Great gift books — great gifts! — come out of left field. Plus, most likely, the best readers on your shopping list are curious by nature. In other words, don’t sweat that supply chain this year, and forget what’s expected. Focus on what would be unexpected. What follows here are oodles of conveniently grouped ideas for book lovers, but with a twist: Very little here is obvious. Maybe one or two ideas. But the rest are helpful reminders: What everyone is desperate for is not usually what gets a smile on Christmas morning.
So take a deep breath, and …
The child’s keepsake: One of my favorite book gifts to give has been something, anything, from the posterity-minded folks at the Folio Society in the UK. (Don’t worry, they also have a U.S. shipping point.) New this fall is a handsome box set of Roald Dahl classics ($115) with Quentin Blake illustrations: “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach” and “The Twits.” The cover fabric is nearly tweedy.
The big splurge: If you missed — or loved — that blockbuster Frida Kahlo exhibit at the College of DuPage earlier this year, two things: It was not a cheap ticket, and Taschen’s gargantuan, bottomlessly interesting survey, “Frida Kahlo: The Complete Paintings” ($200), is the keeper, that rare monograph as rich as any museum show. Reproductions are vivid and huge, the history is free of art speak, and the archival materials — diary pages, personal photos, even architectural plans for her home — feel fresh.
For the Marvel fan who has everything: “The Story of Marvel Studios” ($150) is the authorized history of the franchise that ate Hollywood, which means it reads like a fraction of the probing, less-polite history someone will eventually write. (This thing is so uplifting, Robert Downey Jr.’s afterward inserts a Maya Angelou quote.) Now the fun part: “Marvel Classic Black Light Posters” ($125) is an actual Hulking portfolio, a recreation of the 12 Day-Glo posters that Marvel sold mostly though head shops in the early 1970s. A handful was created by Jack Kirby. Silver Surfer rides a rainbow, Captain America smashes the margins of the panel itself. It’s a big (20 by 30 inches) smile of a treat. Roy Lichtenstein would approve.
Forgotten no more: “Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South” ($30) is the oral memoir of Winfred Rembert, who made his name evocatively recreating scenes of his youth — the harrowing, like chain gangs and near lynchings, but also juke-joint dances and summers on the water — with the most original of canvases: carved, painted leather shards. This book is an illustrated autobiography of plain-spoken pains and moments of strength, alongside vernacular art that stops you short. Rembert died at 75, just last spring; this is the memorial that he should have lived longer to enjoy.
Does not expire 12/26: My problem with Christmas-themed Christmas presents is they look tired within 24 hours. “American Christmas Stories” ($30) explodes that idea thoroughly. Compiled by Library of America, it’s got memoir, sci-fi, crime — an expansive take on how Christmas can come across; more important, it’s got variety — Ray Bradbury, Sandra Cisneros, Ben Hecht, Gene Wolfe, Nathan Englander, W.E.B. Du Bois, and many other authors not often associated with holiday classics. Same could be said for “A Vader Family Sithmas” ($15) by Chicago’s Jeffrey Brown, a new set of “Star Wars” gag comics perfect for kids. (“May the Force be with us, everyone.”) Somehow, it’s just shy of kitsch — not unlike Chicagoan Rob Elder’s original “Christmas With Elvis” ($20), a thoughtful portrait of the King as told through his Christmas recordings, the gifts he bought for himself, his Christmas cards and charitable givings.
The never-expected: First of all, this is not a book. It’s a puzzle. Except, it’s a 1,141-piece puzzle ($50) by Oak Park-based cartoonist and genius Chris Ware, adapted (if that’s the right word) from his form-shattering, ephemera-stuffed “Building Stories” graphic novel. The image is a mashup of pages from the work itself; and since this is Ware, the packaging is just as clever — it all comes in a small cardboard brownstone.
Books on books: If there’s someone in your life always reading, here you go: “Bibliophile: Diversity Spines” ($19), a one-stop snapshot of (the dedication explains) “marginalized writers and readers” and their books. It’s a recommendation party, full of Jane Mount’s Insta-ready illustrations, broken into memoir, horror, classics, coming of age, etc. “The Art of Oz: Witches, Wizards & Wonders Beyond the Yellow Brick Road” ($40) somewhat annoyingly starts with the premise that Oz is real; artist Gabriel Gale includes a Google “map” of Oz. But the heart is solid: Gale’s interpretations of the beasts that Baum (working in Chicago) dreamed into his 14 Oz books, alongside earlier illustrations. That said, “The New York Times Book Review: 125 Years of Literary History” ($50) is the gem here, the must-have, a trove of what-to-read-nexts, yet drawing on history with authority. W.H. Auden reviews Tolkien (“No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy”), Pynchon reviews Marquez; Zadie Smith punctures her own acclaim (“A lot of the book is an exercise in ‘Look at me,’”). Archival photos, ancient book advertising, Q&As. A 1902 editorial knuckle-raps the “Prurient Prudes” of an Evanston library for excessive censorship. There’s even a fun batch of angry author letters. It’s newspaper history done right.
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