Books I Gave Family Members for Christmas

As I have mentioned more than once here, I do most of my holiday gift shopping in bookstores. Here is a look at what I gave some of my family members for Christmas this year. To my mother, to whom I love to give books, as she now has more time to read, and I know her taste, I gave “Someone,” by Alice McDermott; “This is the Story of a Happy Marriage,” by Ann Patchett; “Longbourn,” by Jo Baker; and “The Lowland,” by Jhumpa Lahiri. (Regular readers of this blog will note that I have posted on all four of these books within the past two months.) To one brother I gave Khaled Hosseini’s “And the Mountains Echoed,” and a vegan cookbook (he is vegan). To another brother, whose wife is Chinese and who has visited China, I gave Amy Tan’s newest novel, “The Valley of Amazement,” and -- because, like me, he loves San Francisco so much -- photographer/journalist Gary Kamiya’s “Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco.” I loved this latter book so much that I also gave it to my daughter, who also dearly loves San Francisco and now lives in "The City" again. (I will very likely buy myself a copy as well). In addition, in a nod to her two years living in and thoroughly enjoying New York City, I gave my daughter “Humans of New York,” by photographer Brandon Stanton. I gave my daughter’s fiancé, who is a lawyer for a tech company, Dave Eggers’ novel “The Circle” (about a Facebook-type company) and Mark Binelli’s “The Afterlife of an American Metropolis,” about the city of Detroit (he spent part of his childhood and adolescence in a suburb of Detroit). This is a sampling of what I gave my family; I hope I chose well, and I hope my family members will enjoy these books. My mom tells me she has already started reading "Someone," and likes it very much.