The Book Recommendation Hall of Fame
9 Books to Buy for Someone This Holiday (Or Any Time)
Hello from the west coast and a late-night edition of Dear Head of Mine. This dispatch is to share some recommendations both new and old ahead of the holiday season. Unlike some end-of-year lists (not to be named here), I’ve decided to share only books from authors I don’t know or have any personal involvement with (sorry, friends and authors!).
100% Reliable Fiction
Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich
Last Summer in the City is understandably compared to Hemmingway’s prose. It shares some of Hemmingway’s famous terse stylings and is, let’s say, masculine-forward. But for someone who has never been a huge Hemmingway person, Last Summer in the City is like if The Sun Also Rises was given an espresso martini and a sense of humor. With dark, dry wit the novel tells a timeless story of a man in his 20s spending the summer in Rome largely in futility— unable to hold onto any money, a sense of purpose, or the woman he desperately loves and gives him just enough to keep coming back. It's a perfect novel, and for all of the aimlessness baked into the plot it doesn’t have a single superfluous moment in its compact 192 pages. I’ve read this novel once a year since the English translation came out in 2021.
Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger
This is cheating a little bit because I’ve since had the privilege of working on Kent’s novels after this one. I have to include it because it is probably the book I’ve recommended the most, only because it is the kind of bullet-proof recommendation, classic novel that any kind of reader will love. A boy’s coming-of-age story set over one summer (a good setup for a novel, clearly) that starts with him finding a body and changes his life. A pure novel.
The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson
Wilson is my favorite type of writer, a person who seems to have a one-of-one perspective. His imagination pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in our sandbox we call the world. And he’s also one of the funniest writers working, in a way that works best in and is built specifically for prose. The Family Fang is somehow both his masterpiece and his debut, a book that’s so good I can hardly wrap my head around how this is the first novel he ever wrote. The book is about two performance artists and their two children who they involve from a young age in their wild quest for creating true art.
For People Who Want Smart but Breezy
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue
I wrote a full review of this novel for the DHM book club. It’s driven by strong characters and contains a little bit of the whole human experience—drama, laughs, profound moments and mundane ones. If you or someone you know loves novels that are a little slice of life, this is a great one.
For Your Learners
A book that is in my recommended and gifted hall of fame. In this, a narrative memoir at its finest, Bosker descends into the world of wine from zero, devotes her life to it and takes the reader on a fascinating journey through an exploration of industry, eccentric obsessives, and how to taste.
The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova
It’s basically the same conceit as Cork Dork but the amateur pursuit is poker, and the author is also a PHD psychologist. It’s far less about the card game, and more one of the best books on human behavior, mindset, and critical thinking filtered through an entertaining narrative structure and a game that allows these heady concepts to become practical rather than theoretical.
For Your Serious Nonfiction Readers
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner
This book should be required reading. All of your misconceptions about the agency and its history will be set straight here, showing the limitations of spy craft as an effective tool for national defense, diplomacy, and world political influence. The most amazing part is that its indisputable in many ways because the source material for this 800-page tome comes from the agency’s own files. If you’re looking for a reader who likes Daunting Classics they can stick on their office shelf afterward, look no further that this Pulitzer-Prize winning author.
For Your Cooks
The baking book for non-bakers (or bakers without a lot of time or space). In one bowl you can make beautiful and delicious cakes. As a person who likes to cook but was averse to baking, this book changed my life in the kitchen. Highly recommended.
For Your Weirdos
Pretend I’m Dead, Vacuum in the Dark, Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
Beagin seems to have finally caught a little commercial heat with her latest Big Swiss, but I have been an evangelical fan from the start. The term “singular voice” gets thrown around in publishing to the point that it is rendered useless, but Beagin not only has a style that is unbelievably original but a rare way of translating a life experience that we almost never see on the page. Where the majority of novels are either written about privilege or from a privileged place, Jen Beagin is the rare writer who comes from a different background of harder life experience that shines through in a radiant way in her work. Whether working as a cleaning woman or living in a house overrun by bees in Hudson, New York, all three of her novels are profoundly weird and profoundly great.
