The Holiday season has begun, and you may already be thinking about finding that perfect gift for your loved one. It may seem like a HUGE challenge, but our 2021 Book Gift Guide has you covered. So whether you are shopping for a book for your partner or a younger family member, we have the perfect idea for you!
1. Erica Barry Book: Don’t Wait, Create
Erica Barry has had a strong presence in the social media world for almost a decade. Now, she has decided to share her knowledge and create the ultimate guide for content creators interested in achieving digital success with her new book Don’t Wait, Create. Digital media platforms like Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok have become a phenomenon that has entered mainstream pop culture. Erica Barry provides a roadmap to digital content creation and finding one’s creative voice and highlights the journeys of successful digital creators like Bo Burnham, Chloe Fineman, Jimmy Tatro, and others. This is the perfect gift for those people in your life that are passionate about working in the digital media world. Don’t wait, and go buy Erica Barry’s new book this holiday season.
2. Hal Book, Write Screenplays That Sell- The Ackerman Way- 20th Anniversary Edition
Hal Ackerman has been a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) since 1985 and is responsible for building and directing its screenwriting program. He has nurtured, mentored, and collaborated with hundreds of aspiring screenwriting students, many of whom have gone on to successful, award-winning careers in the film industry. In honor of the 20th anniversary of Ackerman’s book, Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way, he is releasing a newly revised and updated version. With this book, every professional writer gets a lifetime collaborator, and every aspiring writer has a teacher in residence on their shelves. This is the perfect gift for that writer or film buff in your life this holiday season.
3. Jane Owen Book: Plinkity The Rainbow Unicorn
Still trying to figure out what children’s book to get the youngest members of the family this holiday season? Plinkity, The Rainbow Unicorn, is a newly released children’s book by writer Jane Owen. Pinkity, The Rainbow Unicorn, is the story of a multicolored young unicorn living in a world of single-colored unicorns. It’s a story about being true to who you are, bravery, acceptance, understanding, and friendship. For anyone who has ever felt they are a bit different. This is the perfect gift for any young reader in your life!
4. Phoebe Book, Please Don’t Sit On My Bed With Your Outside Clothes: Essays
In her brand-new collection, Phoebe shares stories that will make you laugh, but also plenty that will hit you in the heart, inspire a little bit of rage, and maybe a lot of action. That means sharing her perspective on performative allyship, white guilt, and what happens when white people take up space in cultural movements; exploring what it’s like to be a woman who doesn’t want kids living in a society where motherhood is the crowning achievement of a straight, cis woman’s life; and how the dire state of mental health in America means that taking care of one’s mental health—aka “self-care”—usually requires disposable money.
5. Going There: Katie Couric
For more than forty years, Katie Couric has been an iconic presence in the media world. In her brutally honest, hilarious, heartbreaking memoir, she reveals what was going on behind the scenes of her sometimes tumultuous personal and professional life – a story she’s never shared until now. Of the medium she loves, the one that made her a household name, she says, “Television can put you in a box; the flat-screen can flatten. On TV, you are larger than life but smaller, too. It is not the whole story, and it is not the whole me. This book is.” If you thought you knew Katie Couric, think again. Going There is the fast-paced, emotional, riveting story of a thoroughly modern woman whose journey took her from humble origins to superstardom. In these pages, you will find a friend, a confidante, a role model, a survivor whose lessons about life will enrich your own.
6. Amanda Gorman Book, Call Us What We Carry: Poems
Formerly titled The Hill We Climb and Other Poems, the luminous poetry collection by #1 New York Times bestselling author and presidential inaugural poet Amanda Gorman captures a shipwrecked moment in time and transforms it into a lyric of hope and healing. In Call Us What We Carry, Gorman explores history, language, identity, and erasure through an imaginative and intimate collage. Harnessing the collective grief of a global pandemic, this beautifully designed volume features poems in many inventive styles and structures and shines a light on a moment of reckoning. Call Us What We Carry reveals that Gorman has become our messenger from the past, our voice for the future.
7. Casey Gueren Book, It’s Probably Nothing: The Stress-Less Guide to Dealing with Health Anxiety, Wellness Fads, and Overhyped Headlines
Surrounded by “health hacks” and clickbait headlines, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and underprepared when it comes to taking care of your health. But despite what the wellness industry told you, you don’t need another cleanse, detox, or supplement—you need a crash course in separating hype from health. Packed with illuminating information, funny personal anecdotes, concrete strategies for coping, quotes from dozens of medical experts, and a foreword by New York Times-bestselling author of The Vagina Bible Dr. Jen Gunter, this book is the perfect companion for navigating our wellness-obsessed world with a little less stress and a lot more information.
8. Michael E. Mann Book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
In The New Climate War, Mann argues that all is not lost. He draws the battle lines between the people and the polluters-fossil fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petrostates. And he outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change. With immensely powerful vested interests aligned in defense of the fossil fuel status quo, the societal tipping point won’t happen without the active participation of citizens everywhere, aiding in the collective push forward. This book will reach, inform, and enable citizens everywhere to join this battle for our planet.
9. Stanley Tucci Book, Taste: My Life Through Food
Stanley Tucci grew up in an Italian American family that spent every night around the kitchen table. He shared the magic of those meals with us in The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table, and now he takes us beyond the savory recipes and into the compelling stories behind them. Taste is a reflection on the intersection of food and life, filled with anecdotes about his growing up in Westchester, New York; preparing for and shooting the foodie films Big Night and Julie & Julia; falling in love over dinner, and teaming up with his wife to create meals for a multitude of children. Each morsel of this gastronomic journey through good times and bad, five-star meals and burned dishes, is as heartfelt and delicious as the last.
10. The Art of Oz: Witches, Wizards, and Wonders Beyond The Yellow Brick Road
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the best-selling American children’s book of the twentieth century, and the classic 1939 movie of this quintessential American fairy tale left a permanent mark on the hearts and imaginations of devoted fans throughout the world. In THE ART OF OZ: WITCHES, WIZARDS, AND WONDERS BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD, artist and Oz archaeologist Gabriel Gale brings to life all the creatures and inhabitants from L. Frank Baum’s beloved series, many illustrated here for the first time: wicked witches and their armies, mythical beasts, elemental fairies, robots, insects, one-legged and two-sided people, and many more sky, land, sea, and underground creatures.
