You’ve heard it before: Books make great gifts. For one thing, they are easy to wrap, because most of them are smooth, hard and rectangular. You don’t have to worry about size and fit, as when giving clothes. However, there is a bit of an art to matching a book to its potential reader. Give fanatics a book about their favorite subject, and they likely already own it. Give a friend a book about your favorite subject, and they likely won’t read it. There is a happy medium — a way to pique someone’s interest with a book that opens a door to an interest they didn’t yet know they had. Now if only you could also give the gift of time to read as well.
All books are available or can be ordered at area bookstores.
Pop-up
It would probably make sense to give someone who loved the HBO series Game of Thrones one of George R.R. Martin’s original novel series, A Song of Ice and Fire. But for those who thought that the playful, intricate opening sequence was the best part of the show, try Game of Thrones: A Pop-Up Guide to Westeros (Insight Editions), which was inspired by the credit sequence. The intricate layouts detail key locations in the seven kingdoms including Winterfell, King’s Landing, The Wall and numerous mini pop-ups which may explain the finer points of the plot that you missed. Or not. Cost: $38
Pop rocks
Over the years I have had a number of people recommend the book The Roadside Geology of Wisconsin (Mountain Books) to me, most of whom I would not have guessed had any interest in geology. It turns out that there is something compelling about the rocks we drive past every day or scamper about on while vacationing. These everyday remnants of the, say, Precambrian days are familiar landmarks and yes, often our playgrounds (Devil’s Lake, the Kettle Moraine, the Dells, the Apostle Islands). In this book, Robert H. Dott and John W. Attig tell the stories of rocks we recognize, organized according to state highways…so you can geek out on a rock road trip. Cost: $20
Think ink
The best books work to open up a new side of the giftee’s personality. Anyone you know who has a bit of craftiness and love of nature should be pleased with the beautiful and unexpected, Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking (Harry Abrams) by Jason Logan. Logan, who founded the Toronto Ink Company, forages natural materials everywhere, from the woods (acorn caps) to urban rail corridors (rusty nails and bedsprings). You can’t turn everything into ink, but it seems that Logan has tried. The book is full of practical advice coupled with a sense of adventure. There are recipes and a gallery of ink art, somewhat akin to abstract watercolors but somehow even earthier and even more arresting. Cost: $30
Guys from the past
Paul Hendrickson’s new biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, Plagued by Fire (Knopf) is a thrilling read. Certainly there is no lack of material in Wright’s tumultuous life, and Hendrickson pulls out all the stops uncovering all of it. It’s certainly hard to put this one down. Plagued by Fire’s spiritual brother this season is probably Edmund Morris’s Edison (Random House), which also takes a penetrating look at an almost mythological American figure. Like Wright, Edison was a genius at creating and cultivating his own brand. These two bios make sense coming at this particular historical moment. Another big book for the lover of history: Jill Lepore’s These Truths (W. W. Norton) condenses the history of the U.S. into one fat volume, glancing lightly over material that we think we know well and illuminating it through material which is too often glossed over. The ghost of slavery is never far from these pages. Lepore’s book must be the first encompassing history of the country since the ascendance of Donald Trump to the presidency, and it is impossible not to read it in that light. That makes the book’s overarching question — Have we lived up to the goals set out in the Constitution? — even more crucial. Cost: $ 35, $38 and $20, respectively
Girl from the past
Fiction is tough to gift. Any reader’s taste for fiction is idiosyncratic and hard to predict. That said, I’ve been trying to get everyone I know to read Anna Burns’ Milkman (Graywolf), the coming-of-age story of a young girl in an unnamed place that is clearly Northern Ireland in the 1970s. Milkman won the Booker Prize for 2018, and while described as “experimental” in some write-ups, it’s fairly straightforward narration. It’s just the 19-year-old narrator’s dense and repetitive thought patterns that may make it seem less straightforward. While the action takes place nearly 50 years ago, the traps depicted are still very much of our time. Characters are called only by the name of their role (best friend, maybe-boyfriend), indicating that in this society, it is difficult if not impossible to break away from labels. Cost: $16
