Books

Yule logs

Virgil, Ted Williams, Courtney Love, Bruce Springsteen, and other ideas for the giving season

By PHOENIX STAFF | December 7, 2006

From $16 paperbacks to $120 collector’s items, we’ve come up with a range of selections that should cover everyone on your list — from former classics majors and music fans to future art critics and lovers of high-fashion soft-core. We like to think that even the coffee-table books herein are worth more than their actual weight — that is, the kind of gifts you might have trouble parting with. Happy reading.

Virgil: The Aenied
Translated by Robert Fagles
Aeneas leaving Dido in The Aeneid is one of the best break-up scenes in the history of Western literature. (I’ve got to found a city, baby; it’s not you, it’s me.) (full review)
BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

The Artist’s Body
Edited by Tracey Warr and Amelia Jones
This paperback reprint of last year’s hardcover is the perfect gift for the transgression-loving art nerd on your list. (full review)
BY JON GARELICK

Cowboy Kate & Other Stories: Director’s Cut
By Sam Haskins
Rizzoli’s new edition, including several new “stories” and the “director’s cut” of Cowboy Kate, is a delight: an amalgam of fashion photography, pin-up art, and photo essay. (full review)
BY CHARLES TAYLOR

Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love
By Courtney Love
Lipstick kisses, mildewed edges, wine-stained composition-notebook covers duct-taped to yellow paper — this is People magazine meets Found. You gotta love that. (full review)
BY CAMILLE DODERO

Freud at Work
Photographs by Bruce Bernard and David Lawson
A strong argument can be made that Freud is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, figurative painter at work today. (full review)
BY PETER KADZIS

Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
by Robert Santelli
In addition to the requisite slew of vintage photos, this large-format hardcover comes in a slip case filled with packets, pouches, and envelopes containing facsimiles of vintage ticket stubs, tour calendars, hand-scrawled notes, and club posters. All that’s missing is a CD of rarities. (full review)
BY JON GARELICK

I Am Plastic
by Paul Budnitz
Designer toys are an expensive habit, but they’re pretty damn cool. (full review)
BY CAMILLE DODERO

The Insider Audio Bathroom Reader
By Paul D. Lehrman
While this is indeed the perfect book for your nerdy audiophile friends, any smarter-than-average civilian can enjoy (most of) it as well. (full review)
BY CLIF GARBODEN

Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays
Compiled by Peter Maresca
Yes, it’s expensive. It’s worth every penny. At 16-x-22 inches, it’s striking enough for its sheer heft. But it’s the fantastical compositional brio of those mammoth pages that truly dazzles. (full review)
BY MIKE MILIARD

Magnum Ireland
Edited by Brigitte Lardinois and Val Williams
It opens with photographs from the ’50s by Henri Cartier-Bresson, and is divided by decade through the Tigered ’00s. There are nuns and guns and boggy fields, pints and priests and Dublin scenes. (full review)
BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

The Paris Review Interview, Vol. 1
Introduction by Philip Gourevitch
This paperback original is a kind of best-of remix: 16 interviews selected from the echt lit mag’s 53-year history, the most recent never before published in book form, from Dorothy Parker (Issue 13, 1956) to Joan Didion (Issue 176, 2006). (full review)
BY JON GARELICK

Pretty Things: The Last Generation of American Burlesque Queens
By Liz Goldwyn
Liz Goldwyn’s Pretty Things, based on the film she directed, fairly bursts with affection for its subject. (full review)
BY CHARLES TAYLOR

Point to Point Navigation: A Memoir
By Gore Vidal
In the house of Gore there are many Vidals: novelist, essayist, playwright, screenwriter, politician, controversialist, and — most recently — memoirist. (full review)
BY PETER KADZIS

Sports Illustrated: The Baseball Book – A Celebration of the National Pastime
Edited by Rob Fleder
This book — chock-a-block with blown-up photographs from the magazine’s archives; classic column excerpts from pages past; lingering looks at the timeworn equipment; and decade-by-decade breakdowns of trivia, lists, and assorted arcana — is a worthy addition to the library of anyone who has too many baseball books. (full review)
BY MIKE MILIARD