Book Shelf: Gift Guide Pt 2, Books
A big, juicy list of 27 books to gift: family and friendship sagas, new releases, opportunities to reflect, portals to escape and comfort, and writing on writers
A book is a thoughtful, precious gift - a window into another world, a window into the mind of the person who’s gifted it. When gifting a book you’ve read yourself, you’re saying: here’s a little piece of me that I want to become a little piece of you. When gifting a book you haven’t read but want to read, you’re saying: here’s a universe we can explore together. When gifting a book you haven’t read but matches the other person, you’re saying: I know you.
In the latest episode of Literary Friction (in which they reveal that the show will be ending in December 😭), Carrie Plitt and Octavia Bright discuss friendship. A friendship formed or strengthened over books, they say, is a special one; it’s a space to explore and share thoughts on politics, love, identity… you name it, without confronting those knotty topics head on, or with yourself at the centre.
Firstly, a free suggestion for the book-lover/s in your life: A personalised list of book recommendations. Maybe the list is tied together with a theme, mood, or genre. You’re giving them the freedom to buy or borrow as they feel like it, to zoom in on the few that most spark interest, without shelling out yourself.
Now for my top picks. I’ve grouped them in themes, so I’d suggest choosing one that best suits your gift-giving mood/loved one and seeing which title stands out, or building a book bundle which digs deep into one theme or stretches across a few.
The Gift of a Juicy Family Saga
I recently finished Ann Napolitano’s Hello Beautiful. Talk about a saga. It’s a lengthy book at 383 pages, but so much happens. A single chapter sometimes spans years. Within the first 150 pages, I found myself thinking: How on earth can there be another 200+ pages left when this much plot has been squeezed in already? It sometimes felt a little too packed, but I’d highly recommend it - a perfect Christmas break read, and I loved the basketball thread.
I’ve already raved about Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, but it’s one of my favourite books of the year and you should gift it to everyone you know. I can’t imagine someone who wouldn’t like it. Lara tells her three grown daughters the delicious story of her romance with a movie star.
It’s set on a cherry farm, as the family comes together under one roof to ride out the pandemic (don’t worry, it’s handled very subtly). I went cherry picking with friends out near Orange on the weekend, and I felt like the book had come to life! It says a lot that months after finishing it, I’m still thinking about it. Meditative, sparkly, brilliant - and the beautiful cover is very giftable.
Love Marriage by Monica Ali is the perfect tome to which to dedicate the blurry days between Christmas and New Year - it’s a big book, weaving together familial, parental, and romantic relationships, politics, work, religion, secrets, betrayal, and culture without ever feeling crammed or kitchen sink-y.
Claire Lombardo’s The Most Fun We Ever Had is a book I still think about years after reading it - about a couple, their daughters, and their daughters’ families across the decades. Love, grief, complex family relationships, jealousy, life-altering decisions, the little things that are actually really big.
Plus an Emma Straub pick: All Adults Here. The story of a family (mostly) living in a small town feels familiar in its intimacy. Astrid, the matriarch, finds love again, 20 years after her husband’s death, but is still unsure how to be there for her children. Cecelia, her granddaughter, is grappling with the blurry line between protecting and betraying your friends as a teenager. And Astrid’s adult children - the parental relationship sketched as complex and layered - are each unsure of themselves, navigating different phases of parenthood and selfhood with varying degrees of commitment and success. One of Straub’s very best.
And if you’re looking for books about friendship, The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue (more on this one below), Expectation by Anna Hope, and The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer are three of the best I’ve ever read. The latter two track a group of friends over the course of their lives.
And for an easy choice for a friend/friendship group, Big Friendship sees Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman explore topics and questions about their friendship like: How have we failed each other? How has Ann been careless about race? How have we adjusted our friendship to big life changes?
The Gift of a New Release
Good Material by Dolly Alderton is the trendy book of the moment, and Alderton’s best yet. She interviewed a range of men to inform the story of Andy, a comedian in his mid-30s who doesn’t understand why his long-term relationship ended. If your loved one read and enjoyed Fleishman is in Trouble (another recommendation), they’ll gobble this up. Funny, tender, nuanced - Good Material is a crowd-pleaser.
Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy is Good Material-esque - they’d make the perfect duo (their covers would look fab side by side too). Sally is a sketch writer on a weekly comedy show, akin to SNL. Noah is a dreamy pop star who teams up with Sally as the show’s celebrity guest. But someone like him would never date someone like her, right? It’s an easy, witty read, but also a sharp, intelligent exploration of the rom-com genre.
The Rachel Incident, aforementioned, is perfect for the fan of Irish fiction, the young person obsessed with friendship or building a big life, or the nostalgic mid-30er who likes thinking about earlier versions of ourselves and what shapes us (the protagonist is in her 30s, retelling the story of her early 20s with the distance and softness that time brings). These characters feel 3D and it’s one of the best books I’ve read in 2023.
If you’re giving a gift to someone who’s slightly unplugged from new releases (if they’ve got their finger on the pulse, they’ve likely already read it) but love Aussie debuts, Green Dot by Madeleine Gray is a top pick. It runs the risk of not rising to its hype: familiar ‘young woman sleeps with older, married man’ and office romance tropes, the risk of becoming just another book in the recently built but ever-expanding pile of ‘sad girl novels’.
But it holds up those tropes, turns them this way and that to find a new angle from which to offer a fresh perspective on power, intimacy, youth, desire, modern friendships, and interior lives.
I reviewed it in depth here:
The Gift of Reflection or Advice
Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days is a collection of essays so precise, warm, and true that even thinking of them makes me want to pick it up right now and re-read it. It’s the type of book you could dip in and out of, and return to time and time again at different points in your life.
For a tender hug of a book for someone going through heartbreak or a friendship conundrum, or facing a big life question, Dolly Alderton’s Dear Dolly is perfect. A collection of her weekly agony aunt columns for The Times, it’s non-judgmental, kind, and thoughtful. Another to read snippets of and come back to.
And Catherine Newman’s We All Want Impossible Things is a tearjerker - about Ash sculpting her life around her best friend, Edi, when Edi is diagnosed with terminal cancer. It is about friendship, illness, memory, joy, and the meaning of a good life.
The Gift of Escape
Sunbathing is a gorgeous, evocative debut by Australian writer Isobel Beech set in Italy during summertime. A woman is making sense of her grief - while helping her friends prepare to marry - at an old Italian villa, set in the mountains and imbued with histories and stories.
Another debut set in Italy is Francesca Giacco’s Six Days in Rome, following Emilia, who was meant to be on the trip with her boyfriend before they broke up. It’s equally visceral and immersive, and felt like a mini holiday.
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead is the epic of all epics - spanning the US (Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, LA), New Zealand, and London, weaving together a historical story about pilot Marian Graves and the modern day story of Hadley Baxter, the actor cast to play Marian in a biopic. It is a monumental achievement, one of the best books I’ve ever read. If you know of someone who hasn’t read it, push it into their hands - they’ll never forget the story, and never forget that you introduced them to it.
And if your gift-receiver finds escape in food: Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter - about hospitality colleagues and customers and sweat and food and being run off your feet - and Olivia Potts’ A Half Baked Idea - a special memoir about the cross-section of food and grief - are my top suggestions.
The Gift of Comfort
Elizabeth Strout’s writing makes me feel warm and cosy in my belly - I’d start with Olive Kitteridge, a classic. Each chapter zooms in on a new member of a small American town with Olive Kitteridge a common thread in each. Strout’s portrayal of desire and tenderness among older people is revelatory.
Many of her books are part of a series, so a Lucy Barton set, for instance, would make a lovely gift. I’d challenge anyone of any age not to love Strout’s prose, and the hardbacks are beautifully designed and sized.
And here’s a longer list of my recommended comfort reads if you missed it, including the very cosy Patchett books mentioned above:
The Gift of Reading About Writers
Another dip-in-dip-out book: What Writer’s Read, edited by Pandora Sykes. I love reading about what other people read, so I loved learning about the books that shaped the likes of David Nicholls, Nick Hornby, Ann Patchett, Marian Keyes, Elizabeth Strout, Lisa Taddeo, and Elif Shafak. Such a great, failsafe gift for book-lovers.
And for fictional depictions of writers, Last Resort by Andrew Lipstein and the buzziest-of-the-year, R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface, both deal with writer rivals and questions of which stories belong to who. In Yellowface, Athena, a literary wunderkind, dies suddenly and unexpectedly in the presence of her friend/rival June. June steals her manuscript, develops it, and publishes it as her own. Meanwhile, in Last Resort, Caleb’s manuscript has gained traction: he has an agent and a taste of fame and fortune. But college rival Avi - an editor in the NYC literary scene, and the novel’s ‘inspiration’ - sees it as a stolen story. The bargaining begins.
I inhaled Writers and Lovers by Lily King in a few short hours a few years ago - and I still recommend it. It’s the story of a woman in her early 30s trying to finish a novel she’s been writing for six years while working in a fancy restaurant. It’s about a juicy love triangle, the gradual unfolding of her relationships with two very different men, deep grief over the death of her mother and estrangement of her father, finding your way through difficult jobs, and keeping at your dreams even when success isn’t guaranteed.
And to end on another 2023 highlight: The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop, which is so masterfully crafted and jam-packed with juicy themes like reliability, marriage, truth-telling, travel, writing, and power.
Novelist JB Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Then a storm hits, Patrick falls overboard, and the circumstances of his death and the truth about their marriage unfurls. JB’s world is hazy and uncertain and confusing, but as a reader, I felt so confident in the way Bishop deftly pulled me through the story. One for literary, contemporary, mystery, or thriller fans.
Still confused? Tossing up between a few options? Or nothing jumping out for the person you have in mind? If you’d like a personalised recommendation, describe your loved one in a comment, along with a genre they like or some books they’ve loved, and I’ll tell you if I have a suggestion for them!
Feel welcome to come back to this list at any time for inspiration or ‘if you liked this, you’ll like that’-style suggestions, for loved ones or your own TBR. And prioritise finding a pocket of time - 10mins, an hour, a day - to curl up and read this busy, intense festive season.
Until next time,
Britt
You are so goddamn good with these recommendations! I’ve written down all the ones I haven’t read because I also loved the ones I have so I just know they’ll be good xx
Britt, do you have any recommendations for men? My partner and I try to get each other a book for Christmas every year and I’m always stumped for what to get him!