9 books to buy the readers in your life this holiday

Aux Features Gift Guide
9 books to buy the readers in your life this holiday
Graphic: Rebecca Fassola

It’s never a bad time to give books as gifts. But with brick and mortar stores struggling to stay open—especially during the coronavirus pandemic—buying a book from your neighborhood bookshop means you’re not only potentially giving a thoughtful present, but also helping out your local economy. Don’t tarry, though; if you plan on placing an order through your local store or online this holiday season, be sure to do so as soon as possible. The American Booksellers Association says that printing and shipping delays due to COVID-19 will likely slow arrival times the closer the holidays get. So go ahead and make some tough decisions now (should you get your sister the Allie Brosh or the Raven Leilani?), click “purchase,” and do some reading of your own while you wait.

previous arrowThe Last Great Road Bum by Héctor Tobar (FSG x MCD) next arrow
The Last Great Road Bum by Héctor Tobar (FSG x MCD)
Graphic Rebecca Fassola

Part fact, part fiction, The Last Great Road Bum follows the wild, peripatetic life of Joe Sanderson, who dropped out of college in the ’60s to hitchhike across the globe, visiting, by his estimate, 70 to 80 different countries throughout his short life. Traveling from Jamaica to Vietnam to Nigeria, Sanderson would ultimately die fighting with the guerrillas in the civil war in El Salvador. Inspired by writers like Thoreau and Hemingway, Sanderson wrote prolifically, leaving behind a significant archive of letters, notebooks, and journals, which Tobar used to write the Great American Novel that Sanderson himself could not.Buy on .

5 Comments

  • murrychang-av says:

    List needs moar Illuminatus! Trilogy.

  • kate-monday-av says:

    I’d highly recommend How to Invent Everything, by Ryan North. A really informative, entertaining read about how to recreate civilization from the ground up, in the event that your time travel machine strands you sometime in the past (the flow chart that helps you figure out where in the stream of time you are and what you should start working on first is also very helpful)

  • burneraccountbutburnerlikepot-av says:

    I tried to read JR but found it unreadable. It’s one of those books where you’re never given any introduction to your setting or characters and have to piece everything together – I don’t need to be spoonfed anything but throw me a bone here. I’m not one to shy away from challenging books, and I would even say I make a habit out of “punishing” myself with certain classics, but JR was such an unenjoyable read I had to quit.

  • blood-and-chocolate-av says:

    Question to ANYONE out there reading this: Has anyone ever read The Last Lion, the three-volume collection about Winston Churchill? Worth reading?

  • re-hs-av says:

    Pirensi was great. I now judge books on a scale of 0 to perensi.

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