Hi everyone, I'm aware that the lighting
is slightly... I'm not going to say
terrible I'm going to say cozy. I've been
away most of this week and haven't had a
chance to film apart from now when it's
dark and I thought even though the
lighting isn't great it would be better to
film and upload than not film at all
and I hope that you agree. I've been
going through the comments that you left
on my Christmas gift guide video. Ive made
pages of notes like this where
you have been asking me for book
recommendations for specific people in
your life, so you were saying "Jen there's
someone in my life they like these
things what would you recommend?" I have
two piles of books here, rather large
piles of books, and I'm going to make
some recommendations. Now there were more
requests than I can get to you in
this video but don't worry if I don't
recommend something to you here I will
be going back to that previous video and
replying to all of the comments there, as
well. I will link all of the books that I
mention in the description box down
below and if you're watching this and
you didn't leave a comment last time but
you're still looking for a
recommendation, a bookish recommendation
for someone in your life, leave a comment
on this video and I'll reply in the
comments section. So let's see first off
Anna Goldberg said "I'm looking
for a book for my husband's grandma, she
loves long historical epics such as All
the Light we Cannot See". So for her I
recommend Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. This is a book where one person is
reliving their life over and over again
during the 20th century and you see all
of the ways that her life could have
panned out. Next Innes Flors says "I
need a recommendation for someone who
loves nature, the ocean and whimsical
stories written by women" — not whimsical
stories, but still written by women and about
the sea and nature is this: Salt on your
Tongue: Women and the Sea by charlotte
Runcie, and this is all about women's
connections with the sea, why female
writers have been drawn to write about
it in the past, so it's part memoir and
then part research which is my favorite
kind of non-fiction book. Beth
says that she's looking for a book to
take to an office Christmas party, so I'm
assuming that she's doing some kind of
Secret Santa, and I really like gifting
these books to people, both people that I
know
would really like them but I also think
that they're good gifts for people who you
don't know that well, because I think
most people would really enjoy them and
those are books by Ella Frances Sanders. This
one here called Speaking in Tongues:
curious expressions from around the
world, and Lost in Translation an
illustrated compendium of untranslatable
words from around the world. So this is
as it sounds and each page has a
beautiful illustration and then the
definition of a word or the rough
definition of a word given that these
are worth that technically are very
difficult to translate into English, so
for instance one of these words is the
Inuit word for going
outside to see if someone/anyone is
coming. There is a Japanese word which
is the name for buying books that you're
not reading and letting them pile up. I
think we've all experienced that
somewhat, but I just think that these are
really, really lovely and like I said for
people who maybe you want to buy
something beautiful for but you don't
really know what their specific
interests are. Someone says she's
looking for a book for her mother, not
one that's to do with sadness or grief
but to do with travel, cooking, gardening
or dogs. Sara Moss is not a fan of dogs
so the last one does not apply but the
rest of them I would say do, maybe not
gardening so much but definitely travel
and cooking and it's just heartwarming
and I don't remember it being sad or
dealing with grief, so this is Names for
the Sea: Strangers in Iceland by Sarah
Moss. It's a nonfiction book about the
year that she spent living in Iceland
learning about all of its history, about
its current politics, about cooking and
food and the stories that are ingrained
into all of the landscape that
surrounded them, and I really, really
recommend this one to loads of different
people so I think it's quite a safe bet
aa a gift to somebody. Mariana says
she's looking for a book for someone who
loves, nature, palaeontology and fishes and
they also enjoy historical fiction. Now
this sounds like almost too much of a
good match, so if they've already
read it let me know and I'll recommend
something else but this is Remarkable
Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, which is
about Mary Anning at the turn of the
19th century who was a budding
paleontologist. She discovered the
ichthyosaurs and lots of other things at
Lyme Regis and it's
about her unearthing these fossils, her
relationship with someone called
Elizabeth Philpott,
it's got William Buckland in here, too,
so I think this is definitely one that
you should be gifting. Ena says there that
she's looking for a gift for her brother
who likes fantasy especially the Name of
the Wind,
what new fantasy might he enjoy? You
could try The Parentations
by Kate Mayfield, I'll link it down
below if you want to go find out more,
and you can also try this which isn't as
new but it's brilliant this is Arcadia
by Ian Pears, one of my favorite fantasy
books ever and a bit of an homage to
His Dark Materials if he's read that and
really liked it, not that he has to have
read it to read this one. This is about
travelling into books and into other
worlds and time-travel and there are so
many different threads that are woven
together so beautifully.
Jana says can you recommend a good crime,
thriller or mystery that isn't too
popular? As you know I've been falling in
love with Nicci French recently. They are
not someone who isn't popular but this
is their latest book which is The Lying
Room, it only just came out so it's a
safer one to buy for somebody because
they're less likely to have it. This is
about a woman who was having an affair
with someone who was murdered and no one
knew that she was having this affair. She
goes into the flat where they often meet
up and finds him there dead, and she has
to make a decision: is she going to clear
away all of the evidence at the crime
scene so that no one knows she's been
there at other times and therefore the
affair isn't revealed? Or does she call
the police and help them find out who
murdered the person that she loved and
expose herself as someone who's had an
affair? It's really good and I really do
like crime/thrillers where the police
are not really at the center of the
story, so you just say with her and it's
really fast-paced,
so much happens, yes I enjoyed that one
and one that is probably less well-known
but is quite beloved on Booktube is
Lullaby by Leila Slimani, it's about a
nanny who has murdered the two children
that she is looking after and you go
back in time... it's more a character study than a
really fast-paced crime/thriller but I
really really loved it. Someone's
looking for a gift for their
mother-in-law who loves Nicholas Sparks
books.
I would recommend Rachel Joyce, especially these
two books. She has more than two but
I particularly recommend these two, this
is the Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold
Fry, and The Love Song of Miss Queenie
Hennessy. You can really read these in
either order because they actually take
place at the same time and you're just
seeing two people's perspectives, but I
would recommend beginning with the
Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.
Harold Fry lives in... I can't remember if it's Cornwall or Devon, and then he
receives a letter to say that an old
friend of his is dying in Northumberland
and he decides to walk all the way up to
her and you just follow his journey and
also learn about their past as he's
walking and thinking on his memories.
They are heartbreaking but they are
beautiful. Adawi says she's looking
for a gift for her sister who loves
true-crime series and Studio Ghibli
films. I tried to marry these two things
together and couldn't think of something
off the top of my head. If she hasn't
listened to West Cork on audible it's
one of their original podcasts and I
definitely recommend that you get her to
listen to that. If she doesn't have
Audible you could I suppose maybe gift
for a month subscription or something so
that she could listen to it, but for the
Studio Ghibli I recommend this which is
The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland
in a Ship of its own Making by Catherynne M
Valente, and I have recommended this so
many times but for good reason it is
exactly like reading a Studio Ghibli
film, it is gorgeous, it's about a young
girl called September who swept off the
fairyland on the back of a green wind
and the language is rich,
it's a feast for the imagination, she
needs this in her life as as do all of
us.
Next up someone says they need a gift
for their sister who's interested in
fantastical magical books especially
mermaids, nothing too taxing, please. I
would recommend The Grace Keepers by
Kirsty Logan or any of Kirsty's books,
really, they are all magical, inspired by
fairy tale in parts and often deal with
mermaids in some form; not really in an
overt way,
in a way that mermaids and people could
be the same thing. So this is a book
about a young woman called North who
exists in a flooded world, she lives on a
circus boat with her bear who she often
dances with, and it's about her
relationship with someone called Calandish
who is a grace keeper, so yes this one is
very very beautiful and ticks
all of those boxes. Next up someone says
that they want a recommendation for
someone who loved heart-stopper, must be
mushy and adorable.
Now I haven't read this but I bought it
this week and I bought it because Lex
over at Lex croucher, a friend of mine, has
been raving about this book, she
absolutely adores it, it is called Red,
White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuillan
and it is about... I don't even know what
it's about too much, I just know that she
loved it,
and it says "what happens when America's
first son falls in love with the Prince
of Wales?" There you go and I think it's
supposed to be completely adorable and
something that you're going to fall in
love with, I'm imagining something along
the lines if all of the Remus and
Sirius fanfiction that I used to read
back in the day. So this one, maybe, take
it — not from me but — from Lex, but it is a
book I plan to read over the holidays
because I'm hoping it will make my heart
warm. Next up someone says that
they want book recommendations about
characters like Bella Baxter and Orlando
so, I had two but I put them further
down... here we go
so Bella Baxter in Poor Things is a
character who, depending on the version
that you want to believe because there
are two perspectives in that book, is
somebody who has had the brain of a
child put inside her skull and therefore
she has been brought back to life
but in a very different way to how she
used to live before, and Orlando is
somebody who travels through time
changing gender whenever they wake up. So
I recommend one book that is also
inspired by Frankenstein, like Poor
Things, and that is Frankissstein by
Jeanette Winterson; this came out this
year and it is split into two time
periods, one of them is about Mary
Shelley who was writing Frankenstein and
one of them is set an AI convention in
the modern or close to modern day and
it's all about gender and bodies and how
we want to control those things as a
society. And the other one that I would
recommend is The Accidental by Ali Smith
because one of the main characters in
here, Amber, is somebody who is quite
fluid in the sense that she just molds
into whatever situations she finds
herself in, and she invades the life of
this family. She says that she feels as though
she has being created but all of the stories that
have come before, and she invades their
lives and tries to bring them back
together because they have drifted quite
far apart, so for that reason I would
also recommend this and then you also
wanted book recommnendations for your mother
who started a feminist book club about
history in feminism, so I'd recommend A
Lab of One's Own by Patricia Fara,
which I read this month and is about
women and the suffrage movements up to
the First World War and then the role of
women during the First World War and
what happened once the First World War
ended. I just said First World War many
times. I reviewed it's on TOAST, I'll link
it down below if you'd like to go and
find out more and then this is one
oh no I've picked up the wrong one this
is Daddy's Gone A-hunting, though
actually I could recommend this one to
you, too, I was going to recommend No
Surrender by Constance Maud, which was
first published in 1911 and is about the
suffrage movement and is based on the
lives of real working-class women at the
time, but this one is Daddy's Gone
A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer, both of
these books are published by Persephone
Books and this one is set in the 1950s,
think Desperate Housewives but set in the
1950s, and it also tackles themes of
abortion so, yes, I would recommend those
and Persephone Books in general is a
really great place to go if you're
looking for historical books about women
and the suffrage movement and proto feminism
and feminism, they're brilliant.
Oh I forgot I also picked up another one,
you're getting lots of recommendations
for this one, I also recommend The
Mistresses of Cliveden, which is three
centuries of scandal power and intrigue.
This is about the five women who lived
in Cliveden house and they all had
extraordinary stories to tell and it's
set over many centuries, I'll link it
down below if you would like to go and
find out more, Laura asked for
recommendations of lesser-known plays,
I've recommended these two a lot on this
channel but I still think they are very
much lesser-known plays the first one is
The Seer by Ali Smith, I was going to say
it's her only play published, it's not
there is another one but it's inside an
anthology of other writings by other
people, this one I'm not even sure you
can get any more and I don't know why
it's out of print, you may be able to
pick it up secondhand if I can find a
copy online I'll link it down below, if
not you could go hunt for it yourself
but this is a brilliant play which
really breaks down the fourth wall and I
love it a lot, and then another one is
Peter and Alice by John Logan it looks
at what could have been the conversation
that Peter Llewelyn Davies, who was the
real-life Peter Pan, and Alice Liddel, who
was real-life Alice in Wonderland, what
that conversation would have been like
when they met each other, because they
did meet each other we just don't know
what they said, so it's about those two
meeting their discussion of Charles
Dodgson, who is Lewis Carroll, and JM
Barrie and it it will make you cry but I
promise that it is worth it. Char says
that she's looking for a present for her
boyfriend who loves philosophy and sport,
I highly recommend Fox Tossing, Octopus
Wrestling and other Forgotten Sports, the
most dangerous and bizarre sports in
history. This is informative and also
hilarious and if he likes sports then
I'm sure that he will really really love
this. Next Rena says she's looking for a
gift for an art student who's interested
in LGBT issues, disability and childhood
whimsy, for that I recommend the
**One Hundred Nights of Hero** by Isabel
Greenberg 1. because this is a
graphic novel and you said that your
friend is an art student so I think
they'll really love
the art style in here, 2. this is a
queer story and it's about a woman who
is telling stories in the night to try
and save her partner and that is where
the childish whimsy comes into it a
little bit because it's all about a love
of stories and it's all about creation
myths as well so I would
very much
recommend this one. Next up FlybyReads
says they would like a book to read
aloud with their partner, short
chapters, bonus points for fantastical
elements and alternating perspectives
this one was a fun one I'm ticking all
the boxes apart from the fantastical
elements, this is Disobedience by Naomi
Alderman, this is about two women who
were in love with each other when they
were teenagers and then they were
separated and one of them lives in New
York but comes back and they meet again
in their thirties, I want to say. They are
called Ronit and Esti and they are part
of a very Orthodox Jewish community in
North London and it's about how they
feel when they meet each other again, it
is tense,
it is beautifully written and it has
those alternating perspectives as well
and it has a shortish chapters,
definitely not really long chapters, so
yeah that is my recommendation for that.
Cheryl says that she would like books
that will lure their 13 and 14 year old
granddaughters from their phones, okay
and around that age I loved the Doom
Spell Trilogy, around age 
12/13,  by
Cliff McNish, kind of like Narnia but
much much darker and less religious and
then for the 14 year old I recommend
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. I
think I read the first one when I was 14
and then grew up with them as I went and
I would recommend this one at the moment
because obviously it's on television
right now, so maybe she'll be interested
in it because of the television show,
it's such a magical book to get lost in
at this time of year.
Next up someone says they want a gift
for their sister who likes
historical fiction, Hilary mantel etc
something quite recent so something that
isn't that recent but that I always
recommend for people who like Hilary
Mantel is the Crimson Petal and the
White by Michel Faber
this is about a sex worker called Sugar
who wants to become a novelist and she
becomes embroiled in the life of a man
called William, it's loosely a retelling
of Jane Eyre, very very loosely, and
speaking of that I also want to
recommend this which is also inspired by
Jane Eyre,
is recent, it came out this year, it is
the Confessions of Franny Langton by
Sara Collins and this, like Wide
Sargasso Sea, is trying to give a voice
to characters such as Bertha who didn't
have voices in Victorian literature. This
is about a woman who's been accused of
murdering her mistress, so let me put
those there.
I thought they were going to
fall over. Paul asks 
for a recommendation for his roommate
who loves gardening and cooking... by far
my favourite cookbook of this year has
been the Green Roasting Tin, the recipes
are easy and delicious, I've cooked most
of the things in here and I've only had
one dud which is I think is a very good
success rate for a cookbook. Katherine
says she's looking for a gift for her
boyfriend who likes Dostoyevsky and read
Autumn by Ali Smith - and loved it — and
studies history. So if you loved Autumn
then I recommend Winter and also Spring,
which are the next two books in her
seasonal quartet and if you enjoyed
Ali Smith I think he'll also love Lanny
by Max Porter which remains my favourite
book of this year and it's all about a
young boy in a small commuter town and
the gossip and all the things that knit
them together, it's a little bit
fantastical, it's beautifully written,
rather strange and I think Ali Smith and
Max Porters' writing styles really lend
themselves to each other, so if he likes one
then he'll probably like the other. Emma says that she is looking for a gift for
her stepmother who loves Tess Gerritsen
do I have any recommendations? I mean my
go-to at the moment is recommending
Nicci French, the Frieda Klein
series, if she hasn't read it please get
that for her, so I recommend Blue Monday
which is the first one. If she has read
them then maybe Sister by Rosamund
Lupton, which I read quite a long time
ago and remember enjoying. Katherine
Allen says she's looking for a book
recommendation for a 29 year old brother
who's into fantasy and is an earth
scientist, so I recommend Robert
McFarland's books, he writes about the
earth so beautifully and the earth's
secrets and it feels as though it's
fantasy even though it's just nonfiction
so I recommend those books particularly
Underland which I read recently
and loved. If you'd like something that is
fantasy and also tied to the earth and
is really dark then maybe read this
which is
The Beauty by Aliya Whitely, about a
world where women exist in a very
different way, as in fungus grows out of
their bodies in the ground.
Definitely not whimsical at all. Someone
says they would like a recommendation
for their nine-year-old granddaughter
who loves reading and has read all of
the babysitter books, I would recommend
this which is Tilly and the Book
Wanderers, it's the first in the Pages
and Co series by Anna James, which is
about a young girl called Tilly who
lives with her grandparents who own a
bookshop and she discovers that she can
book wander, so she can travel into books
and it's delightful. So those are all the
books that I had time to get to today,
all of them will be linked down below if
you would like to go find out more. If I
didn't get the chance to recommend a
book to you and you asked for a
recommendation don't worry I'll reply to
your comment in the previous video
giving you your recommendation there and
if you're watching this and you didn't
ask for a recommendation last time but
you would like one now, leave a comment
in this video and I will get back to you
in the comments section. I hope you all
have a great weekend
and I'll speak to you very soon lots of
bookish love x
