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Friday, Dec 25, 2009
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Hard (and soft) ideas for the dedicated -- and picky -- reader.
By Willa Paskin
Hardcore book lovers don't want gifts that encourage them to go (gasp!) outside; they want to explore the universe without having to move an inch. Picking the perfect novel or history, though, can be tricky -- this character has a refined taste that could easily be insulted by your bestseller-list pick. Here are some good, safe suggestions that your devoted reader might not have thought of.
Illustrations by Ryan Germick
Organize your friend's bookshelves -- by color, by size, by theme, or alphabetically, whatever she wants. Find a snowy Sunday, turn on "The Wedding Singer," "Prairie Home Companion" or the Ramones, and do the job your friend has always meant to do, but didn't have the time.
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Since book lovers must have a book with them at all times -- they can never predict when they'll be stuck waiting for a whole five minutes with nothing to do -- they constantly face the dilemma not only of how to lug their books around, but of how to lug them in style. The Strand tote bag is an excellent solution; it's from a bookstore, it's cute, it comes in many different colors, and it's super-cheap (starting at $5.95!).
The encyclopedia has trained its wide-angle lens on any number of quirky subjects -- from bodybuilding to "everything nasty" -- and in Bob Dylan, it's found a subject worth chronicling in deranged exactitude. Michael Gray's "Bob Dylan Encyclopedia" ($40) is a 700-plus-page tome containing entries on the enormously influential musician's songs and albums, as well as dense blurbs on the likes of Little Richard, Harry Dean Stanton, Andy Warhol and J.R.R. Tolkien. It contains the details of Dylan (a sample entry is titled "Ecclesiastes, Dylan's use of") and of the cultural order he helped create. The searchable CD-ROM of the entire text makes the book a steal at $40.
Ever wonder what the call of a black-legged kittiwake sounds like? How about a rock pigeon? A black-bellied plover? OK, so your book lover probably never wondered either, but now he doesn't have to! "Bird Songs" ($45) contains color sketches, informational blurbs and the songs of 250 North American birds, which you can play by punching a number into a panel on the cover. It's a book that talks! (OK, warbles.) This gift should go over especially well with a book lover who has kids -- though you may want to throw in a pair of earplugs, as the high-pitched call of the golden-crowned kinglet could test some nerves.
Looking at New Yorker cartoons from 1929, it becomes head-spinningly apparent that not all that much has changed in the intervening 77 years. Sure, in one image the George Washington Bridge hasn't been completed, but the construction worker standing atop it is employing that familiar irony -- "Yeah, once you break the ice wit' Joisey this way there's no tellin' what'll happen," he says to a colleague. Almost eight decades later, New Jersey's still a punch line and New Yorker cartoons are still befuddling. "The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker" ($35), a collection of all of the venerable magazine's funnies and not so funnies, will let our book lovers ponder all the 'toons' quirks at their leisure.
Undeniably, "Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love" ($35) is shamelessly self-promoting. Rock 'n' roll's most explosive, and at times unhinged, bad girl has included in this high-gloss scrapbook copies of complimentary notes she exchanged with Marc Jacobs and Lindsay Lohan, photographs of her with Elton John and Hillary Clinton, and handwritten song lyrics that "prove" she's an authentic creator. Distasteful? Maybe. But it sure makes for some giddy, gossipy reading. ("I think I'll be a Rockstar. Get an Oscar and be best friends with Elton John" is an excerpt from one of her earliest notebooks.)
For the cultured reader who likes naked pictures, Annie Leibovitz's huge, glossy and voyeuristic "A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005" ($75) should be the perfect gift. Fascinating and fragmented, the book intersperses photos of Leibovitz's family -- Mom, Dad, Sis, kids and Susan Sontag -- with shots of the famous, such as Nelson Mandela, Nicole Kidman and Ah-nold. Celebrities flash skin in these photos (Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford, Demi Moore and Sly Stallone all strip down), but the spotlight stealers are undoubtedly Sontag and Leibovitz herself, who, gauche as it may be to notice or care, also drop trou.
If your book lover's taste is particularly tough to pin down, the Best American series has the ideal gift -- two different gift boxes, each containing three volumes of the best writing of 2006 ($40). Both sets include the best short stories of the year; that title has been coupled with the best spiritual and travel writing in one box and the best mysteries and sports writing in another. Pieces from such diverse publications as the New Yorker, Christianity Today and PerceptiveTravel.com should provide enough copy to keep the dedicated reader occupied -- through January at least.
Comics aren't just for kids anymore; in fact, some aren't for kids at all, like Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's X-rated masterpiece "Lost Girls." A three-volume set that comes in a decorative, cloth-covered slipcase, "Lost Girls" is the perfect gift for the grown-up superhero/porn fan in your life. Moore, famous for "The Watchmen," "From Hell" and "V for Vendetta," has imagined the adult sexual wanderings and fantasies of childhood heroines Alice (as in "Wonderland"), Wendy ("Peter Pan") and Dorothy ("Wizard of Oz"), and we have to admit, it's pretty hot. Gebbie's illustrations are shimmery, luminous, unforgettable -- and delightfully perverted. The set is available from Top Shelf for $75, and elsewhere for less.
People looking to buy their bookish beloved something super-special might be inclined to hunt down a first edition of "Gravity's Rainbow," or a signed copy of "Housekeeping." But a book doesn't have to be old and dusty to make a unique -- and extravagant -- gift. The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary is no ordinary reference book. Adorned by illustrations, and featuring a handful of quotations for each entry to show how a word's usage has evolved over time, the OED makes for riveting material in its own right. It's available this year at an incredibly steep discount -- $895, down from $3,000 -- direct from the publisher. The downfall of this gift: You might also need to buy your book lover a new set of shelves to hold the damn thing.
