giving: books

Like a jar of honey, a book is a thing to devour. With any luck a good book is one you keep on your shelf and cherish for years to come. With a little less luck a book is something that you decide is not worthy of keeping and so you pass it along to someone else who might better enjoy it. Either way, everyone wins.

And while I haven’t yet made the leap myself, a book is often a thing that doesn’t have to exist in the physical realm at all. While I myself cherish the look and feel of a book in its paper form—you know, the smell of those pages, the weight of it in my hand, the look of that spine on a shelf—I admit that lately I’ve been thinking about finally splurging on an e-reader. Here’s my thinking: that an e-reader won’t actually stop me from buying the books that I most want to add to my shelves, but that it might encourage me to read books that I might not want to take up residence in limited space.

Here are a few books that have caught my eye this season, judging, of course, by covers and other things:

• Eat: The Little Book of Fast Food: I love everything Nigel Slater does and this delightful cover design pared with a concept of good food, fast, makes it sound like a recipe for success. On my wish list.
• How to Visit an Art Museum: The museum lover in me is so intrigued by this book. It comes shrink-wrapped (mysterious!) so I haven’t been able to see exactly what sorts of treats might be in store, but the concept is good enough to take a risk, I think.
• My Favorite Things: Maira Kalman is a favorite, always, and this year she had two new books for readers to delight in. This one is a celebration of the significance of objects in our lives—both the rare ones and the everyday ones. Woman after my own heart.
• Sunday Suppers: Recipes + Gatherings: The end of one year and the beginning of another seems like the perfect time to reflect on time shared around the table. Karen Morechai’s Sunday Suppers offers inspiration in the extreme.
• Tory Burch: In Color: I’m not personally a wearer of Tory Burch designs, but I heard an interview on the radio with her and I’m totally on board with her philsophy of women in business. 100% of gross proceeds from the book go to support the Tory Burch Foundation. Worth supporting for that alone, but the book is incredibly lovely in its own right.
• Girls Standing on Lawns: Another gem from Maira Kalman, this one is filled paintings of old photographs featuring (no surprise) girls standing on lawns. The illustrations are interspersed with poetic text and reprints of the photographs themselves. Utterly enchanting.
• The Thing The Book: A Monument to the Book as Object: A book to celebrate the book. Good for material culture nerds, bibliophiles, and curiosity seekers alike.
• An e-reader: You know, just in case.
• Vogue and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute: Parties, Exhibitions, People: The ultimate in insider access. Loaded with eye candy even—and especially—for this plain jane fashionista.