Gift Suggestions

 Hello Interwebs!

On the First Day of Christmas my true love gave to me....

Bookish Gift Recommendations!

So I have recommendations for every interest on your list! These are the top 5 picks I have for several genres of books, both fiction and nonfiction. These are all books I've either read or had recommended to me for various genres. One thing to note is for some genres, especially for fantasy and sci-fi I don't read a lot of these and what I do read are young adult so my recommendations will definitely reflect that. 

NONFICTION

• If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home by Lucy Worsley. This is by a British historian about the history of the home and how we got to the structure and contents and uses that we have now in our homes. This is also a 4 part docuseries that aired on BBC and is on YouTube. 
  
  
  
  
• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson. This is a true crime account of the Chicago World's Fair and serial killer H.H. Holmes. Larson's books are all very readable much like a novel. 
  
  
  
  
• Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. An account of the female mathematicians and scientists who helped get the US to the Moon. 
  
  
  
  
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. This books covers the span of human beings from early man to present day drawing on things from anthropology, paleontology, biology and economics. 
  
  
  
  
• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M Barry. This is a historical/scientific account of the Spanish Flu epidemics of the 1910s, particularly relevant for this year. 
  
  
  
  

FOOD BOOKS

• Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen; Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell. These are two food memoirs written by blogger Julie Powell. In Julie and Julia, Julie cooks and blogs her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and then Cleaving is her follow-up memoir. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• My Life in France by Julia Child. This is Julia Child's memoir from her work in the OSS and her marriage to her education at culinary school and her rise to culinary greatness. 
  
  
  
  
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain. A memoir of Bourdain's beginnings in the culinary profession to his rise as one of the most famous foodies in the world. 
  
  
  
  
• Eat Up: Food, Appetite and Eating What You Want by Ruby Tandoh. Ruby was a contestant on the Great British Bake Off and this is just a general book about food and everything entailed in the production and consumption of it. 
  
  
  
  
• Frontier Follies: Adventures in Marriage & Motherhood in the Middle of Nowhere by Ree Drummond. Drummond, also known as The Pioneer Woman, wrote a memoir about her life and relationships all interconnected with her food career. 
  
  
  
  

Memoir/Biography: This is the only section that has more than 5 selections since I only had a few of each section but couldn't narrow it down to just 5 between the two. 

• Queen Victoria: Twenty-Four Days That Changed Her Life by Lucy Worsley. A biography of Queen Victoria told in an episodic fashion of single days that shaped the queen she was from her parents' wedding to her own death. 
  
  
  
  
• Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley. This is a biography of Jane Austen that focuses on her the places she lived and the spaces she occupied and the way she talks about home and family in her writings. 
  
  
  
  
• Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton by Tilar J. Mazzeo. This is a biography about Elizabeth Schuyler-Hamilton from her early life to her death, all the stuff that isn't in the musical Hamilton. 
  
  
  
  
• Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob. This is a memoir told in a graphic novel format and is one of the best books I've ever read. 
  
  
  
  
• A Promised Land by Barack Obama. This is the former president's recent memoir about his lead-up to becoming President of the United States. I highly recommend the audiobook which he reads. 
  
  
  
  
• Becoming by Michelle Obama. The former First Lady's very engaging memoir is always worth a read. I also recommend the audiobook as well as the guided journal and her podcast on spotify. 
  
  
  
  
• Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. This is the memoir of Cheryl Strayed who took off on a whim and decided to hike the length of the Pacific Crest Trail in the wake of her own substance issues and her mother's death. This is one of my all time favorite books and everyone should read this. 
  

FANTASY

• The Folk of the Air by Holly Black. This is a trilogy and novella set in a faerie realm featuring a human girl named Jude who was kidnapped from the human world by a faerie general alongside her twin sister and half-sister (the general's daughter) and the faerie prince, Cardan, who is her foil and reluctant crush. 
  
  
  
  
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab. This is about a girl named Addie LaRue who back in 1700s Franch made a deal with a devil where she is immortal but no one can remember her...until it does. 
  
  
  
  
• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas. Another faerie based series. This one follows Feyre who is taken to the faerie realm after accidentally killing a faerie while hunting. The first book is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast while the second becomes a Hades and Persephone retelling. 
  
  
  
  
• Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. This and the sequel, Wayward Son, follow Simon Snow and Baz in a version of Harry Potter with an LGBTQ+ romance. 
  
  
  
  
• Shadow and Bone; Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. The Grishaverse series includes the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology in a fantastic world full of heists and danger and magic. These are my favorite books, hands down. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Science Fiction

• Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston. A sci-fi duology that follows a girl named Ana and her android Do9 who live aboard a space ship of scoundrels. It's a mix between the cartoon movie Anastasia and the show Firefly and it's a fun ride. 
  
  
  
  
• The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. This is a sci-fi series that consists of fairy tale retellings starting with the book Cinder following Cinder who is an android in a dark Cinderella retelling. A great mix of sci-fi and fairy tales. 
  
  
  
  
• Arc of a Scythe by Neal Shusterman. A dystopian trilogy following Citra and Rowan through their apprenticeship to a scythe, those that reap people since death has been defeated to combat overpopulation, and then to full schythedom and renegade status as they work their way through the conspiracies that go as high as they can go. 
  
  
  
  
• The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. This is a trilogy set aboard a ship after a mining colony is attacked. There's a mysterious pandemic zombie infection and plenty of intrigue and its told through found documents rather than a traditional novel format. 
  
  
  
  
• Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness. This is about a preteen who is just shy of his 13th birthday when he will become a man when he finds a woman on a planet where he believes there is no women. He ends up on the run from his town and discovers the truth behind the secrets kept by his town about the world they live on and why all men's thoughts are audible to everyone.
  
  
  
  

CONTEMPORARY

• Paradise trilogy by Elin Hilderbrand. This is a trilogy about a family who after the patriarch's death they discover his second life in the US Virgin Islands and go down to discover the truth both about them and their family. 
  
  
  
  
• Me Before You by Jojo Moyes. This is about Lou Clark who is hired to be a caregiver to a quadriplegic young man and how that changes her life. These books are romantic and sad and I loved them. 
  
  
  
  
• Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. This is a family drama about the Richardson family whose neat orderly lives are upended when they rent a property to the mysterious Mia Warren and her daughter. This book is amazing and so is the Hulu show starring Reese Witherspoon. 
  
  
  
  
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. This is about Star, a teenage girl caught between her black neighborhood and the white prep school she attends. Then her world is shaken when she witnesses her friend being shot to death by the police and she has to decide where she's going to stand and who she's going to be in the wake of the tragedy. 
  
  
  
  
• Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. This is about college freshman Cath whose life has always revolved around the Simon Snow book series and its fandom. Upon going to college, her twin doesn't want to be as joined as they were, her creative writing teacher doesn't like her fanfiction writing, and it's a cozy good ride. 
  
  
  
  

ROMANCE

• The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren. This is a hate to love romance where after the wedding of her twin sister, Olive ends up taking the nonrefundable honeymoon trip to Hawaii with the best man and her nemesis Ethan. Hijinks and love ensue. 
  
  
  
  
• The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams. This is a series revolving around hte  men in this Bromance Book Club where they read romance novels to help their love life. They're fun bookish romance novels. 
  
  
  
  
• Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. This is a gay hate to love romance between Alex, son of the first female president of the US, and Henry, a British prince. When they have to fake a friendship to repair damaging tabloid stories hijinks and love ensue.
  
  
  
  
• Beach Read by Emily Henry. This is another hate to love romance between January, a romance writer, and Augustus a literary fiction author, who are both suffering writer's block and spending time in adjoining beach houses while trying to write their books. They decide to trade genres and hijinks and love once more. 
  
  
  
  
• Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann. This is a story about Alice who just broke up with her girlfriend after realizing that she is asexual. She signs off on love and relationships while working her job at the library until she meets the new volunteer. It's not just a love story between the two characters but a love story between Alice and herself. 
  
  
  
  

HISTORICAL FICTION

• Summer of '69 by Elin Hilderbrand. This follows a family during the summer of 1969 on Nantucket as they deal with changing relationships, new jobs, family drama, and the only son being recently sent to Vietnam. 
  
  
  
  
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This is about a girl named Kya growing up in the marshes in the 1950s and 1960s after being abandoned by her family. Then she is accused and charged in the death of popular town boy Chase Andrews and her life becomes public. 
  
  
  
  
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett. This is a book about a young woman Skeeter who decides to write a book telling the stories of the black maids/housekeepers/nannies in her wealthy southern town. 
  
  
  
  
• The Montague Siblings by Mackenzi Lee. This is a series about the siblings in this family and their adventures in life and love starting with oldest brother Monty in The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue where he goes on his grand tour with his best friend Percy and falls in love. 
  
  
  
  
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. This is a WWII novel about a young girl Liesel who is sent to live with a family during the war and ends up stealing books from burn piles and other places around the town as she makes sense of her world. 
  
  
  
  

MYSTERY/THRILLER

• And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. This is a quintessential locked room style mystery in which 10 people are brought to an isolated island, accused of a myriad of crimes, and then are killed off one by one. All of Agatha Christies mysteries are great but this one is considered the best. 
  
  
  
  
• The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware. This is a modern version of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. We follow the live-in nanny in an isolated ultramodern Scottish house who is writing her solicitor from prison where she's been accused of the murder of one of the children and is telling her story. 
  
  
  
  
• Final Girls by Riley Sager. The title is a reference to the final girl trope in horror films, the long female survivor of a massacre. We follow one of these follow girls who has moved on with her life from her trauma until some of the other final girls begin to turn up dead. 
  
  
  
  
• Charlotte Holmes by Brittany Cavallaro. This is a book series following Charlotte Holmes and Jamie Watson, descendants of the famous Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson who meet at a boarding school and immediately are sucked into a mystery involving their ancestors' stories. 
  
  
   
  
• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. This is a short novel by the author of Gone Girl about a girl named Camille who has been ordered back to her hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a girl while reconnecting with her hypochondriac mother and odd teenage sister. 
  
  
  
  

HORROR

• The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. This is a horror novel involving native culture and myths and the relentless pursuit of a mysterious entity hellbent on revenge. 
  
  
  
  
• It by Stephen King. This is the classic horror story of a supernatural entity terrorizing Derry, Maine in the form of the demonic clown Pennywise. 
  
  
  
  
• Dread Nation by Justina Ireland. A historical fiction/horror duology following Jane and Katherine who are in training as attendants to protect wealthy white women from the undead that began rising after the battle of Gettysburg. The two girls become reluctant friends as they are shipped out west and end up in the middle of a nefarious plot all while battling zombies. 
  
  
  
  
• The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey. This follows Melanie who is kept with other children in an underground bunker complex for scientific research after a zombie apocalypse dystopia happens. 
  
  
  
  
• Ring by Koji Suzuki. This is the Japanese horror novel that the movie The Ring is based off of. You are introduced to the infamous video tape where anyone who watches it must show it to someone else or they will die themselves, killed by the spirit that inhabits the tape.
  
  
  
  
  
  POETRY
• The Poet X; Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo. These are novels written in verse by Acevedo. The Poet X is about a young woman who gets involved in the slam poetry movement and the other is about two girls who find out they're sisters and their father had two lives and two families after his death. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Transformations by Anne Sexton. This is a poetry collection that all center around the dark stories behind fairy tales. 
  
  
  
• Women are Some Kind of Magic by Amanda Lovelace. This is a trilogy of feminist poetry about finding yourself and your own voice and saving yourself. 
  
  
  
• Shel Silverstein Any of Shel Silverstein's poetry books are funny and heartwarming and suitable for all ages. 
  
  
  
• Dearly: New Poems by Margaret Atwood. The new poetry volume from Handmaid's Tale author Margaret Atwood. 
  
  
  
  
  

So those are all my book recommendations by genre for Christmas gifts. I also have a selection of bookish gifts and sellers that would also make good Christmas presents. 

• Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions: Barnes & Noble have a huge number of collector edition books from contemporary classics like Jurassic Park to literary classics like Pride and Prejudice. They're nice leather-bound hardcovers with gilt edges and tend to be relatively reasonably priced. 
  
  
  
  
• Out of Print: a collection of book cover and other bookish prints on clothing items and tote bags as well as other things. I have a Handmaid's Tale sweatshirt from there that I love. 
  
  
  
  
• Litographs: book prints that are made up of printed words from the novels. They have clothing as well as housewares like pillows, blankets, posters, and jigsaw puzzles. 
  
  
  
  

Storiarts: accessories such as scarves and gloves printed with pages of books and poetry in a very literary style. 

• Book Beau: book sleeves to protect your books with cute and clever prints. I have the tarot card one and a floral/book print one. They come in a variety of sizes to accommodate all sizes of books.
  
  
   
  
• Nerdy Ink: a paper goods company that sells bookmarks, art prints, book dust jackets, and other bookish goods. I especially love their bookmarks, especially this Hamilton one. 
  
  
  
  

In addition to these specific shops, there's also small notebooks like this one which I really love. Book people also like book ends, pens, candles, mugs and anything cozy to go along with the books. 

So that's the whole shebang, books galore to keep everyone on your list entertained as well as some bookish things for readers' presents. 

Happy 12 Days of Christmas!

Richelle