Happy Valentine's Day, LLF friends! Hope you all feel loved today and everyday – we certainly love you all! As a special treat for today, we have a guest posting by the very funny Sara Benincasa, author of Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom. Her book has been getting lots of praise from little known publications like Kirkus and PW.
“A blisteringly funny yet affecting debut memoir about a young woman’s struggle to overcome panic disorder and agoraphobia… Fabulously quirky and outrageous.” —Kirkus
"AGORAFABULOUS! is “funny and unflinchingly honest” –Publishers Weekly
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It’s Valentine’s Day 2012, and I'm super-into my date. It’s not a guy (or a girl) – it’s my book, Agorafabulous!: Dispatches From My Bedroom, which comes out this very day. For me, the greatest Valentine’s Day present of all would be to wander into the New York Public Library (or the Brooklyn Public Library, or the Queens Library) and spy a patron curled up with my book. It’s not the sexiest Valentine’s Day fantasy, but it's mine. Anyhoo, I clearly have a very strong opinion on which book you ought to purchase (or borrow!) as a low- or no-cost Valentine for your beloved, but ethics dictates that I must also suggest books that were not written by me. Sigh. Here are a few of my personal favorites.
1.) Sandman by Neil Gaiman (the complete series) – Gaiman borrows from several world mythologies, as well as the DC universe, in order to tell the powerful, sad, sexy, freakish, frightening, marvelous tale of Dream and his unruly siblings Death, Destruction, Despair, Desire, Delirium, and Destiny. Perfect for the comic book geek in your life, or for anyone who is open to the idea that great literature can arrive in the form of sequential art as well as in text.
2.) Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Books by Francesca Lia Block – Forget your significant other; 
these books will make you fall deeply in love with Los Angeles, or at least with the mythical Los Angeles Block creates in these modern fairy tales. Originally marketed as young adult novels, these stories are suitable for romantics of all ages.
3.) The AP Stylebook – For the obsessive journalist or college student in your life, there's nothing more deliciously decadent than this entire book full of arbitrary rules of grammar and usage. Except, perhaps for…
4.) The Chicago Manual of Style – Hubba hubba!
5.) Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – For a sharply written, deeply cynical dystopian love letter to books, I'll never stop loving Bradbury's masterpiece.
– Sara
Click through to win a copy!
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Thank you, Sara! I think I'm going to curl up with The AP Stylebook and a cocktail this evening.
Agorafabulous! is the story of Sara's struggle with panic disorder which began with childhood panic attacks and intensified until she developed agoraphobia so severe that, at the age of twenty-one, she was afraid to leave her own bedroom. What exactly is a panic attack? Watch this video to find out.
Would you like a sneak peek at Sara's book? It is available here, and if that isn't enough the first 10 people to comment and let us know your phobias win a copy!
– Annie