Christmas 2010: what books have you bought for people, and why?

And in due course: what books did you get for Christmas?

Keith Richards autobiography for my Dad - lifelong Stones fan etc glaringly obvious choice, suspect others might buy him the same

Books on King Arthur and Tintin's The Black Island for my six year old

Books on Robin Hood, the Beano annual and Anthony Browne's Into The Forest for my four year old

All that lot is basically stuff I'm happy to lose myself in with them over the Christmas holidays.

apollo's angels for a friend because she loves dance and a couple of nyrb titles for that friend's boyfriend: the long ships and posion penmanship because they were the only nyrb titles that the bookstore had in stock. angelology for my partner's sister because i wanted to read it and iris owen's after claude for my sister because it will make her laugh. a cookbook for my partner's boss because she owns a restaurant. brandon sanderson's way of kings for my old boarding school roommate because he loves long fantasy novels and thats a good one. and for hanukkah a couple of georges simenon novels for my grandmother - dirty snow and the man who watched trains go by since she loves crime novels. additionally the latter has an introduction by luc sante, which seemed promising.

for my dad:

An Alan Furst omnibus called Three Great Novels. Features the following: Kingdom of Shadows, Dark Star, and The Polish Officer. Because he consumes crime fiction, but chances are that I'd get him a duplicate if I got a crime novel. Espionage/intrigue seems like a close relative. And I'm reading Night Soldiers myself right now, so I know for sure that Furst's a cracking writer.

Duncan Hamilton - A Last English Summer. Impulse purchase, and a slight mistake in that I thought it was an award winner but that turned out to be his previous book. It's some kind of trip through the 2009 cricket season, my dad likes sport but not sure how it'll go down. I suspect I may inherit it.

for my sister:

Roald Dahl - Matilda. She's not a reader but I remember she loved this when she was little. It's just a token so she has something to open other than vouchers on Christmas Day. Hopefully will make for an amusing evening for her.

the naked mole rat gets dressed, by mo willems, for a young relation

also a book about TRAINS for her brother. i don't really know many people i could buy books for.

Simenon is great and makes excellent holiday reading.

For my dad, the new Oliver Sacks and a crime novel
For my mum, an Alan Furst and a crime novel
For my brother, an Elmore Leonard and a Scandi crime novel (you can see the pattern emerging here)
For my wife, among other things, a huge and complete guide to the plants of the Adelaide Hills, where we live, which she has been coveting

And for myself, I know I'm getting this rather swanky special ed of Christos Tsolkias's 'The Slap', which I haven't read
http://www.allenandunwin.com/BookCovers/resized_9781742374222_224_297_FitSquare.jpg

The cover of the Slap alone was enough to make we want it

For my pal (boy): The Basic Eight by Daniel Handler
For my pal (girl): Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar
For my nephew: The Authoritative Calvin And Hobbes by Bill Watterson
For me: That's The Way I See It by David Hockney

For myself (via Xmas bonus from work): Rat Girl by Kristin Hersh

mum: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, 'cause it's the best thing I've read this decade, and Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, as everyone else reps for it.

dad: The Portable Atheist ed. Christopher Hitchens, preaching to the ultra-converted but hopefully there's some good writing in it. The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals by Patrick Barkham. Random chancey pick.

i bought my best friend this book on the making of Night Of The Living Dead.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806533315/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0671437682&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=12H07K3VZ9667XNP63WG

Hope he doesn;t have it and hope he doesnt lurk on ILX

Matilda was on three-for-two so I tacked on Gilead (and Brideshead Revisited) for myself xp

the Beano annual

autobiography of danny dyer for my brother because we will both lol heartily.

Gordon brown's book on the globalisation crisis for my dad why bcos he think it lk intrsting

Book of beckett plays for other brother

Kick-ass for other brother

got the second book of robert jordan's wheel of time because i'm rebuilding that particular collection since losing them all a few years back, and because the latest few have been rad. Will no doubt be more on the way.

Add a nice copy of Henry Treece's Viking's Dawn to my kids' pile. Bit of good old-fashioned paganism for Christmas storytimes.

utterly loved that viking saga as a kid

Yeah me too! First time I ever cried reading a story was when that one norse dude got wasted ;_;

Got mr spacecadet some books he'd asked for, because I am unimaginative - science fiction mostly

Got my dad "Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey" because he's always been interested in maps. Also got him the new Oliver Sacks because it is about the neurology of vision and he is an optical physicist; I dunno if it will really be sciencey enough for him but I enjoyed Musicophilia

Got my mum a cooking book by whichever of the Two Fat Ladies is still alive, because she always watched them and it had some recipes which sounded like something she'd like (I hope)

And I didn't know what to ask my parents for this year so I went through the ILX top 100 books of the 00s list looking for things which sounded interesting and sent them a big list of books, so thank you everyone involved for that.

ordnance survey book sounds class

oh i got ms mac jamie oliver's 30 min meal book. she asked for it, so dont start, ok?

Happened every other page as I recall. Kind of bloodthirsty for bedtime reading. The history was pretty epic too - wouldn't mind an excuse to have a go at it again actually.

xp to Nick

The Ordnance Survey book's 5 reviews to date on Amazon are pretty mixed (the really negative one has appeared since I ordered it), but we'll see what he thinks of it. I only glanced at the contents myself and it's a pretty chunky book, so I can't comment.

Keith Richards for sis, Mark Twain autobiog for bro-in-law, cuz they asked for em

Bought my brother Steve Martin's Born Standing Up; bought a stage director whose nickname is Hal Princess (and she's that good of a director) Daniel Levetin's The World in Six Songs; bought a culinary-school student I know Buford's Heat.

oh i got ms mac jamie oliver's 30 min meal book. she asked for it, so dont start, ok?

No no, this is a terrific present, and I should know because I've just got it

this happens every year, and how it works is that it turns out to be a catalogue of meals that she will periodically open, present to me, say 'here, cook this', and then pout.

* jules renard's 'nature stories' for my mum, because she loves looking out of the window onto the poky little garden and telling stories about the activities of our limited city fauna (mr and mrs p. pigeon, mr blackbird, sunshine the squirrel).
* a book of raymond carver's poetry for my dad, because we have in common a love of small sinewy stories.
* 'wittgenstein's mistress' for my brother, because i got engrossed in it while browsing in the bookshop. also madhur jaffrey's 'world vegetarian' because everyone says it's amazing and last year he said he wanted actual recipes for making curries etc.
* timothy mo's 'the redundancy of courage' for my brother's girlfriend, because she's an international-politics-and-development kind of person and it seemed kind of intelligent-thriller-y, which i think is a style she likes.

omg u should get her to look into this guy, dan brown

>_<

For my brother, Daniel Woodrell's WINTER'S BONE. For my mom, Anne Tyler's NOAH'S COMPASS. For my dad, this one-time local dude's Japanese crime reporting memoir TOKYO VICE.

I tried to buy a copy of David Shield's REALITY HUNGER: A MANIFESTO for myself, but I couldn't find it, so I'm going to the library later.

ooh, I almost bought a Carter short stories collection for my brother, xxpost.

Carver*

* jules renard's 'nature stories' for my mum, because she loves looking out of the window onto the poky little garden and telling stories about the activities of our limited city fauna (mr and mrs p. pigeon, mr blackbird, sunshine the squirrel).

Just read this, it is pretty cool

* 'wittgenstein's mistress' for my brother, because i got engrossed in it while browsing in the bookshop. also madhur jaffrey's 'world vegetarian' because everyone says it's amazing and last year he said he wanted actual recipes for making curries etc.

Both these books are fine, fine things

Books I DID NOT get:

- A gardening book for my father

- A Russian novel for my mother (she has been reading War and Peace this year)

- Some awful Aston Villa related book for my brother

Got them all DVDs instead.

v pleased w/ my book-buying this christmas, all have gone down well:

herve this - molecular gastronomy for my dad who is always unsatisfied w/ paucity of justification in recipes
christopher clark - iron kingdom for a brother w/ curiosity about prussia (on the cover is a photo of a horseman w/ a lance hanging around by a zeppelin)
ann turnbull - greek myths for a brother now old enough to have a go at pronouncing the names right

My daughter gave me Absolute All-Star Superman and my wife gave me the biography of Willie Mays that was published this year.

My daughter gave me Absolute All-Star Superman

Wow.

She is awesome. She blew out her budget with that for me and the Mark Twain autobiography for my wife, and did handmade cross-stitch pieces for everybody else on her list.

my dad got the 'mike & mike' book

I bought a some gifts for friends whom I met for a late Xmas lunch yesterday:

• James Martin Every Day cookbook for someone who's into his new kindle but no way am I handing over a computer file for Christmas and he can't complain at getting a cookbook in physical form. Went for this because all the exotic ones had gone from the shelves by the time I went shopping and this had the best combination of pictures and easy instructions. Well, Nigella had much better pictures tbf but I just don't trust her.
• The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John Le Carré. Audiobook ensemble adaptation for a couple, one of whom is blind. Because I wanted something exciting rather than too cerebral and I've always meant to read it myself. I thought they were driving home after the holidays but it turns out they're flying, so this didn't entirely go to plan.
• 1001 Things To See In Town picture book for their kiddie. A collection of nicely-drawn street scenes with a pleasingly random collection of things to spot: 7 blue cars! 4 traffic lights! 1 street barber! Was pleased to see his reaction on opening it, his eyes were flicking about all over the place.

• Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky
• Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (both of these in lovely cloth covers)
• C by Tom McCarthy

I bought a friend a collection of Edgar Allen Poe's Dupin stories.

From my Mum I got 'All Souls' by Javier Marias

didn't know what to ask my parents for this year so I went through the ILX top 100 books of the 00s list

Update: got Kurkov's "Death and the Penguin" and Joseph O'Neill's "Netherland" from this list. Have started and am enjoying the Kurkov, but am not very far through even this small and breezy (so far) paperback as Christmas has been mad busy, as ever. Thanks, Ismael, for your hard work on the books poll, and thanks to everyone who voted too.

Also got some 33 1/3s and "Eclipse 2", an SF anthology featuring Alastair Reynolds and Stephen Baxter. Apparently I may have another copy of that waiting for me in Belfast (the dangers of Amazon wishlists - I picked this one semi-randomly on realising I hadn't updated my wishlist for ages, too) so I'm probably going to have to send this back.

bought my dad this
http://bucketsmag.com.au/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/BucketsOnline_FreeDarko_History.jpg
because he was really into the last Freedarko book (basically repossessed it from me, I think it's on his bookshelf atm actually)

also this
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518JX4TWWCL.jpg
which I saw randomly in a Barnes&Noble xmas eve and figured he and I could both read, since this sort of american history/politics/history of ideas thing is something of a sharedinterest

I've had that for years - need to get round to it myself in 2011

I'm really enjoying it so far — just wrapped up Oliver Wendell Holmes' Civil War misadventures, getting into William James' part now — he's about to sign on for an Amazon expedition with biological snake-oil salesman & unpleasant racist Louis Agassiz, which promises much excitement.

Villages of Britain: The Five Hundred Villages That Made the Countryside - for my mum, cos she likes that kind of gazetteer shit, it's quite good in its own way as well, kinda wishing I'd got her Troubles by JG Farrell tho, as she loves the Siege of Krishnapur. Birthday maybe.

The Anatomy of England: A History in Ten Matches - Jonathan Wilson. For my stepdad, thanks Ismael! Spent some time reading this myself, it's excellent, as Ismael says. Funnily enough read it backwards more or less, from matches I knew to ones that I didn't.

Thank You, Johnners by Jonathan Agnew - also for my stepdad, he requested it. As you might expect, leans towards the gentle, but despite that Johnners comes across as a bit of a bore (in the hectoring, practical joking sense). Some fascinating biographical detail as well - he watched his father drown at sea trying to rescue his sister it seems. There's also a lot of non Johnson cricketing anecdote which is quite good.

Remainder for my brother.

A Void - Perec, for my other brother.

Family doesn't buy books all that much for me any more, sadly, as I'll read almost anything.