Christmas Gift Ideas: Recommended Books for Christmas 2010

Topping the New York Times Fiction Hardcover Bestseller list is Patricia Cornwell's book, Port Mortuary. Today, the author hit the airwaves and offered some other titles for the booklover on your Christmas list. She likes Steve Martin's novel, An Object of Beauty, because in addition to being well written, it includes embedded photographs of major artworks. Cornwell says this unusual combination is a first and a pleasure to read. She also recommended Robert Goolrich's novel, A Reliable Wife, which she referred to as both ugly and lovely. The reliable wife in the book proves herself to be not quite so reliable after all as she plans to poison her husband. Cornwell likes Pete Dexter's Spooner because she found it funny and clever. Amazon's Jon Foro said reading Spooner was "like reading Garrison Keillor through a glass of blood: relentlessly dark, yet ultimately affirming." Cornwell's nonfiction picks for this Christmas season include Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson. Publishers Weekly referred to Cleopatra as an "excellent, myth-busting biography" and Schiff has already won a Pulitzer Prize for her previous book, Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). I can personally add props for Mortenson's book, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, which has now been published in a Young Readers' Edition which is geared toward readers aged 9-12.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and The Thing Around Your Neck told The Guardian that her favorite books of the year are Red Dust Road by Jackie Kay which is about an African American girl who was adopted by white parents; Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, "a fresh and wonderful history of African American migration"; Chang-Rae Lee's The Surrendered. which eloquently chronicles the lives of Korean War survivors; and David Remnick's straightforward biography of President Barack Obama, The Bridge. In addition to Adichie's own books, I can personally recommend The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee whose writing is lovely and emotive, drawing the reader deeply into his characters' lives.

If your gift list includes a poetry lover, author William Boyd (Every Human Heart) recommends "Oliver Reynolds's latest collection, Hodge (Areté Books) - poems of beautiful precision that reveal their secrets slowly"; and "Samko Tále's Cemetery Book (Garnett Press) by the Slovak writer Daniela Kapitánová offers us, in a superb translation by Julia Sherwood, one of the strangest and most compelling voices I have come across in years. Muriel Spark meets Russell Hoban. An astonishing, dark and scabrous novel." I can't imagine how a Muriel Spark - Russell Hoban hybrid might read, but a recommendation from William Boyd carries a lot of weight.

Dave Eggers (McSweeney's founder and author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and What is the What, among many other great books) favors Marlon James' The Book of Night Women which he calls a "contemporary masterpiece." Night Women takes place in 18th century Jamaica on a slave plantation and is a force to be reckoned with.

Topping many "Top 10" lists of favorite books this year, including mine, are: Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes, Great House by Nicole Krauss and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Franzen's grand novel takes on love, jealousy, conservation, corporate corruption and lazy rock musicians. It's a story that sucks you in and holds on tight. Matterhorn is the best Vietnam story I've read since Tim O'Brien's The Things they Carried. I'm not a fan of war stories, but I am a fan of good writing. Marlantes takes you straight to the jungle and reveals the hearts of men (and boys) in their glory and their sorrow. For readers who appreciate the meaning of "literary", Nicole Krauss's Great House is a must-read. The story revolves around the antique desk of a Peruvian poet, visiting the various owners of the desk whose lives connect in an almost spiral fashion. My favorite nonfiction book of the year is Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This true story of science, biography, biology and ethics is based on a few cells that were "stolen" from a poor black woman being tested and treated for cancer at John Hopkins in the 1950's. The woman, Henrietta Lacks, died in 1951 but her cells, known as HeLa cells, were the first to survive and thrive in a laboratory. Not just for the medical community or even the armchair scientist, Skloot's book is nothing short of a remarkable, entertaining and provocative detective story.

It would be remiss to leave out a few books for children on your list, so check out Bink and Gollie, the collaborative effort of two beloved childrens' authors, Kate DiCamillo (The Tale of Despereaux) and Allison McGhee (Always) - and a favorite of mine. This story written for first- through third-graders is about two very different friends. Charming illustrations by Tony Fucile top off the tale of zany antics. For a younger audience, the Skippyjon Jones books by Judy Schachner are delightful rhyming stories about El Skippito, the kitten whose ears are too big for his head and whose head is too big for his body. Just read one; you'll be hooked. In addition to Bink and Gollie, the top illustrated children's books of the year according to The New York Times include Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown, Busing Brewster by Richard Michelson, Henry in Love by Peter McCarty, Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan and A Sick Day for Amos McGee by Philip C. Stead.

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Sources: The Guardian, The New York Times, Today Show, Amazon