Merry Bookmas?

Christmas and books. They just sort of go together, don’t they?

Well, they do when it comes to my Christmas shopping list.  I don’t give as many as I used to within my immediate family because we all have Nook e-readers and share a Barnes and Noble account—you don’t want to know how many e-books we have! But I always save a few special selections for Christmas giving: daughter #1 is a manga fan (and loves wolves), so she’s getting Wolf Children: Ame and Yuki; daughter #2, who is studying jewelry making, gets the enormous new release Jewelry: The Body Transformed and Indian Jewelry Making, and the whole family is getting some of the newer Asterix books, continued by a new artist and writer team now that Uderzo and Goscinny are no more.

I also have other family that I always get books for at the holidays like my mother in law, to read on the plane as she makes her annual trip to warmer climes. This year it’s A Well Behaved Woman by Therese Ann Fowler, historical fiction about Alva Vanderbilt, and The Women in the Castle by Jessica Shattuck, set during and after World War II.  And my dear friend Liz is getting White Mughals by William Dalrymple, about 18^th century East India Company agents who fell in love with India—and with Indian women.

And—ahem—I may have ordered one or two books for myself, too...The House at Lobster Cove by Jane Goodrich—about an extraordinary house that was destroyed and then rebuilt, each time by two extraordinary people, and The Shepherdess of Elk River Valley by Margaret Duncan Brown, who single-handedly ran her Colorado ranch for nearly fifty years, somehow found their way into my basket.

Are you a holiday book giver? What books are planning to give (or hoping to receive?)