very much want to put on screen.
08:50It is Absolutely Good Neighbors by Sarah Langen.
08:54I think she is just such an amazing, sinister writer.
08:59And what's so wonderful about her work is that she understands domesticity and how insidious it can be.
09:09She understands the microcosm of a neighborhood and what it means on a grander scale.
09:16And she can find the absolute horror in the mundane.
09:20And I respect her so much.
09:22Without question, my answer is Angela Slatter.
09:27She is an author from that collection, Hex Life.
09:31And I reached out to her and told her I really, really respected her work.
09:35And she started sending me copies of her work.
09:38I have just shelves of her books.
09:40And I love each one more than the next.
09:42I felt so honored that she named a character after me in her last book.
09:48She is such a wonderful fantasy horror writer because she understands femininity and she understands how it has been missing
09:58in the genre.
10:00And she understands how to weave it back in and retell an old story through a feminine lens so that
10:06it belongs to us now.
10:08And I think that that's a really important skill and a really valuable kind of writer to have in your
10:14circle of friends.
10:15The universal truths of oppression of women and magical thinking exist everywhere.
10:22And so I so respect that imaginative take.
10:27So many people get bogged down with historical accuracies.
10:30And Angela plays by her own rules.
10:32She's fantastic.
10:33My favorite place to read a book.
10:35I mean, I want to say it's this room, but it's not.
10:38So let's go see how messy my house is.
10:40I have one chair in particular.
10:45And it's this one.
10:48That's my reading chair.
10:50And there's scooters.
10:51And there's messy kitchens.
10:53And there's 13-year-olds hanging out.
10:58But that is Mommy's chair.
11:00And that's where she reads books.
11:02I normally buy books at really small independent booksellers and usually when I'm traveling.
11:10So my favorite thing in the world is going to a town that I've never been to before and finding
11:15the local bookstore and just making friends.
11:19My all-time fictional crush.
11:22Guys, this is so toxic.
11:24It's really toxic.
11:26But I was a Heathcliff girl from Wuthering Heights.
11:28I had so many really dramatic romances where I just kept falling for Heathcliffs over and over.
11:37And my husband was a bit of a Heathcliff when I met him, but did the work.
11:44And so that's really what we all want, right?
11:47When I read Here's Negan in preparation for doing the episode of The Walking Dead with my husband, I would
11:55be lying if I said I didn't have a bit of a crush on that just bad, bad, bad boy.
12:01I can't help it.
12:02But, and that leaves us with, ta-da, grimoire girl.
12:08I feel like so many of the books I talked to you about today are deeply woven into this.
12:16One of the first things I wanted to do in the very first chapter was give people a list of
12:21books that influenced me.
12:23Take whatever lights up your world and pull out the quotes that matter to you.
12:28Write them down in your own grimoire.
12:30Keep the poetry, whether it's song lyrics or sonnets, whatever it is.
12:36Keep it close to you so that you can share it easily and it can be there for you in
12:43times of need.
12:44And so as we wrap up this spooky evening in the rain together, I really hope you find your own
12:51grimoire and that you fill it up with stories and ideas and spells and things that you love.
12:58And if you need any help, Grimoire Girl's there for you.
13:03Thank you for watching Shelf Portrait and for checking out my book, Grimoire Girl.
13:10Thanks for hanging out with me and while you guys are at it, you should subscribe to Marie Claire.
13:16Bye.
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