At Literary Citizen, we love giving books as gifts. There’s nothing better than connecting a loved one with literature – especially with books that feel perfect for them at the end of (another) very long year. If you have gift needs not covered here, put them in the comments. We’re happy to give more recommendations!
You can find these titles at your local bookstore and the Literary Citizen Bookshop, where your purchases support independent booksellers (and us).
For the tired change-makers
Public servants, activists, and the generally big-hearted: We know how hard it is to keep going. Especially this year, especially right now. Here are some books that remind us why it’s important to take the long view.
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi. Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born in 1700s Ghana. Effia marries a white Englishman; Esi is captured and sold into slavery. The novel traces their descendants, generation by generation, until the present.
The Topeka School, Ben Lerner. This story of a 1990s high school debater, his famed feminist mother and psychiatrist father speaks into current American politics in palpable ways. As a high school contemporary of the author, I found delight in every detail he got just right about this place and time.
Olga Dies Dreaming, Xochitl Gonzalez. Wedding planner Olga and her congressman brother reckon with their own ambitions and the reemergence of their mother, who left the family long ago to fight for Puerto Rico’s independence.
For those reevaluating life choices
These aren’t self-help guides; there’s no game plan or advice here. But these books do ask demanding questions about our relationship to work.
Severance, Ling Ma. If the world was ending, would you still go to work? In this strangely prescient novel, Candace Chen is a production assistant at a Bible publishing company as the world succumbs to a global pandemic.
Friday Black, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. What remains important when the world doesn’t make sense? The characters in this darkly satirical short story collection are retail workers on a dystopic, deadly Black Friday. They’re actors in Zimmer Land, a surreal amusement park where visitors pay to act out street justice fantasies.
Less, Andrew Sean Greer. What’s the one thing that could disrupt your life and force you to do things differently? When his ex-boyfriend announces plans to be married, sad-sack writer Arthur Less says yes to every ask and finds himself on a world tour of dubious literary events.
For your team at the office
The Harvard Business Review makes the case for reading fiction in the workplace. Why? “Business books, by their very nature, boil down issues until they are binary: this is right and that is not.” Whereas “Good literature presents characters with competing and often equally valid viewpoints.” Two discussion-worthy titles that intersect with the business world while reckoning with truth and morality:
The Complicities, Stacey D’Erasmo. A fictionalized Madoff tale from the wife’s point of view. Expect to see this appear in Literary Citizen soon!
Trust, Hernan Diaz. The story(ies) of Benjamin and Helen Rask, wealthy and mysterious New Yorkers, during the roaring 20s and the Great Depression. How might stories change with new information, fresh perspective, or an understanding of agendas?
For anyone who could use a laugh…
…and really, isn’t this all of us?
The Dud Avocado, Elaine Dundy. When I realized tiny babies don’t care what you read at bedtime, I read aloud the misadventures of one Sally Jay Gorce, American in 1950s Paris. Come for Sally Jay’s theater aspirations, stay for the saga of the lost passport.
Sounds Like Titanic, Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman. This is cheating; this book is, unbelievably, nonfiction. It’s a memoir about a fictional job. Or rather, a real job playing classical music to sell CDs for a famous composer, but really pretending to play while a backing track rolls. In malls. For YEARS. I haven’t been able to stop telling people about this book since I read it.
For people homesick at the holidays
This is the first holiday season since I moved away as a teenager that I won’t be back home in Kansas. To distract myself, I’m scouring the internet for Christmas decorations and thinking about these books.
Hard Damage, Aria Aber. Poetry from the daughter of 1980s-era Afghan refugees: When I tell / one aunt I’d like to go back, / she screams It is not yours to want.
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Ifemelu, a young Nigerian woman, moves to America for college. Her high school boyfriend, Obinze, can’t get a visa to join her. The novel traces their lives, back and forth and in between.
The Idiot, Elif Batuman. Perhaps not homesickness; more like nostalgia for our younger selves. This deadpan first-person novel narrated by a 1990s Harvard freshman made me feel like I was back in Cambridge. (A sequel, Either/Or, is newly out and on my own Christmas list.)
For the writers in your life
There’s a certain pleasure in reading about other writers, even in fiction. Maybe it’s the commiseration or the small, ever-present hope we’ll learn something useful.
Writers & Lovers, Lily King. A broke, struggling writer-turned-waitress, a love triangle, the joys of proving yourself to yourself.
Atonement, Ian McEwan. It’s inspiring, for me at least, to read a page-turner that also involves intricate craftsmanship. A detailed accounting of one life-ruining summer day in pre-World War II Britain, and what happened after.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee. Cheating again! This is an essay collection. But it’s an adventure in storytelling and meaning-making and the way one (excellent) writer thinks.
For the person who says they only read nonfiction
Fun fact: Poetry is often shelved with nonfiction. There’s debate about this – poetry defies the fiction/nonfiction binary – but for those seeking truth, poetry has it. A few favorites I’ve found myself revisiting as I work on my novel:
Citizen Illegal, José Olivarez. From a poet, educator, and performer, the son of Mexican immigrants: that’s just the Chicano / in me, who should not be confused with the diversity / in me or the mexicano in me who is constantly fighting / with the upwardly mobile in me who is good friends / with the Mexican American in me, who the colleges love, / but only on brochures
Brown, Kevin Young. From the New Yorker poetry editor and director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, who spent his childhood years in Kansas, of a high school history class: We spent the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts / barely a March on Washington— / all April & much / of May we waited for Woodstock & answers & assassinations / that would never come
Bright Dead Things, Ada Limón. From America’s poet laureate: Say we never meet her. Never him. / Say we spend our last moments staring / at each other, hands knotted together, / clutching the dog, watching the sky burn. / Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be / enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive / right here, feeling lucky.
A gift for all of us
As our gift to you for reading to the end of this list, here’s a video of Ross Gay reading the title poem from his collection Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude – the perfect book to slip into a stocking.
Sending gratitude and thanksgiving to you all.