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A Bookish Gift Guide for the Hard-to-Shop-for Readers in Your Life
Those of us who like to give books as holiday gifts have the same problem every year: People are weird. Well, people are very…specific is maybe the polite term, and it can be hard to match the right book to the right reader.
This year, we thought we’d try a new approach to the gift guide. The recommendations below are inspired by the personal gift list ideas of several Goodreads editors and contributors, but hopefully they will be useful for everyone. We cast a pretty wide net and tried to cover many of the familiar bases, but with true-to-life specificity!
We'd also be remiss if we didn't remind you that you can also check your giftee's Want to Read shelf for ideas, if you happen to be friends on Goodreads. Happy shopping, and feel free to make some recommendations of your own in the comments section below!
This year, we thought we’d try a new approach to the gift guide. The recommendations below are inspired by the personal gift list ideas of several Goodreads editors and contributors, but hopefully they will be useful for everyone. We cast a pretty wide net and tried to cover many of the familiar bases, but with true-to-life specificity!
We'd also be remiss if we didn't remind you that you can also check your giftee's Want to Read shelf for ideas, if you happen to be friends on Goodreads. Happy shopping, and feel free to make some recommendations of your own in the comments section below!
For your techie friend who listens only to podcasts and "doesn't like to read"
If you’re shopping for a podcast regular who isn’t really into text, why not tempt them over with the perfect complement to one of the greatest podcast series ever made? Bad Blood chronicles the meteoric rise and spectacular fall of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar slow-motion disaster founded by Elizabeth Holmes. Veteran reporter John Carreyrou’s investigation fills in many blank spots from the parallel podcast investigation. Or even better: Buy them the audiobook version!
For your annoyingly well-read friend who claims to have already finished ALL the good mystery series
With his outstanding Flavia de Luce series, author Alan Bradley does subtle and beautiful things with the standard cozy mystery template. Our heroine sleuth is a wildly precocious 12-year-old in 1950s England with a nose for trouble and a passion for chemistry. She’s funny, she’s smart, she’s lovable, and she’s just as emotionally vulnerable as any rookie adolescent. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is the first of ten tightly plotted, utterly delightful mysteries. Maybe warn your giftee: This series is habit forming.
For your mom who loves romance, but it's too awkward to buy her anything too horny
This is your big chance to get mom hip to the world of gentle but intimate, fun but romantic, contemporary queer romance novels. Alexis Hall’s Boyfriend Material, first published in 2020, is already a classic of the genre. Luc and Oliver have nothing in common, besides being single and gay. But when circumstances compel them to fake a public romance, the two young men discover that romance has its own agenda. People falling in love. It never gets old.
For your coworker who hasn't read a book since college
When it comes to gift books for reluctant readers, the trick is to ease them into it. You want something instantly appealing, genuinely rewarding, frequently funny, and broken into digestible chunks. This collection of essays from Tressie McMillan Cottom (Lower Ed) checks all those boxes and them some. Cottom is one of America’s most persuasive and original thinkers on topics ranging from race to gender to higher education to capitalism to Black Twitter snarkiness.
For your parent pal who's sick of reading the same picture book out loud 5,000 times in a row
Parents will identify with this dilemma: Your adorable child wants to be read the same book every night. Great for them, less great for you, because it’s the same book every night! Storyteller and illustrator JiHyeon Lee provides an admirably sensible solution with Door, a children’s book with no words at all. The gorgeous dreamlike images encourage kids and parents both to think up their own stories beyond the book’s magical portal.
For your epic fantasy purist friend who's ready to branch out a little
The trouble with traditional epic fantasy is that you pretty much know what you’re going to get. Heroic quests. Good versus Evil. Swords. Sorcery. Probably elves. If you’re buying for someone who’d like to peek over the genre horizon, consider New Zealand author Tamsyn Muir, who dances through speculative fiction’s interstitial zones. Lesbian necromancers! Internet memes! Cosmic horror! Her debut novel, Gideon the Ninth, is the best place to start.
For your friend who really loves reading but somehow ends up scrolling TikTok for 30 minutes before bed instead
In the fast-moving 21st century, the dedicated book recommender must reluctantly deal with our species’ dwindling attention span. It’s the internet’s fault. For your friend who appreciates good literature but needs it in small doses, Yoon Choi’s debut short story collection will do the trick. Skinship centers on the lives of Korean American families, but its fundamental themes are truly universal: love, loss, language, and the bittersweet nature of the human condition.
For your father-in-law who always buys a thriller at the airport bookstore
For the Lee Child and David Baldacci fans in your life, we recommend trying one of Australian author Jane Harper's pulse-pounding crime procedurals. In this first novel from the Aaron Falk series, the titular detective investigates a small-town murder set against the backdrop of a devastating, once-in-a-century drought. This one's got loads of atmosphere, and we can pretty much guarantee the thriller reader in your life won't be able to put it down.
For the beleaguered English PhD student in your life
Win some bonus points in the season when everyone else is gifting this person passive-aggressive how-to-finish-your-dissertation guides with a bitingly satirical tale of a grad student who makes an explosive discovery in her university’s archives. The perfect solution to her increasingly alarming case of writer's block? Or the start of a very strange, very zany adventure? A wickedly funny (and all-too-real) send-up of departmental politics, this book will give your academic friends a knowing laugh.
For your friend who loves historical fiction but is tired of reading books set during World War II
Palestinian American novelist and psychologist Hala Alyan delivers a multigenerational family saga that begins during the Six-Day War of 1967. Forced out of their home in the West Bank city of Nablus, Alia and her family must start again…and again and again…in Paris and Boston, Beirut and Kuwait City. Alyan’s debut novel was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award in 2017 and is a good opportunity for a shift in perspective with historical fiction.
For your foodie friend who spent the early pandemic making increasingly elaborate batches of sourdough
The COVID-19 pandemic has very little to offer in the way of silver linings, but one thing is true: Plenty of people got a lot better at home cooking. Toni Tipton-Martin’s hugely acclaimed Jubilee is an extended tour through the history of African American cooking—via stories and recipes—from enslaved cooks to pioneering Black chefs to modern entrepreneurs. The book offers a chance to learn new techniques alongside thought-provoking questions like: If Thomas Jefferson introduced French haute cuisine to America, who actually cooked it?
For your baseball-obsessed grandpa who falls into a mild depression during the off-season
November is a tough time for serious baseball fans. With the World Series just wrapping up, it means several long months until spring training. This intriguing insider’s book flew under the radar in 2010, and it’s a great gift for the baseball fan in seasonal mourning. The Baseball Codes is a sustained excavation of the unwritten rules and secret protocols of the Great American Pastime, with stories from and about some of the game’s all-time legends.
For your bookish nephew who likes disturbingly prescient dystopian sci-fi classics
Cyberpunk godfather William Gibson rerouted the entire trajectory of science fiction with his 1984 debut novel, a grim future vision wrapped in fast-forward neon adventure. Think orbital casinos, oppressive corporatocracies, insane AIs, this kind of thing. Gibson’s book reads like a fast-paced future noir and still fires the imagination all these years later. Neuromancer is the only novel to win the Big Three sci-fi awards: the Nebula, the Hugo, and the Philip K. Dick awards.
For your science-y friend who wants a deep-dive read that is both thoroughly accurate and beautifully written
Professor and BBC science presenter Helen Czerski's passion for explaining complicated scientific concepts to laypeople is on display in this book that tackles physics principles through questions such as: How do ducks keep their feet warm when walking on ice? and Why does it take so long for ketchup to come out of a bottle? This read will likely also appeal to the Mary Roach and Bill Bryson fans in your life.
For your high schooler who needs to be convinced that classics can be fun
It’s a perennial rite of passage for the modern teenager: slogging through the epic poem Beowulf in fifth-period English class. Can a new edition really make a difference? Oh, yeah. This radical translation from author and scholar Maria Dahvana Headley updates Beowulf for the 21st century with feminist sensibilities and modern idioms. Real modern. The first word of the new translation is Bro! No, really. Getting teens turned on to core world literature is challenging. This is one potential solution.
For your hipster audiophile coworker with the immaculate record collection
In 2010, poet and musician Patti Smith published one of the greatest rock ’n’ roll memoirs ever put to print with this fascinating remembrance of the New York City scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Just Kids details Smith’s loving relationship with the late photographer and artist Robert Mapplethorpe, whose transgressive images pushed the art world forward just as Smith was pioneering new ways to expand rock music. As a holiday gift, this book scores cool points for everyone involved.
For your snobby intellectual cousin who insists that genre fiction cannot be true literature
With his Easy Rawlins series of hard-boiled detective novels, author Walter Mosley pulls off a kind of magic trick: He makes enduring art out of the traditionally disreputable genre. Over the course of 14 books (and counting, we hope), Mosley paints his vision of the Black experience in America from the postwar era in Los Angeles to the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Gifting an Easy Rawlins book is one of the nicest things you can do for someone.
For your niece who's obsessed with realistic, angsty fiction (but doesn't want to read another book about privileged New Englanders)
This 2017 novel won the PEN/Bellweather Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction and was a finalist for that year's National Book Award, which should provide plenty of bona fides for both the quality of the prose and the level of angst about real-world issues involved. The plot follows Deming Guo, a boy whose undocumented Chinese mother seemingly abandons him in the Bronx when he is 11. You should probably warn the recipient of this gift that they might ugly cry in public while reading this book.
For your picky friend who thinks most nonfiction is too boring to try
This innovative 2019 book from author Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties) is a solid option for nonfiction skeptics, in that it uses fiction tropes and strategies to take the memoir form into entirely new territories. Mostly written as a second-person narrative, the book recounts Machado’s abusive same-sex relationship while she was studying at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop. Experimental, complex, and rigorously honest, In the Dream House is a genuinely new kind of nonfiction.
For your in-the-know friend who works in publishing and is always recommending the hottest new books to you
A preorder of a buzzy 2023 title is the perfect choice for your most well-connected literary friend, and this tale of two women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a dystopian private prison system is already generating plenty of chatter ahead of its April 2023 release. Of course, there’s always still a chance that your pal has already gotten an early peek at an Advanced Reader Copy, but who doesn't love a shiny new hardcover showing up on their doorstep at the most opportune moment? No one, that's who.
Have you got some hard-to-shop-for readers in your life? What books have you bought for them?
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A very good list of a wide range of great titles! I have read a few and added more to my tbr. :)As far as buying books for others goes, I usually chicken out and go the gift card route unless they have mentioned a specific title. :( Reading is such a personal endeavor that it is hard to know what will be appreciated, and books can be expensive and hard to return.
Thank you so much for this list, and the titles are so good haha !
I would recommend "Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" to anyone. Flavia de Luce is fabulous!
What about for the friend, who is a retired nurse, and loves dystopian horror stories?
What about for your picky friend who doesn't like to read but loves "where the red fern grows"
Yasmin wrote: "What about for the friend, who is a retired nurse, and loves dystopian horror stories?"All's Well by Mona Awad! Disturbing and magical horror based around chronic illness, one of the best things I've read in years!
i wish i lived in the same world as the person recommending a queer romance book for their mother. buying her something too horny may be awkward but not nearly as terrible as opening the whole 'why did you get me this? are you gay?' can of worms
You guy's best list yet! Just brilliant. Really enjoyed reading through it.I agree with Rin, though. Moms and gay romance? Errr...could be potentially a highly explosive combination or at least cause some strange or insulted looks to be thrown around. (Sad but true)
Just give them cash to buy whatever they like
My two sisters read really dark stuff like: Jeffrey deaver, Chris carter, Michael connelly, R J Ellory, Lynda La Plant, they are gory serial killer masters.The other sister explained: "I suppose because we are normal nice people we are intrigued to read about bloody nutters"
Where's the list for my two lovely sisters?
This is one of my favorite recommendations posts I've seen this year! Thank you for putting it together. I think some of these will be gifts for ME!
Yasmin wrote: "What about for the friend, who is a retired nurse, and loves dystopian horror stories?"Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay if she hasn't already read it! It's a bit zombie-esque, but has its unique spins - a rabies-like virus, and starring a female pediatrician going to help her pregnant friend.
Mel wrote: "My two sisters read really dark stuff like: Jeffrey deaver, Chris carter, Michael connelly, R J Ellory, Lynda La Plant, they are gory serial killer masters.The other sister explained: "I suppose ..."
Oh, what about an up and comer with The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias? I've also heard that Chevy Stevens writes in this sort of vibe, but I have yet to read her stuff.
I loved this list.
People can be weird (me= 0/), in this period of the year we become very picky, for good reasons :)
Loved this one For your science-y friend who wants a deep-dive read that is both thoroughly accurate and beautifully written , this book by Helen Czerski seems amazing! It went to my "Want to read" pile.
How do ducks keep their feet warm when walking on ice? Ducks socks, maybe? ... Just kidding!