Merry Christmas!
December 19, 2010

With Christmas less than a week away, I am sure preparations are in order for everyone regardless of how much or how little you are doing. As you know if you read this letter regularly, I determined far in advance of the season that I was going to make this year one that worked for me with things that are satisfying and fulfilling in a personal way.

One of those is my menu for Christmas dinner, actually for my personal dinner party, the day after Christmas. My parents have always had the same dinner for Thanksgiving and Christmas, which for a long time I loved. But a few years ago, I realized that I would rather not repeat the turkey repast. Christmas dinner deserves its own distinctive choices and thus I have created the following menu for myself and my guests: Bastilla (though I leave out the liver and substitute Calvados for the rum), Orange and Onion Salad, plain steamed artichokes,  and fresh blueberry pie, accompanied by a nice Riesling. As the evening rolls into the final hours, I plan to serve chocolate-cherry tea and a small plate of assorted cheeses and crackers while we enjoy the lights on the tree and the last of the Christmas music.

But . . . before that can happen I need to get to the final column in our Booklovers’ and Readers’ Gift Guide. If you missed the previous ones, here is part one (Address Books to Buttons), part two (Calendars to Home), part three (Horror Lovers to Maps), and part four (Miscellaneous to Postcards).  With that said, here we go with the last of the alphabetic categories: Posters to Watches.

Posters:
Whether you like them framed or unframed, you’ll find plenty of posters that reference books and reading as well as the characters in them. There are so many, in fact, that it is impossible to list even a fraction of them. But I particularly liked these.

Book covers! This site has posters that celebrate the art of dust jackets on all genres of books, more than 500 of them, or if you feel that really isn’t enough of a choice, try these searches with 4,379 posters on “books” and 1,509 for “reading.”

Government posters always have hold a particular fascination for me. If you agree, check out this Read the Books You’ve Always Meant to Read poster created between 1935 and 1943 as part of the Public Works Administration’s Federal Art Project. Another WPA reading poster is October’s Bright Blue Weather: A Good Time to Read one. September is always the “back to school” month but this Back to Work, Back to School, Back to Books poster makes the “back to” part seem quite exciting; who, after all, wouldn’t want to get “back to books”? Promoting the library is this poster, For Greater Knowledge on More Subjects Use Your Library Often! that uses strength and muscle to convey the importance of public libraries.

Family nights around a  book were the subject of this Good Books Are Life Teachers poster, which depicts a time probably between 1912-1920. More family time in the form of the new craze for camping can be seen in Take Along a Book, a poster from the early 1900s. A pretty one for girls would be Little Miss Muffet … Reading a Picture Book, which honors the poem that Dr. Thomas Muffet wrote to his daughter in the early 1600s.  Among the amusing ones are those that were created to combat women’s suffrage in the early part of the twentieth century and which were not intended to be funny. This one, of a man doing the washing while his wife reads, could be an interesting wall ornament in the laundry room.

For the writer in your life or for those who harbor an affection for old typewriters, this etsy seller has several images of rusted machines with a strange artistic beauty.

Books and the beach is a common theme for paintings and other artwork, and this particular print is certainly lovely; choose between the green chair or the red one—or get both.

Banned books are among the most popular topics for posters and pins, and this Read Banned Books poster will allow you to check off those banned books you have read, want to read, or are currently reading.

Kitties and books otherwise known as the Kill Poster!

Posters with art about specific books include To Kill a Mockingbird, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Huxley’s Brave New World, Heller’s Catch 22, Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (okay, this one is a play), Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, Ellison’s Invisible Man, Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Wells’s War of the Worlds, Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, an original edition of Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, and more.

Travel:
Book travel? You bet! Whether you do it yourself or join an organized tour, or regardless of whether you stay at a hotel or just give a daytime treat you’ll find here a number of suggestions for great bookish travel.

New York City is chock-full of experiences and places for a reader so consider planning a weekend trip for the recipient. There are always book signings by famous authors, plenty of bookstores and the New York Public Library to visit. And you can stay at the Library Hotel, a luxury boutique hotel, in Manhattan while you are there. Each of their sixty rooms, six to a floor, is “individually adorned with a collection of art and books relevant to one distinctive topic within the category of the floor it belongs to.” Just because, you might say, just because the Algonquin Hotel hosted the famous Algonquin Round Table doesn’t make it a literary hotel. Yes, it would even if that were its only literary connection. But it’s not. There’s a long history, one so worthy of protecting that in 19096 the hotel was declared a literary landmark.

New York isn’t the only city with bookish hotels. In Connecticut, the Study at Yale Hotel offers accommodations to those visiting Yale or just the city of New Haven. Their 124 guest rooms (each with a leather reading chair), while the Studies almost all possess a separate den with stocked bookshelves.  Plus, the lobby/living room has “abundant reading materials including the international periodicals and a selection of admired literature chosen from The Strand in NYC.”  On the west coast, San Francisco offers the Hotel Rex in Union Square, whose lobby has “distinctive San Francisco period furnishings, walls of antiquarian books, and an exceptional collection of exotic objects, original portraits and murals.” It doesn’t sound like the books are available for reading, but at least they are there. And if you are heading to Thailand, put The Library on your list of places to stay.

Books and food go so well together that it’s a wonder there aren’t more places like Library Bistro & Bookstore Bar in Seattle, or the  Winding Stair Bookshop and Café in Dublin, Ireland. If Oscar Wilde was right in believing that love and gluttony satisfied everything then the Wilde Bar & Restaurant in Chicago with its grand library is sure to satisfy. For Jack Kerouac fans, the Vesuvio Café (actually a saloon) located in San Francisco’s North Beach just across from City Lights Bookstore is a sure pleasure.

Tours? If you like to plan a trip, try The Word Travels, which specializes in literary travel and literary tours of all types—walking, festivals, classical, and more. Harry Potter fans might enjoy the planned iterneries of HP Fan Trips, which, in 2011, will enjoy a “muggle backstage pass” to the sites that inspired the books and were part of the movies. Novel Explorations is another Britain-based literary tour agency. I like their motto—Where Fiction and Travel Merge—and their tours sound fantastic. In addition to Theatrical Feast in Paris;  Regency House Tour; Writers, Myths and Legends: A Journey to Northern England and Scotland; and A Truly Royal-tea Journey to England, they will also develop tours based on the needs of a specific group (firshand paranormal activity, anyone?).

London Irish Literary Travel is “a small team of literary enthusiasts who organise trips and excursions to places associated with Irish writers in Britain, Ireland and France. We also arrange walks in London and trips to places of literary interest near London.” Unfortunately, I can’t find anything listed yet for 2011 so if you are interested it’s best to contact them directly. Lynott Tours Inc offers an amazing number of literary tours of England(scroll down to read about them) during which you will visit author’s homes, literary museums, towns and villages where the stories are set, and places that inspired the writers.  Special Group Tours offers, among others, literary tours in England and in Edinburgh, day trips in/from London, and can develop customized tours for private groups upon request. For Scotland enthusiasts, Edinburgh Literary Tours has two tours: the Edinburgh Booklover’s Tour and the Lost World Literary Pub Crawl. Another Edinburgh literary tour comes courtesy of the Scottish Literary Tour Trust, and this one looks wonderful with its pub tours that include “an intrepid duo,” various bus tours, and the Makars’ Literary Tour with theatre. And there’s more too!

The Shakespeare Tour is a self-drive, seven-day one that organizes a car rental and places to stay for you with a suggested itinerary that is customizable depending on your specific interests. Pride and Prejudice fans will surely enjoy this particular tour in which you can visit the locations of the latest film adaption of the classic story. They also offer tours for fans of The Other Boleyn Girl. More literary tours focusing on authors (in this case, Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Hardy, and Churchill) include those offered by Tours International. Lord of the Rings. It has a . . . . ring, doesn’t it? This company makes available spectacular tours of Middle Earth (New Zealand) , as does this one which has several tour options.

England is not the only place that specializes in literary tours; San Francisco does to0. It has a two-hour walking tour that touches on a number of eras and movements but specializes on post-Gold Rush and the Beat generation.  Moving farther to the south—to South America, actually—is this private tour: Isla Negra and Pablo Nuruda Museum in Santiago, Chili.

And finally, if you are interested in discovering  literary sites in your state, this page lists homes, museums, libraries, and other sites devoted to the state’s authors and which would make great literary tours if you live in or are planning to visit there.

Unusual Books:
What do I mean by unusual books? Those that are artistic or unique in some unusual way.  A fine example is Trail: Paper Poetry, a book that has white-on-white pop-ups throughout the pages. The Literary Garden Recreating Literature's Most Beautiful Gardens would be perfect for the dual lover, allowing horticultural lovers to recreate literature’s great gardens in their own backyards.

Penguin Books is one of my favorite publishers, especially in their series collections. One of the most outstanding in terms of book design are the Great Ideas (see all five) and Great Journeys series. I mean these are gorgeous! Yes, I own some of both and covet the rest. Great Ideas is exceptionally beautiful, utilizing typefaces and embossing in ways rarely seen any more. I haven’t yet seen the Great Loves series in person but if they are as  good as the other ones—and I have no reason to think they are not—well, these are excellent gifts too (if not for Christmas, then for Valentine’s Day?). Given what Penguin did with those, I am not surprised at the stunning beauty of these F. Scott Fitzgerald books designed specifically to honor the 70th anniversary  of his death. Elegant foil jackets, and even a matching bookmark!

Personalized Classics are a wonderful way to let someone create their “own” classical novel by using the kit they send you to substitute your name for the leading character, create your own cast of family and friends (up to six), write a personal dedication, and the register the work. Within one month, you (or your recipient) will receive a first edition of one of these books: Alice in Wonderland, Dracula, Pride and Prejudice, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or Wuthering Heights.

If someone you know likes to read the bible and would appreciate the work that goes into creating a spectacular book this embellished King James Bible would be absolutely perfect. The cover is burgundy leather cover adorned with antiqued bronze stampings and castings set with topaz- and ruby-colored Czech stones. You can also add the beautiful rosary if desired. There is also this wonderful revised standard version Bible with a black grained-leather cover embellished with solid brass stampings accented with smoky topaz faceted stones and topaz cabochons. More delicate in appearance but no less stunning is this Embellished White Leather Bible (new international version) with a white bonded leather cover, silver-plated corners, cross, Czech crystals and a pearlized bead. A velvet bookmark with cross ends keeps your place.

On the other side (so to speak) is Dracula’s Heir. This novella picks up where the original left off and gives you a mystery to solve using eight removable clues. When you think you have solved the crime, you can open the final signature (sealed at the printer’s) and discover if you are right. (Note: I have no idea if the story is good or not. It just sounds like it would be fun.) There’s also Sherlock Holmes: The Crimes of Dr. Watson, but it is currently out of stock; e-mail if interested to find out when copies are next expected to arrive.

Paris Icons claims to be “as much about publication as about objet d’art” with “spectacular visuals and intellectual insights.” It certainly looks beautiful, and if you love Paris this might just be worth it.

Armchair traveling never felt so good as in these historical traveling guides. Taking their cue from the famous Europe on 5 Dollars a Day (and its descendents), The Wild West on 5 Bits a Day, Ancient Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day, and Shakespeare’s London on 5 Groats a Day all offer practical travel advice to those “traveling” back in those times. But they are not fiction. Rather, the writers used the works of contemporary authors, pamphlets, maps, letters, maps, wills, and legal records to create memorable self-guided tours without catching anything, avoiding muggers and cutthroats, using local transportation (horseback, stagecoach, and locomotives) for day trips.

Watches:
Though these could have gone under Jewelry, I felt their uniqueness deserved its own category. This Book Lover Watch offers a face with miniatures of books, a pen, and a cup of coffee on a background of a library. The Love Story Watch has miniatures of a book, rose, and lips on its face. And the Mystery Love Watch includes miniatures of a bloody knife and a mystery book set on a background of a crime scene. And finally, Shakespeare again comes through, this time in a watch from the New York Review of Books. Shakespeare on your sleeve—or at least next to it.

And that, dear friends, ends our gift list for 2010. I hope that each one of you has a wonderful holiday –regardless of whether that is Christmas, or Kwanzaa or was Hanukkah—and no matter how festive or peaceful you make it. Just make sure it is one that works for you.

Upcoming Book Festivals:
Unfortunately, there are no book or author festivals until January.

The Pub House:
Watson-Guptill is a large publishing house, an arm of an even larger one, Random House. And as such it publishes a lot of books in a number of categories that I am just going to pick three. (If you like how-to books they have a large and excellent selection.) The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnavigate the Globe, a new book being released this month, is the previously unknown story of the first woman to ever sail around the globe—in the necessary guise of a man in 1765. Queen Hereafter is historical fiction based on the little-known Saxon princess Margaret of Scotland who is given in marriage to the warrior-king and learns to maneuver her way through shifting alliances and political tension in the world of eleventh-century barbarian Scots. Kansha: Celebrating Japan's Vegan and Vegetarian Traditions celebrates the vegan and vegetarian in Japanese cuisine through Buddhist philosophy and practice. Practical techniques, an introduction to the staples, and color photography will make this a wonderful tool for cooks looking to the east for greater variety.

Imaging Books & Reading:
If you enjoy reading A Christmas Carol every year, and especially enjoy introducing children to the richness of the story, you’ll probably find that this cartoon, highlighting one of those reasonable but not entirely answerable children’s questions, familiar.

Of Interest:
What a wonderful blog The Bibliophile's Adventurers Club is! I was completely taken in when I stumbled across it while researching something else. And here’s why (courtesy of the “welcome” message): This site is dedicated to men of mystery, women of intrigue. To those who seek adventure even in the books they read. To those who love the feel of a strong binding in their hands – first editions, leather bound boards, original illustrations, gilt and marble edges, and fanciful end papers. To those who own magnificent libraries; and those who hope to one day. Here’s to you – may you never lack in bookish treasure; may you always sense the thrill of the chase. What passionate reader could fail to fall in love with that?

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren