Books Make Great Gifts, Part 2: Personal Picks

So I can’t very well remind you that books make great gifts without giving you some recommended reading.

In an effort to expedite this post, and therefore expedite any remaining holiday gift purchases, this year I’m calling my list “Off the Top of My Head,” with the somewhat lame yet totally true claim that if I can remember a title at 10 o’clock on a Friday night after a long day, a long week, and a year full of reading and researching, it must be a memorable read.

Right?

(I’m still so fond of the book picks I suggested last year, so give them a second look if you’re interested. I think Abigail Thomas’s A Three Dog Life is one of the most exquisitely written memoirs I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading.)


Nonfiction (memoir, narrative, food, and health):
The Liar’s Club by Mary Carr
Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
Atlas of the Human Heart by Ariel Gore
Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer
Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis
The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
It Must Have Been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten
Overtreated by Shannon Brownlee
Encounters with the Invisible by Dorothy Wall
Breathing for a Living by Laura Rothenberg
The Autoimmune Epidemic by Donna Jackson Nakazawa
Blood and Guts by Roy Porter
Keep Working, Girlfriend by Rosalind Joffe

Fiction:
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld
Best Friends by Martha Moody
Handle With Care by Jodi Picoult
Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner
Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin
Dirty Girls’ Social Club by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez
Olive Kittredge by Elizabeth Strout
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond
Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I’ll probably think of a lot more tomorrow, but I think that’s a wrap for now. As always, please chime in with more suggestions, or feedback on any of the books mentioned above!

Happy shopping…(and don’t forget: whenever possible, support local independent bookstores!)