What are you buying OTHERS for the holidays?

Well, it is that lovely time of year again, and I'm curious to see how many folks out there are buying books to give as gifts (because of course we are, fellow bibliophiles!), and...

...if so, what are you buying?
Do you shop with a list?
Do you grab what looks good?
Do you talk to booksellers for recommendations?

And lastly: what did you end up buying for yourself?!

Curious, curious, curious...!

I love, love, love buying books for people. I usually think a lot about what I'm going to get, but I always leave room for a book to say, "hey, Dad would like me!". I don't usually talk to booksellers, b/c I read a lot of reviews and generally have some idea of what I want going in. I also tend to buy people books that I've either read, bought, or looked through for a while. I sometimes randomly buy a book, but not too often.

This weekend, I did most of my Christmas shopping and I found (I can't do the fancy links - sorry):

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart for a friend who loaned me Three Cups of Tea.

Washington's Crossing by David Hackett Fischer for my Dad.

For my brother, my husband found American Creation by Joseph Ellis. Luckily, I already had a copy of my own, or he would have needed to buy two!

My uncle is getting The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam (another book I own).

I found Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh for my husband.

I have a terrible time buying books for my mother. She's very picky, and I haven't come up with anything yet.

Of course I bought books for myself! I found Red Mutiny by Neal Bascomb while getting my dad's present. While buying my husband's present, I found some other books - something about the Spanish Armada, Flyboys, and a book about the USS Indianapolis. Luckily, they were all used so not too expensive!

Even being a bibliophile, I buy surprisingly few books for people. Thus far, only two of my gifts have been books. One was Dracula by Bram Stoker for a Turkish friend, who we all jokingly call the resident Nosferatu. He told me he's already read it in Turkish, but he was looking forward to reading it in english. The second was WW Z: an Oral History of the Zombie War for a friend who loves zombie movies.

I didn't buy too many books for most people this year. I got my Dad For the Love of Hockey: Hockey Stars' Personal Stories (hoping that if I don't get it myself I can borrow it), his wife is getting Acrylic Revolution: New Tricks & Techniques for Working With the World's Most Versatile Medium, and my sister is getting The Adventuress by Audrey Niffenegger. My husband is getting Vaccinated: One Man's Quest to Defeat the World's Deadliest Diseases (guess that one's not in touchstone) and Batman: Year One.

Usually I get a lot more books for people.

#4 Oh, Batman: Year One is a GREAT one. Loved it!

#3 I love that you call your friend Nosferatu!

#1 World War Z is a very engrossing read. My friend lent her advanced reading copy to me, and I could not put it down from beginning to end. Excellent.

I love what y'all are buying for people, even if the purchases are small in nature. I'm in a bit of a conundrum. I work in an indie bookstore, and we have been given an instore discount for our seasonal purchases....and it's so darn tempting to use it for myself! Argh!

I got my husband a signed copy of Long Way Down by Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman. My flatmate is a foodie, so is getting a copy of Rick Stein's Mediterranean Escapes.

#5 - misslilpaw, we have very strict rules in our family (particularly for my husband and brother-in-law) about not purchasing anything for oneself in the month leading up to birthdays and Christmas. (A great example of this is a few years ago when they each decided that their brother would LOVE Dispatches from the Tenth Circle: The Best of the Onion and that they wanted it for them self as well, so they bought it for the other, and an extra copy to keep. They ended up with a total of 4 copies of the same book for 2 people.

I'm not telling till after they've opened them.

Usually, I use Library Journal recommendations with a heavy bias for small presses.

This year, I've substituted for two that I failed to come up with an Library Journal with an LT suggestion from the work page of a book that I knew she like, and for another I used an LT tagmash.

#7 - cheri0627, 4 duplicate copies! Oops! Oh my, that will sure teach 'em!

Last year I bought everybody books and got some strange looks LOL

This year I've only bought books for my sons and my mother. For my youngest son I picked up Kids Bathroom Book: Jokes, Your Very Own Robot which is a Choose Your Own Adventure book, 500 Hilarious Jokes for Kids and The Everything Kids' Knock Knock Book: Jokes Guaranteed To Leave Your Friends In Stitches.

My oldest is getting Sports Illustrated: Almanac 2008 and 2007 NFL Record & Fact Book.

For my mom I picked up the latest Kinley MacGregor romance, The Warrior (Brotherhood of the sword book 3).

I have gotten books for nearly everyone. Every year our 4 kids each get a box of books - different titles, different genres each year depending on what I find and what they are interested in that year. My youngest always gets a collection of picture books and this year she got a few chapter books that I can read to her.

I bought my 10 yr old daughter about 5 books including a really cool Nancy Drew book that looks like a diary of all of her cases. My 13 yr old son got an Elvis portrait book as well as 3 or 4 other books. My 15 yr old son got a collection of Worst Case Scenario books, a book on Paul McCartney (he is a real Beatles freak), a new book in the Redwall series and I also bought him The Catcher in the Rye. We bought my husband a few books about Philadelphia sports. I bought a friend two Cormac McCarthy books. And for my mother and mil, I went to the used bookstore and bought them a collection of different books about 5 or 6 for each of them. This is something that my mil requests a lot because they are like new and she can get so many more books this way. My mom liked the idea so we did it for her this year as well.

And, of course, I got my Secret Santa pick a book - not telling what it is though.

I love giving books as gifts especially when I find something that I know they have wanted or something really interesting that I haven't seen before.

I shop with a list of possibilities in my head, but nothing more organized than that. I almost never buy a novel that I haven't read as a gift, but I do it for non-fiction sometimes. I ended up buying a lot of books as gifts this yera.

My brother and I always buy each other books at Christmas. This year I bought him Richard Russo's Straight Man. The rest of my family isn't bookish, but my husband and I decided to buy books for his family.

For my father-in-law, it was the Dalai Lama's Ethics for the New Millennium and Carl Sagan's Contact. For my mother-in-law, a book on fossils. Fossil-hunting is her major hobby.

For my older sister-in-law, The Catcher in the Rye. She didn't finish high school and thus missed out on reading this as a teen. (Great choice, #11! I think every teen needs a copy.) For my younger sister-in-law, we bought Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics. I think she could get into the literary off-beat.

For my husband's grandmother, we bought a big book on the Civil War. She's big into history and genealogy, and she and my husband have lately been discussing relatives of theirs who fought in the Civil War.

For my niece, we were thrilled to find Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Frog and Toad Together. Those brought back memories!

For a friend of ours, I bought Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics and Richard Powers' Plowing the Dark.

I didn't intend to buy for myself...but I always end up doing it anyway. I picked up Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman and Sense and Sensibility. I've been belatedly getting around to reading Jane Austen these past few months, and what a delight!

I picked up a copy of Twelve Extraordinary Women by John MacArthur for my good friend, and a copy of Beyond Opinion Living the Faith We Defend by Ravi Zacharias for my husband.

For myself, I bought a new copy of To Kill A Mockingbird along with a paperback copy of The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain.

My wife has taken a renewed interest in books, so I bought her The Annotated Pride and Prejudice and Madame Bovary. I also bought Easton editions of Little Women and Madame Bovary.

For a friend I bought copies of the Landmark Thucydides, and the Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. For myself, I picked up a copy of The Game of Shadows: Barry Bonds on the Balco scandal. I received a the latest translation of The Aeneid and David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War.

I usually buy at least one or two books for relatives, but this year I just couldn't think of anything that would be appropriate for any of them. My only gift purchases were for my SantaThing: The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke and The Golem's Eye by Jonathan Stroud.

(And she already received them, so I'm not ruining anything by revealing them here!)

Catching up with LT after the holidays....

I bought Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason, The Cat Who Came in from the Cold, and Middlesex for my boyfriend, Dinner with Persephone for my mom, and a huge history of post-colonial Africa for my dad. Can't remember the name....

I received the new translation of War and Peace, The Intellectual Devotional: American History, The Latke Who Wouldn't Stop Screaming, The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, and Every Night Italian. Altogether I'd say it was a good Xmas for books.