Holiday Gift Guide: Orgasmic Appetizers and Matching Wines by Shari Darling

Picture this: a full house at your place in the weeks leading up to the Big Holiday. You come out of the kitchen with a tray. And on that tray, Seared Scallop with a Pickled Ginger and Clementine Butter Sauce. And nestled next to it, a platter of Meatballs in Camembert Sauce that you put down on the table right next to the Chipotle Goat Cheese Dip with Bagel Wedges. And the whole place sighs. Oh heck, this is your fantasy: the whole place applauds. To be honest, though, Shari Darling would take it up a notch: she’d have the whole place moan.

The culinary orgasm is sometimes just a happy accident. As a home cook (I’m not a chef), I love to hear my guests moaning over my food and wine choices …. For many of us, provoking this sublime response in others is hit and miss. What if you could learn the science and art of causing the culinary orgasm by purposefully preparing hedonistic recipes and matching wines, and you could produce them on a consistent and frequent basis?

In Orgasmic Appetizers and Matching Wines (Whitecap Books) Darling takes us there. Why appetizers instead of something more substantial? “Appetizers are indulgent and irresistible, risky and exciting. They’re sexy!” Are you sensing a theme here?

Orgasmic Appetizers and Matching Wines will make a terrific present to yourself on your quest for unforgettable holiday entertaining, or to make a strong statement under someone’s tree. This might very well be one of those gifts that just keep on giving.

Holiday Gift Guide: The Fire by Katherine Neville

While a few reviewers have been somewhat cool about Katherine Neville’s long-awaited sequel to 1988’s The Eight, we predict that The Fire (Ballantine) will still manage to find its way under a lot of trees this holiday season.

The Fire features Alexandra Solarin, the sole daughter of the heroic couple we first met in The Eight. The Fire covers a lot of fictional ground between 1822 and 2003 while Solarin searches for a piece of a legendary chess set that -- in its own context -- has the capability of transforming the shape of the world.

The best news for fans could come at the very end: it seems possible that the game might continue at some future point. The possible bad news: will we have to wait another 20 years?

Holiday Gift Guide: The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip Pullman

If you’ve never encountered the book before, reading it is like stumbling across a lost treasure.

First published in 1985, a decade before The Golden Compass ever saw the light of day, Philip Pullman’s mystery series featuring 16 year old Sally Lockhart provides a glimpse at a sort of proto-Lyra Belacqua.

The Ruby in the Smoke (Knopf) was the first of four Sally Lockhart Mysteries, a series set in Victorian London. In the first book, Sally is trying to solve the mystery of her father’s death. Pullman aficionados will know that all of the Sally Lockhart books were well received when they were first published, and they have never been out of print. However, if you weren’t at the time paying close attention to children’s literature, it would have been possible to miss them as it would be another decade before Pullman became really well known after his Dark Materials trilogy belted him into the stratosphere. When it was first published in the United States in 1997, The Ruby in the Smoke was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Booklist Editor’s Choice and was nominated for the Edgar.

Knopf has chosen to republish all four Sally Lockhart mysteries at the same time: The Ruby in the Smoke, The Shadow in the North, The Tiger in the Well and The Tin Princess are all available in very handsome and reasonably priced paperback editions, and just in time for holiday gift giving for the young mystery reader on your list.

Holiday Gift Guide: The 2009 Old Farmer’s Almanac

Obviously, you’d don’t have to be an old farmer -- or even any kind of farmer -- to enjoy The Old Farmer’s Almanac (Yankee Publishing), which has been published annually since 1792. The contemporary editions retain all the down-homey advice that made the annual publication an absolute must for those who made their living from the land, but gears itself these days to answering questions and bringing smiles to readers wherever they live. The 2009 edition includes articles on fashion trends, growing tomatoes and even one on global cooling. But the heart of the whole thing is in the calendar pages. “They present sky sightings and astronomical data for the entire year and are what make this book a true almanac.”

Who needs an almanac? Brides, gardeners, event planners: basically anyone who wants a shot at seeing into the future. In any case, the book is slender, inexpensive and will slide easily into a stocking and should, theoretically, provide a whole year of fun.

Holiday Gift Guide: Garfield: 30 Years of Laughs and Lasagna

Who says nothing good came out of the 1970s? Jim Davis’ sardonic comicbook kitty, Garfield, turned 30 this year. And though he was born in the 1970s, as Davis points out in an introduction, “Garfield morphed from a grumpy lump of wisecracking clay into the iconic ‘spokescat’ for the ‘80s generation: the ‘Me Generation.’ What perfect timing!”

Garfield: 30 Years of Laughs and Lasagna (Ballantine) offers up a generous sampling of Garfield over the decades. The over 400 strips include 30 that Davis calls his favorites. A wonderful remembrance or a great introduction, and an anniversary celebration befitting “the world’s most famous feline.”

Not quite enough Garfield? Or maybe a little too much? Garfield Minus Garfield (Ballantine) is a ridiculous idea that works eerily well. Based on a viral Internet joke, this little book looks exactly like the Garfield books of yore: except there’s no Garfield. Garfield’s owner, Jon, is left speaking into a void, looking like a lonely kook when he should be speaking to a kitty. Good fun!

Holiday Gift Guide: 101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada

101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada (Key Porter Books) is a weird little book. It reads like an anthology of Canadian stuff as described by a handful of Canada’s top contemporary writers. Contributions by Camilla Gibb, Christopher Moore, Todd Babiak, Michelle Berry and others reflect a view of Canada that is distinctly east of the Rockies in a package that looks and feels more like a children’s book than perhaps it really should. The topics are not childish, however. The contributors tackle health care, the Canadian flag, peacekeeping, hydroelectricity, the St. Lawrence Seaway and oil.

101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada is the ultimate result of an Ipso-Reid Survey Canada’s Dominion Institute did that asked Canadians -- about 3000 of them -- what things they considered quintessentially Canadian.

“In the final analysis,” writes editor Rudyard Griffiths, 101 Things Canadians Should Know About Canada shows that we are not, as we are often told, a disparate nation made up of ornery regions, cloistered ethnic groups, and aggrieved linguistic communities. Instead, we are a people who enjoy and benefit from a set of widely shared understandings about the fundamentals of a common Canadian identity.” As well as the Stanley Cup, Queen Elizabeth. And moose. Quite a mix, eh?

Considering the contributing talent and the topics covered, the book is not as sharp as it could be. Still. It’s a slender little volume that will fit handily into a size-large stocking, making it the perfect gift for the Canuck (or Canuck-lover) on your list.

Holiday Gift Guide: Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Half a century on, Holly Golightly is as fresh and compelling as she was the day Truman Capote first skated her across the page.

Capote’s novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, turns 50 just as holiday shopping gets going in earnest. Vintage has published an anniversary volume that goes on sale today. The film, of course, won’t join the anniversary for another couple of years. According to The New York Observer, Capote didn’t want Audrey Hepburn for the part:

Conjure Audrey Hepburn, if you like, but my Holly Golightly has less polish, more sizzle. (Truman Capote thought Hepburn was wrong for the part; he wanted Marilyn Monroe, which is maybe too much sizzle, if there can be such a thing.) Yes, she’s beautiful, but what makes her irresistible is the wild jumble of words that comes pouring out of her mouth:

“I’d never be a movie star. It’s too hard; and if you’re intelligent, it’s too embarrassing. My complexes aren’t inferior enough: being a movie star and having a big fat ego are supposed to go hand-in-hand; actually it’s essential not to have any ego at all. I don’t mean I’d mind being rich and famous. That’s very much on my schedule, and some day I’ll try to get around to it; but if it happens, I’d like to have my ego tagging along. I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

Also on sale today, the paperback edition of the very splendid Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote (Modern Library), another good holiday gift giving choice.

Holiday Gift Guide: I Live Here

I Live Here (Pantheon) is stunning, heartbreaking, riveting. True.

Actually four books held together in an artful portfolio, each documents the stories of some of the displaced women and children in four locations: survivors of ethnic cleansing in Burma, war in Chechnya, globalization in Mexico and AIDS in Malawi.

Some of the voices we encounter belong to those very women and children, other stories come to us through noted artists and writers -- Ann-Marie MacDonald, Joe Sacco and Karen Connelly among them.

The book is part of a project put in motion by actor Mia Kirshner, who was initially looking to fill a hole in a seemingly rich and comfortable life and possibly ended up with more than she bargained for, but certainly not more than she could chew. In a recent interview, Kirshner said that, on her travels, she “mostly met people who weren’t that different from you and me. Sure, they were desperately poor, but they were even more desperate to be heard. This project is about making that happen.”

The I Live Here Foundation can be reached online.

Holiday Gift Guide: Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman

It’s like we turned a special corner, hit some magical turnpike or passed a mystical milestone no one can really see. But -- quite suddenly -- everything seems like Neil Gaiman, all the time.

One of the reasons for all the brouhaha, of course, is that November marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Gaiman’s seminal Sandman series. Vertigo Comics is marking the date with the publication of -- among other things -- The Absolute Sandman Vol. 4, which is the final of four slip-cased volumes collecting the final 19 issues of The Sandman series. Also, keep your eyes posted for other publications and events commemorating the date. For example, on November 9th, author and designer Chip Kidd will discuss Sandman with Gaiman at a special anniversary celebration at Kaufmann Concert Hall in NYC. More information on that event can be found here.

Another mark of the author’s achievement comes in the form of Prince of Stories: the Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman (St. Martin’s Press) by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden and Stephen R. Bissette. If the authors seem to occasionally run to hyperbole, we must forgive them: at this moment, and just a few days shy of his 48th birthday, Neil Gaiman seems poised on the very lip of the type of literary achievement that nails names into history books forever. From the introduction to Prince of Stories:

Who is Neil Gaiman?

Forbes magazine labeled him “the most famous author you’ve never heard of.” His publisher, William Morrow, calls him a “pop culture phenomenon.” He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of “the top ten living post modern writers,” along with Thomas Pynchon and William Burroughs.

Prince of Stories is the perfect biography of a powerful artist at mid-career. It collects some of the interviews he’s done throughout his career, never-before-published writing by Gaiman himself, rare artwork, comics and book covers; trivia on Gaiman, a Gaiman timeline; Gaiman trivia; a foreword by Terry Pratchett; information on the entire Gaiman oeuvre and more. So much more.

Prince of Stories is not the final word on Gaiman. Not by a longshot. With any luck at all, we won’t be seeing that book for many, many years. In the meantime, though, fans of the author and his work simply must have this book. It casts a light on this important author in a way we’ve never seen before.

Holiday Gift Guide

Even though selecting a gift book can’t help but be subjective, the editors of January Magazine have combed through the stacks and chosen the books we’d most like to get -- and give -- in art & culture, children’s books, cookbooks, crime fiction, fiction and non-fiction this holiday season.

As usual, we’ve included links to an online bookseller. This is not necessarily intended to help you purchase. Feel free to print the relevant pages and carry them with you when you visit your favorite independent bookstore to make your purchases. While there, make sure you linger in the stacks to take a taste of prose here, a hit of adventure there. As always, the idea of our holiday gift guide feature isn’t to convince you to buy these books, but rather to help you remember to keep book buying near the top of the your to-do list: not just during the holidays, but all year.

We hope you enjoy this year’s January Magazine holiday gift guide. We’ve certainly worked hard putting it together. But if you take only one thing away from it, our work will be justified: there is no better gift than a book, no matter where it’s purchased or what time of year. Happy reading, through the holidays and always.

Here’s the main Holiday Gift Guide page on January. The various genre pages are here:

• Art & Culture Gift Books
  
• Children's Gift Books
  
• Gift Cookbooks
  
• Crime Fiction Gift Books
  
• Fiction Gift Books
  
• Non-Fiction Gift Books

Holiday Gift Guide: Non-Fiction

Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker by Stacy A. Cordery (Viking) 608 pages
Brash but beautiful, an assiduous rules-breaker known for smoking in public and speaking her mind, Alice Longworth, the oldest child of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, turned a desire to gain her father’s attention into a determination to influence politicians for most of the 20th century. She wed a Republican congressman from Ohio, who went on to become Speaker of the House and cheat on their marriage (which led Alice to bear a child with renowned Senator William Borah of Idaho). A great one for cross-party manipulations, she did her damnedest to undermine Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations and denounced her cousin Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. But she later ditched the GOP and voted for John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, only to go on and encourage Richard Nixon’s second run for the presidency. A vigorous gossip, Alice Longworth was famous for the adage, “If you haven’t anything nice to say, come sit by me.” Cordery captures her in all her defiant finery. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Alone Against the Arctic by Anthony Dalton (Heritage House) 192 pages
At times during Alone Against the Arctic you can’t help but wonder what the hell author Anthony Dalton thinks he’s doing. “All around me, in and out of the mist, the frigid grey Bering Sea heaved and rolled with the storm .... The wind shrieked and moaned its displeasure at my presence. Audacity jerked viciously from right to left and back again, making it difficult for me to stay upright.” And just in case you’re imagining some grown-up sized boat, think again: Audacity was the four-metre long open speedboat Dalton had chosen to attempt a solo transit of the Northwest Passage. The journey was a near fatal adventure and Dalton describes it wonderfully in Alone Against the Arctic. As close as I’d want to being there. -- Aaron Blanton

America in Space: NASA’s First Fifty Years foreword by Neil Armstrong (Abrams) 351 pages
America in Space sweeps you away. This is one of those large format coffee table books that never fail to make booklovers drool. In this case, some of that book envy (or appreciation, in the case of a gift) will be coming from space enthusiasts. Published in collaboration with NASA, this is the real deal, a book quite worthy of launching NASA’s 50 year anniversary celebration that began this fall. Here we have the story of the American space program, told in part by 480 photographs -- many of them previously unpublished -- directly from NASA’s archives. As befits a NASA co-production, the story is told chronologically and though it seems a bit arrogant to start chapter one with the words “In the beginning,” it does describe that starting point in the darkness of the cold war. The book concludes, appropriately enough, on some super two-page spread reproductions of photographs taken with the aid of the Hubble telescope. Since most of us have only ever seen these on Web pages or small in magazines, it’s a real treat -- and entirely germane to the subject matter -- to include them here. An amazing book and an absolute must for anyone with a strong interest in the American space program. -- David Middleton

The Associates: How Four Capitalists Created California by Richard Rayner (W.W. Norton/Atlas & Company) 224 pages
In the history of American business, few men have exercised the power that Collis Huntington, Leland Stanford, Charles Crocker and Mark Hopkins -- the “Big Four,” as they were known, amid cheers and sneers -- did in the 19th century. Once middle-class store owners in Sacramento, California, they reached national prominence by constructing the western portion of the first transcontinental railroad. That transportation link ended the West’s pioneer era and left the Bear State with a genial arrogance regarding its place in history (“California Annexes the United States,” read placards carried through San Francisco after the last spike was driven in 1869) that persists to this day. It also provoked the Big Four to extremes and deceit in order to sustain their influence. L.A. novelist Rayner (The Cloud Sketcher) recounts the lives and legacies of these robber barons in often droll detail. -- J. Kingston Pierce

A Little Fruitcake: A Childhood in Holidays by David Valdes Greenwood (DaCapo)
Those who loved the youthful recollections in David Sedaris’ Me Talk Pretty One Day will cotton to David Valdes Greenwood’s A Little Fruitcake. Valdes Greenwood is a little less nasty than Sedaris, and he finds more in the world to warm the heart, nevertheless he manages to find a somewhat similar stance: to plunk us down in the middle of a somewhat familiar scene and look at it from a new and different angle. As the title suggests, A Little Fruitcake is strongly holiday flavored, Valdes Greenwood manages to look at the ordinary and with humor, wit and a knack for finding the spot that makes us human. “But then again,” Valdes Greenwood writes at one point, “what family is really ‘just another family’? The dramas that play out between people who love each other, the histories between the holidays, are specific.” Exactly right. Exactly so. And yet, Valdes Greenwood’s talent is such that in sharing his memories, we often see ourselves. -- Aaron Blanton

The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisantz Raymond (Carroll & Graf) 320 pages
Over a period of almost three decades (from the 1920s to 1950) Georgia Tann, operating a Memphis, Tennessee-based children’s home, sold some 5,000 infants she had taken from poor single mothers -- by means legal and not -- to wealthy clients, including actress Joan Crawford, falsifying birth certificates to cover her tracks. Tann argued that the kids were better off, though some were put to work as cheap labor on farms. While her scheme helped to popularize adoption, it also tarnished the procedure. Raymond not only recounts Tann’s activities, but explores how crooked politics and the dearth of options open to women in the early 20th century helped this black-market operation to thrive. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Bird Songs from Around the World by Les Beletsky (Raincoast Books) 368 pages
Strictly speaking, Bird Songs from Around the World is probably slightly less useful than its predecessor, 2006’s Bird Songs: 250 North American Birds in Song. Where that book could, presumably, be used as something of a field guide (as in, “Honey, was that an Ocellated Turkey we saw today?” “I dunno, dear. Let’s listen to the book and find out.”) you are less likely to find yourself in a situation where you need to know exactly what a bird from Africa and one from Australia sound like on the same day. Still, “need” is seldom the bottom line when it comes to books. Bird Songs from Around the World is well written and illustrated, it’s interesting and -- because of that crazy voice box with bird sounds supplied by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology -- it’s even kinda fun.

Boom!: Voices of the Sixties by Tom Brokaw (Random House, 663 pages)
Tom Brokaw’s fourth book promises to be as big a seller as all of his previous works, including 1998’s The Greatest Generation. In some ways, that book could be the parent to this one. Both are wide-ranging social histories and both break things down to era-defined specifics. It’s an interesting way of doing things and Brokaw does it oh so well. But where that book dealt with people of an age to have fought in WWII, as the title suggests Boom! brings us the subtitle Voices of the Sixties. And what voices! Think about it: The space race, the cold war, Vietnam, Woodstock, Women’s Lib, as Brokaw says at one point, “The Sixties were a time when the nerve endings of the body politic were constantly stimulated with new sensations, but it was also a time of mindless fantasy, groundless arrogance, spiritual awareness, callow youth, and misguided elders.” The journey Brokaw takes us on is complete, a reunion for those who were there, a historic overview for those who were not. But since this is Tom Brokaw, still one of the most respected journalists in the United States, he manages to tie what we learned and what we should have learned in the 1960s to the present and the future. “The Sixties realigned both political parties, and the great questions for 2008 will be “Is this the end of the Sixties for the Democrats? And will the Republicans find a new champion...?” A complete look at a fascinating era. It’s sure to be on many holiday lists this year.

C.C. Pyle’s Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America by Geoff Williams (Rodale Press) 328 pages
Endurance contests (dance marathons, flagpole sitting, etc.) were very popular in America during the 1920s, but none was so audacious or potentially grueling as the Los Angeles-to-New York foot race organized by fast-talking sports promoter C.C. Pyle in the year before the Great Depression struck. Enticed by a $25,000 prize, 199 runners lined up at the starting gate; a remarkable 85 made it to Madison Square Garden (a distance of 3,423.5 miles) almost three months later. Williams is swift off his mark with commentary about this race’s era and the wrenching miles ahead of the racers, and finishes strong with personality studies of Pyle and the contest’s longshot winner, part-Cherokee Andy Payne. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium by Daniel Schorr (Viking) 400 pages
Recruited to CBS News in the 1950s by Edward R. Murrow, named on Richard Nixon’s “enemies list,” and threatened with imprisonment after he released to the public a damaging report about CIA corruption, Daniel Schorr -- now 91 years old and the senior news analyst at National Public Radio -- is legendary in U.S. journalism circles. He brings his extraordinary knowledge of history and history-makers (he’s covered 12 presidents so far) to this collection of piercing commentaries about everything from international affairs and national health care, to executive privilege battles and the Supreme Court “junta” that installed George W. Bush in the Oval Office in 2000. A fascinating primer on American politics of the last quarter-century. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer’s by Lauren Kessler (Viking) 272 pages
The author had long endured a very difficult relationship with her mother. But after watching Alzheimer’s disease first turn her parent into a stranger in her own life, and then steal away that life, Kessler, who heads up the University of Oregon’s graduate program in literary non-fiction, decided the way to assuage her guilt was to sign on as a caregiver at an Alzheimer’s facility. She wasn’t surprised by the humbling labor or sense of powerlessness attendant to this job; what she hadn’t expected, however, were the humor and humanity that end-of-life care would expose. Unsentimental, yet warmed by the characters of the patients and the underpaid attendants struggling to keep them comfortable, Dancing with Rose shows just how much life can still be enjoyed by those with so little of it left. -- J. Kingston Pierce

The Dead Guy Interviews: Conversations with 45 of the Most Accomplished, Notorious, and Deceased Personalities in History by Michael A. Stusser (Penguin Books) 394 pages
Michael Stusser’s a funny guy. He was apparently born that way, and hasn’t grown out of it. Which is kinda good, because otherwise this book probably wouldn’t exist. The concept of the “dead guy interviews” began in Mental Floss, the bimonthly magazine of humorous trivia, but eventually grew beyond that, because ... well, it’s just such a damn fine idea. As Stusser is quoted in a news release about this volume: “You know that question, ‘If you could have dinner with anybody in all of history, who would it be?’ Well, I decided to meet them all.” In a manner of speaking, anyway. Stusser’s “conversations” with the voluble dead are executed for entertainment, of course, and he makes the most of them, chatting up Catherine the Great on the subject of her sex life, asking Frida Kahlo whether she ever considered getting an eyebrow waxing, and fielding death threats from J. Edgar Hoover as he inquires about the former FBI honcho’s cross-dressing proclivities. There are 45 interviews here altogether, including those with Cleopatra, Crazy Horse, Salvador Dali, Mae West, Harry Houdini, and Abraham Lincoln. And while they’re cleverly done, they are also -- get this! -- educational. So many of today’s readers avoid learning about history, but this paperback actually makes the subject enjoyable, as Edgar Allan Poe talks about the absence of copyright protections in his day, Thomas Jefferson explains the early development of America’s political parties, and Henry VIII recounts the reasons he did away with his various wives. “In the end,” Stusser writes in his introduction, “I learned more from these masters than I ever did in school.” Readers of The Dead Guy Interviews are at risk of realizing the same thing. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations by David. R. Montgomery (University of California Press) 295 pages
While much has been written about factory and auto emissions polluting our air, and how greenhouse gases are causing icecaps to melt and polar bears to suffer, fewer alarms have sounded about threats to the earth’s most basic resource: dirt. Yet it, too, is being depleted by overuse, argues University of Washington professor Montgomery. He digs through a fascinating mix of human and archaeological history to show how societies have risen and collapsed based on the quality and care of what's right beneath their feet. Montgomery also makes the case that, without conservation strategies, today’s agricultural methods will one day make it impossible for the land to keep feeding the world’s population. -- J. Kingston Pierce

East Wind Melts The Ice: A Memoir through the Seasons by Liza Dalby, University of California Press 2007
Dalby, best known as the “American Geisha,” continues her fascination with Japanese culture in this exquisite book. Part memoir, part almanac, part gardener’s journal, part meditation on American and Asian cultures, this book hasn’t received the attention it so richly deserves. East Wind began with Dalby’s study of the Chinese Almanac as it was adapted by the Japanese: a measure of calendrical time divided into 72 five-day periods. Each five-day increment is named. “East Wind Melts the Ice” indicates the first breath of Spring. It’s deeply associated with an aspect of Japanese natural life: lunar cycles, the appearances of birds, fish, flora and fauna. The Japanese have a name for a book like this: a saijiki: “‘a year’s journal’ entwining personal experiences, natural phenomena, and seasonal categories.” Until Dalby’s work, we had no such entity in English, what she calls “seventy-two separate windows into a life lived between two cultures.” Moving meditatively across time and place, East Wind beautifully conveys a richness of tone, a call to observation of the natural world often lost in a culture overcome by technological efficacy. From the swallow haiku (March 22-26) to the Freesia in Dalby’s Berkeley’s garden, we are shown the world in a way many of us are forgetting, had we ever known it. A bonus is the book itself, a beautiful object clothbound, celadon, with a cover detail of Mayumi Oda’s “Garden in Rain.” You need not even wrap it, though you are best advised to purchase more than one, lest you cannot bear to part with it. -- Diane Leach

Enchanted Isles: The Southern Gulf Islands by David A.E. Spalding, photography by Kevin Oke (Harbour Publishing) 144 pages
Spalding and Oke chronicle and celebrate a special part of the world -- the magical islands nestled between the southern most part of mainland British Columbia and Vancouver Island. And they do it in a way that hasn’t been done before. The southern Gulf Islands are up there as one of the most popular destinations in the region. These two long time Gulf Islanders are the perfect duo to present this area, from the most populated island, Saltspring, with 12,000 residents, to tiny unpopulated D’Arcy almost straddling the American/Canadian border. Spalding’s unusual textual treatment is as layered and unexpected as the islands themselves. Coffee table books like this are usually read; this one you experience. Somehow the flavour has gone into the mix along with the ingredients; how did they do that? The people, the places and the history all visually unfold on the page. A stunning gift book or to grace your own coffeetable. -- Cherie Thiessen

The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 by Jay Winik (HarperCollins) 688 pages
Six years after the publication of his incisive Civil War study, 1865: The Month That Saved America, Winik turns his clear, detail-oriented vision to America’s diapered days, an era of interlocking world conflicts. George Washington sought to protect the United States’ future by normalizing trade relations with Britain. France was riven by a revolution that would lead to Napoleon Bonaparte’s European hostilities. Russia was riding high after its victory in the Russo-Turkish War, and the first U.S. clash with an Islamic power -- the piratical Barbary States of Northern Africa -- was about to explode. With a dramatist’s skill, Winik re-creates this broad canvas of ideological disputes, allowing its major players -- Thomas Jefferson, Catherine the Great, revolutionist Maximilien Robespierre, and more -- to command the stage. Compelling history, indeed. -- J. Kingston Pierce

How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else by Michael Gates Gill (Gotham Books) 272 pages
An unusual tale from the barista trenches: Gill, the 63-year-old son of legendary New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, is accustomed to high social status and a six-figure income at a major Manhattan advertising agency. But within a short period, he loses his job and his wife, and is diagnosed with a brain tumor. Lacking health insurance, he goes to work at Starbucks. Turns out, it’s the best thing for him, curbing his sense of entitlement, teaching him to appreciate hard work, and giving him a mentor in the form of an African-American who helps him achieve self-confidence he never had before. All of that’s here, plus an inside look at Seattle’s best-known company. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Ledyard: In Search of the First American Explorer by Bill Gifford (Harcourt) 352 pages
Eighteenth-century explorer John Ledyard packed more adventure into his 38 years than most men do in lifetimes twice that long. Connecticut-born, he ditched college to sail the Atlantic as a common seamen, jumped ship in England, and joined Captain James Cook on his voyage to the South Pacific, Hawaii and North America’s west coast. He partnered with John Paul Jones in the fur trade, began a hike across Russia that was also supposed to carry him on to North America (but he was arrested and deported by Catherine the Great), and persuaded U.S. President Thomas Jefferson to launch the Lewis and Clark Expedition. By the time Ledyard died, while planning a traversal of northern Africa, he was famous. Gifford hopes to rescue him from modern obscurity by re-creating Ledyard’s voyages, along the way filling out the dimensions of this storied “American Traveler” with anecdotes about his chivalry, his curiosity regarding indigenous peoples and his lustful appetites. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Life: The Most Notorious Crimes in American History: Fifty Fascinating Cases from the Files edited by Robert Sullivan (LIFE Books, 144 pages)
Now, clearly, this is not a book you rush out and buy for your mother-in-law, especially if you don’t know her tastes. But if you have someone on your gift list who adores true crime, Life: The Most Notorious Crimes in American History could well be just the thing. There aren’t many cases here that true crime fans won’t have heard of, but the coverage is remarkable, including as it does photographs and other material from the LIFE magazine archives. The book is broken into four sections, with crimes organized by type: passion, politics, profit and pointless mayhem. (I wonder if they had to struggle to make them all begin with “P”?) And so we have the deaths of Sid and Nancy, the Patty Hearst saga, the Son of Sam, Ted Bundy, the killing of John Lennon, Enron, the murder of Laci Peterson and the Bath School Disaster of 1926. And a lot more: 50 in total. All in all, though it’s carefully organized and well produced, The Most Notorious Crimes in American History is a disturbing book. Which, I guess, is pretty much the point.

1920: The Year of the Six Presidents by David Pietrusza (Carroll & Graf) 544 pages
Only with hindsight does the significance of the 1920 U.S. presidential election become clear. No fewer than half a dozen men who had, or would, occupy the White House were eyeing the race: Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover and Theodore Roosevelt. It was also the first campaign with newsreel coverage, and the first since women had won the right to vote. With a storyteller’s eye for characters and drama, Pietrusza re-creates America at a post-World War I turning point, when it wanted steady leadership, but got scandal instead. -- J. Kingston Pierce

The New Photography Manual: The Complete Guide ot Film and Digital Cameras and Techniques by Steve Bavister, Lee Frost, Rod Lawton, Andrew Fleetwood, Patrick Hook (Chronicle Books) 256 pages
The New Photography Manual almost doesn’t need a review: the subtitle covers the bases so completely. Nor does that subtitle exaggerate: this really is the complete book on where photography is right now, with full consideration to digital photography, how it works and how it can work for you, as well as more than lip service to classic analogue photography and the places where new and old intersect. (Lighting, supports and so on.) The book is complete enough that it would serve the photographer who is only now moving into digital as well as the keen amateur. Well organized, lucidly written and beautifully illustrated, The New Photography Manual provides either a great foundation to the new photographer’s library or a super addition for someone who already has a serious interest in photography. -- David Middleton

Shaggy Muses by Maureen Adams (Ballantine Books) 297 pages
Elizabeth Barrett Browning promised him her “perpetual society.” Emily Dickenson discussed everything with him, “and his eyes grow meaning, and his shaggy feet keep a slower pace.” Edith Wharton credited hers with helping her to become “a conscious sentient person,” while Emily Brontë’s “Keeper” was her constant companion. Virginia Woolf, meanwhile, used them as metaphor for an affair. “Acquired me, that’s what you did,” she wrote to her love, “like buying a puppy in a shop and leading it away on a string.” It seems that dogs have played a prominent role in the lives of many of our most important women authors. Clinical psychologist and first time author Maureen Adams here chronicles the lives of five of these women through the lens of their affection for and relationship with their canine companions. Even without the doggy connection, Shaggy Muses is a telling look at these important women of letters. The book includes compact biographies of Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickenson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton and Emily Brontë. Written in the shadow of Adams’ loss of one of her own dear canine companions, Shaggy Muses makes a wonderful gift and lasting reference.

Shakespeare Revealed: A Biography by René Weis (McArthur & Co /John Murray)
This is a one-of-a-kind gift. Meticulously researched, this thick publication contains much that is new and some well documented speculation that is even mind-blowing. Weis believes that the Bard’s poetry and plays contain much information about the personal man, and he has been a relentless sleuth in his analysis of Shakespeare’s work and in his detailed archival research to prove his point. Up until now, it hasn’t been all that popular to search for clues about the man in his works, but this author not only believes that they are there, but that Shakespeare wanted them found: “This book aims to ... demonstrate that the plays and poems contain important clues not only to Shakespeare’s inner life but also about real, tangible, external events. A cumulative amount of circumstantial evidence demonstrates beyond doubt that Shakespeare responded in his work to events from his life.” Ergo, Weis constructs a plausible biography that ultimately fully fleshes this sparsely known figure, still one of our greatest playwrights. I wonder if we can invent a new literary term for what Weis has done and call it “literary forensics”? It’s dense. Even with the welcome color plates in the center of the book, this is a slow read. Too much interesting information ensures that it just can’t be skimmed, but -- hey -- that means you’re getting more for your buck. You could also call it the gift that keeps on giving because the recipient of this book is going to feel like the new North American expert, or at the very least impress their friends. -- Cherie Thiessen

Sharks of the Pacific Northwest by Alessandro De Maddalena, Antonella Preti and Tarik Polansky (Harbour Publishing)
Either Sharks of the Pacifc Northwest or Whales & Dolphins of the North American Pacific from the same publisher would make many a budding naturalist/boater/sea lover very happy, especially if they live on the Pacific coast. The latter covers whales, seals and other marine mammals from Mexico to Alaska, whereas Sharks covers those toothy beasts we love to fear, from Oregon to Alaska. The happy owner of either of these guides will need to read just a few pages in order to impress -- or frighten -- friends, and ensure that they get everyone’s attention the next time they’re on the beach or at sea. Did you know there are 18 species of sharks in the Pacific Northwest, for example? Saltwater swimmers or surfers will especially want this book if only to reassure themselves that sharks have better things to do than savage the odd limb or two -- or do they...? Both books are very attractive and show an amazing range of creatures huge and fierce, compact and cuddly (well, almost). Who has ever heard of a pygmy sperm whale or a Ginkgo-toothed Beaked Whale, or the Pacific angelshark? Scads of color photos, and an abundance of interesting details make these compact books the perfect additions to almost any bookshelf. -- Cherie Thiessen

Stealing Lincoln’s Body by Thomas J. Craughwell (Belknap Press) 288 pages
On the night of the 1876 presidential election, a gang of Chicago counterfeiters broke into Abraham Lincoln’s tomb at a cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, intending to steal the body and ransom it back for $200,000 and the release of their imprisoned engraver. As Craughwell recounts this bizarre -- and generally forgotten -- episode, he frames it with entertaining background about 19th-century money forging, embalming, grave robbing and the rise of America’s Secret Service. He also lets us in on the responses to this hijacking of both Lincoln’s wife, Mary, and their son, Robert Todd Lincoln, who decades later would have the body exhumed and reinterred beneath feet-thick concrete. Just in case. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Too Late to Say Goodbye by Ann Rule (Free Press) 456 pages
I’m not going to give you all the gruesome details of Ann Rule’s latest book, Too Late to Say Goodbye. The story here is so convoluted, if a novelist made this stuff up, you’d pitch it against a wall. Since this author’s very first book in 1980, The Stranger Beside Me which dealt quite famously with serial killer Ted Bundy who she did, briefly, actually work beside. Since then, Rule has become the queen of true crime, delivering over 20 books and 1400 articles since 1969. Reviewers have been calling Too Late to Say Goodbye this bestselling author’s finest work yet. I don’t know about that, but I do know I could not look away from this tale of murder and betrayal in Atlanta that is drawn to its conclusion by a twist of fate and coincidence no novelist would dare include. -- Lincoln Cho

The Toothpick: Technology and Culture by Henry Petroski (Alfred A. Knopf) 464 pages
This is at once a volume about cultural evolution and business acumen. Petroski, a civil engineer who has written before about the design of everyday objects (in The Evolution of Useful Things and The Pencil), here looks back to the origins of the toothpick in prehistoric times; how this culinary accessory has become legend (it’s said that Emperor Nero fancied silver toothpicks), religious tool (the Qur’an suggests using toothpicks before praying), and cause of death (American author Sherwood Anderson perished after ingesting a toothpick at a party); and the eventual mass-production of toothpicks. That last enterprise can be credited to Charles Forster, a Maine manufacturer who, after seeing natives in South America clean their teeth with slivers of wood, devised machines capable of whittling huge tree chunks into convenient dental picks. To create demand for his products, Forster hired Harvard students to eat in restaurants, and insist on being given toothpicks afterward. Before long, toothpicks were as common in restaurants as salt shakers. -- J. Kingston Pierce

Holiday Gift Guide: Crime Fiction

The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps: The Best Crime Stories from the Pulps During Their Golden Age -- the ’20s, ’30s & ’40s edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard) 1,150 pages
“Like jazz, the hard-boiled private detective is entirely an American invention, and it was given life in the pages of pulp magazines.” So writes the estimable Otto Penzler, bookstore owner, critic and editor of this blunt weapon of a short-story anthology. His was a daunting task -- to pull together more than 50 tales from the pulp-fiction heyday of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, penned by both giants of the genre (Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner) and once-familiar wordsmiths (Carroll John Daly, Paul Cain, Norbert Davis, etc.) whose reputations have not fared as well in recent years. But he has executed his task most admirably. Divided into three parts -- “The Crimefighters” (introduced by Harlan Coben), “The Villains” (prefaced by Harlan Ellison) and “The Dames” (with Laura Lippman providing a foreword) -- this Big Book of Pulps is no less than an excavation of 20th-century American history, as conducted by writers with their eyes focused on the seedier, less-privileged and more violent side of life. Unlike many of the consciously reassuring stories we’re served nowadays, the good guys don’t always win and things don’t always work out for the best in the yarns Penzler has corralled here. Among the treats are “Faith,” a previously unpublished Hammett story; “Killer in the Rain,” which Chandler cannibalized for his first novel, The Big Sleep (1939); and Cornell Woolrich’s avenging-angel tale, “Angel Face.” But anyplace you begin in this mammoth tome is the right one. The pulp writers thought they were writing just for money; it turns out, they were writing for posterity. Good of Penzler to reintroduce us to their broad range of hyper-realism. And Vintage/Black Mask get extra points for the design of this fat paperback. Although its cover is decent enough, a no-surprise-there reproduction of a relatively well-known old pulp cover, the publisher took the time to re-typeset the stories (a lot of these sort of collections, particularly the cheaper ones, simply reproduce the old pages). Even better, Vintage utilized era-appropriate faces and has assembled the text in a two-column grid format that deliberately recalls the layout of many of the old pulp mags. As an added bonus, a number of the original black-and-white illustrations have been re-integrated into the text. This is simply one of the best-looking pulp collections to come out in a while -- an attempt to do more than just plop some great old stories on a page. -- J. Kingston Pierce and Kevin Burton Smith

Dead Man’s Hand: Crime Fiction at the Poker Table edited by Otto Penzler (Harcourt Books) 400 pages
Having already commissioned original short stories for anthologies with sports themes (basketball, boxing, baseball, tennis, horse racing, etc.), Penzler is finally tapping into the enthusiasm for what seems to be America’s latest favorite spectator-friendly endeavor: poker. Taking its name from the aces-and-eights card hand that Wild Bill Hickok was reportedly holding when he was shot to death in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, in 1876, this compilation bears all the excitement and inconsistency associated with Lady Luck. It’s nice to see talented stalwarts such as Peter Robinson, Joyce Carol Oates, Walter Mosley, Jeffery Deaver, and Michael Connelly pitching their prose into Penzler’s pot. And gambling’s longstanding nefarious edge makes it an ideal subject around which to build a crime-fiction short-story collection. I only wish that the poker theme had been played as expertly by all of the contributors, as it is by some. Still, for fans of cards and crime, Dead Man’s Hand is a good bet. -- J.K.P.

Detroit Noir edited by E. J. Olsen and John C. Hocking (Akashic Books) 280 pages
It’s surprising how quickly Akashic Books’ “Noir” series, anthologizing original short stories with strong connections to individual cities, has become essential reading. Beginning with Brooklyn Noir in 2004, this sequence of paperbacks has since expanded to cover Chicago, New Orleans, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Minneapolis, Dublin, Havana and elsewhere. There are plans next year to add Las Vegas, Toronto and Trinidad to the mix, with the future prospect of “Noir” books focusing on Seattle, Portland, Mexico City, Moscow, Rome and other burgs. Although these collections are sometimes uneven, with leading novelists (often not familiar for their briefer fiction) doing most of the grunt work and lesser-knowns benefiting from the time spent in their shadows, there are inevitably several tales in each volume worth the cover price. Certainly, that was the case with Los Angeles Noir, released earlier this year and featuring yarns from Gary Phillips, Michael Connelly, Neal Pollack, Robert Ferrigno, and the anthology’s editor, Denise Hamilton. And it’s true again of Detroit Noir, with its cynical odes to old districts like Hamtramck and Brush Park and Corktown; its contributions by Loren D. Estleman and P.J. Parrish and Craig Holden (The Jazz Bird); and its portrayal of Motown as a city that can no longer keep up with the forward-moving machine that is America. Flipping through this volume’s pages, you are can almost smell the industrial effluents and automobile exhaust and creeping rust that are all part of the cliché that Detroit has become in the public mind. Megan Abbott’s characterization of Michigan’s largest metropolis as a spot inspiring fears of violence (“they found her three days later in a field, gangbanged into a coma at some crack house and dumped for dead, no, no, it was three weeks later and someone saw her taking the pipe and turning tricks in Cass Corridor”) reinforces media perceptions that Detroit is no place you’d want to visit, except through fiction, and even then with a bodyguard. Yet for somebody who, like me, has lived there at one time or another, this anthology also serves as a reminder of Detroit’s uniqueness. Yes, there are many quarters in dire need of repair, and some that would best be attended to by a wrecking ball. But like post-Katrina New Orleanians, Detroiters are a hardy bunch, bonded together by their resolution to remain in a location from which fate seems increasingly to be demanding their ouster. Detroit Noir is at once a pessimistic reminder of the city’s faded state, and a tribute to the strength of its populace. -- J.K.P.

Hollywood and Crime: Original Crime Stories Set During the History of Hollywood edited by Robert J. Randisi (Pegasus Books) 322 pages
Thanks to the works of Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, Stuart M. Kaminsky and so many other authors, as well as TV crime dramas and films, Los Angeles and detective fiction may be permanently pared in the public mind. And no sector of L.A. has received more attention from this genre than Hollywood, which offers both an abundance of glitz and the possibility of gore. Editor Randisi solicited more than a dozen familiar crime-fictionists to contribute their own Tinseltown tales to this volume. Among the best are Lee Goldberg’s clever “Jack Webb’s Star,” Michael Connelly’s “Suicide Run,” and “Murderlized,” in which Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens send one of the Three Stooges, Moe Howard, off to investigate the death of that comedy trio’s mentor. Bill Pronzini, Dick Lochte, Ken Kuhlken and the aforementioned Kaminsky also contributed to this fictional look at the fame and infamy that have attended Hollywood’s most familiar intersection during the past 80 years. -- J.K.P.

The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved by Judith Freeman (Pantheon Books) 368 pages
“For 30 years, 10 months and four days, she was the light of my life, my whole ambition.” So said Chandler in 1954, after the death of his wife, Cissy -- a twice-divorced woman, 18 years older than he (though she had lied to him about being younger), whom the author had married less than two weeks after his mother -- a critic of their union -- perished of cancer. Drawing on near-obsessive research into her subjects, novelist Freeman (Red Water) presents a frequently moving study of their symbiotic marriage; the author’s unsteady evolution from oil company exec to distinguished genre stylist; Cissy’s influence on her husband’s fictional portrayal of women; and his rapid decline into drink, depression, and attempted suicide after her passing at age 84. Suffused with quotes from Chandler’s work, The Long Embrace is an extraordinary look at the relationship between love and literature. -- J.K.P.

The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes: The Life and Times of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Andrew Lycett (Free Press) 576 pages
Through the agency of his literary creation, Victorian detective Holmes, Conan Doyle solved myriad crimes for Queen and country. But the mystery he left behind at the time of his demise in 1930 was the evolution of his own personality and beliefs. Digging into the Scottish doctor-author’s newly released trove of personal correspondence and diaries, Lycett brings fresh dimension to Conan Doyle as a boy in a dysfunctional household (his mother was overbearing, his father an alcoholic), a husband who sought vainly to incorporate a young lover into his family (even as his wife was dying of tuberculosis) and a writer who endorsed scientific evidence in his fiction, yet devoted his later life to proving that fairies existed. A cohesive biography of a contradictory subject. -- J.K.P.

The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler by Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank McShane (Harper Perennial) 128 pages
Have you ever come across the Chandler novels Law Is Where You Buy It and Deceased When Last Seen? Or the short stories “They Only Murdered Him Once” and “Stop Screaming -- It’s Me”? Of course not, because those were titles he dreamed up but could never pin to a particular work. Chandler at least wrote them down, though -- along with so many other story concepts and obscure musings and loose chunks of dialogue -- in a series of private notebooks that he kept from the start of his pulp-writing career (in the 1930s) until the end of his life (in 1959). McShane, who penned one of the foremost biographies of this American crime-writing master (The Life of Raymond Chandler), also put together this short but fascinating scrapbook of selections from those notebooks, originally published in 1976. Here you’ll find sketches of scenes Chandler wanted to incorporate somewhere; quotes about disgust, women and other subjects that he took from various sources; his thoughts on the differences between the English and American writing styles, and on the limits of the detective tale (“The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.”); collections of railroad, pickpocket and urban slang; a list of memorable lines that even he referred to as “Chandlerisms” (“If you don’t leave, I’ll get somebody who will.”); and five short chapters of a non-crime novel called English Summer: A Gothic Romance that he hoped to complete and publish after he’d become established as a mystery novelist (but never did). Like the 2005 stocking stuffer Philip Marlowe’s Guide to Life, The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler is a gift through which crime-fiction fans can page with uncommon delight. -- J.K.P.

The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction by Barry Forshaw (Rough Guides Ltd./Penguin Books) 310 pages
As long as you remember the title of this mini-book, then you’ll love it as much as I did. If, however, you want something more substantial -- an exhaustive examination of the genre -- then this is not the work you ought to be purchasing. Barry Forshaw is well known in British crime- and horror-fiction circles, thanks to his editing of Crime Time magazine. He also writes and reviews widely for newspapers and other periodicals, and every so often pens the odd book. This (rough) look at crime fiction -- past, present and popular -- is obviously a labor of love, written by someone who knows the great depths of his chosen genre. Naturally, due to space constraints, there are omissions, some of which are puzzling; but a few welcome surprises also lurk between the entries about Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Patricia Highsmith, James Lee Burke, Thomas Harris and so many others. In another section, the guide dissects this genre as a whole, subdividing it into themes such as “Cops,” “Espionage,” “Serial Killers,” “Legal,” etc. I was pleased to find that Forshaw places particular emphasis on the so-called Golden Age of Crime Fiction, with extensive coverage of that era’s pivotal works, including Rogue Male (1939), by Geoffrey Household. However, the most enlightening (pardon the pun) portions are those that showcase noir works. Being a film buff, Forshaw cannot help but pepper this volume with references to classic movies based on the novels he describes. This is a perfect festive volume for digesting late into the night. Discover what you may have missed reading in the genre, and perhaps what missed making the final edit of this tightly knitted guide. -- Ali Karim

Holiday Gift Guide: Art and Culture

24: Ultimate Guide by Michael Goldman (DK Books) 144 pages
24 is one of those television programs that creates addicts. It certainly created one in me. I came late to the party, watching the seasons on DVD before having to endure the seven days between episodes that come when you watch every week on Fox. Seasons one through five were pretty epic most of the time, and season six tanked. Made almost no sense. Still. Now that the writer’s strike has put production of Season 7 on hold, give the 24 fan in your life a little something to hold him (or her) over: this book. It’s the ultimate look at the series, including story arcs, full character bios, weapons and gadgets, conflicts, behind the scenes juiciness, cool-as-heck photos and much more. Best of all, each season (that is, each day) gets an almost minute-by-minute breakdown of what happened, how. It’s great fun to flip through, getting the scoop on everything you might have wondered about as you were watching. The writing here is crisp and fast, no-nonsense -- just like the show. -- Tony Buchsbaum

The Art of Dreamworks Bee Movie by Jerry Beck (Chronicle Books) 160 pages
“What about a movie about bees and call it Bee Movie?” When Jerry Seinfeld said these words to Steven Speilberg -- just to fill a lull in the conversation they were having over dinner -- he had no idea that Spielberg would take him seriously and that the next four years of their lives would involve how to figure out how to bring bees and their world to life in a movie. Jerry Beck’s The Art of Dreamworks Bee Movie takes fans of animation through the stages of what it took to make Sienfeld’s little conversation filler a reality. There is something very insider-ish with a book like this. Sitting down with it is like having a Q&A with the animators: How do you come up with a bee world? Did the characters always look like this? What was going through your mind when you designed the cars, the costumes, the city, the colors? On its own The Art of Bee Movie is a fun and happy and informative insight into the art of the animator, but books like this also make great companions to the movies they celebrate. -- David Middleton

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007 edited by Dave Eggers (Houghton Mifflin) 320 pages
So here’s the deal: students at 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing lab for young people that writer/editor Dave Eggers co-founded, are each assigned various publications. They have to keep tabs on their publications all year, collecting notes for the anthology. Then they meet and they vote and they debate on who should make the cut. And then the chosen few are published in this book. So here we have what Eggers and the students at 826 Valencia think was best in fiction, non-fiction, alternative comics, screenplays, blogs and even, this time out, a poem about bathing Ed Asner. Whatever is “best” is also always subjective. It’s the nature of the beast. But if it isn’t best, it’s certainly interesting with contributions here from Conan O’Brien, Matt Klam, Jonathan Ames and many others. Profits from the anthology go to benefit 826 Valencia.

Canadian Paintings, Prints and Drawings by Anne Newlands (Firefly Books) 368 pages
Canada is a vast and diverse country. It follows that the art the country has produced should be diverse, as well. Yet so much of Canada’s art and so many of her artists are not well known even in Canada, let alone outside the country. Author Anne Newlands would change all of that. Newlands has written extensively about art, including biographies of Emily Carr and Degas. She is also the author of Canadian Art: From its Beginnings to 2000. For this new book, Newlands set herself the seemingly impossible task of selecting just 164 artists to represent the many thousands who have contributed to Canadian art. Just as difficult, Newlands writes, was to then select a single image from each artist not to represent their body of work, Newlands stresses, but “as a glimpse into a lifetime of creative expression.” Within the book, the artists are arranged alphabetically, “which removes them from predictable associations and chronological relationships and frees them from the standard linear narratives of traditional art histories.” Despite the occasional encounter with this droning coolness of artspeak, Canadian Paintings is a wonderful book. It really is special to see a single well reproduced image from so many artists who have little to connect them beyond their Canadian-ness. All time periods are represented, all two dimensional mediums, all styles and types of work. Each painting is accompanied by a thoughtful, knowledgeable short essay, sharing information about the work as well as the artist. The resulting book becomes a sort of short course in Canadian art history taken at the leisure and desire of the reader.

Carve Your Own Totem Pole by Wayne Hill and James McKee (The Boston Mills Press) 131 pages
On the surface of things, it sounds ridiculously complicated. What would be needed to carve a totem pole, after all? A 20-foot log and some serious carving tools. Beyond that... perhaps luck and a tailwind? But Hill and McKee’s lovely book is as much spiritual journey as how-to manual. Sure: the necessary tools are described, as are some techniques. More importantly in the real world, though, they tell us about what all those animals really mean and why they’re situated where they are. (And, while we’re about it, just where the expression “Low man on the totem pole” comes from, exactly.) Here we have described for us the difference between a “Legend” pole and a “Family” pole, what considerations are necessary for design and what each figure means. Practical issues include choosing the right wood, how to seal your work and how to carve and sand. It’s certainly difficult to imagine a better, more clearly explained and illustrated book on this topic.

Dream Gardens: 100 Inspirational Gardens by Tania Compton and Andrew Lawson (Merrell Books) 352 pages
“Most creative endeavours are born of a desire to turn a dream into reality. In gardening the dream that may spur the transformation of a featureless site into a garden never ends.” So begins Dream Gardens, setting up the groundwork for a book on which those gardening dreams that are also creative endeavours can be based. The book is well named. There is no aspect of “how-to” to Dream Gardens. Rather, we are taken on intimate tours of what are arguably 100 of the dreamiest gardens in the world. So here we see the gardens at Tapeley Park in Devon, gleaming royally along the coast. Villa Marzotto’s private oasis in north-eastern Italy. The breathtaking organization of the bamboo garden of Sydney Australia-based landscape architect Vladimir Sitta; the riot of color that is Bingerden in the Netherlands. Cynthia and Edwin Hamowy’s Westhampton garden is nature brought close in a modernist setting. These gardens -- and 96 more -- will provide inspiration and the base of dreams for everyone who looks upon them.

Etched in Stone by Ryan Coonerty (National Geographic) 192 pages
What a wonderful book this is! I love great book ideas, and this is one of them, a look at the best monuments in the United States. Fifty places are covered here, from memorials to parks to gardens to theaters to sculptures and even whole buildings. For each monument, we’re shown beautiful images, some shot at an ideal distance, some shot up close, for telling details. Each one of them is perfect. There are also find brief, wonderfully written essays that cover the history, the reason the monument was created, important quotes, inscriptions and more. This book is an ideal way to see and go behind the scenes of the Lincoln Memorial, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, the National D-Day Memorial, the Slavery Monument, the Blacklist Sculpture Garden, the Library of Congress, the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center Memorial, even Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. It would cost a fortune to actually travel to all of the places covered in this book -- but having this book on your shelf means you don't have to. Whoever you give a copy to will owe you a huge debt of gratitude. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Fame Us: Celebrity Impersonators and the Cult(ure) of Fame by Brian Howell (Arsenal Pulp Press) 183 pages
In a book filled with strong images, one stands out. It’s an impossible shot and, if you had no idea what was going on, it would hurt the eyes. The frame is filled top to bottom with living human forms, that’s clear. Some of the people seem to be posing. Others seem to be watching something off camera. Some appear to do both. What makes the shot seem impossible are the identities of those photographed. You can see Howard Stern, Bill Clinton, Marilyn Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, Elvis and Patton. Some of the others look vaguely familiar, as well. You feel as though, if you looked closely for just a bit longer, you’d recognize still more famous people; put names to still more faces. That single photo seems to bring focus to all of Fame Us, a book that looks at the culture and lifestyle associated with celebrity impersonators. If you ever thought you knew anything about this topic, think again. Photographer Brian Howell’s strong black and white images and short, sharp biographies of his subjects gives us a sometimes humorous, always compassionate look at celebrity -- and near celebrity. How we view it, wear it, incorporate it into our lifestyle.

The Garden at Night: Private Views of Public Edens photographs by Linda Rutenberg, foreword by William Shatner, introduction by William Dewdney (Chronicle Books) 176 pages
A stanza from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Sensitive Plant” sets the tone in Linda Rutenberg’s The Garden at Night: “A sensitive plant in a garden grew, and the young winds fed it with silver dew, and it opened is fan-like leaves to the light, and closed them beneath the kisses of night.” More tone setting with an introduction by Christopher Dewdney (Acquainted with the Night) and a foreword by William Shatner (who I will not introduce because you already know who he is). And then, with the tone well and truly set, we’re away on an incredible adventure of Rutenberg’s imagination. And, of course, it is not her imagination: these are photographs. And yet. With her choices, with her technique and, of course, with her eye, Rutenberg shows us gardens as they’ve never quite been seen before. The images in the book were taken at 20 of North America’s best know gardens, including the Atlanta Botanical garden; the Brooklyn Botanic Garden; Butchart Gardens near Victoria, British Columbia; the Reford Gardens in Grand-Métis, Quebec; United States National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. and many others. In her artist’s statement, Rutenberg writes, “The resulting photographs unearth an extraordinary secret -- plants and flowers that appear commonplace by day turn into something ethereal by the light of night.” We agree.

The House that Hugh Laurie Built: An Unauthorized Biography and Episode Guide by Paul Challen (ECW) 337 pages
Why is it we love Gregory House so much? And though the two couldn’t be further apart, we also love House’s alter ego, the actor Hugh Laurie. House is the perpetual bad boy, but with a strong moral and ethical center, a combination that has proven irresistible. And Laurie? Well, he’s someone completely different, yet the connections are clear. The House that Hugh Laurie Built will delight fans of either the hit medical television show House or the actor who stars in it, Hugh Laurie. Or both. Though the book bills itself as an unauthorized biography, it’s really more than that: an affectionate, respectful look at both the actor and all aspects of the show, including glimpses of all recurring characters and a blow-by-blow of all episodes through the end of season three. A great gift for House fans.

How I Write edited by Dan Crowe (Rizzoli) 192 pages
Jonathan Franzen uses a squeaky, battered green office chair. Will Self uses Post-it notes. Douglas Coupland uses chocolate. Jay McInerney uses an axe. What for, you ask? To write. That’s right: to write. And that’s what this charming book is all about. Not why these people write, but how. It’s about their habits and, more importantly, their talismans. Where do they get their inspiration? Their ideas? How do they keep those ideas organized? Imagine walking into the office of Joyce Carol Oates or A.S. Byatt, and you’d see portraits in the office of the former, a cabinet of curiosities in the latter. Written in short bursts of chapters by the authors themselves, the book comes across almost as a confessional, a “come in and see what I’m all about” sort of thing. It’s embarrassingly addictive and impossible to put down. Movie stars. TV stars. Sports stars. Just about any early evening entertainment news program will tell you everything you need to know. But authors? Nah. To what they’re really all about, you need this terrific book. Give it to someone you know who is as addicted to Nicholson Baker and Melissa Bank as others are to Brad and Angelina. -- Tony Buchsbaum

I’m A Lewbowski, You’re A Lebowski: Life, the Big Lebowski and What Have You by Bill Green, Ben Peskoe, Will Russell and Scott Shuffitt (Bloomsbury) 234 pages
There is only one sort of person for whom you should buy a copy of I’m A Lewbowski, You’re A Lebowski as a gift: someone you know has watched the Coen brothers movie several times, and perhaps already dreams of attending Lebowski Fest, if only in their mind. As the book itself suggests, to some people The Big Lebowski was a move. To others it was the movie. Obviously, this latter part of the population are the ones who need this book. (And they’re probably also looking forward to the chapter on how to Dude-ify you car, living space and office.) The authors -- all four of them -- are the “founding dudes” of Lebowski Fest (yes it’s a real thing) which will, I suppose, be an even bigger thing in 2008 when the movie hits its 10th anniversary year. But the book. A series of interviews on all things Lebowski, with a foreword by the dude himself, Jeff Bridges. Our authors talk to everyone who had anything to do with the production of the movie. In total, I’m A Lewbowski, You’re A Lebowski is like a big, juicy ad for Lebowski Fest. The thing is, the fans of this cult classic will probably think that’s better than cool. It’s all right.

Inside Game Design by Iain Simmons (Laurence King) 159 pages
“Increasingly,” Iain Simmons writes in his introduction to Inside Game Design, “the gap between mainstream culture and videogame culture is less about levels of consumption, and more about levels of understanding.” Well, OK. But we would also add that, over the last decade, perhaps slightly more, videogame design has been moving from being a realm of pure geekdom to take its place in the arts. Not animation, of course. Not filmmaking. But storytelling, nonetheless, albeit with huge interactive chunks. Still, it’s gone from being something vaguely untouchable to something at least contemplatable by mortals. “Perhaps the most important service this book offers,” Simons adds at one point, “is to question what ‘game design’ even means.” He does it beautifully: in true art book style, with color images, lucid text, the occasional storyboard, interviews with industry leaders, glimpses inside prominent studios and more. This will be an important book within this industry as well as a potentially critical link for those who aspire to take part.

James Bond Encyclopedia by John Cork and Collin Stutz (DK Books) 320 pages
Wow. I mean: Wow! I’m a Bond fan from way, way back, and I thought I knew it all. I’m one of those poor saps who can name all the films in order, tell you who played 007, the villain, the girl, the sidekick, who composed the music, who sang the title song, and on and on. (Disturbing, isn’t it?) So you wouldn’t think I’d even need to crack the spine of this book. Oh, but I do. There’s stuff in here no one knows, facts about every single film, from Dr. No to Casino Royale (the 2006 version, thank you very much). The contents are arranged by categories: villains together, then women, supporting players, vehicles, weapons and equipment, and the movies. There are endlessly fascinating bits of tid throughout, with full chapters on Ian Fleming, Bond Style, and the Role of Bond, which includes bios of the men who have played him (Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig -- I did that without looking, by the way). Best of all, this book is a treasure trove of photographs, many of them rare, along with poster art, behind-the-scenes images, full lists of cast and crew, and much more. I’m tempted to say this book will leave a lucky someone on your list shaken, not stirred ... but I won’t. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Japanese Style: Designing With Nature’s Beauty by Sunamita Lim (Gibbs Smith) 159 pages
The fact that this title and close variations of it -- Japanese Style and Japan Style -- have been used for books so often tells us something. The style we think of as Japanese has a strong appeal to people of many lands. And there is something in the arrangement of space that speaks to many people. Sunamita Lim, author of Japanese Style, feels this is because, when all is said and done, we need a break today. “Japanese interiors also provide sanctuary from a chaotic world at the end of the day, thus gifting inner renewal to soul and spirit and, consequently, for outer mind and body too.” As you may already be suspecting, the writing here is the weakest link. In fact, it contains one of the worst paragraphs we’ve ever seen: “Many appreciate the simple life. But living a life of simplicity is not enough. Rather, trying to simplify one’s life is a constant challenge...” Ummm... it couldn’t be... simpler? Fortunately, it’s not a novel, and though the crude wordsmithing prevents it from being a great book, it doesn’t mar its usability. Japanese Style is well organized, beautifully illustrated and filled with super design ideas. A great gift.

Making Records by Phil Ramone (Hyperion) 320 pages
Streisand. Sinatra. Joel. Charles. Dylan. Gilberto. Jones. Bennett. Simon. Grusin. Lennon. Loggins. I could go on all day and never hit the bottom of the list of music greats that record producer Phil Ramone has worked with. This book is part autobiography, part how-I-did-it manual and an intimate and intricate look at what goes into making records. In movies, it's the director who shapes the project; in records, the Chief Creativity Officer is the producer. The songwriter composes. The performer sings. But the producer determines the sound of the music, the feeling that the music should evoke. Ramone has been around longer than anyone, starting out as an engineer (the guy who actually records the music on tape) and working his way into the producer's chair, creating some of the best-known, most memorable and undisputed classic albums of the last 50 years. His writing is fast and easy, natural the way Sinatra’s singing was natural, and while it’s not exactly brilliant literarily, it needn’t be. What it needs to be is fascinating, and it is. These days, behind-the-scenes books are a dime a dozen; but check out the last names at the top of this review. Rarely, if ever, do we get to go into a recording studio to see them work. This gem of a book is as much a history lesson as an indelible portrait of how music is made. Either way you look at it, it's a chart-topper. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Motion by Design by Spencer Drate, David Robbins and Judith Salavetz (Laurence King Publishing) 159 pages
For anyone on your list who’s into animation, film and television credit sequences and cool television commercials, this is a terrific book. Every spread features a different project, with a dozen or so stills or film frame reproductions, detailed descriptions of the creative and process, production details and software tools. The pages are arranged by production company, which means you can easily track one company’s style. While some of the examples -- OK, several of the examples -- are less than stellar, most of the time the authors have chosen examples that do justice to the mission of the book, which is to showcase the best work of this kind. The volume includes a DVD, although I was far from impressed by it. In fact, I found it frustrating because only some of the work in the book is on the DVD; invariably, the most interesting-looking work wasn’t on it. A pity. But still, the book itself is wonderful. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Obsessed with Hollywood: Test Your Knowledge of the Silver Screen (Chronicle Books) 320 pages
Obsessed with Hollywood is an unassuming little cube of a book. Roughly -- though not precisely -- the size of a good CD box set, this compact little brick of a book potentially crams hours of fun between it’s well designed little covers. Here we have 2500 (2500!) questions about the silver screen, arranged thematically, no less. Though the questions are multiple choice (“What filmmaker made Marty and later All Quiet on the Western Front?” “Yo, what was Adrian’s last name before she married Rocky Balboa?”) on each two-page spread, one question has been given a beefed up presence and an accompanying photo. So question 441, for example, which is from “Classic Films,” tells us a little bit about George Lucas’ American Graffiti from 1973, background that has nothing to do with the question. You “play” the book by activating a cool, attached electronic device that feeds you a question number. You go to it, then enter the letter that correlates to your answer. If you’re right, you get a happy sound; wrong and the sound is less happy. Though this isn’t the first time I’ve seen a book-that-is-game, this one is perhaps the best executed. And never mind that: it’s actually pretty fun!

Prophets of Zoom by Alfredo Marcantonio (Merrell) 112 pages
Prophets of Zoom is a weirdly delicious little book. First weirdness: it explains itself on its tiny cover. The story of itself begins on the front cover, then winds its way to the back. “Seventy years ago,” says the cover, “a group of people created a series of cards that foresaw the future.” And so on. Here’s what really happened: in the 1930s, the world was mad for collecting cards of any kind. Since their product was flat and consumers always wanted more, cigarette boxes were a natural for distributing collector cards. A Scottish cigarette manufacturer cooked up the idea of producing a set of collector’s cards called “The World of Tomorrow.” (Disney didn’t use the phrase until many years later.) They used a series of commissioned illustrations as well as some stills from science fiction films to predict the future. While this was a completely oddball idea, all these years later we can see that -- lo! -- a lot of the time, they were actually right. Prophets of Zoom collects all of these cards and pairs each one with a contemporary image of the predicted thing. A lovely little book, wonderful in its weirdness and potentially the perfect gift for those typically difficult to buy for people who appreciate the off-beat.

The Star Wars Vault by Stephen J. Sansweet and Peter Vilmur (Harper Entertainment) 128 pages, slipcased
Steve Sansweet is one of the luckiest guys in the world. Abject Star Wars fan, the guy somehow corralled himself into the job of a lifetime: as Grand Collector and disseminator of all the coolest Star Wars stuff imaginable. He’s the author of other books on the subject, but this glorious addition to the canon is something else, as much book as treasure chest. There are goodies on every page: posters, programs, stationery, storyboard and production drawings, autographs, behind-the-scenes photographs, comic book covers, ads, handwritten notes by George Lucas ... the list goes on and on. But that’s not even the best part. Oh, no, friends. The best part is the stuff -- the goodies -- you can remove and hold in your hands. Stuff like the blueprints for Luke’s Skyhopper, an early poster reproduction, an actual T-shirt transfer, a program from a London Symphony Orchestra performance of John Williams’ music, a brochure from the original Star Wars press kit, a barf bag from the Star Tours ride at Disneyland ... need I go on? Throughout the book are crisp essays on everything you’d ever want to know (and probably a few things you don’t really care about), trivia galore. And as if all this weren’t enough, there are also two CDs -- one of them filled with radio ads, cast interviews, parts of NPR’s radio drama, a George Lucas commentary, and more. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen-and as a Star Wars fan, I’ve seen a lot. If the Force isn’t yet with you, after one look at all this stuff it will be. -- Tony Buchsbaum

Street Dogs by Traer Scott (Merrell) 128 pages
In 2006, portrait and fashion photographer Traer Scott had a hot seller on her hands with a work straight from her heart: Shelter Dogs. The book included portraits of American dogs in shelters, doing time for no crime other than not having a family of humans to love them. This year Scott follows that book up with the equally moving Street Dogs. The author/photographer traveled to Mexico and Puerto Rico to photograph these homeless canines living either alone or in street packs. In her introduction, Scott writes that she first became aware of the plight of these homeless canines on her honeymoon in Antigua. Back in the states, she read about the large number of stray dogs in many countries visited by American tourists, as well as the efforts to rescue at least some of them. “I kept thinking how remarkable it would be to photograph these dogs and bring their faces and their plight to a larger audience,” writes Scott, who adds that the success of Shelter Dogs finally made that possible. Scott’s introduction is lengthy and interesting, it details her trips and she shares many of her encounters: the stories behind the photos. But it is the photos themselves, of course, that take center stage: soulful headshots, curiosity and fear from a distance, interacting with humans, reacting alone. Over 90 of Scott’s beautiful photographs fill the pages of Street Dogs, by themselves telling a story so eloquent, no words are required. It probably almost goes without saying that a portion of the profiles from Street Dogs will be donated to the World Society for the Protection of Animals, making it an even more lovely gift.

To Infinity and Beyond! The Story of Pixar Animation Studios By Karen Paik (Chronicle Books) 304 pages
How do they do it, really? How do a bunch of people sitting in front of blank paper and empty computer screens create an entire believable world out of nothing but sketches, pixels and a lot of imagination? It’s like magic. Starting with nothing and ending up with characters and sets made entirely out of bits of information but often with more life and heart than some movies peopled by living, breathing humans. Pixar has long been in the forefront of realistic style computer animation. From their very first short film, Luxo Jr., Pixar has gone from commercial advertising work to feature work on films including Cars, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo as well as other types of animated work in live action films. The company has consistantly lead the way in which full length animated features would be told. To Infinity and Beyond! The Story of Pixar Animation Studios lets fans in on the behind-the-scenes stories and secrets of this pioneering studio. Like a cross between a biography and a how-to book, To Infinity is lushly illustrated with everything from animated movie stills to personal childhood photographs of one of Pixar’s principals, John Lassiter. -- David Middleton