Not their fiction

You have probably met the lost pilot of The Little Prince. Now, you will meet Saint-Exupery the aviator himself.

He does not befriend little princes here, but this is a book about friendship nevertheless; of camaraderie in flying.

Saint-Exupery was once stranded after a plane crash, not unlike the pilot whose voice he borrowed in The Little Prince.

Help yourself to connecting empirical dots from Saint-Exupery's actual close brush with death to his dreamy novella about meeting a little prince in a desert.

This is evidence of the intimate and inevitable relationship Orhan Pamuk has with the city Istanbul. He is not able to tell his own stories without first describing Istanbul at length.

His characteristic rich description ever-present and his lyric melancholy especially apparent, this is Pamuk's personal letter to Istanbul; a letter of tragedy but also love.

I was at first disoriented to find Murakami's voice speaking in commonplace narration. In a very real and practical way, he talks about running and writing.

But soon enough, I find a comfortable spot from which I could feel Murakami as a living, breathing, running writer. And what an honor to talk about running with Murakami, no metaphors.

Reading this will either make you want to start writing, or to put on your running shoes. (I did the latter.)

Finally a collection from Neil Gaiman that proves he is of this world too. The essays in this collection retains his storyteller's stylistic voice, the smoke and mirrors and the reveal.

At the same time, we glimpse Gaiman sitting in the audience, the excited voice of the reader, putting forth lengthy opinions about the book he just read.

Meet Gaiman the reader, for he is just as delightful as Gaiman the storyteller.

The honesty of this junkie's account is almost brutal. I almost felt the needle pricking my skin, and the desperate need for it gnawing at my insides.

The voice of the narrator is far from sure-footed, doubtful at times and always nonlinear, but never apologetic. This is not only a junkie's account, this is a junkie's state of soul.