Well, you’ve done it again, waited too long to get presents for people, and now you’re desperate. You are not a bad person! You just have high standards. No fear, your critic has arrived in the nick of time with a list of fun and terrific books for all the lovely weirdos in your life who, when they heft an obviously book-like package from beneath the tree, do not secretly wish you had given them socks, or a brick. Given that time is running short, it’s best to visit local bookstores to secure the following reads.
Your Uncle Scott, whose enthusiasm for cryptozoology is both endearing and undying, will appreciate the updated edition of “Where Bigfoot Walks” by the indomitable ecologist Robert Michael Pyle. This expanded version of the classic account now includes a new afterword.
Your critic once had the unusual pleasure of sitting in Pyle’s cozy coastal Washington study, where I was regaled with possibly true stories of real Bigfeet lurking in the wild hills of Wahkiakum County and beyond. A big, bearded storyteller at ease in his enormous easy chair, Pyle resembled a sort of Sasquatch himself. A thoughtful and incisive scientist, Pyle is also an excellent writer. Bigfootology is a harmless enough passion, and his book has a witty, expansive precision, enjoyable even for the skeptic.
Your dad, who loves his thrillers and shoot-em-ups, will appreciate anything from northern Idaho’s late, lamented Denis Johnson. Start him with the hilarious and gratifyingly slim novel “Nobody Move,” in which a bunch of charismatic, gun-toting schemers contend over a couple million bucks in missing money. Pure noir, pure fun, a quick, wicked read. Odds are dad will also enjoy the compelling, cryptic “Train Dreams,” or, if he has a political bent, the mournful, sexy “The Name of the World.” These books are also both very short, about two naps’ worth each at most.
Want more Denis Johnson? Yes, you do. Any Vietnam-era veterans on your list will appreciate getting lost in Johnson’s epic, lyric, biting “Tree of Smoke,” winner of 2007’s National Book Award in fiction. This novel, a real doorstopper, describes the high weirdness and random terror of the war from the point of view of a civilian CIA operative. It is about as trenchant and convincing (and dismaying) a portrait of American foreign policy as you’ll find. Johnson’s father Alfred was a CIA liaison, so the book is saturated with rich, ugly authenticity. Johnson, himself a beautiful sweetheart, in person gave the impression of an idiot savant, helpless before or unable to articulate the degree of his genius. Once, for example, puzzled by the heated seats in your humble critic’s humble Mazda minivan, Johnson wondered aloud whether his pants were on fire. They were quite manifestly not. Still, genius he was.
Ranchers, cow-persons and any horse-friendly people on your list will adore anything from either or both of two Montanans: Kevin Canty and/or Maile Meloy. Canty’s collection “Honeymoon” is a particular favorite, one spare, incisive story after another, filled with misfits who have been shunted aside by time or culture but are not quite ready to disappear.
Meloy’s collection, “Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It,” is worth it for the first story alone: “Travis, B.” is 14 pages of perfectly constructed humor, longing, mystery and loss. Your recipients, though perhaps typically reserved in their expressions of gratitude, will nonetheless reserve the best cuts of the cow for you next year. Because you understand them.
Who’s your favorite adult child? Don’t tell me (or them), but they are getting something by Alice Munro this year. Munro, who has spent much of her life in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, won the Nobel Prize in 2013. Anything from her will do. But for maximum local color try her collection “Runaway,” which features, among other masterpieces, a glorious triptych of connected stories concerning a mother and her troubled daughter, all set in British Columbia. Your critic reads this book about once a year to remember how strange and complex fiction can be, and what short stories are capable of. Another collection, “Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage,” is no doubt Munro’s best book, though less of its action takes place in our region.
Any poets on your list? That is too bad; they can be difficult people. So sad! And those clothes! But their angst might be temporarily relieved by the peaceably sorrowing work of Seattle’s Luther Hughes, whose debut collection “A Shiver in the Leaves” is new this year from the estimable BOA Editions. Inside, you’ll find clarity, patience and hope, in well-made, variously metered verse, anchored by a wise and aching sensibility. You get Seattle, and our region, as you may not have had them before, from a queer Black perspective, loving, true and pained.
Also new this year is Oregonian reporter Casey Parks’ “Diary of a Misfit.” Part memoir, part journalistic quest, this book describes Parks’ attempts to reconstruct the life of a trans man, Roy Hudgins, who played a crucial, curious role in her mother’s childhood home of Delhi, Mississippi. The book, generous with all its players, seeks complexity rather than simplicity, and for Parks, a gay woman raised in the deep south, the study of Roy becomes a search for acceptance and belonging.
Finally, fans of the graphic novel will be pleased to receive a big, beautiful copy of “Odessa” by Portland’s Jonathan Hill. Winner of the 2020 Believer Book Award for Graphic Narrative, this rich, humane adventure story, set in a post-Cascadia earthquake world, is exciting, a little scary, and perfect for your teen reader (and you can sneak a peek before you wrap it, sitting on the bed).
And then there’s Berkeley’s Thi Bui, whose moving graphic memoir “The Best We Could Do” portrays her parents’ escape from Vietnam and the lives they built thereafter in the United States. More than 300 pages of ink-and-watercolor history, you’ll knock it out in a sitting.
Well, that’s a lot of reading for someone. But doesn’t it get dark early these days? Perfect for pulling up the covers and tucking into something great.
