Christmas 2021 books gift guide: ‘Tis the season for a jolly good read
You don’t need to give anything else at Christmas. Just give books.
Dear Santa,
Please let us celebrate Christmas with loved ones this year. Please know how much we’ve missed each other, and please allow us to get together to feast on prawns, and let us also give books to each other, for what else does anyone need?
I’ve devoted the whole section today to gift ideas for booklovers. Some are lavishly illustrated coffee table books; some are slim volumes of poetry. Some are by First Nations writers, and some are by Latin Americans. Some are about sport and others about food, and some are for kids, and some are about love.
Maybe you’re thinking, wait, is this a commercial thing? Has somebody paid to have these books here? No, no, I took advice, but in the end, I chose them all, based on what appealed to me, in the hope of producing a list of unusual, inspired and welcome gift ideas for your loved ones. And then Cheryl Akle, who produces our Notable Books column, also made a special list of eight books to wrap up and give away this Christmas, in case you wanted more options.
Next week, our literary critics will choose their Best Books of 2021, which is a different thing altogether. A week after that, chief literary critic Geordie Williamson will tell you what to look out for over summer and into 2022.
In the meantime, happy shopping. Happy wrapping. And Merry Christmas.
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Bird: Exploring the Winged World
There are a couple of beautiful bird books on the shelves this Christmas, including Bird: Exploring the Winged World (Phaidon) with an introduction by Katrina van Grouw, which celebrates the beauty of birds throughout art, history, ornithology and culture. It contains 300 spectacular images, from painted medieval manuscripts to incredible high-speed photography. It was produced in consultation with an international panel of artists, art historians, conservationists and photographers. It has tiny hummingbirds, and ostriches taller than humans, and will you just look at the cover?
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The Complete Prose of TS Eliot
So, how much do you love the poetry lover in your life? This monumental, eight volume, 7148-page collection, The Complete Prose of TS Eliot (Johns Hopkins University Press) has a sticker price of $1300 but it brings together for the first time in print all of Eliot‘s nonfiction writing on literature, philosophy, religion, cultural theory and politics. Described in The Wall Street Journal as having been published at “considerable expense and with great care” this magnificent set of books is a collaboration between the university and the poet’s estate, and reading it, you may find yourself longing for “the time to return where literature once again occupies a central place in our culture.”
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The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature
A gorgeous hardcover book by a 25-year-old illustrator named Sami Bayly who is based in country NSW. She is without peer when it comes to drawing Australia’s ugliest – her word! – animals. If your kids already have The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Ugly Animals then The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Peculiar Pairs in Nature (Hachette) is the perfect companion. Bayly studied drawing at the University of Newcastle and she is a wonderful person as well as a talented illustrator. She makes plain sketches available on her website for kids to download and colour in. She has won plenty of awards, including the CBCA Eve Pownall Award. She makes ugly animals look adorable, which of course they are.
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Libertie
Kaitlyn Greenidge tells of an African-American girl whose mother hopes that she will become a doctor. She has other ideas. It is a mystical and mysterious book, filled with hope, magic, triumph and love.
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Devotion
There is something special about this book. It is about the kind of love that gets people through the near-impossible. Hannah Kent says wrote it as a gift to her younger self. Our reviewer, Emma Harcourt, described it as astonishing.
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Light Perpetual
Light Perpetual (Allen & Unwin) by Francis Spufford begins with the death of five children in the World War II bombing of London. They had gathered outside a store to stare, amazed, at some newly arrived aluminium pots. It proceeds beautifully, telling the stories of the lives they might have lived.
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The Lincoln Highway
The Lincoln Highway (Penguin Books Australia) by Amor Towles, set in the 1950s, concerns a young man whose family farm has been foreclosed upon by the bank, so he picks up his eight-year-old brother Billy and sets out for California to start a new life, only to find some outlaws in what Americans call the trunk.
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Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World
Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World (Allen & Unwin) by Victoria Finlay. A talented journalist trots the globe, discovering the history of fabric, at one point plunging her hands into raw pashmina wool, finding it “so soft I wasn’t sure if I was touching something or nothing”.
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Oh William!
Oh William! (Penguin Australia) by Elizabeth Strout. It is hard to believe when you are in the middle of a divorce but you can get to a place where the two of you are friends again. This book tells the story of a long-separated couple, who still sometimes need each other.
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Great Properties of Tasmania
Great Properties of Tasmania (MUP) by Richard Allen and Kimbal Baker is a hardback, inviting readers into 18 private estates to explore the histories of the families who have lived on the Apple Isle, some of them still in sheep and cattle, others now making whiskey and gin.
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Winter Recipes From the Collective: Poems
Winter Recipes From the Collective: Poems (FSG) by Louise Glück is the 2020 Nobel laureate’s slim new collection of 15 glorious poems. “Some of you will know what I mean,” she says, as she writes her way into your soul.
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Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage
Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage (Macmillan) by Eleanor Henderson is a memoir of her husband Aaron’s long illness, which began as trauma, evolved into depression and addiction, and somehow became a physical ailment, which left Eleanor as baffled as his doctors.
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Nat’s What I Reckon: Death To Jar Sauce
Nat’s What I Reckon: Death To Jar Sauce (Random House Australia). Long-haired dude with neck tattoos says jar sauce can get f--ked, then presents easy to follow recipes to help young adults navigate the kitchen, when (if ever?) they move out of home.
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Where The River Bends
Where The River Bends (HarperCollins) by Jane & Jimmy Barnes, a couple who revealed themselves during the pandemic to be filled with love for their fellow man, recording uplifting sing-a-longs with their friends to give away on Facebook. Here, they show how to prepare a simple meal for your family.
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When We Cease to Understand the World
This book, by Benjamín Labatut (Pushkin Press) is unlike anything else you will read this year. It tells a mesmerising story of the 20th century’s most brilliant scientists and mathematicians in a hybrid of fiction and the author’s astonishing imagination. You’re thinking: no, but yes. It’s amazing.
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The Christmas Pig
The Christmas Pig (Hachette) by JK Rowling because she is hands down one of the finest storytellers for children we are likely to see in our lifetime; and the book comes in what the publisher described as a “gorgeously gifty hardback”, with art from renowned illustrator, Jim Field.
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Love Stories
Love Stories (Harper Collins) by Trent Dalton. OK, so you know about this one: Dalton sat behind an old typewriter at a table on a Brisbane street corner, with a sign that said: Please tell Me A Love Story. Passers-by poured their hearts out. Tender and beautiful.
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The Brilliant Boy
The Brilliant Boy (Simon & Schuster) by Gideon Haigh because how many truly international statesmen has this country produced? Doc Evatt had a vision for Australia and for the world. He was also a judge who believed not only in law but in justice.
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Australia and the Venice Biennale
Australia and the Venice Biennale (MUP) by Kerry Gardner is a baby-pink, hardback beauty, celebrating early Australian art by Sidney Nolan, Russell Drysdale and William Dobell and, later, the bold works of Rover Thomas, Howard Arkley, Patricia Piccinini and Shaun Gladwell in Venice.
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Gangsta Granny Strikes Again
Given it’s Christmas, you’ll be looking for children’s books, so maybe try David Walliams’ Gangsta Granny Strikes Again! (HarperCollins), starring Gangsta Granny, a cabbage enthusiast, a Scrabble partner … and an international jewel thief known as The Black Cat.
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The Woman from Uruguay
The Woman from Uruguay (Bloomsbury) by Argentine author Pedro Mairal, a professor of English in Latin America, is a short, gorgeous story about a man who makes a day trip from Buenos Aires to Montevideo with $15,000 in his pocket that he cannot afford to lose.
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Piazza Garibaldi
Piazza Garibaldi (Merrijig Word & Sound Company) by Marisa Fazio, is a portrait of 1880s Melbourne, not through the usual lens but through the beguiling eyes of Sapphire, a Sicilian sex worker living in a bordello next to current day Pellegrini’s Cafe.
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Underwater Wild: My Octopus Teacher’s Extraordinary World
Underwater Wild: My Octopus Teacher’s Extraordinary World (Black Inc) by Craig Foster and Ross Frylinck, creators of the Academy Award-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, who dive without tanks in the kelp forests off South Africa.
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Last Letter to a Reader
Last Letter to a Reader (Giramondo) by Gerald Murnane, reflecting on the 15 books that have led critics to praise him as “a genius on the level of Beckett” – and I must admit, there were times when I stopped dead at the end of a sentence, thinking, Wait, how did he do that?
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Everything I Love To Cook
Everything I Love To Cook (Murdoch Books) by Neil Perry, with a stunning dedication to his mother, Margaret, on the opening pages. It contains simple recipes, made from fresh produce, with an emphasis on loving your family by feeding them well. It is hardback. It is gorgeous.
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Glass: The Life and Art of Klaus Moje
Glass: The Life and Art of Klaus Moje (New South) by Nola Anderson, traces Moje’s apprenticeship in his father’s small glass-cutting and glass-grinding business to his decision, in 1982, to move to Australia, where he established the Glass Workshop at the Canberra School of Art.
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Whisper Songs
Whisper Songs (UQP) by Tony Birch. Tender poems, some to his late brother, some to others he has loved and lost, and loves still. Divided into three sections – Blood, Skin and Water – the poems come encased in a special cover designed by a First Nations artist, Jenna Lee.
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Bluey: Christmas Swim, or Bluey: Camping
Did I ever tell you about the time I looked at my own blue puppy, with which I was – and am – besotted, and thought, “I should write a kids’ book about an adored blue dog.” Well, I didn’t do it. What an idiot. Anyway, buy either of these in hardback (Penguin Australia). Your kids will love them.
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Die Laughing: The Biography of Bill Leak
Die Laughing: The Biography of Bill Leak (IPA) by Fred Pawle tells the story of a flawed, creative, truly interesting and different human being. It tells of his working-class background, and the mad love affairs, with perceptive reflections by friends Leigh Sales and Jeanne Ryckmans.
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Tonight’s Dinner
Tonight’s Dinner (Hardie Grant) by Adam Liaw because he is a warm person, presenting easy-to-follow recipes that you will serve with pride, among them lemon pepper fettuccine with haloumi, for which I once received a very welcome kiss, and a squeeze on the back cheek.
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Nevermoor series
A collectable set of the first three books in the Nevermoor series (Hachette) starring the brave-heart protagonist Morrigan Crow. The author, Jessica Townsend, wrote her first story when she was a Queensland schoolgirl, aged just seven. There has been no stopping her since.
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Campese
Campese (Scribe) by James Curran. Look, I don’t pretend to get it, but I do understand that Campese thrilled spectators in Australia and overseas as a rugby player, and while I object to anyone being the “Bradman of rugby”, this book will likely be welcomed by sports fans.
The Story Continues: Dustin Martin
The Story Continues: Dustin Martin (Hardie Grant) is the all new, up-to-date and illustrated companion to his first release, included here because you have to have a football book on a Christmas list and because I once saw Dusty in a Bonds ad and never really got over it.
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Take One Fish
Take One Fish (Hardie Grant) by Josh Niland, because you can never – okay, hardly ever – get a seat at his tiny Sydney restaurant; you’d stay up for days trying to land one. This book has 60 recipes, “celebrating the drips, crunchy bits, burnt edges and imperfections” of fish.
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Australian Birds in Pictures
Australian Birds in Pictures (New Holland) by Matthew Jones and Duade Paton is, yes, another bird book, but these are Australian birds in their natural habitats. The authors have specialised in portraits and behavioural shots of soaring albatrosses and hunting raptors and rarely seen skulking emu-wrens and quail-thrushes, and oh, who doesn’t love them.
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Cheryl Akle’s Notable Books
The Lyrics
By Paul McCartney
Penguin, Nonfiction
91 pp, $155.00
This two-volume set by Paul McCartney would make such a special gift. Rather than write an ordinary autobiography, the singer has taken 154 of his songs, from his earliest boyhood compositions through to the present, and used them to recount his life. At 14, he wrote of the death of his mother. Throughout are letters, scrawled notes, paintings, photographs and recollections, making this a a superb record of McCartney’s life. This is well worth the cover price: intimate, revealing, inspiring, it’s a lovely reading experience.
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Life at the Edge
Thames & Hudson, Photographs
160pp, $59.99
A coffee-table book, and an ode to this nation, with expansive panoramas and detailed close-ups showcasing all that we have to celebrate about Australia’s coastlines, rivers and waterways. Sunlight on water, children playing in the surf at dusk, a lone fisherman. While the focus is the stunning images by photographers from around the country, thoughtful essays by Jock Serong, Amy Liptrot and Deborah Cracknell also explore the importance of water to the Australian identity.
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Taste
By Stanley Tucci
Penguin, Nonfiction
320pp, $45
Award-winning actor Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian-American family, cooking and sharing meals together. This background has given him a lifelong love of food, and a curiosity about the intersection of food and life. He’s explored this passion in the past in films like Big Night and Julie & Julia, and in two previously published cookbooks. His latest book is filled with recipes, anecdotes about his life, and even a chapter on the Perfect Martini.
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This Much is True
By Miriam Margolyes
Hachette, Memoir
336pp, $49.99
BAFTA award-winning actor Miriam Margolyes shares her incredible life story – or, more accurately, the stories the lawyers allowed her to share. It’s a gossip-fest of famous actors, theatre tales and entertaining anecdotes. She doesn’t diminish her struggles, but the wisdom of age gives her a refreshing take on any heartbreak, homophobia and misogyny she’s experienced. Margolyes says, “From the very beginning, I always wanted to connect with people using language and humour and naughtiness. I hope people will like me, but if they don’t, I want them to notice me.”
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Daughter of the River Country
By Dianne O’Brien
Echo Publishing, Memoir
336pp, $32.99
Dianne O’Brien (known as Aunty Di) is a Yorta Yorta woman who raised six children, endured abusive relationships and mistreatment in Sydney institutions before learning her true identity. She is Aboriginal, and her great-grandfather was William Cooper, a famous Aboriginal activist. She has since dedicated her life to her family and community, fostering children, working tirelessly in drug and alcohol counselling, and Aboriginal legal and community services – and now she has penned her life’s story. Aunty Di’s memoir is eloquently and powerfully written. Her courage is palpable throughout.
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Treasure and Dirt
By Chris Hammer
Allen & Unwin, Fiction
512pp, $32.99
Christmas reading is often about entertainment and escapism, and you can’t go wrong with a Chris Hammer novel. His latest stand-alone thriller, Treasure and Dirt, has all the things we expect from a great holiday read: an exhilarating plot, a vivid setting and gritty, nuanced characters. Grisly murders and white-knuckle tension are set against the oppressive heat of the outback town of Finnigans Gap, where police struggle to maintain law and order. Give this one to your Christmas visitors and you won’t hear from them until after the final page.
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Home
By Stephanie Alexander
Pan Macmillan, Cookbook
416pp, $59.99
Stephanie Alexander‘s five-decade career has transformed the way Australians think about food. This is a sumptuous collection, with more than 200 recipes, beautifully designed and photographed, and celebrating tastes, ingredients and flavours. Included are inspiring essays on people, places and experiences, highlighting her fascination with what people eat, and how they share meals. More than a cookbook, Alexander delights in the entire process, from choosing ingredients, to preparing and cooking the meal, and finally sharing it with those she cares about.
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How to End a Story
By Helen Garner
Text, Memoir
256 pp, $29.99
This is the third instalment of Helen Garner’s diaries, covering four eventful years from 1995, including the demise of her marriage. Her husband, known as V here, is consumed by his work, writing the great Australian novel, while Garner tries to find her place around him, and with him. Garner is one of Australia’s most celebrated writers and she is here in all her splendour, in a portrait of love and pain, loss and betrayal. A wonderful gift for anyone, but especially for the women in your life who have discovered the regenerative power of a room of one’s own.