Book Recommendations & Gift Guides
Here’s your chance to recommend books you think would make great gifts. When making a recommendation, please include the title and author, plus a bit about the book. Is it fiction or non-fiction? What genre or style is it? Who would it appeal to? If you’re on Twitter, feel free to share your Twitter name in your post.
The table below includes links to publisher’s catalogs, book gift suggestions, and best of lists for 2009.
- Hachette’s 2009 Holiday Gift Guide
- Penguin’s What to Give & What to Get
- Buy Books for the Holidays
- Hyperion’s Books Are Great Gifts
- Harper Collins’ Harper Holidays
- Random House’s Books Equal Gifts
- Publishing Works
- Unbridled Books
- Best Books 2009 – Library Journal
- Art and Architecture Books – New York Times
- Graphic Novels – New York Times
- Gallery-Going Without the Gallery – New York Times
- Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009 – New York Times
- Best Books of 2009 – Publishers Weekly
- Best Children’s Books of 2009 – Publishers Weekly
- Gift Ideas in Books – Amazon
- Holiday Gift Guide – Barnes & Noble
- Book Page
[...] Phase two includes a section of the LitChat website devoted to book recommendations with links to book publishers, bookstores, book blogs, and reader reviews. [...]
So many books! I’ve got lots of suggestions at White Readers Meet Black Authors. For readers of romance, speculative fiction, literary, women’s fiction…everything. More coming every Tuesday through December.
If you like books about: hands-on work/non-traditional jobs for women/maritime adventure: storms, engine room fires, sinking, etc./fireboats & tugboats/U.S. history/the Hudson River/the meaning of work in America, check out:
My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America on the Hudson
by Jessica DuLong (@JessicaDuLong)
“DuLong is a confident and sensual writer … [a] very fine and gutsy book” —The New York Times
“An unexpected portrayal of America in the decline of industry… Powerful reading.” —Kirkus, starred review
When journalist Jessica DuLong ditched her dot-com job for the diesels of an antique fireboat, she found a taste of home she hadn’t realized she was missing. Running the engines of retired NYC fireboat John J. Harvey made her wonder what America is losing in our shift away from hands-on work, raising questions that crystallized after the boat got called back into service at Ground Zero, where DuLong and the rest of the boat’s civilian crew pumped water to fight blazes.
Vivid and immediate, MY RIVER CHRONICLES: Rediscovering America on the Hudson (Free Press) is a journey with an extraordinary guide—a mechanic’s daughter and Stanford graduate who bridges blue-collar and white-collar worlds, turning a phrase as deftly as she does a wrench. As she searches for the meaning of work in America, DuLong shares her own experiences of learning to navigate a traditionally male world, masterfully interweaving unforgettable present-day characters with four centuries of Hudson River history.
A celebration of craftsmanship, MY RIVER CHRONICLES is a deeply personal story of a unique woman’s discovery of her own roots—and America’s—that raises important questions about our nation’s future.
Read an excerpt here.
For kids ages 6-10, the first four books in The Sisters 8 series – $15 hardcover, $4.99 paperback – written by the Baratz-Logsted/Logsted family and available for order everywhere books are sold.
I would like to suggest 3 books:
1- “Is Harvey Dunne?” by K.L.Romo (The relentless, frigid blizzard of discrimination blew into my world and changed it forever. My two lives finally collided in a soul-twisting crash, and catapulted me into the challenge of my life. I was now dealing with the wreckage. Is Harvey Dunne? is a novel about braving the malicious storm of prejudice. It is about not only the arduous search sometimes required to find ourselves, but the challenge of acceptance, both from ourselves and others, we must face once we get there.)
2-The Fire Stone (Reign of the Elements, Book 1) by RileyCarney (Sixteen-year-old novelist Riley Carney works magic in this high fantasy adventure story brought to life by memorable, vibrant characters. The Fire Stone, the first book in the captivating Reign of the Elements series, is rooted in genuine adolescent thought and emotion throughout a journey of danger, friendship, and courage, as a group of teenagers, led by fifteen-year-old Matt, attempt to save their world. Matt knows how to shovel hay, dig trenches, and dodge his father’s whip, but when three terrifying creatures attack Matt, and he is rescued by a wizard, he kidnaps a baby alorath, and is befriended by elves, Matt’s life transforms overnight from dreary to astonishing. When he unwittingly joins a quest to find the Fire Stone, one of the elusive Stones of the Elements which have the power to destroy the world, Matt is thrust into a string of perilous adventures. He soon discovers that magic does exist and that he has extraordinary powers that can change his destiny and determine the fate of Mundaria.)
3-Mishap or Design by: J. Oliver Johnson (Meet Banjo Larry.
You might’ve seen him around before, but you no doubt just passed him by. He is but one of the millions of homeless people wandering through life in America. He’s unclean, unclaimed, unaccounted for and often unnoticed.
Playing his guitar for spare change, he once had (and may possibly still have) the means to live a much more respectable life, but instead chooses a bum’s existence.
He’s an enigma and a cliche with a past as sketchy as his future. He’s a friendly, likable man forced into this self-imposed isolation.
And whether or not it’s understood by others, he’s just living his life the best way he can.
He is simply Banjo Larry.)
These three books (and more) can be found at http://www.indiependentbooks.com.