It's Book Monday, and the 2009 Books on the Nightstand Holiday Gift Guide is here!

 We are thrilled to present the 2009 Books on the Nightstand Holiday Gift Guide! Just click the Books on the Nightstand gift guide logo below for the free .pdf download.

Somewhere, at some time, the pundits declared that the Monday after Thanksgiving should be called "Cyber Monday." I guess that means everybody is supposed to do their holiday shopping from work. Here at Books on the Nightstand, we'd rather do our book shopping in person, in our local bookstores -- but there's no reason that we can't use our workday to plan our shopping, right? So we're calling today "Book Monday" and offering up this downloadable gift guide for you to begin making that shopping list.

Our gift guide includes our personal book recommendations across many categories -- including several great books that cost less than $20! Just click to download (don't worry, it's free)! (If your shopping list includes children, we have a separate Kids' Book Gift Guide!)

In order to download and read the Gift Guide on your computer, you will need Adobe Reader. If you do not have Adobe Reader, you may download a free copy here:
  
We've designed this e-book to be printed or read on your computer. If you choose to read it on your computer, the very last page is a checklist of all of the recommended titles, so that you may just print out that single page and take it with you to the bookstore. And technically, it's an ebook (and DRM free!), so if you have an e-reader you can load it onto your device and take it with you to the store.


We believe that books make the perfect gift. There is truly a book for everyone, and books have an importance and value beyond two covers and some paper in between. In this year where so many of us are looking to spend less and give more thoughtfully, we think books are the answer. We hope you agree.

We've had a lot of fun putting this together, and we hope that we've given you enough great ideas to allow you to complete all of your holiday shopping.  There's something here for everyone, we believe ... including yourself. I've heard through the grapevine that some of you may be using this as your own personal wish list! That's fine with us, and if you need us to email a copy anonymously to your personal Santa, just let us know!
We'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of your for your support of Books on the Nightstand. Thank you for allowing us to share our love of books and reading with you. For those of you that read and listen on a regular basis, thank you. For our new friends, welcome -- we look forward to getting to know you.

But remember ... if you need even more gift suggestions, there are a wealth of recommendations here at Books on the Nightstand. Every book we blogged about or discussed on a podcast gets our stamp of approval, and would be a great gift.

And of course, we'd love to hear your feedback about the Gift Guide (either this year's or last), so please let us know what you think in the comments. Did you use last year's Books on the Nightstand Gift Guide to help you with your holiday shopping? Have you used this year's to create your own reading list?

Forget Black Friday... Get Ready for BOOK Monday!

Okay, you've gotten the flat screen TV for $400, the laptop for $100 and the coffee maker for $3. Now it's time for you to relax and think about which books you'll be buying for your friends and family.

BUT... can we respectfully request you hold off on making those decisions until Monday? That's when the 2009 Books on the Nightstand Holiday Gift Guide will be available. Ann and I have been working very hard to narrow down the list to a manageable size and we'll be putting the finishing touches on it this weekend.

Trust us. It's worth waiting for!

photo by croixboy, via flickr

BOTNS Books Podcast #54: Meet Stan Hynds

Books on the Nightstand, Episode 54 (29:12)

We've got a special guest for this episode!

Stan Hynds is the Senior Book Buyer at The Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont.  Michael and I work closely with Stan, and we thought you'd like to hear how all of those books get onto the shelves of your local independent bookstore. Stan is the perfect person to tell us.

In Segment 2, Stan tells us about three of his favorite novels from this past year.  Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, which Michael also loved, is a novel of identity, and is made up of three connected stories that turn out to be intertwined. Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby is the story of a music, fandom, and relationships that fans of Hornby's previous novels, especially High Fidelity, will surely love. But really, Stan's favorite novel of the year is The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. You can see Stan's review of this book on The Northshire Bookstore blog. (Since this episode was recorded, I have indeed purchased both Juliet, Naked and The Anthologist. You may want to budget for a few additional book purchases after hearing Stan talk about his favorite novels).

Stan was also great enough to handle both books in our "Two Books We Can't Wait for you to Read" segment. First up is a collection of essays from Chuck Klosterman called Eating the Dinosaur, which Stan blogged about at The Northshire blog. Sam Lipsyte's forthcoming The Ask, will be published in March 2010, and may lead to a future Books on the Nightstand episode about novels set in academia. Got any candidates? Call our voicemail and let us know!

 

Many thanks to Stan for helping us out with this week's podcast. It was great fun for me, and I hope that our listeners will enjoy it as much as I did. You can read more of Stan's book recommendations at the "Staff Picks" section of The Northshire Bookstore's website, and on The Northshire Bookstore blog, where Stan usually posts on Mondays.

(You can listen to the podcast by using the player at the top of this post. If you're using Internet Explorer, click twice to listen. If your browser does not support javascript, you won't see the player; click the link below the player to listen, or right-click to download the episode. If you are receiving this post by email and cannot see the player at the bottom of the message, please visit http://www.booksonthenightstand.com to listen)

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We encourage you to write down or print out the title information and shop at your local bookstore. Titles link to LibraryThing, a social networking site that allows you to catalog your home library. LibraryThing also links to various online purchasing options. Here are the books from this post:

Await Your Reply by Dan Chaon, Ballantine Books hardcover
Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, Riverhead hardcover
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker, Simon & Schuster hardcover
Eating the Dinosaur by Chuck Klosterman, Scribner hardcover
The Ask by Sam Lipsyte, Farrar, Straus & Giroux hardcover (due March, 2010)

(all information is for the U.S. editions).

BOTNS Books Podcast #53: Piles and Piles of Books

Books on the Nightstand, Episode 53 (25:24)

Reading over Publishers Weekly’s list of the 100 Best Books of 2009 made me realize that there are many, many books that sound wonderful, and sound right up my alley. And yet, I will never, ever get around to them and that really upset me. I also recently came to terms with the fact that I have way too many books in my house and that I need to find new homes for many of them. Ann doesn’t keep many of the books that she finishes, but I always have. What about you? How do you “deal with” books? The ones you’ll never get to, the ones you’ve already finished. Let us know here in the comments or on our voicemail!


In segment two, we confess the books that we’ve been meaning to get to; in some cases, for years! Ann still hasn’t read The Poisonwood Bible or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (both of which I loved). I have never read A Fraction of the Whole (one of Ann’s favorites from last year), The Little Prince or Out Stealing Horses. We’re opening this up to you our loyal readers. Convince us that we need to read these, and share with us the shameful gaps in your reading.

Finally, two books we came to later than we would have liked… for me, it was To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic that deserves all of the accolades it has won over the years. Also, a reminder that the audio version, read by Sissy Spacek is much beloved by all who have heard it. Ann admits to buying a book called Thanksgiving Night at the beginning of November last year, but she’s finally picked it up this year and will finish it before the holiday.

top photo courtesy of arjecahn on Flickr

(You can listen to the podcast by using the player at the top of this post. If you're using Internet Explorer, click twice to listen. If your browser does not support javascript, you won't see the player; click the link below the player to listen, or right-click to download the episode. If you are receiving this post by email and cannot see the player at the bottom of the message, please visit http://www.booksonthenightstand.com to listen)
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We encourage you to write down or print out the title information and shop at your local bookstore. Titles link to LibraryThing, a social networking site that allows you to catalog your home library. LibraryThing also links to various online purchasing options. Here are the books from this post:
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, Harper Perennial trade paperback 
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, Picador trade paperback 
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz, Spiegel & Grau trade paperback 
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Harcourt Children's Books hardcover and paperback 
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, Picador trade paperback  
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Harper Collins trade paperback
Thanksgiving Night by Richard Bausch, Harper Perennial trade paperback

(all information is for the U.S. editions).

Hey, That was MY Idea! :)

I have a lot of cookbooks. A LOT of cookbooks.Cooking magazines too. It's a bit of a problem actually. There's the physical storage of them all, but there's also the frequent question I ask myself: "Which book was that recipe in?"

About a year ago, I dreamed of creating a website where I could enter all of the cookbooks I own, then enter my favorite recipes in each book. I could then easily search for a recipe and I'd know in which cookbook I'd find it. As more people joined the site and rated recipes, I could even discover hidden gems in the cookbooks I already own. The model for the idea was Ravelry, a knitting site that my wife uses to keep track of her projects.

Unfortunately, I'm not fluent in HTML or website creation and I didn't really know anybody who was, so the idea remained just that, an idea. That is, until Andrew Gray came along. He had a similar problem finding recipes in his books.The difference is that he did something about it. He created Cookbooker. It's exactly what I wanted in a site and I'm thrilled!

The site is still in its infancy. There are only 112 members, but that number will grow. Tim Spalding, founder of LibraryThing, just tweeted about them, now we need to spread the word even more! The more people that rate and review recipes, the more useful the site will become. Plus, Andrew seems genuinely open to ideas and suggestions, so I know the site will continue to evolve and get even better than it already is.

I'm looking forward to adding more and more of my cookbooks and magazines and rating all of my favorite recipes. Join me, won't you?

BOTNS Books Podcast #52: In praise of women writers

Books on the Nightstand, Episode 52 (22:04)

Publishers Weekly, the trade journal that covers the book industry, just released their list of Best Books of 2009, with a new "top ten" list to go along with the announcement. We're happy to pat ourselves on the back, since we've talked about 6 of the top 10 here on Books on the Nightstand, but like many others, we question the lack of women authors in the top ten.

You can follow the controversy about the lack of women by reading twitter messages that are tagged with #fembook. Out of the brouhaha comes The Willa List Wiki, started by Women in Letters and Literary Arts (link goes to Facebook group) as a way for people to list their favorite books by women that were published in 2009.

Other takes on the topic:
Laura Miller in Salon, Lizzie Skurnick, author and critic, in Politics Daily, and Bunch of Grapes Bookstore presents 10 Great Books by Female Authors.

What books written by women in 2009 do you think should top the Publishers Weekly list? Let us know in the comments, or call our voicemail line at (209) 867-7323 so that we can play your message on a future show.

In segment 2, Michael and I look at our own bookshelves to see how many women writers are represented. We also ask, are women marginalized for writing in a specific genre, or even for writing at all? One book that examines the history of women writers and looks at some of these issues is A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx by Elaine Showalter.

For those of you interested, Women Unbound is a reading challenge where participants are encouraged to read nonfiction and fiction books related to the rather broad idea of ‘women’s studies.’ It runs for an entire year, so do check it out if you want to examine the topic a bit more closely.

In our "Two Books We Can't Wait for You to Read" segment, we recommend two books we love that are written by women. Michael talks about The Secret History by Donna Tartt, one of his favorite books of all time that still deserves attention today. Ann discusses Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro, her newest collection of short stories.

  

(You can listen by using the player above. If you're using Internet Explorer, click twice to listen. If your browser does not support javascript, you won't see the player; click the link below the player to listen, or right-click to download the episode. If you are receiving this post by email and cannot see the player at the bottom of the message, please visit http://www.booksonthenightstand.com to listen)

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We encourage you to write down or print out the title information and shop at your local bookstore. Titles link to LibraryThing, a social networking site that allows you to catalog your home library. LibraryThing also links to various online purchasing options. Here are the books from this post:

A Jury of Her Peers, Elaine Showalter,Knopf hardcover
The Secret History by Donna Tartt, Vintage trade paperback
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro, Knopf hardcover

(all information is for the U.S. editions).

BOTNS Books Podcast #51: It's All the Rage

Books on the Nightstand, Episode 51 (22:49)

In this episode, we take a look at "literary fads" -- you know, like when every new book in the bookstore seems to be about the same thing, or uses the same type of jacket image. The current "fad" seems to be books inspired by Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Not all "fads" are deliberate, however, and coincidence plays a large part.

In segment two, we bring one of these literary fads back to life by discussing it to death. (Sorry, but how else do you introduce a segment about zombies?). Yes, Zombies. As evidenced by books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, these undead creatures are taking the bookstores by storm. Michael talks about several zombie books including Star Wars Death Trooper by Joe Schrieber and three books by Max Brooks: World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide, and Zombie Survival Guide Recorded Attacks, a graphic novel that looks at zombie attacks throughout history. And Michael wants to read The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, a comic series that has been collected in book form and is being turned into a TV series.

Ann has, somewhat accidentally, read and enjoyed a young adult novel called The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, which also features zombies, but this time the zombies are in a dystopic landscape.

In segment 3, Ann discusses Nightlight: A Parody by The Harvard Lampoon. Based on the Twilight series, this is a satire in the very best way, and will appeal to anyone who has read Twilight but doesn't really believe themselves to be in love with a sparkly vampire. It's funny and right on target, further enhancing Ann's reading of Twilight for her mother-daughter book club.

Michael prepares for his reading of The Art Student's War by telling us about one of author Brad Leithauser's older books.  The Art Student's War iis a novel is set in 1943 Detroit, and is about one art student's experience with World War II when she is asked to sketch wounded soldiers who have returned from the war.  Michael loved Leithauser's earlier book, A Few Corrections. That book leads off with one man's obituary, which you soon learn is riddled with errors. In each chapter, the obituary is slightly corrected, a unique way to tell the story of one man's life.

(You can listen by using the player above. If you're using Internet Explorer, click twice to listen. If your browser does not support javascript, you won't see the player; click the link below the player to listen, or right-click to download the episode. If you are receiving this post by email and cannot see the player at the bottom of the message, please visit http://www.booksonthenightstand.com to listen)

___________________

We encourage you to write down or print out the title information and shop at your local bookstore. Titles link to LibraryThing, a social networking site that allows you to catalog your home library. LibraryThing also links to various online purchasing options. Here are the books from this post:


Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, Megan Tingley Books trade paperback
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, Quirk Books trade paperback
Star Wars Death Trooper by Joe Schrieber, Lucas Books hardcover
World War Z by Max Brooks, Three Rivers Press trade paperback
The Zombie Survival Guide by Max Brooks, Three Rivers Press trade paperback
The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks by Max Brooks, Three Rivers Press
The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman, Image Comics
The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan, Delacorte Press hardcover
Nightlight: A Parody by The Harvard Lampoon, Vintage trade paperback
The Art Student's War by Brad Leithauser, Knopf hardcover
A Few Corrections by Brad Leithauser, Vintage trade paperback

(all information is for the U.S. editions).