For Christmas when I was 7 or 8, I received all six American Girls books featuring Samantha, the Victorian-era girl with a poor friend who worked in a factory and who lived with her grandmother in a grand house. Samantha ate petit-fours and created decoupage gifts. I loved these books and read them over and over, along with my eventual complete set of Molly, the World War II girl whose father was a military physician overseas and who once made the mistake of trying a home permanent.
I frustrated my aunts at Christmastime, when they would ask me what I wanted, and I always just wanted a gift certificate to Borders or Barnes and Noble. One of my aunts wanted me to get my ears pierced just so that she could get me something else! But I love new books, and I’m sure you do, too.
Along with a smorgasbord of board games (a cribbage board carved from sustainable Massachusetts wood, a Mensa-approved match of wits, Life!, a backgammon/chess/checkers board from the MoMA), I received a handful of books, which you are sure to see popping up on your computer screen in the near future. Here’s what you (and I) have to look forward to:
- Superfreakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (I might have the spellings of their first names reversed)
- Emma by Jane Austen
- The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain
With few exceptions, if you received Christmas presents from me, you also got books. Here are some that landed under other people’s trees:
- At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman
- Back to Basics (Barefoot Contessa) by Ina Garten
- The Day of Battle and An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson
- When Everything Changed by Gail Collins
- Born Round by Frank Bruni
- Yours Ever by Thomas Mallon
- American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson
If you are a regular or occasional reader of my blog, you have probably noticed that I gave books that I liked or by people I like. When in doubt, give something you’d like to receive!
Now, what about you? What books were you excited to give or receive? What should be on my birthday list (coming in April, slackers!)?
Lauren the Bookworm 
“Aguas en movimiento: la resistencia a la privatizacion del agua en Uruguay”. Which, admittedly only was a gift in that a friend offered to check it out of the Harvard library for me.
Oh, and Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (almost done, I like!) and La Catedral del Mar by Ildefonso Falcones.