Christmas gift guide: What to buy for your significant other

11 Nov 2015

If they want to delve into fiction over summer

At 944 pages long, Garth Risk Hallberg’s debut City on Fire is a great pick for anyone looking for a big meaty book to get stuck into over summer. You can find more suggestions for really, really, really long novels here.
Stephanie Bishop’s The Other Side of the World is this year’s winner of our Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction. Read some testimonials from staff about how much they loved this book here.
Charlotte Wood’s The Natural Way of Things, a gripping exploration of contemporary misogyny and corporate control, is bound to appear on many readers’ ‘best books of the year’ lists.
Like Margaret Atwood, Claire Vaye Watkins uses dystopia to traverse the scarred frontier of the heart and her debut novel, Gold Fame Citrus is a powerful read.
If they love crime fiction, the new Robert Galbraith (a pseudonym for J.K. Rowling) is a real page-turner. Career of Evil starts with a severed leg arriving in the post and gets darker and twistier as the story goes on.

For the outdoorsy type, Susan Guagliumi shares a treasure trove of DIY gardening projects that she has perfected in her garden with Handmade for the Garden.
If your significant other has a hankering for home bartending, Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas by Caroline Bicks and Michelle Ephraim is a fun collection of recipes for literary nerds.
With over 20 years in the craft and design industries, Ramona Barry and Rebecca Jobson are bonafide craft gurusm, and their Craft Companion is the ultimate guide to navigating the new craft frontiers.
In Just Brick it: Over 20 Projects for Adult Fans of Lego, David Scarfe reveals how to build impressive and hugely appealing objects with Lego. Very entertaining and challenging.
The tips in Lonely Planet’s Best Ever Video Tips are suitable for the novice and experienced videographer alike who want to capture great moments on film.

Directed and produced by Andrew Jarecki and produced and shot by Marc Smerling, the six-part documentary series The Jinx: The Life & Deaths of Robert Durst is a real-life mystery. The closing scene is utterly chilling.
Louise Welsh has hand-picked 100 ghost stories to feature in Ghost, everything from gothic classics, to ancient folk tales and stylish noirs.
David Mitchell’s Slade House is an unnerving and intricately-woven tale which begins in 1979 and reaches its turbulent conclusion in 2015.
Vividly capturing the dark atmosphere of seventeenth-century America, Stacy Schiff reveals the real-life horror of 1692 Salem in The Witches.
Emerald Fennell’s YA novel Monsters is probably the scariest book published this year. Read more here.

Tokyo Cult Recipes includes recipes for miso, sushi, soba noodles, bentos, sushi, fried rice, Japanese tapas, desserts, cakes and sweets from the gastronomic megacity of Tokyo.
Hello Tokyo by Japanese-based Australian blogger/crafter/designer/zine publisher Ebony Bizys (aka Hello Sandwich) is a quirky guide to living a handmade lifestyle.
Isabel Allende gives readers an exquisitely crafted love story and multigenerational epic with The Japanese Lover.
With over 400 houses, one house per page, one image per house, Jutaku: Japanese Houses shines a Harajuku-bright neon light on the sheer volume, variety and novelty of contemporary Japanese residential architecture.
The Collected Works Of Hayao Miyazaki is a collection of the eleven feature-length works of Hayao Miyazaki – artist, auteur and founding member of the iconic Studio Ghibli.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear is truly charming and chock-full of calming, practical adive.
After the death of her father, Margi Gibb’s life is changed forever. Kissed by A Deer is her passionate quest for the personal and intellectual truth that only comes through lived experience.
Johanna Basford’s colouring books are intricate and meditative; possibly your significant other will have an epiphany while colouring in! Basford’s latest is Lost Ocean: An Inky Adventure & Colouring Book.
Mindy Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life in the essays collected in Why Not Me?. Her stories of growing up will warm your significant other’s heart.
Yes, it may seem counter-intuitive to give your partner a book called Spinster: Making a Life of Ones Own, but Kate Bolick’s cultural examination of singledom is really a celebration of living authentically, for us.

For more than twenty years Wendy Whiteley has worked to create a public garden at the foot of her harbourside home in Sydney’s Lavender Bay and Janet Hawley’s book about the project, Wendy Whiteley and the Secret Garden, is glorious.
Award-winning designer Coralie Bickford-Smith presents a tender and moving fable in The Fox and the Star, complete with detailed illustrations.
The amazingly inventive Vargic’s Miscellany of Curious Maps: The Atlas of Everything You Never Knew You Needed to Know has so many wonderful maps, from the sprawling map of the internet, to the moderately sized map of paranormal activity.
Photographer Carla Coulson and writer Lisa Clifford take readers on a journey through Naples in Naples: A Way of Love.
Hélène Druvert’s Paris Up, Up and Away is a breathtaking picture book set in Paris. The author uses intricate laser-cut silhouettes to superb effect in its pages.

Andy Weir’s The Martian tells the fictionalised story of an American astronaut who is stranded alone on Mars and must improvise to survive.
M.R. O'Connor’s Resurrection Science almost reads like science fiction as he explores the cutting edge of biotechnology.
World-leading natural and social scientists shed light on their discoveries and lives in We Are All Stardust.
Acclaimed scientist and author Tim Flannery urges readers to act now (and to not give up on our world just yet) in Atmosphere of Hope: Searching for Solutions to the Climate Crisis.
Andrea Wulf reveals the colourful adventures of Alexander Von Humboldt, the ‘lost hero of science’ in The Invention of Nature.

Maori Murota

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