2024 Holiday Book Picks
Fiction
The Bright Sword By Lev Grossman – Publisher: Penguin Random House
The Magician’s author Lev Grossman’s ten-year pursuit to explore the fate of the severely depleted Round Table in the wake of King Arthur’s death triumphs where the quests it describes meet much more ambiguous fates. Ambitious, engaging, and satisfying, Bright Sword incorporates the complex history of Arthurian literature over the centuries and imbues it with a deep sense of bedrock humanity—set firmly as an immutable sword set in a changing stone.
Ministry of Time By Kaliane Bradley – Publisher: Simon & Schuster Historical missing persons—such as Graham Gore presumed dead on The Franklin Expedition—are retrieved from the past and pulled into the present by the Ministry of Time. This clever premise lends itself to an acute exploration of current social and political issues. The narrative is further embellished by some very effective plot twists and a compelling slow burn romance. All in all, The Ministry of Time is an exceptional and satisfying speculative fiction novel.
Buried Deep By Naomi Novik- Publisher: Penguin Random House
There’s something for everyone in this wide-ranging story collection by literary fantasy virtuoso Naomi Novik. The stories touch upon the many worlds established in her novels, each one adding either a new encounter with an old friend or an exquisite sampler for anyone new to Novik. Deft shifts in tone and style make this collection a nicely varied treat.
All Fours By Miranda July- Publisher: Penguin Random House
“I devoured Miranda July’s All Fours. A feast of sumptuous detail, of raw emotional honesty, of sheer possibility. Anything I say about the plot feels pallid in contrast to the vitality coursing through this book, but I can’t not tell you “what the book is about,” right? A forty-something, multi-hyphenate artist leaves her husband and child in Los Angeles as she embarks on a road trip to New York. She makes it about twenty minutes from home before a rash decision to take up residence in a hotel, undergoing an entirely different journey of self-discovery. I don’t want to say more—even though there is so much more—because July’s sense of surprise exquisite. I’m talking true surprise, true curiosity. July brings her sensibilities as a filmmaker and performance artist to the page with embodied characters, lush sets, and a keen awareness of audience. All Fours is funny, sexy, graphic, self-aware. Everyone I’ve seen lately who has read it is in love with it. Like so in love we want to start an All Fours Club, so in love we have to tell anyone who hasn’t read it to read it now. See? I can’t help myself.” — meg
Non-Fiction
The Wide Wide Sea By Hampton Sides- Publisher: Penguin Random House
Hampton Sides expands his already robust reputation for writing excellent popular histories with this account of Captain Cook’s fascinating and ultimately fatal third expedition. Filled with insightful character development, a precise eye for detail, and a narrative hand which is held steadily, growing in intensity until it achieves a truly fevered pitch. The Wide Wide Sea offers the best sort of literary voyage as reader’s will disembark from its pages richer from the reading.
Vanishing Treasures By Katherine Rundell- Publisher: Penguin Random House
Katherine Rundell, author of the sensational middle grade fantasy Impossible Creatures (also featured in this year’s Holiday 20), displays her remarkable range by also publishing this incredibly charming bestiary of endangered animals. With literary flourishes, sublime quotations, and deftly spun information, Rundell has produced a remarkable thematic corollary to Impossible Creatures—which is itself in part a narrative bestiary of equally threatened imaginary creatures. What a pleasure it is to pick up Vanishing Treasures, open to a random page, and read a few entries.
Picture Books
Treehouse Town By Gideon Sterer – Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Treehouse Town is a fully immersive experience. There is so much for a child to see, hear, and then do. Once the book is set down, it will be time to step right across into a delightful world of imaginative play, community, friendship, and wonder. Gideon Sterer’s splendid rhymes are perfectly accompanied by Charlie Mylie’s resplendent drawings. The enchanted pages of Treehouse Town truly are a home away from home.
Mouse on the River By Alice Melvin- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
“I nearly wept at the sweet gentleness of Alice Melvin’s new picture book Mouse on the River when it arrived at the bookstore. The book begins with our dear adventurer Mouse setting off downriver aboard his red rowboat, off to visit a friend who lives on the seaside. Along his journey, Mouse embraces everything he meets: friendly faces, the bucolic countryside, the lively sights of a little town. My delight overflowed when I realized there was much more to see than what’s on the surface—each page has its own die-cut flaps! Lush trees fold out to reveal songbirds roosting in the branches. A tree house on the drizzly riverbank reveals a squirrel’s cozy reading nook. Wonder runs through this book in its quiet moments of presence. At each turn, a tender curiosity. Until salt air, until sunset: ‘Where the river meets the sea my journey meets its end. I pull the boat onto the sand and greet my waiting friend…’” — meg
What Can a Mess Make By Bee Johnson- Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
This tale of two sisters spending a day engaged in mess-adjacent creative play is a sheer delight as it explores the many ways a mess can be transformed into masterpieces, snacks to share, places to rest, and changes of plans. The charming text and evocative illustrations are infused with an intimate buoyancy which give the story a rare, sublime quality indeed. Huzzah to thee, oh author and illustrator Bee Johnson.
Holiday Books
Santa’s First Christmas By Mac Barnett- Publisher: Penguin Random House
It turns out that the vast labors Santa undertakes to bring joy to everyone who celebrates Christmas leaves him too tired and worn out to enjoy the holiday himself. In this warm and clever book Santa’s elves are determined to give him his first true Christmas.
Brightly Shining By Ingvild Rishøi– Publisher: Grove Press
This Norwegian holiday story is a remarkable book. Its ten-year-old narrator broke my heart with her hard-won hopefulness. A skinny tree clinging to a cliff side in a storm, she weathers the hardships of her life with a clear-eyed transcendence whose magic lies in the transformative power of a rooted imagination. Ronja superimposes longed-for security and warmth onto a cold world from which she is still able to elicit skeins of love. This is a book to share and one you will always remember.
Cookbook
Ottolenghi Comfort By Yotam Ottolenghi- Publisher: Penguin Random House
Ottolenghi and Comfort are a happy pairing of two happy words. Beloved cookbook author Ottolenghi’s foray into comfort foods delivers everything its title promises. Wonderful recipes and enticing photographs roll by page after page. With inviting chapter headings like “Eggs, Crepes, Pancakes”, “Soups, Dips, Spreads”, “Fritters and Other Fried Things”, and “Dals, Stews, Curries, and Sweet Things”, all one needs is the ingredients and the time.
Maine Interest
Burn By Peter Heller- Publisher: Penguin Random House The power of the unspoken is deafening in this powerful and rewarding novel. Two best friends on an extended hunting trip in rural northern Maine find themselves trapped behind the lines of a violent secessionist movement. The book is filled with exceptionally well-rooted nature writing and a narrative intensity driven by the slowly unfurling mystery and danger of Jess and Storey’s circumstances. Yet, as the pieces slowly fall into place, all these strengths primarily serve to heighten and illuminate Burn‘s core narrative: a subtle and nuanced exploration of what we owe each other. What are our interpersonal responsibilities and how do the ways we handle those responsibilities define the horizons of our personal narratives? Burn‘s unexpected ending leaves the reader squarely within those same questions, working like the novel’s protagonists to find their way out.
My Wonderful Christmas Tree By Dahlov Ipcar – Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Dahlov Ipcar’s timeless classic—sadly long out of print for years due to complex estate issues—is now finally available again in a lovely new edition. Whether you are making or renewing your acquaintance with My Wonderful Christmas Tree, sharing this holiday treasure’s unique artistry with loved ones will be deeply rewarding.
Imaginative Books of Wonder
Houses with a Story By Seiji Yoshida- Publisher: Abrams Books
Author and illustrator Seiji Yoshida’s stated goal with Houses with a Story was to recreate his own childhood delight in the evocative buildings he encountered in books by producing a collection of newly-imagined fictional lodgings complete with their occupants, builders, and histories. This whimsical array of imagined dwellings transcendently achieves his intent—opening up edifices of wonder, built with elements of narrative structure both visual and literary, that invite the reader to occupy themselves in completing the experience. Structures such as “An Eccentric Botanist’s Laboratory”, “A Miner’s Engine House”, “The Post Office of the Dragon Tamer”, and “A Wanted Man’s Sod House” bring the book’s premise to life. They are places for readers to inhabit, explore, and visit in different times, states, and senses. Yoshida has bequeathed us a uniquely rich and delicate literary confection. What a marvelous gift!
Mr. Lepron’s Mystery Soup By Giovanna Zoboli- Publisher: Candlewick Press Sometimes I think of the bookstore like a vast garden in which, every now and then, one may encounter a wholly unexpected experience inside a familiar skin. Mr. Lepron’s Mystery Soup looks like an ordinary picture book but those who sample its pages will find that it is anything but. This rich, detailed, and insightful tale of a soup-making rabbit whose success has unexpected consequences defies both genre and expectation. Mr. Lepron’s reckoning with fame and fortune is gracefully evoked by Giovanna Zoboli’s fine writing and sumptuously-rendered by Mariachiara Di Giorgio’s arresting illustrations. So good!
Middle Grade Fiction
Impossible Creatures By Katherine Rundell- Publisher: Penguin Random House
It is peculiarly appropriate that Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures is the tale of fulfilling a difficult and vitally important quest, for the book itself fulfills a difficult and vitally important quest—one sought after by all fantasy novels. The quest to achieve singularity, real magic and depth, enduring meaning and wonder, to make of our world a mirror in which both myth and mundane, evil and good, are reborn into a fresh, resilient world. Impossible Creatures embodies its own powerful story. And that is a rare triumph indeed.
The Wishkeeper’s Apprentice By Rachel Chivers Khoo- Publisher: Candlewick Press
This tale of a ten-year-old boy who becomes apprenticed to an aging, curmudgeonly Wishkeeper is a gentle story whose dangers are all the more potent for its genial nature. The Wishkeeper’s Apprentice is just right for young readers eager to explore a world of imagination, resolve, and well-earned comfort.
Young Adult Fiction
Ruin Road By Lamar Giles- Publisher: Scholastic
Ruin Road is an exceptionally good exploration of Faustian themes through the lens of modern-day race issues. Cade is a football star who is tired of instilling fear in others simply by being big and Black. Avoiding an unprovoked police encounter, he slips into a pawn shop. The pawn keeper grants Cade’s wish for everyone to stop fearing him. It soon becomes clear that the wish went a bit farther than Cade intended. People stop fearing anything at all, and the story descends into horror. Gripping, entertaining, and profound, Ruin Road is a tour de force.
Chapter Book
Stella & Marigold By Annie Barrows- Publisher: Chronicle Books
Stella and Marigold is an absolute treasure of an early chapter book. The day-to-day adventures of two young sisters is pure magic in the hands of Ivy and Bean author Annie Barrows and two-time Caldecott winning illustrator Sophie Blackall. This book provides everything you could wish to give a young reader.
Whatever gifts you choose to share with your loved ones, make sure to purchase them from the stores which share a community with you.
Kenny Brechner is the owner of Devaney Doak & Garrett Booksellers in downtown Farmington. He can be reached at [email protected] or online at www.ddgbooks.com.
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