47 books for holiday gift giving in 2017
From the pretty to the gritty, our suggested list of new books for holiday gift-giving represents a variety of genres, topics and tones. It doesn’t shy away from serious or intense books, but I’ve kept pleasure reading foremost in mind. ❚ In general, this list recommends books published since the Journal Sentinel’s summer reading list came out in May, though I have reached back to the beginning of the year for some choices. ❚ Also, this season we’re publishing our recommended children’s book picks separately for easier sharing (page 4E). ❚ Thanks to my colleague Chris Foran for the pop culture and baseball sections and some other picks. Some of my recommendations were inspired by and adapted from reviews by contributors Elfrieda Abbe, Carole E. Barrowman and Mike Fischer.
EDITOR’S PICKS
“The Big Book of the Continental Op” (Vintage Crime / Black Lizard), by Dashiell Hammett. All 28 stories and the original serialized versions of the two novels starring Hammett’s unnamed detective, one of the emblematic characters in American mystery fiction. “Going Into Town: A Love Letter to New York” (Bloomsbury), by Roz Chast. The great New Yorker cartoonist salutes Manhattan and mocks her own anxiety. She claims this isn’t a guidebook, but it reads mighty helpful to me. “Hunger: A Memoir of (My)
Body” (Harper), by Roxane Gay. The author discloses how she began eating compulsively and gaining weight after being gang-raped at age 12. This brave book fits no preconceived template about weight, weight loss and eating disorders. “Keeping On Keeping On” (FSG), by Alan Bennett. More than half of playwright Bennett’s third prose collection is drawn from his compulsively readable diaries. Where else can you get encounters with both T.S. Eliot and Morrissey? “Meddling Kids: A Novel” (Doubleday), by Edgar Cantero. In this humor-horror confection, former teen detectives and their dog return as troubled young adults to the spooky place where they once put a small-time crook away to confront the real supernatural evil embedded there.
“Montaigne in Barn Boots: An Amateur Ambles Through Philosophy” (Harper), by Michael Perry. Wisconsin humorist and memoirist Perry (“Population: 485”) finds common ground (and shared afflictions) with the great French essayist.
“An Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett, Mentor and Editor of Literary Genius” (FSG), by Helen Smith. A compelling bi-
ography of Garnett, a coach and confidante of Joseph Conrad, John Galsworthy, T.E. Lawrence and other important writers. (Out Dec. 12.)
“You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” (Little, Brown), by Sherman Alexie. Mixing short prose chapters with related poems in this memoir, Alexie sorts out his complex relationship with his mother, a difficult woman whom he nonetheless credits with saving his life twice.
WISCONSIN CONNECTIONS
“Beer Lover’s Wisconsin: Best Breweries, Brewpubs and Beer Bars” (Globe Pequot), by Kathy Flanigan. Flanigan, who covers craft brewing for the Journal Sentinel, barnstormed the state to create this guidebook to beer culture and destinations.
“The Driftless Reader” (University of Wisconsin Press), edited by Curt Meine and Keefe Keeley. Meine and Keeley have selected dozens of excerpts of scientific, literary and journalistic writing to create a composite portrait of the region. More than 50 illustrations enhance the book.
“Enchantress of Numbers: A Novel of Ada Lovelace” (Dutton), by Jennifer Chiaverini. Madison historical novelist Chiaverini fictionalizes the life of Lovelace (1815-’52), widely recognized today as a forerunner of computer science for her collaboration with Charles Babbage. Oh, she was Lord Byron’s daughter, too. (Chiaverini will speak about the book in a ticketed event at 7 p.m. Dec. 18 at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, 2145 W. Brown Deer Road. Call (414) 446-8794 or visit lyndensculpturegarden.org.)
“The Great War Comes to Wisconsin: Sacrifice, Patriotism and Free Speech in a Time of Crisis” (Wisconsin Historical Society Press), by Richard L. Pifer. This book explores Wisconsin’s tangled home-front experience during World War I, where wartime sacrifice and hysteria shared the stage in equal measure.
“In Grace’s Time” (Black Rose), by Kathie Giorgio. In this Waukesha writer’s new novel, a gay man and a grieving mother connect on a drive across the country.
“Irksome Particulars” (Publishing Genius), by Matt Cook. One hundred crisp prose poems about the flip-flops of consciousness, from a former Milwaukee poet laureate.
“Junk: A Play” (Back Bay Books), by Ayad Akhtar. Brookfield Central graduate Akhtar’s new play, now onstage in New York, takes a Shakespearean approach to big capitalism, using a cast of some 20 characters to dramatize a junkbond raider’s attempt to take over a steel company. Akhtar’s close relationship with the Milwaukee Repertory Theater makes it likely we’ll see this play in Milwaukee.
“Justice for All: Selected Writings of Lloyd A. Barbee” (Wisconsin Historical Society Press), edited by Daphne E. Barbee-Wooten. A valuable collection of writings and reminisces from Milwaukee civil rights leader Lloyd Barbee, who was in front on everything from the fight for school desegregation to prison reform.
“Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel” (Schocken), by Francine Klagsbrun. The woman who became prime minister of Israel spent her formative years in Milwaukee, attending the school that now bears her name, where her early activism included raising money for textbooks for poor children. (Klagsbrun will speak at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Jewish Community Center, 6255 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Whitefish Bay.)
“Lolas’ House: Filipino Women Living With War” (Curbstone Books), by M. Evelina Galang. Galang shares the true stories of Filipino women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during World War II. She is a former Brookfield East High School student and a University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate. (Galang will speak at 7 p.m. Dec. 13 at Boswell Books.)
“The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapes That Inspired the Little House Books” (Timber Press), by Marta McDowell. A gardening and landscape historian describes and explores the plants and crops in each of the places where Wilder lived, including Wisconsin.
FINE FICTION
“The Chalk Artist” (The Dial Press), by Allegra Goodman. A young teacher tries to win over a student being drawn into an immersive gaming world.
“Forest Dark” (Harper), by Nicole Krauss. A wealthy philanthropist and a young novelist both come to Tel Aviv to reset themselves in Krauss’ brainy novel.
“Future Home of the Living God” (Harper), by Louise Erdrich. Fans of “A Handmaid’s Tale” may enjoy Erdrich’s dystopian fable about a future where pregnant women are rounded up by a shadowy theocracy.
“The Hainish Novels & Stories” (Library of America), by Ursula K. Le Guin. A two-volume collection of Le Guin’s speculative fiction about the Hain worlds, including “The Left Hand of Darkness,” a provocative masterpiece about gender.
“Her Body and Other Parties” (Graywolf), by Carmen Maria Machado. Vivid stories about life inside the bodies of women that frequently tap horror ideas and techniques.
“Manhattan Beach” (Scribner), by Jennifer Egan. A young woman whose father disappears mysteriously later becomes a deep-sea diver in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. From the author of “A Visit From the Goon Squad.”
“The Seventh Function of Language” (FSG), by Laurent Binet. A witty and playful novel, evocative of Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose,” in which an odd couple of detective and French academic hunt for an explosive document by Roland Barthes.
“Sing, Unburied, Sing” (Scribner), by Jesmyn Ward. A murdered brother haunts a beleaguered Southern family in a novel filled with ghosts. From the author of “Men We Reaped.”
“The Story of Arthur Truluv” (Random House), by Elizabeth Berg. A teenager and an elderly widower who meet in a cemetery form an unusual friendship. (Berg will speak at 7 p.m. Dec. 8 at Boswell Books, 2559 N. Downer Ave.)
COMPELLING NONFICTION
“Ballad of the Anarchist Bandits: The Crime Spree That Gripped Belle Époque Paris” (Nation Books), by John Merriman. True crime with a French accent: Popular Yale professor Merriman chronicles the anarchist Bonnot Gang of the early 20th century.
“Basketball (and Other Things): A Collection of Questions Asked, Answered, Illustrated” (Abrams Image), by Shea Serrano, illustrated by Arturo Torres. Blending obsessive detail and humor, Serrano takes on both barstool arguments (Michael Jordan’s best year, the best NBA dunk ever) and whimsical conceptual inquiries.
“Birdmania: A Remarkable Passion for Birds” (Greystone), by Bernd Brunner. Culture writer Brunner warbles about bird-loving and bird-obsessed humans famous (Charles Darwin, Helen Macdonald) and otherwise, with many bird illustrations, some rare reprints.
“Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News” (Graywolf), by Kevin Young. In this exploration of humbug from P.T. Barnum to today’s fakery, Young often finds racial stereotype and anxiety at work.
“Grant” (Penguin Press), by Ron Chernow. An underrated president gets his due in a massive biography from Chernow, author of the “Hamilton” biography that inspired the Broadway musical.
“How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain” (HMH), by Alan Pell Crawford. From silver mines to coca leaves to board games, the author of “Huckleberry Finn” kept trying to get rich. And kept failing.
“The Long Haul: A Trucker’s Tale of Life on the Road” (W.W. Norton), by Finn Murphy. A trucker who specializes in cross-country moves demystifies his occupation while also telling thrilling stories.
“This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Farm Family” (W.W. Norton), by Ted Genoway. A chronicle of contemporary Nebraska farmers coping with the many stresses and threats to family agriculture today.
“The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II” (Random House), by Svetlana Alexievich, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The Nobel Prize winner’s alternately harrowing and inspiring oral history of the 1 million women who fought in the Soviet army during WWII.
MYSTERIES & THRILLERS
“An Extraordinary Union” (Kensington), by Alyssa Cole. In this historical romance, a black freedwoman and a white Scot become intimate while spying undercover against the Confederacy.
“Bluebird Bluebird” (Mulholland), by Attica Locke. A Texas Ranger probes the murders of two people found dead near a small-town café: a black man and a white woman. Mystery columnist Carole E. Barrowman calls Locke’s novel “a layered portrait of a black man confronting his own racial ambivalence and ambition told with a pointed and poignant bluesy lyricism.”
“Fierce Kingdom” (Viking), by Gin Phillips. A mother and her preschooler dodge multiple shooters at a zoo while looking for a safe way out.
“The Nine-Tailed Fox” (Soho Crime), by Martin Limón. U.S. Army CID agents look for three missing American soldiers in 1970s South Korea, while dealing with bureaucracy and other mayhem.
“Old Scores” (Minotaur), by Will Thomas. Thomas balances rich historical context with a contemporary feel in this mystery about the murder of a visiting Japanese diplomat.
MUSICAL SUBJECTS
“Chuck D Presents This Day in Rap and Hip-Hop History” (Black Dog & Leventhal). From a party DJ Kool Herc hosted in 1973 to the release of the “Hamilton” mixtape last Dec. 2, the voice of Public Enemy offers daily milestones of the music and its related culture.
“The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums” (Pantheon), by Will Friedwald. Nobody knows the Great American Songbook or its interpreters better than Friedwald. In his latest, he offers context and analysis for 51 classic albums in a masterful listening guide that’s also fun reading.
“Lou Reed: A Life” (Little, Brown), by Anthony DeCurtis. A biography of the rock star noted both for his uncompromising, ambitious approach to songwriting and his defiant stance toward almost everybody and everything.
“Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell” (Sarah Crichton Books), by David Yaffe. A life of the brilliant, restless musician, tracing her path from Canadian folkie to collaborations with jazz giants Charles Mingus and Wayne Shorter.
“Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green” (Da Capo), by Jimmy McDonough. Warts-and-all biography of the incomparable soul singer turned minister turned soul singer turned minister.