Hancocks

I'm not an autograph hound, by any means, but this recent post by Maud Newton got me thinking about my favorite signed books. (Warning: Click through from Maud to the L.A. Times piece at your own peril -- it's frozen my browser every time I tried.) I don't have that many signed books, which helps narrow it down. Last year, I got to briefly meet one of my heroes, Richard Russo, after a reading, and he signed my copy of Empire Falls:


And I've somehow ended up in possession of an old Mickey Mantle autobiography that he had signed for my dad:


(Dad, you can have it back whenever you'd like, of course.)

But I guess it's hard to vote against the signature below as my favorite. I never met him, but my sister got this for me in New York many years ago: