Bookish Gifts for the Difficult to Buy For

I love a good 'best of' list and we've reached that time of year when it seems everyone (whoever she is) is sharing her favourites for 2014. I've been trying but I can't narrow it down to a manageable number - five becomes six becomes sixteen and 'best' becomes a nonsense.

So instead of a neverending story, here's a list of books you might buy for the difficult to buy for, drawn from my reading this year. It's not too late to pop into your local bookshop.


The world traveller you wish would come home
We all have one – the family member who makes their way somewhere else in the world and you wish you could tempt them home. Send them Nigel Featherstone’s novella, The Beach Volcano. It will remind your traveller of hot coastal nights, wintery Tasmanian days, and the powerful ties of family that never ever let go. It’s a slim volume, which means it will be cheaper to post than the latest volume of Thomas Keneally’s Australians series.

The family historian
 I will love Lloyd Jones forever for writing Mr Pip, a gutwrenching ode to the power of literature in the most unlikely place but his recent memoir, A History of Silence. A story of Christchurch as it struggles to heal after the earthquakes, it is also the story of writing across the silences in a family’s history to reveal the heartbreak at its core. It’s sad but exquisite – and anyone interested in family history will love sharing the research process with Lloyd Jones.

The new arrival
It's baby's first Christmas and baby already has everything: stuffed toys, rattles he can't hold, more clothes than anyone could possibly wear. The answer? Australia's children's classic, Where is the Green Sheep? by Mem Fox and Judy Horacek. It only has just over 100 words but it will last for years. It will be one of the first books read to baby, read with baby and read by baby. And one day, it will be the first book baby will read to another new baby.

The 'creative'
I struggle with 'creative' being used as a noun but I'm ignoring that because 'entrepreneur' or 'thought leader' seemed even worse. This is the person in your life who wants to make a living out of their passion, and who may or may not work in the arts or hospitality or museums or online or in design (fashion, graphic) or who writes or draws or makes music or theatre around the edges of their day job. Encourage them to follow the dream and have an inspired, glossy 2015 with a subscription to Renegade Collective.

The struggling reader
You know that if she could just make it to the end of the book, she would fall in love with reading for the rest of her life. But books have so many words, she's terrified. Give her The 13 Storey Treehouse by Andy Griffiths and Terry Denton, a book (and sequels) where words and pictures combine to reveal the powerful effects of imagination on the lives to Andy and Terry, who don't have very long to finish writing and drawing their next book.

The sister or bff
Anita Heiss' Tiddas is my pick in this category this year - and I've already gifted it to one of my sisters. It offers best friends, book talk, secrets, messy lives and one of the most engaging depictions of Brisbane I've ever read. Made me want to hop on the plane with Tiddas as my guidebook. Perfect for book clubs too, it challenges how Indigenous Australians are depicted in much of our fiction.

The political junkie
You don't agree with their politics. You don't know what political memoirs they have recently read. And sometimes they take their politics so damn seriously. Lighten them up with Behind the Lines; The Best Political Cartoons of 2014, published by the National Museum of Australia.

The lover of tales
Kate Forsyth writes across genres but until this year I hadn’t read any of her work. Then I read Bitter Greens, her reimagining of Rapunzel, and followed it quickly with The Wild Girl, a novel based on the story of Dortchen Wild who lived next door to the Brothers Grimm and was the teller of many of the tales they made famous. Set during the Napoleonic Wars, its romantic and passionate and heartbreaking – and it puts a wonderful woman back into the picture.

The Rebus fan
He says he loves crime but only ever talks about Rebus. Introduce him to Cormoran Strike, a wounded war veteran and his sidekick Robin (couldn't help myself). Strke is the creation of JK Rowling's alter ego, Robert Galbraith, and in his first outing, The Cuckoo's Calling, I fell hard. He's a tortured soul (not unlike Rebus), the streets of London leap off the page, the crime is intriguing, and Robin holds Strike and the book together. The second book in the series, The Silkworm, is on my summer reading list.


The dreamer
Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a dream of a book for the dreamer in all of us. A contemporary fairytale, it’s a story about a young reader for readers everywhere. As the narrator says: ''I liked myths. They weren't adults' stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.'' Buy a copy for your dreamer and one for yourself as well.

On reading

From http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/drunk-on-color.html

Yesterday, I finally finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert's novel, The Significance of All Things. I say 'finally' because it has been a struggle. Now that I have reached page 499, though, I can't quite believe that the struggle was so great.

I bought The Significance of All Things hopefully. It came with good reviews and it ticked a lot of boxes. Historical novel - tick. Strong female protagonist - tick. It 'soars across the globe' - tick. An international novel with Australian connections - tick. It seemed to offer so much.

A little like the story of Alma Whittaker, however, we began our journey together with a few false starts. A couple of pages read before the book returned again to the 'to-be-read' pile. Then some progress was made. But it seemed that every time I picked it up, I did so wondering if it was time to give up on it. I don't like not reading books to their ends but this one seemed to be defeating me. It was a 'dromedary' (as Alma's father memorably describes his daughter) at a time when I seemed to need a fleeting gazelle.

I repeatedly stopped reading The Significance of All Things, reading instead four or five books that were strong on plot. I read each of them over a couple of days or at 3am in the morning. They held my attention and made me race through their pages. It wasn't that I wasn't reading. I couldn't stop reading. I just couldn't read The Significance of All Things. I did, though, keep picking it up. And every time I did, certain that this would be the time I'd decide to stop reading it altogether, it would offer me something, a tiny tempting morsel. First, it was the arrival of the beautiful but inscrutable Prudence, Alma's adopted sister and the daughter of a 'loose woman'. Next came exuberant, silly and slightly mad Retta Snow. 'She'll get things moving,' I thought. 'Now something will happen.' But not a lot did.

Finally, on Good Friday, I decided to offer The Significance of All Things one last chance. I wasn't even quite half-way. I was defeated. Ready to give up. I didn't want to spend a long, lazy Easter weekend wrestling with Alma Whittaker and her tedious botanical studies. She might be interested in the slow movement of moss across rocks but I wasn't. I was decided. If she didn't convince me this time, I was walking away.

Forty-eight hours later, Alma had won. And I have been left to wonder why it was such a struggle because now, if you asked me, I'd say 'I love this book'. Its premise is so audacious: what if, Elizabeth Gilbert asks, what if Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace weren't the only naturalists exploring theories of evolution in the middle of the nineteenth century?

Now, I can see that the way the book is written echoes the movement of Alma's mosses. It demands patience. It asks you to pay attention and look closely. Nothing is insignificant, nothing is wasted.

It's also a novel steeped in history. Beginning with Henry Whittaker's bruising and audacious encounters with Sir Joseph Banks, it journeys through a century of exploration and scientific discovery, a century in which religious beliefs and scientific theorems were challenged and changed. And yet it looks at the century as if through a microscope, through Alma Whittaker's eyes, the eyes of a highly educated, highly intelligent, highly isolated woman. Now, instead of annoying me, it reminds me of Middlemarch and Alma reminds me of Dorothea.

It's a novel that makes me think and, I have to admit, mostly I've been thinking about how I read. There was a moment, last week, when I wondered if my ability to read a long, slow, complex novel had left me. If my brain wasn't quite up to it any more. If, perhaps, I had given myself over entirely to strong plots and dynamic characters. Not lesser books, by any means. But books that didn't need me to put so much effort in.

Now, with the challenge of The Significance of All Things behind me, I have a more balanced view of how I read. There are books for all seasons and when I am super-busy, overtired, sleeping badly - as I have been for most of the late summer, early autumn - I still read but I don't have the energy to make an effort. I want to be swept away - sometimes to little English villages where romance is inevitable; sometimes to the streets of Edinburgh or Paris where dogged investigators solve crimes faster than I can read them. But as the pace of life has slowed, I can slow my reading pace. As I relax and my energy levels increase, I can take on the challenges of a book like The Significance of All Things.

I could have given up. Easily. And I might never have challenged my reading mind again. Instead I've expanded my knowledge of moss (admittedly, we were beginning at a very low base). I've expanded my understanding of the theory of evolution. I've befriended some extraordinary characters and been reminded of some old friends. I might reread Middlemarch - it's long overdue. And I am feeling gratitude - to Elizabeth Gilbert and Alma Whittaker, who have stretched me and reminded me to look closely, be patient and pay attention.