‘This extraordinary story never goes out of fashion’: 30 authors on the books they give to everyoneNEWS | 13 December 2025I love giving books as presents. I rarely give anything else. I strongly approve of the Icelandic tradition of the Jólabókaflóðið (Yule book flood), whereby books are given (and, crucially, read) on Christmas Eve. Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is the one I’ve given more often than any other; so much so that I keep a stack of four or five to hand, ready to give at Christmas or any other time of the year. It’s a slender masterpiece – a meditation on Shepherd’s lifelong relationship with the Cairngorm mountains, which was written in the 1940s but not published until 1977. It’s “about the Cairngorms” in the sense that Mrs Dalloway is “about London”; which is to say, it is both intensely engaged with its specific setting, and gyring outwards to vaster questions of knowledge, existence and – a word Shepherd uses sparingly but tellingly – love.
Most years, I like to give novels as holiday gifts, but this year I am thinking of sharing either Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations or one of Byung-Chul Han’s books, particularly The Burnout Society or The Spirit of Hope. The South Korean-German philosopher describes himself as an “optimistic refugee”, and his style is quite distinctive, blending various disciplines and philosophical traditions from east and west. These short but dense books may not exactly be cheerful, Christmassy reads, but they make excellent companions for anyone interested in “thinking about thinking” in a digital world of noise and distraction; for anyone concerned about the future of humanity.
There is a book I buy as a present that never goes out of fashion. It is The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford. It is hardly about a soldier at all, but the title is good because it distracts people and thus the extraordinary plot creeps up and bites you before you know where you are. The narrative curls and twists; the narrator knows too much or too little. But at some point the appalling and ingenious nature of the treachery – what is called “cheating” nowadays – becomes apparent and you feel that you have been let in on some intriguing and explosive secret. It is perfect, thus, for Christmas.
To the young people in my life I give Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It’s a series of perfect micro-fictions that both stand alone and build towards a deepening message on the nature of reality. It’s also an optimistic text that locates power in the individual. We can change things – if we know where to put our energy.
To my contemporaries, I give out whatever I think will do them good! Books are more than entertainment. We shouldn’t be shy about wanting to provoke or challenge our friends – or ourselves. This year it’s Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive?
I’ve given copies of Claire Keegan’s Foster to so many friends, I worry about unwittingly doubling up. At just 88 pages, it makes a slender gift, but one that won’t sit onerously on a bedside table and whose concision hints at its specialness. Set over one Irish summer, the story is told through a child’s eyes, as she is sent to live with relatives during the final weeks of her mother’s pregnancy. Coming from a household of neglect into one of warmth, the girl’s observations about people reveal both a guilelessness and devastating insight.
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy is a gorgeous, brave and nuanced account of the novelist’s life – anchored in an astonishingly truthful exploration of her relationship with her mother, Mary. She describes her as “my shelter and my storm”, and in the book’s pages we meet Mary the celebrated feminist campaigner and Mary the volatile, threatening mother. Without ever flattening or reducing this formidable and complicated woman, Roy parses the ways her own life has developed – both as a rejection and as homage to her mother. The work is also unapologetically political, and after the horrors in Gaza, I appreciate an author who can speak to the world we are in. The book is beautifully bound and makes for a lovely gift, and I haven’t stopped buying it for people since the day it was published.
When The Wind in the Willows first came out, the reviews were mixed. “As a contribution to natural history,” said one, “it is negligible.” AA Milne set out to proclaim its genius. He used to give copies to people “as a test of character”. I feel the same about Terry Pratchett’s Truckers. It’s the story of a group of Nomes who have come to believe that the department store in which they live is the entire universe (its slogan is “everything under one roof”). A satire on consumerism, sexism, dogmatism and … you name it, it is above all warm, hilarious and wise.
Sarah Crossan’s Where the Heart Should Be is a gripping and moving free verse novel set in the time of the famine in Ireland. It brings you face to face with the tragedy and solidarity of those times. So-called YA, but a great read for anyone.
I have two books I keep stocks of to give as gifts. One, for book-hungry older children, is The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas: it’s dauntingly huge, yes, but also one of the most perfect adventure stories ever written, and I have found that the children it does catch hold of become dizzy with the pleasure of it. The other, to lure in children who have not yet become eager readers, is Sharna Jackson’s superbly witty High Rise Mystery series; I’ve not yet met a child who doesn’t adore it.
The book I have most often given, for over 20 years now, is Alice Oswald’s Dart, her miraculous translation of a river into polyphonic poetry. Ecologically and philosophically it is profoundly (and increasingly!) radical, and line by line it is a pure enlivening delight to read. I give it to people who never read poetry, as well as poetry experts. I give it to visitors, friends, newlyweds, students, grievers, swimmers; and I hope they pass it on to others, because nobody owns a river.
Since 2010, all five stories shortlisted for the BBC National short story award have been published in book form by the wonderful Comma Press. It’s always a stellar shortlist, varied in all ways other than quality. As gifts go, the anthology is perfect: first-rate fiction, the stories as compact as the physical book itself (you can carry it in the deep pocket of a winter coat). And, best of all, next Christmas you can give it to the discerning reader all over again.
As I’ve got older, it’s become harder for me to engage with books on that magical level that feels as if the whole world were concentrated in the palms of your hands. So when it does happen, the impulse is to share it. Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly is a gentle and compassionate novel that explores the nuances of queer love and friendship, the moral dilemmas of sharing someone else’s life through life writing, and the choices we make for our chosen family and those bound to us by blood. I’ve given it to many people so far, but the most significant was to the Casual Readers book club, where, uncommonly, there was unanimous love for the book.
Over the years the books I’ve tended to give most? Wise Children by Angela Carter and When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson. Carter’s final novel is infused with such a high-kicking joyousness that it’s a pleasure to hand it to anyone. Atkinson is always good news, and this work of humane detective fiction is so satisfying that I can give it to folk who don’t know her work, trusting they’ll love it. But this past year the book I’ve found myself giving to most people is Michael Kohlhaas, a slim novella from 1810 by Heinrich von Kleist, translated by Michael Hofmann. Why is the world in such conflagration again? Kleist’s tale about the consequences of injustice will never not be relevant and is so thrilling that once I started reading it I couldn’t stop for anything. Stunning.
I’m a lover of short stories and one of my favourite collections is Sarah Hall’s Sudden Traveller. The stories are simply stunning in their emotional and imaginative leap; her use of language is beautiful and glittering. As far as gifts are concerned, this is one you could give to someone who likes a quick yet wholly transporting read.
“Amos, a mouse, lived by the ocean.” Everybody in my family – maybe in my life – knows the opening line of the picture book Amos & Boris by William Steig. It’s the story of an unlikely friendship between a shipwrecked rodent and a kind-hearted whale, and it’s a combination of plainspoken and magical and deeply, even existentially, philosophical. There’s nobody in my life I wouldn’t give this book to – especially children and friends, and children who are friends – except there’s nobody I can give it to, since I have already given it to everybody.
I can tell which books I really love because I never have copies on my bookshelf. These are the ones I repeatedly give away, so that my shelves have become a repository for all the books that are not my actual favourites. Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask is a novel I have bought on many occasions. For anyone who needs reminding how straight-up fun reading can be, it’s a great reviver: funny, sharp, alive – and with a wonderfully dark undertow. I haven’t kept hold of a copy in years.
I give Rumer Godden’s novels to people – Kingfishers Catch Fire, perhaps, or The River – because a lot of readers don’t know her work. She’s such a warm and entrancing storyteller, but with a steely eye too, and ruthless truthfulness. She’s the best kind of comfort read.
I love to give Restoration by Rose Tremain at Christmas. I’ve never known anyone able to resist protagonist Robert Merivel – a young medical student who lands in the court of Charles II, rises quickly in the king’s favour, then suffers a catastrophic fall from grace. Honest, mischievous, spiritual and self-indulgent, Merivel is above all lovable. Tremain’s depiction of 17th-century life – contrasting the opulence of court with the brutality of the time – is gloriously bawdy one moment, and stop-in-your-tracks profound the next. And as an added bonus, the book’s cover, over the years, has always been Christmassy. Note: the sequel, Merivel: A Man of His Time, is just as wonderful – if not more so.
I often give Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book. Best known for the Moomins, Jansson was also a mistress of the short story, and The Summer Book shows both the gift for parable that underlies the best children’s picture books and the literary economy of short fiction. The central characters are a little girl and her grandmother, and the story turns around the missing mother without ever mentioning her. There’s lots of beautifully observed play and adventure and attention to the natural world. It’s set on a small Finnish island in midsummer, among people who know very well how to appreciate sunlight, so good midwinter reading.
At Christmas I often give the gift of Tove Jansson’s A Winter Book – a collection of short stories selected by Ali Smith, and an exquisite companion to The Summer Book. These stories reflect Jansson’s core passions: small boats, islands, and the vital need for art and inspiration. They’re about land and sea, youth and age; my favourite is a description of two elderly women locking up their home for the last time – a house on a remote rock in the Pellinge archipelago I was lucky enough to visit – leaving the key and some purposefully muddled instructions for anyone who may be passing by.
The book I’ve given most often – by a large margin – is a collection of poetry called Fear of Description by my friend Daniel Poppick. I bought it before I’d ever met Dan, and it had been a long time since I’d got anything out of poetry. I was relieved and amazed to find myself laughing aloud, and then winded with emotion by the final line. I’ve given it since to friends, lovers, at least one parent – partly because it’s a pleasure to share work by someone I’m proud to be friends with and partly because it’s a low-stakes burden gift-wise, something you can dip in and out of with ease and pleasure.
The new Ultimate Spider-Man series deserves everyone’s attention. Written by the legend that is Jonathan Hickman, alongside artist Marco Checchetto, it’s the Spidey reboot we’ve all been waiting for. There have been many reinventions of everyone’s favourite webslinger, but nothing meets the moment like this does, and with Hickman’s incredible attention to character, it’s the best Spidey’s been in years.
I am not sure if it’s wrong to suggest you give the same book to all the vegans in your life, as if suggesting that all vegans are the same, but I do think Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead fits this bill. I love to imagine people I know reading it, even people who eat meat, who would probably like it too. It’s kooky and fun and strange; it’s important without being depressing. I think a lot about the scene at the annual Mushroom Picker’s Ball, which Janina, the main character, attends dressed up as a wolf. Actually, this book is rather festive.
I was given a copy of JL Carr’s novella A Month in the Country many years ago by a work colleague and it’s a book I’ve gifted ever since, so that others can have the joy of reading it for the first time too. It’s a profound, funny, elegiac meditation on lost youth and unrequited love, so sharply observed and economically written that it can be devoured in one sitting. For me, that makes it the perfect present: immediately pleasurable and something that stays with you for life.
I occasionally give The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann, in the (so far unfulfilled) hope that one day somebody else will agree with me that for narrative complexity and jagged emotional impact there is almost nothing that comes close to it.
Recently, I’ve been giving Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee. Published a decade before Pachinko, it follows a Korean community in 00s Manhattan. I’m currently crawling through Middlemarch, and the influence of Eliot’s writing on Lee’s work, and Free Food for Millionaires in particular, is clear. If you’re looking for a sprawling contemporary novel with intersecting and heartfelt narratives, this is for you.
I am a great reader and buyer of 20th- and 21st-century poetry, but many of my cultured and sophisticated friends think modern poetry is “difficult” or “obscure”, not to say “incomprehensible”, and consequently don’t read it. So, deciding to proselytise, I give the recalcitrant friend a copy of Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings, with certain key poems marked. Namely, the title poem, Broadcast, MCMXIV, Sunny Prestatyn, Afternoons, and An Arundel Tomb. More often than not, they’re hooked. Larkin, at his best and most inimitable, speaks to – and for – everyone.
The last book I gave someone was a birthday present that went down so well, I intend to fill a stocking or two with it at Christmas. It was Elizabeth Day’s One of Us, a dark comedy that slickly satirises the lives of a British establishment family. It’s brimming with sharp commentary on class in modern Britain and paints an intimate portrait of the super-privileged’s messy family dynamics. But most importantly, it’s a lot of fun.
On the theory that a gift should raise spirits, I opt for The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono – a naturalist’s quest to improve a strip of land. First published in 1953, it’s a reminder in these torrid times of what really matters in life, and how to make a difference. It can be read in an hour, and few books offer more joy or warmth for your buck.
Curtis Sittenfeld
Erin O White’s debut novel, Like Family, was published in the US last month, and I’ve already given it to two friends and my two sisters. I’m still planning to give it to my neighbour, my oldest friend and my sister-in-law. It’s about three intertwined families in upstate New York, and it’s smart and warm and queer (as in mostly about lesbians) and middle-aged and funny. Admittedly, I’m friends with the author in real life, but writer friendship obligates you to buy just one book; this for me is a case of true literary love. And the beauty of Like Family is that reading it will make you feel like you’re friends with the author, too.Author: Source
