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Great Books to Gift: From Our Favorite Authors
Great writers are also great readers, which is why we trust them to give the best book recommendations. To celebrate the holidays, we asked some of our favorite authors to share what they consider great books to give as gifts, and they came up with a wide range of stories that'll make wonderful holiday presents for any reader.
Louise Penny
Author of Miss Wolcott's Ghost
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan (Women's Prize for Non-Fiction Winner)
Lyse Doucet
4
Hardcover
$29.00
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Vincent Yu
Author of Seek Immediate Shelter
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Ina Garten
Author of Simply Ina
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I love all of Ann Patchett's books; I just wish she could write faster! When I first read Whistler, I couldn’t put it down. It’s so engaging and beautifully written that I felt as though Ann was sitting next to me telling me the story herself! This book is perfect for the holidays because it explores the importance of connecting with someone who is your "person" in the world, no matter how short the time you have together. To me, the joys of reading are the same as the joys of cooking: getting so lost in a story that you forget everything else around you.
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There are many delightful books and yet, not every book is an ideal gift book. I think A Christmas Memory — a slim story of an impoverished child narrator and his elderly cousin making fruitcakes is exemplary at illustrating the beauty and grace found in an uncommon friendship. Published in 1956 by Truman Capote, best remembered for In Cold Blood, A Christmas Memory is wondrous autobiographical fiction. Too long to be considered a modern short story but far too short for a novella, clocking in at about 40-something pages depending on the publisher, it is exactly the right size for a Secret Santa gift or as a treat to slip into the stocking (instead of a lump of coal) of the hard-hearted.
Mary Beth Kean
Author of Whale Harbor
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For me, reading is not a healthy habit or part of a wellness routine, as I’ve heard it described lately. Take your vitamins and read fiction! Reading is how I find my place in the world and make sense of it. It’s how I feel less alone. When I’m in doubt, reading reminds me that we matter, if only because we are enormously capable of generosity and love.
When the holidays roll around, I like to press a book into the hands of my favorite people, people I trust will be moved by that book in the same way that I am. The book I turn to most often for gifting is Foster by the great Claire Keegan. My GOD. With only 88 pages she does the emotional work of an 800-page tome. It is exquisitely written from the first word, heartbreaking in the way I’m addicted to, and much, much bigger than the sum of its parts. Like all the best stories, there is what happens in the pages, and then something far bigger that happens within the reader. You can see in the photo how old my copy is (before Ireland switched to the Euro!) and how worn. I love seeing books battered and warped – it means they were read many, many times. It means they were loved.
Levy Rozman
Author of How to Win at Chess, Next Level: The Ultimate Guide for Intermediate Play
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I usually read to learn something, or to delve into a completely different world. And A Man Called Ove took me to one thousands of miles away in suburban Sweden, where I experienced life through the eyes of a grumpy and complicated old man. I had packed the book with me to enjoy on a trip, but I finished it on the flight to my destination. Truthfully, I have never read a book cover to cover faster in my entire life. I was crying the last hour of the flight... and it wasn't because the seats were that uncomfortable. Highly recommended.
Richard Osman
Author of We Chase Shadows
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When The Cranes Fly South will remind anyone of the joys of reading and how the best books can be both heart-breaking and life-affirming. This novel about an elderly Swedish man, his home care team and his faithful Elkhound, is a beautiful, beautiful book. What an extraordinary debut novel.’
Jasmine Warga
Author of The Unlikely Tale of Chase and Finnegan
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This is the perfect book as it has everything--gorgeous writing, a masterful plot, and a small dash of magic. It's written with Karina Yan Glaser's signature warmth, and I was absolutely captivated by the way the two storylines intersected--so surprising and satisfying! My favorite reading experience is when a book makes me forget about everything else and totally sweeps me up in the story, and this book delivered on that. It somehow manages to be both cozy and suspenseful. Truly magical!
Chloe Benjamin
Author of Under Story
The joys of reading are manifold: I love discovering other worlds, other perspectives, and other minds. But one particular joy is reading a writer friend’s book for the first time. I first met Lucy Tan in 2014. She was an incoming graduate student in the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Wisconsin—Madison; I was a recent alum who’d stayed in town. I was immediately struck by her wit, nuance, and clear-sightedness, and over the years, she’s become one of my closest friends. Lucy’s latest novel—Tiger’s Mouth, to be released on November 17 but available for preorder now—is the story of two friends whose shared name is their only commonality: Jack Chen grew up working class in Queens while Jack Owens is the heir to a tech company where both have been hired as summer interns. When a joint project goes big, questions of privilege, loyalty, morality, and innovation combust in ways that had me scrambling to turn pages. Lucy tackles both interpersonal and societal issues with remarkable fluidity: Tiger’s Mouth feels both propulsively story-driven and rich in thought-provoking, conversation-starting ideas. I think it’s brilliant.
Dan & Finn Ojari
Authors of Is This a Plum?
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We love this book, it turns any bedtime into a hilarious conversation. Not so much a bedtime storybook, more a set of weird and sometimes gross questions and answers! It's especially good for when no one's quite got the energy for a longer story, and you'd rather just chat and giggle instead.
Yotam Ottolenghi
Author of Ottolenghi Simple Too: A Cookbook
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Long Island Compromise made me feel very uncomfortable when I first sat down to read it. In all honesty, I almost put it aside. Then I remembered that I had the same experience with Fleishman Is in Trouble, the previous novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and how the discomfort slowly turned into a kind of obsession. The same happened again…
I became obsessed with the three Fletcher children and with their mother and her desperate attempts to keep everything together. And still, the story is told with so much humour. There’s a razor-sharp eye observing the Fletchers, revealing the absurdities of their affluent life. Like Nathan’s ritual of cooking on top of the range barbecue, running it like a military operation. Control through grilling… don’t we all do this in times of crisis?
This is a book about family trauma of an extreme kind but in reality it captures the nature of much smaller traumas too. This is what I love about it – it’s relatable even when it’s totally outrageous.
The joy of reading to me is the intimacy of it. My ability to sit with a book in a restaurant and not feel awkward. It’s an escape from my little obsessions and the noise inside my head. It’s an opportunity to encounter something or someone or somewhere I would have never chanced on in real life.
Freida McFadden
Author of The Witch
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One book that I recommend to absolutely everyone is The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Reid is one of my favorite authors and this book in particular is a stunning piece of historical fiction. It’s a Hollywood story on the surface, but embedded underneath is a beautiful love story. I love every single one of Reid’s books, but this one is a masterpiece.
Daniel Nayeri
Author of This Is a Door
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The Book of Dun Cow is the quintessentially American allegory of the rooster, Chauntecleer, who is a prideful king, and yet somehow a good one, who is fearful of his own capacity for violence, and yet finds himself in a conflict demanding exactly that. It is about a farm under siege, about animals who are wholly unqualified for a task they must, nevertheless, achieve. It is about the formation of a country out of disparate and, at times, unwilling parts. It asks the question of "who is my neighbor?" and "what is evil?" and "how should we then live?" And it has a great lugubrious dog.
Jeneva Rose
Author of Dead Girl Summer
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One of my favorite things about reading is when a story leaves me completely gobsmacked, and The Kind Worth Killing did just that. It’s a book I wish I could erase from my memory just so I could experience it for the first time again. I think that’s part of the joy of giving someone a book you love—you get to relive a little of that magic through them. So if I put this one under your tree, please call me when you finish it. I’ll be waiting.