Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Books About Reading, Writing And Writers

Let's kick this off with the books you're most likely to want to buy for yourself if you are reading this blog. Don't do it. Think about how surprised your reading-mad relatives and friends will be when you pull out something stellar like these five-plus entries.

Elizabeth Benedict, MENTORS, MUSES AND MONSTERS: 30 WRITERS ON THE PEOPLE WHO CHANGED THEIR LIVES. I love a good thick biography but these anthologies scratch the same itch with their snapshot versions. I'd love to know what Jane Smiley found at the famed Iowa Writers Workshop, or what it was like for Joyce Carol Oates to meet her rival and actually like him. As with all books you want to give around this time of year, this is the kind of volume you'll want to keep around.

Haruki Murakami, WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING. This is not an accident, this book is as much about the Japanese author's career in letters as it is his penchant for marathons and triathlons. While occasionally self-contradictory, Murakami's startlingly personal memoir explores how his hobby feeds his work because, as he writes, "when we use writing to create a story a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it."

Shahriar Mandanipour, CENSORING AN IRANIAN LOVE STORY. This book, another James Wood-approved pick, presents itself as a novel written by a Tehran college student which has been pre-censored (but not indecipherably) by the authorities. I'm captivated by the unconventional form and the opportunity to get to know Mandanipour (an exiled Iranian film critic) through his first novel being translated into English.

Heidi Julavits, Ed Park and Vendela Vida (ed.), READ HARD: FIVE YEARS OF GREAT WRITING FROM THE BELIEVER. Collection of essays from everyone's favorite anti-snark McSweeney's project. **Bonus 2008 Re-Run** As long as a few people I know have not read them yet I will keep recommending and giving Nick Hornby's Believer essay collections. I only wish he'd kept up the column so they didn't have to end. (I finished the last one, SHAKESPEARE WROTE FOR MONEY, in January.)

THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS, VOLS. I-IV. Frankly, I haven't been that good this year; one volume a year for the next four Christmases would probably be fair. And I might need that long to absorb the wealth of interviews in this box set. Maud Newton writes for NPR that the collection "enables us to continue believing that the authors we revere are effortlessly wise and entertaining."

FTC cover-assery: I got the Murakami book from the library and I bought all the Nick Hornby books. Seriously: so good.

Photo: Detail from tofuttibreak