Books to Give As Gifts This Holiday Season Books

10 Books to Give as Gifts This Holiday Season

For the chef child rocker and assorted bookworms on your list

Kate Hiscock/Flickr/Getty Happy holiday reading! Is there a better than a good book? The recipient will still be turning its pages long after the lights and tinsel have been taken down, savoring the story it tells — and thinking fondly of the giver. Like Santa, we've been making a list, and now we've checked it twice to make sure it contains gift-book ideas for every personality you may be shopping for in the months ahead. Publisher: Random House, $25

For Your Favorite Foodie

Nothing says "home for the holidays" more than homemade chocolate pudding, and Clio Goodman's lets you bring the hottest new dessert shop in New York City into your own kitchen — or under the tree of your favorite foodie. Goodman, the owner of hipster mecca Puddin' by Clio in the East Village, offers "foolproof recipes" for everything from beloved standards (butterscotch pudding, tapioca) to more ambitious fare (dulce de leche, banana upside-down cake). Her cookbook lives up to its subtitle: Luscious and Unforgettable Puddings, Parfaits, Pudding Cakes, Pies, and Pops. And we haven't even mentioned the toppings!
Publisher: Abrams, $60

For the Unreconstructed Rocker br

are guaranteed to eat up the arrestingly intimate portraits that leap from the pages of photographer Lynn Goldsmith's . (That's a young Bruce Springsteen on the cover, left.) Here's a candid close-up of Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger, tête-à-tête in 1977; there's Keith Richards, cradling his Stratocaster (and wearing a T-shirt owned by singer Rachel Sweet); and on yet another page is an injured Patti Smith, being loaded into an ambulance after a fall from a Tampa stage that broke several neck vertebrae. From her stretcher, Smith urged: "Lynn, take pictures." Man, did she!
Publisher: Random House Children's Books, $9.99

For the Young Reader or Listener

True believers will be charmed by the picture book in which Melissa Stanton (full disclosure: she's an AARP editor) imagines what might happen when a 6-year-old girl named Ava decides to write Santa Claus a thank-you note after Christmas — and whaddya know, he writes back! The exchange of handwritten letters continues once a month throughout the year, culminating in Santa's assurance to Ava that "I'm real to the people who believe in me — like you." Artist Jennifer A. Bell's kinetic illustrations add to each month's holiday joy.
Publisher: Bloomsbury, $30

For the Political Junkie

Political animals of any stripe will delight in opening either of these books as presents. Option 1: We get an unvarnished look inside the soul of in , in which "one of the most gifted writers ever to occupy the White House" warns Eleanor Roosevelt, "I am certain that you are the victim of misinformation" for bad-mouthing his father, Joseph. Poignantly, the 36th president also promises a wartime girlfriend, "If anything happens to me I have this knowledge that if I had lived to be a hundred I could only have improved the quantity of my life, not the quality."
Publisher: Penguin, $29.95 Option 2:

In , Mark Halperin and John Heilemann use their insider access to explain why President Obama chose to interpret his second electoral victory as an even more powerful mandate than his first. From squabbling Republicans and the self-sabotaging Mitt Romney to "mustachioed message mavens" who struggled to keep their hot-tempered boss from coming across in debates as "nasty Obama," no one departs this stage unscathed.

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Publisher: Simon & Schuster, $25.99

For the Mystery Lover br

Way too many choices will confront you in a year when every thriller writer from Heather Graham and Marcia Clark to Lawrence Block and brought out new novels. Option 1: Buy a book written by all four of them — plus 16 of their closest writer-friends! You read that right. The new is billed as "One chilling mystery … 20 thrilling writers," with each author contributing a chapter to this tale of an Upper East Side socialite and her missing wayward daughter. Publisher: Vintage, $25 Option 2: If this mosaic approach intrigues you but you want something more seasonal, pick up a copy of , edited by titan-of-the-field Otto Penzler. Touting his anthology as "the most complete collection of Yuletide whodunits ever assembled," Penzler invites the reader to "have yourself a crooked little Christmas" with these tales of "festive felonies, unscrupulous Santas and misdemeanors under the mistletoe." Contributors include , Ed McBain, Sara Paretsky and more than 50 other legends.
Publisher: HarperCollins, $29.99

For the Bon Vivant br

The South is back in style — have you noticed? How else to explain why "Hipsters from Brooklyn now descend on our mountain precincts in search of chocolate gravy," writes John T. Edge in . Compiled by the editors of Garden & Gun magazine, this "guide to living the good life" will teach the bon vivant on your holiday list or find the best peach stand on the back roads of South Carolina. And — crucially — how to season "the almighty cast-iron skillet." The secret, all you auslanders, is with lard.
Publisher: Celebra, $25.95

For the Wannabe Comedian br

Is there one in your family? Does he haunt your holiday gatherings? Keep him quiet — for a while, at any rate — by gift-wrapping him a copy of by stand-up comic and talk-show host George Lopez. His 40s were "a touch-and-go decade," says Lopez: divorce, kidney disease, two canceled shows. And though Lopez used to "lie to survive," when he hit 50 in 2011 he vowed: "I'm not gonna lie. Anymore. Not at my age. I don't have that good a memory."
Publisher: The New York Review of Books, $30

For the Armchair Traveler

You know you've led an exciting life when your biography is subtitled An Adventure — and that's just what your favorite armchair traveler is in for when he opens your gift of by Artemis Cooper. Fermor's life (1915-2011) overflowed with travel, romance and derring-do. He walked from Holland to Istanbul in 1934 (and later wrote three books about it), fell in love with a Romanian countess, and abducted a German general from Crete in WWII. No wonder Welsh historian and travel writer Jan Morris calls this book a "magnificent biography [of] one of the very best of men."
Allan Fallow writes about books for AARP Media.

Also of Interest br

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