Say It with a Book

Nobody says you have to actually eat
these chalky little hearts.

People, I hope you haven't forgotten tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I urge everybody to observe the day, even if you don't have a lover who's hoping for a gift or a nice night out––and the amenities of the relationship later. Don't think of it as a money-making scheme cooked up by chocolate manufacturers or Hallmark Cards. Life is short and often brutal, so let's express some affection on a day specially set aside for it. You must have a pet, a neighbor, a friend, a boss, or a relative you're fond of. Even if you're a total misanthrope, you can kinda get into the spirit of tomorrow and give yourself a little something. I'm here to help you with what that little something could be.

Now, gift-giving is a balancing act between what you think your recipient would like and what you want to give him, her or it. Of course, just because your 13-year-old son or daughter would like the keys to your 2015 Maserati GranTurismo, and Fido wants that platter of chocolate cookies on the counter doesn't mean you're going to give them those things, even on Valentine's Day. No. Your best gift to Fido is a long, patient walk on the leash, after you've asked him who's a good boy and let him lick your face. For your kid, you'll leave some milk in the fridge and a couple of chewy fudge brownies (see recipe here) in a plastic baggie on top of a wrapped copy of Sherman Alexie's hip and funny The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian; Patrick Ness's The Knife of Never Letting Go (the first in the dystopian Chaos Walking Trilogy), in which everyone can hear every one else's thoughts; or Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One, featuring a South African boy who grows up in the 1930s-1950s and aspires to be the welterweight champion of the world. Or, if it's too late to pick up the book, scribble in the Valentine's Day card that you've ordered it and it's on its way. Or include an emailed Powell's Books eGift certificate in the card. Don't forget to say I love you.

A good choice for the conscientious mother who reminded you about the Golden Rule until it leaked out of your ears when you were a kid is a copy of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Stick inside a note detailing how much you appreciate her. You must illustrate the note, no matter how poor an artist you are, with a picture of the two of you––draw stick figures if necessary. If you know To Kill a Mockingbird is already on her shelf, you can pre-order her Lee's Go Set a Watchman (Harper/HarperCollins, July 14, 2015) here or at your favorite online independent bookstore. Minae Mizumura's A True Novel, a re-imagining of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights in post-WWII Japan, or the layered and twisting tale of Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin would be other great Valentine Day's choices. Or, show your mom that she can relax, now that you've turned out okay, with a light-hearted or satirical book: Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson or Martin Amis's Money.

If you're still working on turning out okay, offer your dad encouragement by showing him at least you know a good book when you see one and you have a sense of humor. Choose one with a theme of innate savagery such as The Call of the Wild by Jack London, anything by Cormac McCarthy, or Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. With a book like this, you can give soft candy such as caramels, jelly beans, or whatever candy you know he likes. If you're completely incorrigible, give yourself Richard Matheson's tale of horror, Hell House.

Got a sorta cynical sibling or long-time friend who's been with you through thick and thin? Pay tribute to your relationship, not with something sentimental, but Will Christopher Baer's surrealistic Kiss Me, Judas, in which disgraced cop Phineas Poe goes through a very bad time; Thomas Pynchon's blast from the psychedelic past, Inherent Vice (include an invitation to see the movie in your card); or Leigh Brackett's No Good from a Corpse, featuring hard-boiled private eye Ed Clive. Some other appropriate hard-boiled choices include Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives, Jean-Patrick Manchette's The Prone Gunman, and Sébastien Japrisot's Trap for Cinderella. Accompany the noir with a good bottle of Pinot Noir. The Pynchon goes well with the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations, a harmonica, or a pint of heavenly hash ice cream. (Any other accompaniment is between you and your local police force.)

Maybe your spouse or one of your old friends needs a dose of playfulness. Give him or her the opportunity to exercise that ol' inner nut ball with something eccentric, such as a literary figure who refuses to stay dead (Marcel Theroux's Strange Bodies), a man who is brought back to life after dying a century earlier in a human vs. alien war (Neal Asher's Dark Intelligence (Nightshade, February 3, 2015)), or a ritual that changes the lives of three Cambridge students (The Course of the Heart, by M. John Harrison).

Long-time Read Me Deadly readers know I'm a proponent of reading in the tub. If this also appeals to you and/or your lover, have a special Valentine's Day tub session. Give him or her one of the Horatio Hornblower books by C. S. Forester; an Aubrey-Maturin book by Patrick O'Brian (the series, set during the Napoleonic era, begins with Master & Commander); or Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny. Gather plenty of towels, put your glasses of wine or rum out of harm's way (fortify yourself first), arm yourselves with water pistols and a super soaker to replicate the firing of a water cannon, step into the water-filled tub, and act out scenes. At some point, you'll want to sing Anchors Aweigh (or consult this site for a British naval ditty).

An alternative: Perhaps you weren't raised by parents who taught you to always play fair––or maybe they did, but surely they're not in the bathroom with you now, and, besides, we all know all's fair in love and war. Don't mention to your lover that there's a battle brewing, and when he or she slips into the tub, open surprise fire with a blast from a water bazooka. A further alternative: After both of you are sitting in the water, grab his or her leg––using your hands rather than your teeth, because you need your mouth to yell the "duh duh duh duh" of the Jaws theme song––and commence a' wrestlin'. (Note: Be sure you closed the bathroom door before climbing into the tub, or you may find your dogs joining the melee at sea. If they do, I hope your windows are closed or your neighbors will wonder what the heck is with all the barking, yelling, and splashing.) After someone has surrendered (we will not say "thrown in the towel"), curl up in bed with cups of soup in which are floating some little oyster crackers. This is the perfect time to watch Jaws, Das Boot, The Search for Red October, Master and Commander, or Run Silent, Run Deep. Then bring up what they say about oysters, which surely holds true even if they're only crackers, and don't go to sleep.

For other folks, you can accompany a book with another gift. For example, for someone who loves gardening and crime fiction: Dig up a lovely old teacup and saucer, put a couple of small stones in the bottom of the cup, add some African violet soil mix and a miniature African violet. Give this little plant along with Reginald Hill's Deadheads. Or perhaps you know somebody who's constantly getting lost. Accompany a mobile GPS system with a book in which location is important: Charles Willeford's Miami Blues or Brighton Rock by Graham Green.

For someone with a lot of books in a TBR pile, a huge zippered tote bag comes in handy. Good bags are offered by LL Bean, and there's no shipping charge; it's too late to order one to arrive tomorrow, but you can say in a card that it's coming. Using this bag makes a TBR pile portable, and in addition, removes it from the eyesight of a guilt-ridden reader. I like this idea so much I bought several large zippered bags for myself and keep one full of books in the car. Before giving, don't forget to first add a book to the bag––in effect, you're "seeding" it. Some choices: Dennis Lehane's The Given Day is the first in the excellent Joe Coughlin trilogy (the third, World Gone By, is due out this spring, and I can hardly wait). To someone who bemoans life as giving no second chances, give Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. For anyone who hasn't already read it, Angelmaker, by Nick Harkaway, is a riot of fun.

Give a cheap used book of literary fiction such as Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma with a subscription to the London Review of Books or The New York Review of Books. Accompany a used book of mystery fiction (some good bets are Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep; Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö's The Laughing Policeman; and The Friends of Eddie Coyle, a heist novel by George V. Higgins) with a subscription to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Mention the online fan club, The Wolfe Pack, in the card taped to a Nero Wolfe book by Rex Stout (i.e., Too Many Cooks or Some Buried Caesar). Accompany a Sherlock Holmes DVD or book with a card that includes information about the Sherlockian web portal. Andy Weir's The Martian is a good present for any adult halfway interested in science, unless you know he or she would strongly object to the use of an occasional f-word. Be sure to mention Matt Damon will be starring in the movie later this year.

I hope you have a great Valentine's Day tomorrow. After you've rounded up books to give your loved ones, treat yourself to one, too. Let us know what you're giving and expect to receive. Our TBR piles are suddenly looking kinda puny.

Happy Boxing Day!

I hope you enjoyed your Christmas Day, whether it included church or Chinese food. Around here, it was deeply religious––we watched the NFL Game Rewind marathon on NFL Network.

I did put it on pause long enough to open presents, enjoy a delicious dinner (prepared mostly by my husband, though I made dessert and was in charge of monitoring the new temperature probe in the roast), and take a couple of walks. I stayed seasonal on my walk, listening to Georgette Heyer's Envious Casca, her second Inspector Hemingway mystery, which has a Christmas theme.

Audible has been insisting for months that I'd like Georgette Heyer's mysteries, but I resisted until last week. I'd never read her stuff before, but I thought of her as a romance writer and I didn't feel like reading some goopy thing. In a weak moment, probably brought on by shopping fatigue and seeing way too many commercials for jewelry and luxury cars with giant bows on them, I tried out Heyer's first Hemingway mystery, No Wind of Blame. It was a hoot!

I had no idea Heyer was so slyly clever. I figured out the whodunnit right away, but it was still a pleasure to listen to because of the amusing characters and writing. Inspector Hemingway is a talented young detective who pats himself on the back a lot, but his pool of suspects include a couple of women so batty and histrionic that he almost despairs.

In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought, and cued up the second book right away. Envious Casca is a country house mystery in which the rich and extremely grouchy Nathaniel Herriard is persuaded by his jolly brother, Joseph, to host a party of his business partner and his relatives and their wives/fiancées/associates over Christmas. Nathaniel is a real Grinch, but anyone would be with this crew on hand. Nearly everybody wants something from Nathaniel; specifically, a big wad of cash, and they are unendingly rude and cutting to each other as they maneuver. Since Nathaniel is a Grinch, though, all their machinations are for naught. When Nathaniel is found murdered on the floor––in his locked bedroom!––it looks like one of these greedy guests might have decided to go to Plan B.

So today is Boxing Day. There seem to be different stories about the derivation of the name and the holiday, which is celebrated in the UK and some of its former colonies. The most common story is that servants were traditionally given a box of food and gifts from their masters on the day after Christmas, since they would all have been required to work on Christmas Day. In honor of Boxing Day, then, I suppose you could read a book involving English country house servants, like Jo Baker's Longbourn, which reimagines Pride and Prejudice from the point of views of the servants.

Or, if you want something more mystery-oriented, you could watch the movie Gosford Park, with its star-studded cast: Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Eileen Atkins, Alan Bates, Kristin Scott Thomas, Clive Owen, Emily Watson, Charles Dance, Laurence Fox, Michael Gambon, Jeremy Northam, Ryan Philippe, Tom Hollander, Richard E. Grant and Stephen Fry as the spectacularly dense Inspector Thomson.

The only mystery book I know of that is specifically a Boxing Day tale is the Golden Age classic, Nicholas Blake's Thou Shell of Death. You probably already know that Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Cecil Day-Lewis, who was Britain's Poet Laureate and the father of noted actor Daniel Day-Lewis. As Nicholas Blake, he wrote a cracking good series of 16 mysteries featuring amateur detective Nigel Strangeways.

Thou Shell of Death is the second Strangeways mystery, and the one in which he meets Georgia Cavendish, the woman who will become his wife. But it's notable for more than that. This is a fiendishly clever story and well worth reading at any time of year. The setup is that World War I flying ace Fergus O'Brian has received a series of poison-pen letters saying he will be killed on Boxing Day. O'Brian decides to host a house party and invite Strangeways and everyone he thinks might have written the letters. Despite Strangeways' presence, O'Brian is killed in a way that suggests suicide. Strangeways must persuade the police to investigate it as a murder and then do all the legwork necessary to prove their theories to be completely wrong.

In the US, Boxing Day isn't celebrated by name, but boxes are involved, as in returning Christmas boxed gifts to the store, in exchange for something more pleasing. I will be taking one box to the UPS store, because my gift of Watching the English (which I mentioned last Friday) arrived with what looked like a reindeer bite out of 20 pages.

If you received an ugly Christmas sweater as one of your gifts, my advice is to keep it. The Ugly Christmas Sweater Party seemed to be everywhere this year, and I'm willing to lay odds this will be a phenomenon for at least one more season. This year, the stores––even Goodwill––were charging a premium for particularly egregious examples. So you'll be ahead of the game if you can just pull yours out from the back of your bureau drawer next year.

No Need to Hit the Panic Button Yet

"A beautiful way to say". . . . Riiiight

I've known Sister Mary Murderous for years now. She's organized and meticulous, so I didn't panic when she mentioned last Friday she had pretty much completed her holiday shopping. It's when my not-so-well-organized husband told me he's done that I started getting very nervous about not being finished myself.

Fellow how-the-heck-did-we-get-ourselves-into-this-last-minute-predicament shoppers, it's not down to the wire yet, but we do need to get cracking. Let's muster our self-discipline and seriousness of purpose. No more starting to do online research into a gift for little Susie and getting side-tracked somehow into winter bird irruptions in North America, because that leads to wondering what a Bohemian Waxwing looks like, and before you know it, you're looking at a map of the Czech Republic, which has nothing to do with a Christmas present for 10-year-old Susie.

Okay. I'm going to tell you about some gifts I'm giving this year and share some strategies in case you're running out of time to shop.

Don't get sidetracked by looking up "Antsy Pants"

My husband is one of those people who is easy to shop for once you've figured out the hopeless gifts––clothes––and the sure bets based on his interests––movies, post-World War II history, sports, science, and rock 'n roll. Past presents for the man whose favorite movie is 1947's Out of the Past include a subscription to Netflix tucked into Foster Hirsch's The Dark Side of the Screen: Film Noir. He enjoyed that book and Eddie Muller's jauntier Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir. Another hit was nonfiction about American workers in all walks of life, oral historian Studs Terkel's Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. It was published in 1974, and many of the jobs it describes are greatly changed or no longer exist; however, existential questions involving what it means to work at your job remain the same, people are still people, and this book is wonderful.

The book I'm giving Hubby this Christmas is Rock Covers, by Jon Kirby, Robbie Busch, and Julius Widemann, published earlier this month by Taschen. Time Magazine describes this 550-page book as "inclusive a selection of great, influential, bizarre, unsettling and, quite often, downright eye-popping rock and roll album covers that any fan is ever likely to find in one place." The more than 750 covers range from Robert Mapplethorpe's photograph for Patti Smith's Horses to the surreal collage designed by artists Peter Blake and Jann Haworth from a Paul McCartney ink drawing for the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I can't wait to see my husband open it––and to look at all these album covers from rock 'n roll.

Note: Do not get distracted by investigating the Kitten Covers (here), which substitute kittens (what else?) for people on albums such as Nirvana's Nevermind, the Clash's London Calling, and Tom Waits's Swordfishtrombones. We could get even further off the tracks by checking into the possibility of animals other than kittens on covers, but we won't do that, will we? People, we're at the serious task of completing our holiday shopping.

Say you have a crime fiction-loving friend, but you're unsure what he or she has read. Think in terms of combinations. You can buy a vintage book cheap at a used bookstore, and then give it with something else. For example, an old Agatha Christie featuring Jane Marple, such as A Murder Is Announced, could be gift wrapped with some knitting needles and gorgeous yarn for a winter scarf. (Staff at yarn shops are always friendly and will be happy to help you add a simple how-to pamphlet if your mystery lover doesn't yet know how to knit. Trust me, anyone can knit a beautiful scarf.) Give Jim Thompson's gritty The Killer Inside Me with a lovely mirror or a bottle of really good hard stuff. Michael Innes's 1938 Lament for a Maker needs a bottle of Scotch, but Dashiell Hammett's charming The Thin Man needs martini glasses and fixings. Combine a Lord Peter Wimsey book by Dorothy L. Sayers (it's hard to go wrong with Murder Must Advertise or The Nine Tailors) with a tea pot and/or tea.

Gift wrap a tin of hot chocolate and a pretty mug or a box of chocolates with a fun Golden-Age classic (i.e., Anthony Berkeley Cox's The Poisoned Chocolates Case, Georgette Heyer's Envious Casca or Behold, Here's Poison!, or Ngaio Marsh's Tied Up in Tinsel or Overture to Death). Give a book with the movie made from it (Robert Bloch's Psycho, Stephen King's The Shining) or present a book with something appropriately useful (a Simenon book with a bottle of French perfume; Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train and a nice pair of gloves; John Dickson Carr's The Case of the Constant Suicides or another locked-room mystery and a lockable box for jewelry or other treasures; Dorothy L. Sayers's Have His Carcase and a Swiss Army knife; Halloween, by Curtis Richards and John Carpenter, and a chain saw). Or pick any old mystery and add a jig-saw puzzle. You get the picture.

You should be able to find the following books in a local bookstore so you can meet the Christmas deadline without ordering online and paying for one-day shipping.

Have kids or grandkids around 8 to 10 years of age yourself or looking for a family gift for someone who does? This one is for you. A couple of years ago, writers Joshua Glenn and Elizabeth Foy Larsen came up with an antidote to boredom and a way to get kids off their electronic devices––for a break, at least. One of my friends loved their Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun. Now there's Unbored Games: Serious Fun for Everyone (Bloomsbury USA, October 2014), which combines informative how-to's with entertaining things to do. Activities such as geocaching, board-game hacking, code-cracking, and classic science experiments are combined with "best-of" lists, trivia, and Q&A's with experts. These lavishly illustrated books are highly rated by reviewers and deserve a place on a shelf––or in your favorite 10-year-old's backpack.

Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson (Ecco, May 2014) takes a look at America's rural poor, specifically, those in Tenmile, Montana, and the cultural issues of the 1980s as Carter was leaving office and Reagan was stepping in. Henderson wrote the Super Bowl commercial "Halftime in America" narrated by Clint Eastwood, and his first novel involves Pete Snow, a long-haired social worker better at helping others than himself, a half-feral 11-year-old boy named Benjamin Pearl, and Ben's dad, "Tribulation-ready, Race War-ready" survivalist Jeremiah Pearl. If your gift recipient likes the bleak worldview, moral ambiguity, and flawed characters found in books by Daniel Woodrell (Winter's Bone) or Pete Dexter (The Paperboy), he or she would probably like this beautifully written novel, which made the New York Times list of 100 notable 2014 books.

I'm giving Marlon James's novel, which is making many favorite-books-of-the-year lists, including mine, to an avid-reader friend who had the sort of year that, in the retelling, makes you unsure whether to laugh or cry. It's not an easy read at the beginning because writer James doesn't let you wade in, he just dumps you headfirst into events (the first bit is written by a ghost), and while you're trying to get up to speed on what's been happening, you're dealing with the multiple narrators' dialects, free associations, and the whole shebang.

Ask yourself before you buy it, "Does my recipient have the patience to fall under a spell?" I hope the answer is yes, because the acclimation process itself is pleasurably head-spinning (don't worry, there's no need to write anything down, it all becomes clear through a process kinda like passive osmosis), and after you're acclimated, the book is mesmerizing. A Brief History of Seven Killings (Riverhead Hardcover, October 2014) is a fictionalized treatment of the 1976 attempted assassination of Jamaican Reggae singer Bob Marley (never mentioned by name). The 700-pager spans decades, hops continents, and features many characters, ranging from drug dealers and assassins to journalists, politicians, and ghosts. I'd suggest an accompaniment of Jamaican rum or something else Jamaican if you live in Colorado or Washington State, but really, this imaginative book is a gift that makes it on its own.

One of my young relatives will soon move into an apartment with friends. They all love good food, which means they'll need a good general cookbook. One of the best is The New Best Recipe by Cooks Illustrated Magazine. I recently bought it for myself after reading Powell's Books staffer Suzanne G.'s review, "If I have to pick one book, I want it to be the book that explains in detail how it tested multiple versions of each recipe, what the results were, why the authors picked the one they decided was best, and what variations they suggest. At a thousand fully-explained recipes, this dictionary-size reference book is the first one I consult for everything from eggplant Parmesan to steamed mussels to carrot cake. Much more authoritative than Googling, it's the Consumer Reports of classic recipes." Yeah, I agree, it's great, and it can be someone's only or most-used cookbook.

Someone on your gift list like my sister, who has a sweet tooth and loves to bake? I'm oohing and aahhing over Zoe Nathan's scrumptuous-looking Huckleberry: Recipes, Stories, and Secrets from Our Kitchen (Chronicle, September 2014). The Huckleberry Bakery & Cafe is one of Santa Monica's favorite breakfast places, and its recipes cover both the sweet and savory sides. Right now I would kill for a piece of what's on the cover and a good cup of coffee.

Let's finish up with one last gift suggestion, so we can finish our coffee and get to the bookstore. A friend on my gift list is an environmentalist who loves the desert country of north-central New Mexico. One year I gave her Edward Abbey's comic-adventure masterpiece, The Monkey Wrench Gang (Harper Perennial, September 2014; first published 1975), featuring Vietnam veteran George Washington Hayduke III, who returns to the desert to find it threatened by industrial development. He joins forces with a motley crew to fight it.

This year I'm giving her a book of nonfiction: Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt, February 2014). Kolbert is a New Yorker staff writer who consulted scientists in a variety of disciplines, such as botany, geology, and wildlife biology. She uses thirteen chapters, focusing on individuals from a dozen species, to explore the disquieting story of their threatened extinction. This is nonfiction at its suspenseful best. With its wittiness, historical perspective, and field reporting, it reads like a novel. It's a depressing, but ultimately inspiring book. I highly recommend it for the science- or natural history-lover on your list.

Okay, folks, it's off to the bookstore. Good luck, and happy holiday shopping!