Journey vs. Destination

Last year, I gave my brother a bunch of books for the holidays. He professed to enjoying receiving them all. He hasn’t said which ones he liked reading. But, as a I said last year, we aren’t great communicators.

I also suspect he most liked me setting up his email even more: a “friend” had previously set up his email and it intentionally misspelled my brother’s last name. I, of course, sent the gifts to the correctly spelled name, my head being unable to cope with that sort of breakage. Anyway, I made a corrected email address and then forward the old account to the new one and sent him all the passwords (which he expected me to remember this year, hah!).

When I called to ask for his daughter’s addresses, we chatted for a few minutes. He said he’s reading a lot these days and would love more books, especially science fiction. I got excited, exclaiming I have the perfect gift. Sadly, he’s already read Andy Weir’s The Martian– three times! At least I know I’m on the right track.

I made a new list, partially from the ones last year that I’d forgotten or fell off my list. So far I’ve already bought

• Neil Gaimen’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane. I asked Chris where he thought someone should start with Neil Gaimen and he thought maybe American Gods and I thought maybe The Graveyard Book thought that is young adult. But when I thought about about really-good-books without taking into about the author, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is higher in my personal ranking.
• Ernest Clines’ Ready Player One. As soon as my brother said The Martian, I thought about Ready Player One. I don’t know why they are linked to me, maybe because I wish I’d written these books. No, not because they are popular but because they are deeply harmonic with the noise in my head.
• Keeping with fiction, I went ahead with Ender’s Game. In Amazon, it is filed under “Classic Science Fiction” which where it belongs. The movie was not as good as the book (in large part because you couldn’t get a kid as young as in the book). I don’t necessarily like Orson Scott Card and I think the Ender books went on for much too long. But this is a great book and it was on sale.
• Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn Trilogy. Chris introduced me to this fantasy trilogy. Sanderson is so prolific, it can be tough to figure out where to start. This trilogy is fairly well encapsulated and a lot of fun. I have only dipped my toe in his other work though Chris gets lost in it.
• Matthieu Ricard’s Happiness. Written by a molecular biologist turned Buddhist monk, I suspect my brother will like this book more than I did. I quite enjoyed the first 25% and then it lost me a bit in the deeper areas of Buddhism. I’m fully willing to believe (and practice) that happiness is a skill that requires practice and attention. However, I’m a product of Western education, the eradication of self is inexplicable to me unless he means balancing the System 2’s lies to cover System 1’s laziness (from Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow). That makes sense to me but I’m not sure that’s… Anyway, my brother mentioned an interest in Buddhism and Happiness is the obvious book for him if not for me.
• Randall Munroe’s What If? Ahh, come on, we all read the wonderful XKCD webcomic with its mix of absurdity, love, and science. And I read the What If? blog with great enjoyment. I suspect my science-loving brother will love this though I worry that he may not be familiar with Munroe’s other work. I wonder if that will decrease his overall enjoyment, I hope not.
• Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half. Last year, I got the hardcopy of this for several people. My brother-in-law never laughs aloud and he giggled through it. A visiting friend seemed a bit depressed (in part because he was visiting over Christmas to meet stupid work deadlines and because his cat had recently passed away) and we put this in his stocking, getting a few giggles from him as well. It is a great book that covers some fairly deep territory with panache (and humor). I recommend it to everyone. Though I’m concerned about the color images on a kindle (my brother said he had a color screen, I hope it all works out).

I started working on this list last week, making an Amazon gift list so I could pile ideas together. Strangely, this shows me just how much the prices fluctuate. Both What If? and Hyperbole and a Half were discounted 30% when I went to look today (and add another book I was thinking of). Now, I’ve decided to go ahead and leave the list a little broad, maybe a few more things will go on sale, helping me decide what else to get my brother. Some of my other ideas:

• In the popular science category, I have: Ken Jenning’s Maphead about incredibly interesting subject of geography (yeah, I didn’t think it was possible either), Sam Kean’s The Violinist’s Thumb about genetics (and history of discover), Micheal Pollan’s The Botany of Desire about plants mating habits and how they’ve trained humans to care for them, and James Pennebaker’s The Secret Life of Pronouns about the wonderful world of words and the psychology of interpreting what someone means. Vladimir Dinet’s Dragon Songs about crocodilian (and Russian) mating habits almost makes the list but I think that was because I listened to part of it which set the voice in my head better than the writing did.
• In science fiction, I have Douglas Adam’s The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which contains all five books. I should just buy this one. It is a little pricier than the cheap ones but, gosh, at a per-word price it is improbably cheap. Heck, I should get it for myself, it is time for re-read of these, they make me happy. Talking about a good value even at full price, my list also has Neal Stephenson’s Reamde. What a romp! But my brother isn’t into computers so the attention to detail may be lost on him (and I already got Ready Player One which is somewhat similar).
• In fantasy (I don’t normally separate sci-fi and fantasy, any advanced technology looking like magic and whatnot, but that previous bullet was getting pretty long. To keep this short, I’ll just put up some books.
• Last year’s gifts had a lot of urban fantasy so this year, I tried to be shorter in that. I liked Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City (and the New Orleans sequel). For all that these are full of dead things, it is a more character driven book than some of the others on the list. Other urban fantasy and some pithiness:
  • The Atrocity Archives (wow, that’s a depressing book to give for Christmas)
  • The Wrong Goodbye (this was good, why haven’t I read the sequels yet?)
  • American Gods (see previous musings about Neal Gaiman (jeez, is Good Omens a better choice?))
  • Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, Book 1) (I like urban fantasy, ok?)
• Back to science fiction or fantasy or whatever
  • Jumper (I love Gould… though I started with Wildside so maybe that is better. But Exo came out this year (Jumper #4) and so this is better path)
  • The Curse of Chalion (Where to start with Bujold? Vorkosigan is awesome but this is standalone. And awesome. But on the pricey side)
  • The Three-Body Problem (I am so looking forward to reading this book myself! I have such high hopes. This may be an example of giving a gift to someone else and hoping they don’t like it and give it back.)
  • Boneshaker (I remain a sucker for Steampunk.)
• Last (but not least), I really enjoyed the The Best of Instructables. I seldom go to the website (being ad-phobic) and having them in a book has been awesome for inspiration and general interest. But I’m not sure about Kindle. I’d consider sending him Make Magazine but I’m not sure he’d be into that.

Having learned the price fluctuations in ebooks, I’ll watch them for a day or two and sort out what else to get my brother. Though if I was in charge of making profits at Amazon, now that the shipping window is nearly closed, it would make sense to push the prices of all electronic items up a bit for those last-minute shoppers.

What did I miss? Any books you especially enjoyed this year?