Gift Ideas for Dads

giftdad Christmas often means buying for our nearest and dearest, but sometimes the need to get it just right can be a challenge too. In the next part of our gift ideas series, we've asked Readings Monthly editor Jo Case to come up with a few books for dad - from Anna Funder's gripping portrayal of Nazi Germany to this year's Booker Prize winner, there's no shortage of choices.

All That I Am
Anna Funder

This masterful novel, set between Berlin and London in the lead-up to World War II, looks at the efforts of a band of socialist agitators to alert the world to Hitler’s intentions to wage, well, World War II. With brilliantly imagined characters (sparked by their real-life counterparts) and a thrilling spy story running parallel to the unfolding historical events, this is a literary thriller par excellence. Funder, the author of Stasiland, tells the little-known story of the ‘other’ Berlin – and suggests the outside world’s desire not to know what was happening in Hitler’s Germany played a major role in what was to happen.

Read our review

Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson

Does the dad in your life rock an iPhone, a Macbook, or an iPad? (All of the above?) Does he chew your ear off about (sniff) ‘PC people’ and gloat about his beloved Mac never getting viruses? Well, give him more ammunition than ever to be obnoxious about the Apple Empire with this biography of the man whose brainchild it all was. This exclusive biography draws on hours of interviews with Steve Jobs himself, as well as family, friends, colleagues and rivals. It’s an insight not just into an IT genius, but into innovation itself. Or at least, that’s what my dad tells me.

1Q84
Haruki Murakami

Literary dads who also like a bit of genre in their lives will go gaga for the latest Murakami. In the Age, reviewer Chris Flynn called it a ‘nebulous masterpiece’. Published in Japan in three separate volumes, it sold over four million copies. Set between two parallel universes – 1984 and a world that is and yet isn’t 1984 – the novel follows fitness instructor/contract killer Aomame and part-time mathematics teacher Tengo, who has ghostwritten a bestselling novel about a 17-year-old girl who spent time in a religious cult. So far, so weird, so Murakami. 1Q84 has all you’d expect from the Japanese literary superstar – and more.

Read our review

The Sense of an Ending
Julian Barnes

This year’s Booker Prize winner has garnered comparisons to Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach. And not just because this, like Chesil, is a slender volume that packs a punch far above its weight division. Not even because they’re both late-career masterpieces by contemporary English literary greats at the top of their game. Like Chesil, this is a perfectly crafted meditation on masculine guilt and regret. Retired, divorced Tony is forced to face his self-delusion and its impact on others when he is willed a diary that sheds light on his past. Old friends, ex-girlfriends and middle age.

The Life
Malcolm Knox

Literary readers who also like sport are well served by Malcolm Knox, who I think is one of Australia’s finest novelists. He’s been literary editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, a sports writer and ghost-writes autobiographies of sporting figures. His fourth novel, The Life, is quite remarkable. It tells the story of a retired surfing legend, DK, as he alternately reveals and conceals his life story, from the Gold Coast unit where he lives with his fiercely protective mother. Told in DK’s rough-hewn vernacular, it’s about fame, the perils of believing your own mythology, surf culture’s transformation into a commodity – and has a murder mystery (and an identity mystery) woven in. A fantastic, gripping read.

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And What Do You Do, Mr Gable?
Richard Flanagan

Essay collections by novelists can be dubious. But Richard Flanagan, like his Brooklyn counterpart Jonathan Lethem, is one of those rarities whose non-fiction is as powerful and provoking as their fiction. Flanagan is famous for his (successful) crusade against Gunn’s in Tasmania, and writers’ festival audiences have spoken about his addresses on subjects like freedom of speech and thought and the future of bookshops for months after they’ve been given. If your dad likes to wrap his head around issues as diverse as politics and literature, contemporary events and the effects of war, this is the perfect collection to keep him absorbed for hours.

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jo-case Jo Case is the editor of Readings Monthly and associate editor of Kill Your Darlings journal. You can follow her on Twiiter - @jocaseau.