Christmas is coming fast, so we’ve supplied you with ideas for what to get your loved ones this festive season!
For the person who has read everything…
If you’re struggling to choose a book for someone who seems to have read everything, why not let your favourite authors give the recommendations instead? What Writers Read, edited by Pandora Sykes, is the perfect gift for voracious readers, featuring contributions from 34 bestselling authors, including Elizabeth Strout, Caleb Azumah Nelson, Nick Hornby and Dolly Alderton. Each writer chooses one book with a special place in their heart and tells us why it’s their favourite in an earnest essay or humorous anecdote. It’s fun to find out which authors share your literary tastes (or who might change your opinion on a book you’d previously overlooked) and to finish the collection with a host of recommendations for your new year’s TBR. Plus, it’s a stocking filler-sized hardback finished with beautiful gold foil, and sales support the National Literacy Trust.
Alternatively, surprise your recipient with a book that they definitely won’t have read by preordering a forthcoming 2025 release. For those who don’t want to wait too long, I recommend A Kind of Madness by Uche Okonkwo, a lively and unexpected collection of short stories set in contemporary Lagos, or The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter, a hauntingly surreal story for fans of Julia Armfield and Mona Awad – both out in January from VERVE.
For the person who needs something short but not-so-sweet…
Has the person you’re buying for complained about being in a reading slump? Are they struggling to find a book they can really connect with? Well, I’ve got two suggestions for you: Blue Hour by Tiffany Clarke Harrison and If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin. Both are short yet insightful commentaries on the racial issues and police brutality plaguing America, with family and community at their heart. While Blue Hour‘s narration is lyrical, fluid and borderline poetry, If Beale Street Could Talk is straight forward and blunt, mirroring the diction of a young woman growing up in 1950s Harlem.
Somehow, the texts explore a lot within less than 160 pages, delving into art, politics and covering a love story that you won’t forget. These are the perfect texts to break a reading slump and to become emotionally invested in the lives of these characters.
For those who are fans of screen adaptations…
I recently went to see Small Things Like These which is the film adaptation – starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Watson, Eileen Walsh and Ella Cannon – of Claire Keegan’s tender novel of the same name. Set in the not too distant past, yet seemingly a world away from today, the film and novel exemplify what can happen when people choose to ignore the truths on their doorstep. When a local coal merchant begins to realise what is happening behind the doors of the local convent, he must face his own inner turmoil of whether to act upon this knowledge. The novel is based upon the true story of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene laundries, the last of which closed in 1996, when I was nearly twenty – the same age of many of the young unmarried mothers who were forced to live and work in them. I would urge anyone to read the novel before seeing the film, if they haven’t already. It’s a slim yet incredibly powerful read set in the run up to Christmas and is a story of ‘hope and quiet heroism’ as one man confronts this terrible truth.
Another novel that I love which is also set in a small Irish village, where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp, is Chloe Michelle Howarth’s acclaimed novel Sunburn. An astute and tender portrayal of queer love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up, it is set only a few years later than Small Things Like These in the 1990s.
We have limited signed copies available of Sunburn if you’re looking for a gift for a book lover or to treat yourself!
For the person who loves a matching set…
Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy (consisting of the novels Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance) has just been rereleased with gorgeous new, matching covers to celebrate its 10th anniversary and the long-awaited release of the fourth in the series, Absolution. Considered a ‘contemporary masterpiece’ (Guardian), the Southern Reach Trilogy challenges the boundary between known and unknown, human and alien, terror and limitless beauty – perfect for your friend or relative who loves sci-fi, horror or ‘weird’ fiction. HarperCollins UK are even offering a discount if you buy the anniversary editions of the first three books in the series together.
If sci-fi’s not their thing, why not opt for VERVE’s matching editions of Laurie Petrou’s Stargazer and Sister of Mine. If the person you’re buying for loves books about the dark side of sisterhood and female friendship, books in which close bonds escalate to dangerous obsessions, they’ll love Laurie’s novels. Think Coco Mellors meets Donna Tartt.