'Tis the season

books, books, books

If I could have any job in the world, it would be to sit on a comfy chair in a nice bookstore and give people advice on what books to buy as Christmas presents for people they barely know. You wouldn’t even have to pay me, I’d just do it for free. And I’d do it well, too. I know I’d be good at this job, because my more illiterate friends are always asking me what to get their spouses, and I am always right. Because what’s a Ph.D. in English FOR if you can’t spew out the plot and point of a thousand different books?

Recommending books would be different than recommending music. For one thing, unlike music, I wouldn’t have any expectations that said people would actually read the book they got for Christmas. Back when I was young, I thought my friends would enjoy the same music I did and I would eagerly play them my favorites, and then I would feel terrible when they didn’t like them. It felt like a kind of personal rejection. As revenge, I became a rock critic, which could also be called, cutting off your nose to spite your face. It was dumb, but here we are, and now I never ever tell people what to listen to, having learned my lesson. It’s my personal secret. No one gets to know now, or ever again.

I feel differently about books, though. I suppose that books feel less like a piece of my soul, so I’m not insulted if you don’t like what I like. Also, it takes longer to read a book than to listen to a song, so it’s less insulting if a person doesn’t do it when asked. Also, I have come to terms with the fact that, unlike music, which most people genuinely like to listen to, most people hate reading, even people who should like it, like, college professors, and people getting their MFA. That being the case, books represent something very different than music.

In the end, what would make the book recommending job so much more fun than recommending music ever was is that I feel like less is at stake. Also, it would be Christmas, and we’d be in a store, so they might even actually go buy them. After all, books are the perfect Xmas gift because they are just about the amount you want to spend, they wrap nicely, and you can get them for anyone. Even though most people don’t like to read very much anymore, they still like to have books around, just in case the urge hits them, and also, books, qua books, are nice objects. Whereas an MP3…not so much.

So. Are you in that position, where you need to buy a gift for someone you either don’t know very well or are otherwise stuck for? If so, here’s my idiosyncratic suggestion of possible purchases, unrelated to newness, hipness, or anything else.

1. WHITE ELEPHANT/SECRET SANTA GIFT

To me, a White Elephant gift should be something really dopey that you’d never buy yourself but that it turns out you enjoy mightily, and the best such gift I ever got at one was the book “Me,” a memoir by Elton John. Going on that principle, I suggest you bring “Cher: A Memoir,” by Cher, which I am sure pretty much anyone on earth would have a good time reading, but would probably not buy themselves. People will either fight over it, or you can take it home yourself, so it’s a win-win.

2. RANDOM HUSBANDS

“The Wager” by David Grann – or frankly anything else by him; my own favorite is actually “The Lost City of Zed” – about an Amazon explorer, but “The Wager” combines exciting events in the past with lengthy lists of things that people took to sea with them. It’s like a cross between a rock critic’s 500 very dry best-of list and “Moby Dick” – i.e. it’s perfect for people who don’t want their literature sullied by romance or emotions, and for people who like to read about facts.

Otherwise, see entrant #4.

3. RANDOM WIVES

“Euphoria” by Lily King. My biggest diving rival gave me this book after Pan Ams for the plane ride back from Medellin to America and it was the fastest flight of my life. It’s a fictional retelling of the time in the 1920s when Margaret Meade went to the islands near Samoa to study the sexual lives of adolescents, as well as recounting an only quasi-fictitous seamy love triangle she was involved in there. Need I say more?

4. THRILLERS

“Rogue Male” by Geoffrey Household. You thought I’d say “Slow Horses,” didn’t you? Even I thought I’d say Slow Horses; it’s so good! But this is even better. Written in 1939, it follows the adventures of a spy who attempts to assassinate a well-known dictator and is then chased down a literal badger hole by Nazi minions, where he is taxed with having to figure out how to escape. Oops! I’ve said too much. But it’s the best! And if you can’t find it in a book store, which seems sadly likely, you can always get “Slow Horses” which is also amazing, or its companion book, “The Secret Hours,” which also involves a badger hole.

5. CLASSICS

There’s this woman on my diving team who went to an Ivy League and holds an incredibly important job in the legal world and she told me that she wishes she read more but it seems like a waste of time unless it’s something, you know, important. I was like, “What’s important”? And she said, “You know, like Dickens.” Hmm. I feel like that’s the wrong attitude to have toward reading, but we all have gaps in our knowledge of classics, and whenever I do get around to filling one, I am reminded why they are called classics. Because they’re classic! Dickens is pretty hard going, and if you’re not up for him, a gap I recently filled that absolutely blew me away was “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. For some reason I hadn’t read it, and it is phenomenal, phenomenally important, and just a great read, so that’s my pick. Like “Rogue Male” it’s sort of short, too – so way more doable than Bleak House.

I feel like this list pretty much has something for anyone - at least I hope it does. Hope it helps someone, and if not…no big! Happy X y’all.