The gift of books

In my family, I have become known as the aunt/sibling/spouse/daughter who gives books. Have a birthday? Getting married? Buying a house? There's a book somewhere just for you, and it's my private mission to find it, wrap it and hand it over.

I'm already stocking up for the holidays, and somebody (I won't say who) will be getting "Wicked River," Lee Sandlin's history of the Mississippi, and somebody else will be getting that Clarence Clemons memoir that is newly out in paperback, and I might just have to buy Ian Frazier's book about Siberia for myself, because who buys books for the book lady? Nobody, that's who.

If you're buying books this holiday season, we have lots of suggestions; inside this section, you'll find roundups of some of the best fiction and nonfiction published this year, an array of gift books and tons of regional books -- everything from Louise Erdrich's novel "Shadow Tag" to a gorgeous book about Finnish saunas. Peg Meier, who wrote for the Star Tribune for 35 years, has a new collection of photos and diary entries from the bowels of the Minnesota Historical Society -- this time focusing on Minnesota children.

Wayzata poet Joyce Sidman has published two new picture books -- "Ubiquitous," which has landed on several "best of the year" lists already, and "Dark Emperor," poems about the wild creatures of the night. (No, not vampires. Moles and bats and owls.)

Per Petterson isn't local, but his publisher, Graywolf, is; his newest novel, "I Curse the River of Time," was named an IndieBound great read and landed on recommended lists of the Wall Street Journal, Time and Newsday. (And the Star Tribune.)

Set in California, Coffee House Press' "I Hotel" by Karen Tei Yamashita was a National Book Award finalist for fiction. If you're looking for novels with Minnesota settings, Peter Geye of Minneapolis' "Safe From the Sea" is based mostly in Duluth and along the North Shore, and John Reimringer has set "Vestments" quite firmly in St. Paul, where he lives.

Readers weigh in

For Catherine Partsch Conlan, the best gift was a coffee-table book of train photographs, because it led to marriage to the man who gave it to her.

Tim McLarnan of Moorhead, Minn., was most moved by a biography of Raymond Carver that his son Peter gave him last Christmas. "The author projected me into Carver's tumultuous life of ups and downs," he said. "I since have sought out his short stories, and especially his poems, and I have thanked my son many times, telling him the book put me under Carver's spell."

It was "Devotion," a memoir by Dani Shapiro, that impressed Adela Peskorz of Woodbury. "An exquisitely written, meditative memoir," she said. "Got it for Chanukah, though, not Christmas."

And Susan Thurston Hamerski of St. Paul remembers getting "Little Women" from her parents and poring over the Tasha Tudor illustrations with her art-loving father. "Alcott was simply my favorite writer when I was a child," she said. "I return to that copy for moments of 'comfort literature.'"

Ah, "Little Women." Remember the opening? "'Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,' grumbled Jo, lying on the rug." I think we can edit that slightly: "The holidays wouldn't be the holidays without any books." So do your part.