This Christmas, our Booksellers have been busy curating gifting guides to suit all. Whether you're buying for that cousin who lives to travel, a Cricket obsessed uncle; looking for the perfect gift for little ones, big ones or difficult ones, we've got you covered.
Presenting our Gifting Guide for Book Lovers:
Look Closer
Look Closer
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
As an English literature professor, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst has delighted in sharing his love of reading with his students. Bringing together more than twenty years of teaching, Look Closer explores the iconic works of literature that have formed, sustained and entertained him, from timeless classics like Wuthering Heights and Dracula to modern masterpieces such as Normal People and The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as children’s books, poetry, plays, short stories and comics. By revealing the simple techniques to slow down, take note and bring a text to life, Look Closer makes clear how literature works and why, in these turbulent times, reading is more relevant than ever. Funny, illuminating and personal, this book ultimately shows us how great writing can change a person’s life. It is a celebration of the simple joy of reading, and how becoming more attentive readers can open up worlds and bring us closer to ourselves in delightful and unexpected ways.
When Books Go Bad
When Books Go Bad
Alex Johnson
The literary life isn't just about curling up with a good book and a cuppa, it's also a world where Lord Byron calls John Keats' work 'p$%s-a-bed poetry', spaniels eat the first drafts of masterpieces and gung-ho Ben Jonson shows he's more than happy to prove the sword is mightier than the pen. When Books Go Bad shows that behind the jaunty covers and feelgood memoirs is a dingier world of personal insults, physical blows, and publishing errors. It's one where books suffer bad endings and libraries impose bizarre sanctions. It's a story of writers behaving badly since Sophocles clashed quills with Euripedes, defacing books, abandoning spouses, and regretting choosing Dylan Thomas to be the Best Man at their wedding. Elsewhere it looks at hot take reviews, sniffy dedications, publishers' rejection letters, literary friendships gone sour and why you should never lick a book with a green cover.
A World of Cozy Bookstores
A World of Cozy Bookstores
Chrissy Lau
Step into a realm where every page allows you to de-stress and unleash your creativity. A World of Cozy Bookstores beckons you to explore 46 enchanting scenes filled with reading nooks and literary spaces, both real and imagined. From whimsical book nooks to breath-taking reading rooms, travel the globe as you colour your way through the world’s most delightful bookstores. Each illustration serves as a cozy retreat, designed to inspire relaxation and mindfulness for colourists of all skill levels.
Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear
Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear
Gyles Brandreth
In this new biography Gyles Brandreth tells the remarkable story of A A Milne – and of the ‘bear of very little brain’ who went on to become a global phenomenon. Drawing on his friendship with Milne’s son, the real Christopher Robin, Gyles Brandreth has produced a revealing and intimate portrait of a prolific author whose legacy came to be defined by his most famous creation, and of the divided Milne family who for many years had a conflicted relationship with the iconic bear. This is the story of a man, a boy and a bear – but it is also a gripping family drama, and a fascinating exploration of the complicated nature of growing up, and the impossible longing for a return to the enchanted places of childhood.
The Writer's Room
The Writer's Room
Katie da Cunha Lewin
The rooms of certain writers are mythologised almost as much as the works themselves: the Brontës’ study in the parsonage; Virginia Woolf’s garden room; Sigmund Freud’s study, with its famous couch. They are preserved in writers’ houses or recreated in museums, pictured and described in newspaper columns and on Instagram. And yet writers, old and new, have worked in all kinds of places: in bedsits and boarding houses, at libraries, in bathrooms and while on the move. From Emily Dickinson’s hidden writing pocket to Lauren Elkin typing on her phone on the bus, Maya Angelou in hotel rooms and Ernest Hemingway in Parisian cafés to the founders of Women of Color Press around their kitchen tables, Katie da Cunha Lewin dismantles the familiar furniture of the writer’s room and opens it up. The Writer's Room takes us on a fascinating journey through the hidden worlds that shape the books we love. It is the perfect gift for the reader in your life.
Mrs Dalloway
Mrs Dalloway
Mark Hussey
The fourth and best-known of Virginia Woolf’s novels, Mrs Dalloway is a modernist masterpiece that has remained popular since its publication in 1925. Its dual narratives follow a day in the life of wealthy housewife Clarissa Dalloway and shell-shocked war veteran Septimus Warren Smith, capturing their inner worlds with a vividness that has rarely been equalled. Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel offers new readers a lively introduction to this enduring classic, while providing Woolf lovers with a wealth of information about the novel’s writing, publication and reception. It follows Woolf’s process from the first stirrings in her diary through her struggles to create what was quickly recognised as a major advance in prose fiction. It then traces the novel’s remarkable legacy to the present day. Woolf wrote in her diary that she wanted her novel ‘to give life & death, sanity & insanity… to criticise the social system, & to show it at work, at its most intense.’ Mrs Dalloway: Biography of a Novel reveals how she achieved this ambition, creating a book that will be read by generations to come.
Looking After Your Books
Looking After Your Books
Francesca Galligan
This quirky but practical guide covers questions book-lovers might have about looking after their books at home. With historical anecdotes and curious examples at every turn, it will delight anyone with an interest in books and their history. Written by an expert rare books librarian at the Bodleian Libraries and covering a range of subjects including collecting, arranging and keeping books in good condition, its friendly advice will guide you through all aspects of book-ownership. Here you will find useful tips on buying from bookfairs, bookshops and dealers and identifying first editions. Help is on hand with treating accidental mishaps and a range of common problems afflicting books, whether an attack of red rot or a broken spine. There are also chapters on shelving, how to keep track of your books, how to commission a special box for a special book and how to pass books on usefully. An indispensable resource for anyone who cherishes books.
Every Day I Read
Every Day I Read
Hwang Bo-reum (author), Shanna Tan (translator)
From the internationally bestselling author of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop comes a warm and reflective collection of essays about reading, language and life. Why do we read? What is it that we hope to take away from the intimate, personal experience of reading for pleasure? Rarely do we ask these profound, expansive questions of ourselves and of our relationship to the joy of reading. But in this gentle, philosophical collection celebrating books, reading and language, Hwang Bo-reum doesn’t just tell us, but shows us what living a life immersed in reading means. Every Day I Read provides many quiet moments for introspection and reflection, encourages book-lovers to explore what reading means to each of us. While this is a book about books, at its heart is an attitude to life, one outside capitalism and climbing the corporate ladder. Readers and non-readers will take away something from it, including a treasure trove of book recommendations blended seamlessly within.
Books - A Manifesto
Books - A Manifesto
Ian Patterson
This is a book about books, about the subversive power of reading and the strange, enduring magic of books as objects.Ever since childhood, books have been at the centre of Ian Patterson's life, as a poet, teacher, translator, bookseller and collector. As he constructs the last of many libraries, he makes an impassioned case for the radical importance of reading in our lives - from Proust to Jilly Cooper, from golden-age detective novels to avant-garde poetry. Wise, irreverent and exhilaratingly wide-ranging, Books: A Manifesto reminds us that poems know things that we might not yet know ourselves, urges us to seek out the puzzles alive in the art of translation and celebrates the singular elasticity of the 'bookshop minute'. But even more than this, the book insists on reading not as a luxury but a necessary part of reality: we live within language, and when we think, it's with the tools that reading gives us. Our time of cultural and political crisis demands more than books - but without them, and without the breadth of knowledge, sense of history, awareness of alternatives and hope for the future they offer, things will not get better. At once a primer for enriching your own library and a manifesto for why that matters, this book is an invitation to a deeper, richer world of thought and feeling - and a reminder of just how much books matter.
Worlds of Wonder
Worlds of Wonder
Daniel Hahn (editor)
A beautifully illustrated journey through the most beloved classics of children’s literature, spanning more than twenty countries and one hundred and fifty years. From Little Women to Harry Potter, children’s literature is a treasure trove of literary magic. Written in multiple genres and featuring some of literature’s most memorable characters and worlds, fiction for young audiences offers narratives into which to escape even while it teaches lessons about the real world. This volume traces the history of the world’s most beloved children’s fiction, showcasing the vast breadth of iconic literature written for children. Spanning from the Victorian era to the present and focusing on books for readers age five through young adult, Worlds of Wonder will take you on an enthralling nostalgic journey through the most important works in children’s literature from across the globe.
More Gift Books for Book Lovers
See More
More Gifts for Book Lovers
See More
