A Bibliophile’s Philes: Holiday Gifts for Yourself or Others

Holiday Gifts for Yourself and Others

A Bibliophile’s Philes

Recommendations by Hal Calbom • Photo by Larry Olson

Iworry about my books. Will they survive me? My son, not a particularly avid reader, thinks they’d look cool as decorative objects in his house in LA. My daughter, more of a reader, is busy collecting cases of her own. I remind myself it’s all about the experience of reading, not the accumulation of these erudite and well-dressed guests at my lifelong literary “dinner party.” I don’t believe myself for a moment. I’m not ready to give up any of my books. So please join me at the “table” as I renew my happy acquaintance with my own set of favorites. Happy Holidays!

Hal Calbom is CRRPress editor, and producer of CRR’s monthly “People+Place” feature (see page 21).

HISTORY MYSTERY

All of Alan Furst: delectable, atmospheric espionage set in Europe between the wars and inevitably circling back to the haunting streets of Paris.

BIBLIOMANIA

I confess to reading five times all 21 volumes of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/ Maturin tales of the Napoleonic Wars at sea, a way of life told through a remarkable friendship.

THE THREE CLASSICS

Tolstoy, Eliot, Dickens. So you can say you did and well worth it: Anna Karenina, Middlemarch, David Copperfield, the three great narrative voices.

ALL THE PSYCHOLOGY YOU NEED

CG Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections, reveals his insights through his own life story.

BEST HARD-BOILED MYSTERY

James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss and its opening sentence: “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.”

HOW IT WAS (SUPPOSED TO BE)

Lonesome Dove. Larry McMurtry lays a rough woollen blanket over the myths of the west and warms your heart by firelight.

MILITARY HISTORY

For chronicles of the Second World War Sir Max Hastings is incomparable in combining narrative, strategic insights, and human experience.

WHY THE BIG DEAL?

Read anything by Jane Austen and you’ll know; remarkably contemporary in period garb.

LOVING POETRY

Let Billy Collins seduce you into what verse can do with charm and good humored ironies. Let Walt Whitman make Harold Bloom’s case that he’s our American Shakespeare. Let the odes of John Keats ring aloud as you savor the language: “a thing of beauty is a joy forever…”

PAGE TURNERS

Mystery writer Michael Connolly elevates the very banality of contemporary Los Angeles into high art in the Hollywood Hills.

CONFOUNDED EXPECTATIONS

The Signature of All Things. I brought biases to bear against Elizabeth Gilbert, of Eat, Pray, Love fame, and was knocked out by this magnificent novel, which I consistently recommend.

CRITICISM

Literature and Western Man, a readable, concise survey. J.B. Priestley is a personal deity of mine, a prodigious author and critic. His books of autobiography are masterpieces, particularly Midnight on the Desert.

AND, OF COURSE, THIS EDITOR’S PICKS

The works of Robert Michael Pyle and Michael O. Perry.

What a pleasure to write for a publication proudly dubbed the “Reader,” and for you, dear reader, of course. Feliz Navidad! •••