Written in a young, first-person narrative (in a wonderfully brash tone), Eloise marches through page after page of holiday cheer, singing not-quite-right lyrics to well-known carols. She visits the lobby on Christmas Eve, wears a halo of mistletoe, attends parties while presumably uninvited, and generates mayhem in every situation. In her own wise, higgledy-piggledy scratchings:

Then it’s zippity jingle and dash away ping
Hang holly and berries in all the halls
The tassels on all the thermostats and
Write Merry Christmas on all of the walls.

And on Christmas, she writes about all the marvelous presents under the tree and who gave what to whom, including Skipperdee the turtle, and Weenie the dog. It’s all so improbable and rather fetching, but very uncomplicated, simply divine, and just right.

Yes, yes, I like Eloise, I do, I do. She is creative, clever, naughty, greatly inspired, and absolutely adorable. If you wish to enchant those who are special in your life with a gift that continues to please on numerous readings, try this volume. It’s timeless and sure to please those on your list—even curmudgeons. In the words of Eloise, “Ooooooooooooooooooooooooo! I absolutely love Christmas.” After reading this tale and viewing the charming, accompanying illustrations, you too will love Christmas—and Eloise.

Mosca Mye is 12 years old. Orphaned and living with her aunt and uncle in a village perpetually soaked by rain, Mosca steals a goose named Saracen and flees in search of the kind of life she has glimpsed in books. In this fictional world that resembles eighteenth-century England, unauthorized books are banned and women are strangers to reading. But Mosca’s father—a banished scholar and radical—taught his daughter to read before his death. As a result, Mosca has a mind of her own, and that determination leads her to make decisions that land her in the midst of scandal and political intrigue that just might lead to her demise … or the end of a tyrannical reign.

The novel is marketed as a book for high schoolers, but I recommend ignoring that pigeonhole. After all, Fly by Night is ambitiously conceived and gloriously executed—a literary nugget that also gleams for adults. Hardinge imagines a world where the Artful Dodger and Bill Sykes could almost be lurking around the next corner. Characters are anointed with unlikely and entertaining names like Eponymous Clent, Aramai Goshawk, and Mabwick Toke. The world through which Mosca sprints and meanders is vividly familiar and yet singularly distinct—populated with a colorful parade of characters that includes an insane duke, identical-twin queens, and deified idols known as Beloveds (who bear such auspicious names as “Goodman Sussuratch, He Who Preserves the Unwary from the River’s Embrace”). Mosca outshines all of the glorified, however, and her quest to find and save a banned printing press will enthrall readers young and old.

Al Gore is the de facto president of the planet, at least with regard to its vanishing glaciers and drowning polar bears. Since the divisive 2000 election, Gore has hunkered down in his role as champion of the earth’s environment. Of course, with An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, he’s also returned to his place as top-selling author. Spurred by the success of the companion documentary and mounting concerns about global climate change, Gore’s book has been sitting at or near the top of bestseller lists since its release. But why should you be interested in the writings of this planetary crusader and harbinger of environmental doom?

Because he’s right.

You don’t even have to read An Inconvenient Truth to understand this. Just flip through its pages, examine its photographs, and explore its charts and diagrams. It is a beautiful, terrifying book—one so complete and well-documented that it is impossible to refute.

Before I write further, let me clarify: This review is not about politics. An Inconvenient Truth is about common sense; it’s about facts. It does not myopically see global warming as an American issue or a partisan concern. Gore presents this topic as a dire situation, backs up his argument with solid resources, and invites you (whatever your political affiliation) to do something about it.

Gore’s book is comprehensive and incredibly detailed. It’s the evolved version of the slide show that Gore has been sharing with the world for nearly two decades—a presentation that begat the movie documentary. Open the book and you’ll see what I mean: Hundreds of full-color photographs beg to be studied and compel you further inside. The idea of reading a white paper on global climate change isn’t appealing to most folks. But when Gore discusses the world’s disappearing glaciers, he shows them to you—where they used to be years ago compared to those same glacier-free or glacier-starved places today. It’s a stunning, see-for-yourself method of driving home the point. It is this unsettling, visual story that is keeping a book about global warming, of all things, a New York Times bestseller.

Melting glaciers are just the tip of the iceberg. An Inconvenient Truth is more than a photo album of gigantic ice cubes. You’ll also see photographs of global deforestation, increasing meteorological devastation, and much more—including those polar bears I mentioned, which face extinction by drowning because melting ice now forces them to attempt to swim sometimes 40 miles to shore. You’ll discover page after page of charts illustrating such things as rising ocean temperatures, the growing deserts of recent decades, and skyrocketing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And then there’s the wordy stuff—facts succinctly stated and illustrated, with interesting and personal vignettes interspersed throughout. All of this information merges into a surprisingly readable and compelling trip around the world. It is National Geographic on steroids.

The proof is in the pictures—and the charts and the rest of it. Al Gore has assembled a remarkable, prescient book. It is a canary in the coal mine. But An Inconvenient Truth isn’t only about the proverbial little yellow birds we see and hear around us in this warming world. It is also about hope. After all, Gore’s motivation is to get the world to help itself, which means he’s trying to get you and me to pay attention and to take action. As a result, he saves the last 16 pages to illustrate everyday things we all can do in order to make a difference—in order to leave this planet in the sort of condition that will let our children and grandchildren survive and thrive.

The opening essay, “SantaLand Diaries,” describes the personal pitfalls of working as a Macy’s Christmas Elf. In his second interview with Macy’s personnel, Sedaris was told, “It is an elf’s lot to remain merry in the face of torment and adversity.” And that’s what is recounted in plentitude: torment and adversity. He tells all in captivating prose, leaving almost nothing to the imagination—including long lines, wailing children, weird Santa characters, famous personages, elf chores (including cash registers and photographs), and other unsavory aspects. In case you hadn’t noticed, the holiday season is a business—a big business—and he makes that point abundantly clear in this piece. It is hysterical because it is so true, so real, and so crude.

Another essay charmingly details the annual and obligatory children’s pageant. Much has been written of these theatrical productions, including The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson, but none quite compare with these various flings into creative stage management. You have to love the malapropism uttered by an unsophisticated wise man, “A child is bored.” And as David Sedaris adds, “Yes, well, so was this adult.” Another production presents a giant Great Dane transformed into a reindeer for the purposes of instilling the valuable moral lesson that children should not own Santa’s sleigh help. It is bizarre, and one I would love to have seen. (I did once attend a pageant where a young participant vomited the contents of breakfast over the pastor’s shoes and hem of his slacks. It stopped the congregation cold in the middle of a responsive reading, as the sound of retching echoed from the rafters.)

As a last view, at least here, the fine art of unselfish giving is carefully examined. In this exposition, two neighboring families see who can give best and last and their all—including trading their children into slavery. Thinly veiled contempt oozes from every sentence, and the reader is charmed by the rather fine masterpiece in absurdity and reality. Just how far will the participants go in the spirit of the moment? Too far, it seems—way too far. Shades of Dorothy Parker in scathing, withering contempt and wit.

So give yourself a gift you can enjoy all year long and add this fine volume to your collection of “holidays gone bad” books. It will keep you moving even through the bleakest moment of the season, including the dinner feast with your least favorite relative. If nothing else, this fine book may keep you from using your fork as a catapult to fling green beans at Aunt-Sallie-the-Whiner.

Spouse: “Be nice.”
Me: “I am being nice. Now can we leave?”

Any Artemis Fowl saga makes a great gift for (a) young readers, (b) anyone who enjoys the Harry Potter books, or (c) older readers with a lighthearted sensibility, a willingness to fantasize, and an appreciation for well-written novels. What do I mean by this latter category? Well, the grown-up in question has to be willing (perhaps eager) to dive into a book that is populated by a teenage protagonist and a crowd of mythical creatures that includes crime-fighting elves, farting dwarves, and even a romance-starved centaur. Don’t worry, Colfer imbues such otherworldly beings with a good dose of humor, self-deprecation, and credibility. They’re certainly not overly earnest or viewed through the soft-focus lens of whimsy run amok—not that a measure of whimsy is a bad thing. (An acquaintance once flatly remarked to me, “I don’t do whimsy.” Now how prim and rigid is that?)

I highly recommend The Lost Colony for anyone who falls into the preceding categories. I’m one of several adults I know of who have enjoyed Artemis Fowl’s previous four adventures. (No, we do not play Dungeons and Dragons, were not the folks you saw dressed up as wizards on opening night of the last Lord of the Rings movie, and are not strangers to serious literature by authors like Annie Proulx and Philip Roth.) This fifth tale is as good as any of its predecessors. In The Lost Colony, Artemis and his elfish cohorts discover a world populated by demons—an ancient civilization in a different time-space dimension that is threatening to collide with our own. Artemis comes to the rescue, and the result is a well-paced entertainment that will leave you—and others on your gift list this holiday—smiling, laughing, and eager for more of this magical series.

Cleverly penned by Patrick Dennis, A Joyous Season is a marvelous farce that brings back some very fond memories. I was 13 years old when I first perused this volume. My mother read portions of it to me and my 11-year-old brother, replacing the more colorful language with gentle, generic terms (in light of our tender years). I finally decided I could do better than the bowdlerized version, so I borrowed her copy and savaged it eagerly, thoroughly, and rapidly. This season, approximately 40 years later, I purchased my own copy. It’s still as satirical and acid as I remember. In some ways, A Joyous Season is even more hysterical, as I now understand all the undertones. It is rich, wicked, profane, and irreverent.

The story is told in first person by a precocious 10-year-old named Kerrington. He recounts with all the particulars and a certain amount of relish the marital split of his parents—caused by dysfunctional family activities initiated during the holiday season. The book at the most basic level is a dissection of divorce with fresh perspective. But it is more—much more—than a commentary of discord and dissention.

The writing is deliberate and utterly malicious. Contemptuous of his players as he has drawn them, the writer details with a fine hand their idiosyncrasies, and slices and dices to the core. They are unlikable caricatures, nicely fleshed, but still larger than life and deliberately drawn with bold, outlandish strokes. The book is wicked, because it rings so true. There is no delicacy here—none at all—and yet the tone and tempo are just right. The words are carefully chosen, even down to the malapropisms voiced by the narrator; they are intentional and humorous slights.

A Joyous Season isn’t fluff; nor is it literary. It is, however, plenty interesting and still very contemporary satire. It presents with a jaundiced eye personal relationships; family members, including sisters, grandparents, and uncles; interfering bystanders; significant and insignificant others; daily tasks made into major production; and—to top it off and tie the threads together—all the joys of the holiday season. Nothing is spared; no one is safe. And that’s what makes it malicious fun. This little satirical volume is definitely a keeper. It will brighten your holiday with its refreshing honesty, forthright hostility, and unstinting portraiture of the joyous season.

All five volumes serve to provide a comprehensive view of the book world, but it is the first book, A Gentle Madness, with which the reader should commence. The view is so complete. In this book, the author covers a history of the written word, starting from 5,000 years in the past and continuing into the present—providing detail in rich abundance. Although you don’t need to do so, I recommend pulling an encyclopedia, timelines of history, and any further source materials as references. The research will serve you well. In general, I found at least four hours of supplementary research were required for every hour spent reading this book. Worthwhile? You bet. I’ve never begrudged the time spent in gaining a basic and absolutely necessary understanding of the book elements.

Basbanes covers further facets of the book world in his next two books. As he explains in the prologue of Patience & Fortitude, “Thus it is that Patience & Fortitude pays particular attention to the endlessly fascinating tales of the individuals and the places I encountered, while the work to follow, Life Beyond Life: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World, deals more pointedly with the issues involved and the stories that clarify them.” As a note of interest, “Patience” and “Fortitude” are the unofficial names of the two pink-marble lions placed outside the New York Public Library. He explains that little tidbit of information too.

Among the Gently Mad recounts his personal experiences in collecting books. Nicholas Basbanes likes books, and his writings reflect the intensity and respect with which he carries them. It is a portrait as much of the author as the book collector, and engaging for all of that. An excellent case is made for attending book fairs in the face of the almost overwhelming predominance of the Web. Book fairs are the means to observe and interact with sellers, buyers, and books—and perhaps, just perhaps, where you might locate an elusive volume.

The latest book, Every Book Its Reader, declares various books and their impact and influence upon those who peruse them. There are those who scribble in the margins (one of the banes of my bookselling existence), but those scribbles can provide insight to both the book and the author of such notations. Certainly, no one would complain if the author of the marginalia, as it is called, were penned by a noted author or an historical figure. One thing seems certain: Writers read, and they read with comprehension; the words upon the page shape their opinions; then writers sometimes write, and we read their writings. It is an amazing, symbiotic relationship between book and reader, author and book, and author and reader.

There’s more, much more, of course. I have simply provided a few of the highlights. Nicholas Basbanes provides his own Web page and permits readers of his site to ask questions via e-mail. (Yes, indeed, it is so.) I have done so on one occasion and received a gracious reply in return.

Books breathe, and learning about books is a continuous process. It is our good fortune that such fine books have been written by an author who enjoys the book world and translates that joy to the written page. If you wish your avid book collectors and readers to thank you this holiday season, surprise them with these five Basbanes volumes. They will, I assure you, be pleased with your selections.

I Like You is a hospitality book that mirrors Martha Stewart—if the mirror you’re using is in a fun house. Chock full of recipes, entertaining advice, housekeeping hints, and craft projects, this tome could almost double for a publication of that ex-con conqueror of all things domestic. But look closer and you’ll see (in hundreds of full-color photos that could also be from a 1970s issue of Good Housekeeping) that Sedaris is more like “Martha Stewart on crack,” as she recently described herself while a guest on Stewart’s talk show.

The recipes are comfort food exemplified (mac and cheese, southern-fried chicken) and Betty Crocker satirized (a dinner of cube steak, canned pork-and-beans, and potato salad, with a banana and a glass of champagne). The meals also represent visits to the Sedaris home that produced the likes of Amy and David. You’ll discover dishes like spanakopita and desserts like koulouraki, which are nods to the Sedaris’s Greek heritage. You’ll be able to enjoy the baked Alaska that Amy would request on her birthdays as a young girl (and budding, working-class gourmand). And don’t miss the recipe for red-wine steak butter sauce, which Sedaris’s mother reportedly copied from an issue of Playboy and used for roasts and T-bones.

Food is the predominant feature of I Like You. But there’s so much more packed in among the recipes, and it’s in these sidebars and essays that the queen of quirky really shines through. Sedaris explains her practice of selling the flotsam and jetsam of her apartment to partygoers—everything piled on a card table and priced at a quarter each. She provides beauty tips that range from dying your lips red with cherry-flavored popsicles to ridding yourself of green toenails via a vinegar soak. Sedaris outlines the recommended practice for serving lunch to a lumberjack. She details her devotion to house rabbits, including tips that are helpful to rabbit adopters and humorous to the rest of us, like the following:

If you have a pet and are going to entertain, it’s important to make sure your home is free of the scent that sometimes accompanies our pets. Nobody wants to deal with an overbearing odor of a litter box just as they sit down to enjoy a Fudgsicle. Make sure that you have allergy medicine (preferably prescribed) in your cabinet just in case a guest is allergic. If a guest does have a reaction and their face puffs up, take advantage and grab a snapshot. You can use the photo along with the caption: “Have a swell Christmas,” as a card, which you can then send to all your friends during the holidays.

Much of what Sedaris advocates is, of course, a joke—tongue firmly in cheek. While we’re on the subject of bunnies, here’s a good example of belief cum comic relief: “A rabbit’s droppings are really easy to pick up. I don’t even have to wash my hands afterward and they are a great way to spruce up a salad.” That’s the joy of I Like You: This book is packed with ideas, advice, and recipes you’ll actually find useful, and to get to these utilitarian upsides you’ll encounter strange and truly hilarious asides. It’s a refreshing and entertaining approach to what could otherwise be just another boring recipe recital. Of course, some jokes fall flat, others are a little bawdy for certain readers, and still others leave you scratching your head. But that’s part of the acquired taste for Amy Sedaris, who clearly is her own hostess and humorist; there’s no one else like her. If you like levity with your levelheadedness, you’ll also like I Like You.

The tone of Casanova Was a Book Lover is light—amazingly so—and the volume is packed with down-to-earth information and opinions, which are illustrated with numerous amusing sketches, snippets, and biographies. You will learn, for example, why aspiring writers should never quit their minimum-wage jobs and, if I may laughingly add, why classical authors make quite astonishing case studies. Then, too, there’s confinement—that is, jail—which tends to hone writing skills, principally because there is so little else available to occupy the time. After reflecting on these passages, you’ll ask yourself whether you really, really wish to be an author. This volume may serve to dissuade you for all eternity.

Casanova also analyzes the fine art of the book review. Historically, reviewers were prone to pen negative and articulate diatribes. “The quarrels may rage for years as one adversary and then the other sallies forth to strike a blow that enriches literature,” writes the author. In contrast, some reviewers of today may gush glowing superlatives—the scripted equivalent of leaping excitedly and dancing around the wastepaper basket. The reasons for such unbounded enthusiasm are fully explored in Casanova. The title of this chapter is “Inglorious Employment: In which it is shown that book reviewing is so bad because so many forces drive so few critics to be so nice.” I must then ask, “What does that make me?”

Casanova also examines the advantage of good luck. The correct book at the correct time published by the correct press and plugged by the correct reviewer will generate mega keep-them-presses-rolling sales. Endorsements, death, awards, and censorship all serve to sell books, although a few of the tactics are extreme—not unlike writing from confinement or moonlighting as an author.

Not incidentally, the author also devotes chapters to dedications and to the most stolen books of all time*. He then follows with not one, but two, appendices because, as he writes in a chapter title, “This book is even weightier because it has two appendices.” Read all titles of the chapters: They are an amazing education in how to be knowledgeable without being dull. In fact, this entire book is an amazing education in how to write well and present enticingly copious quantities of information.

This irreverent volume with the distinctive title is a perfectly wonderful gift for the aspiring author, serious reader, or even the amused observer of life. It presents a behind-the-scenes view of the rather awkward and capricious business of writing, publishing, reviewing, reading, selling, and understanding books—the peculiar processes of the book industry and those who mingle within its boundaries.

*Most stolen book? It’s the Holy Bible.

While I think King’s latest book is pretty awful (including the audiobook version), I agree with this author of some of my favorite audiobooks (namely, his Dark Tower series) that listening to books (especially suspense novels) is a great way to experience literature. Whether you’re already sold on audiobooks or would like to give one a spin for the first time, you’ll find many enticing suggestions in King’s list of favorite audio titles:

1. American Pastoral, by Philip Roth
2. Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
3. The Harry Potter novels, by J.K. Rowling
4. That Old Ace in the Hole, by Annie Proulx
5. Back When We Were Grownups, by Anne Tyler
6. Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan
7. The Aubrey/Maturin novels, by Patrick O’Brian
8. Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt
9. Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
10. American Gods, by Neil Gaiman