Congratulations to Alison Bechdel, whose newest book, Are You My Mother?, publishes today.  We can’t wait to read this book, and have been thrilled by the marvelous attention its author has gotten recently, including a New Yorker profile by Judith Thurman, a Time profile by Lev Grossman, a fabulous book review in Entertainment Weekly, and an equally terrific Barnes & Noble review by blogger extraordinaire Maud Newton (which was also posted on Salon.com).

The book also received a positively glowing review by Katie Roiphe in the New York Times Book Review this past Sunday.  In her review, Ms. Roiphe notes that in Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel quotes from the book To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.  We weren’t surprised by Alison’s choice of books – we already knew that it’s one of her eleven favorites.  We know this because Alison was one of the thirteen writers (along with Lev Grossman) featured in our recent book Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books edited by Leah Price.  The chapter on Alison includes wonderful photographs of her bookshelves, her answers to Leah’s questions about her reading habits and relationship to books, and a list of her eleven favorite books.  In the case of the other twelve writers included in the book, the “favorite books” lists are accompanied by photos of the jackets of their selected titles.  Alison, however, lovingly rendered the covers in her own artistic hand, which you can see in the slideshow below.

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