The Book Lovers’ Guide to Holiday Gifting

From classics to young adult fiction, we have something for everyone on your list.

Dec 10, 2024

If you want to know what to gift a food lover for the holidays, check Bon Appétit. If you need a gift for your sister, try Cup of Jo. And if you have a book lover on your holiday shopping list, well, look no further.

Last Thursday night, two of the most prolific book lovers we know—Goodreads co-founder and former editor-in-chief Elizabeth Khuri Chandler and Godmothers co-founder Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, who also knows a thing or two about books—met on the Godmothers stage to share (with a sold-out audience!) the books they love that are just right for gifting.

We took copious notes—and also scooped up Elizabeth’s personal notecards—and rounded it all up below. (The conversation snippets are choppy, but we pulled the gems from the hour-long convo so you could get the highlights and get on with your day.) For most of the books, we also shared a link to the audiobook, because these books also make for great listening while you’re wrapping gifts or cooking a holiday dinner. Enjoy!

p.s. This event was also a Worldreader benefit. Click here to learn how a gift of $25 will give one family the tools, training, and resources to help their children thrive through reading.

CLASSICS

ELIZABETH KHURI CHANDLER: If you haven’t read Anna Karenina, I’m sorry, you have to. JENNIFER RUDOLPH WALSH: It’s mind-blowing how good it is, and how easy-to-read it is. I couldn’t agree more. I would add Crime & Punishment to that, too. It’s incredible—and very accessible.

EKC: Pride & Prejudice I re-read during Covid, and it was great.

1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; audiobook. 2. Crime & Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky; audiobook. 3. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen; audiobook.

FICTION

EKC: Bonjour Tristesse by Sagan is a savage, savage little book, very French.

EKC: Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians series. JRW: THE best. It’s brilliant. (And oh my god, I love the movie.) EKC: I like books where you get submerged into a totally different world.

EKC: I like Taylor Jenkins Reid. Her books have a real L.A. vibe. Daisy Jones & the Six is a really fun read. JRW: Based on Fleetwood Mac!

EKC: I interviewed Will Schwalbe, who wrote The End of Your Life Book Club, and he said Giovanni’s Room changed his life. It’s just incredibly beautiful writing.

4. Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan; audiobook. 5. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan; audiobook. 6. Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; audiobook. 7. Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin.

EKC: Sally Rooney. I feel like she’s the queen of dysfunctional relationships.

EKC: Jojo Moyes has always stuck out in my mind as one of the kindest people I’ve interviewed. She wrote seven books before her first one was published.

8. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney; audiobook. 9. Me Before You by Jojo Moyes; audiobook.

JRW: I went on a two-week vacation with my family with just My Brilliant Friend, and I ended up downloading the other three Neapolitan Novels while we were away. I never saw my family the entire trip. I’ve never had such a compulsive experience. I didn't want to live outside of those pages.

10. My Brilliant Friend (Neapolitan Novels #1) by Elena Ferrante; audiobook. 11. The Story of a New Name (Neapolitan Novels #2) by Elena Ferrante; audiobook. 12. Those Who Leave & Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels #3) by Elena Ferrante; audiobook. 13. The Story of the Lost Child (Neapolitan Novels #4) by Elena Ferrante; audiobook.

EKC: When I’m reading Sally Rooney, I’m often thinking, “God, how can you write like that?”

EKC: Perfume is kind of like a cross between Silence of the Lambs and a period drama. It’s about a guy in 18th-century France who has this extraordinary olfactory ability. He’s also a serial killer and trying to capture a serial killer. It’s creepy and really good.

JRW: The Other Boleyn Girl is so delicious and dishy. It was a gateway drug that got me into historical fiction.

14. Normal People by Sally Rooney; audiobook. 15. Perfume (audiobook) by Patrick Süskind. 16. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig; audiobook. 17. The Other Boleyn Girl (audiobook) by Philippa Gregory.

EKC: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo has a LOT of great plot twists!

JRW: Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a really good book that sort of plays with the idea of the multiverse.

EKC: When We Cease to Understand the World follows the troubled lives of Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger—people who did quantum mechanics. And it’s all about kind of the madness that hits people when they reach the limits of human knowledge. It pushes your thinking.

18. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid; audiobook. 19. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin; audiobook. 20. When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut; audiobook.

EKC: It took me a year and a half to read the Wolf Hall trilogy, but it’s a really interesting perspective on Henry VIII—and Hilary Mantel is a phenomenal writer.

21. Wolf Hall (Wolf Hall Trilogy #1) by Hilary Mantel; audiobook. 22. Bring Up the Bodies (Wolf Hall Trilogy #2) by Benjamín Labatut; audiobook. 23. The Mirror & the Light (Wolf Hall Trilogy #3) by Benjamín Labatut; audiobook.

PERSONAL GROWTH

JRW: Daring Greatly by Brené Brown is just such a powerful book. It’s about leadership, but it’s also about identity and vulnerability and shame and how all of those kind of come together in the ways that we present ourselves. It’s really just about the courage to be who you are and to really understand who you are.

EKC: Simplicity Parenting is my favorite parenting book ever.

EKC: Stolen Focus was really impactful to me recently. It reminded me that all of us are losing our ability to focus, partly from all the switching from webpage to webpage, which apparently ruins your ability to focus.

JRW: I remember talking to a CEO once, and I asked him about a book that changed his life, and he turned me onto a book called The Surrender Experiment. I read it, and I’ve never stopped thinking about it.

24. Daring Greatly by Brené Brown; audiobook. 25. Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne and Lisa M. Ross; audiobook. 26. Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention by Johann Hari; audiobook. 27. The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection by Michael Alan Singer; audiobook.

SOCIAL SCIENCE

JRW: I was blown away by Far From the Tree. I learned about my own children, but mostly I learned about myself and the expectations that we put on our children.

JRW: On Our Best Behavior talks about this undercurrent of “goodness” that drives most women’s lives, that they don’t even really understand. Utterly fascinating and transformational.

EKC: When I meet somebody famous or interesting, I always like to ask what books changed their life. And so last week I was at a conference and I ran into David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and one he mentioned was The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap.

28. Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon; audiobook. 29. On Our Best Behavior by Elise Loehnen; audiobook. 30. The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap (audiobook) by Mehrsa Baradaran.

EVERYTHING ELSE

EKC: In The Years, Annie Ernaux kind of takes you on a Forrest Gump–style journey across decades—and she drops truth bombs all along the way.

JRW: Educated is a book I absolutely adore about a woman who grew up in a family where she was homeschooled—or, not really schooled at all—and she ended up at Oxford. It’s about her mighty journey.

JRW: The Power Broker is incredible.

EKC: The Hate U Give handles a complex topic with nuance and entertainment.

31. The Years by Annie Ernaux. 32. Educated by Tara Westover; audiobook. 33. The Power Broker by Robert Caro; audiobook. 34. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas; audiobook.

If you’re looking for a non-book gift for a book lover—or anyone on your “nice” list—Godmothers has a beautifully curated selection. Here are just a few of our favorite things:

35. Reader In Training Mini Tote Bag by Out of Print. 36. Love Letters Lost Candle by Caroline Francis. 37. Clear Ribbed Carafe by Gry Mattr. 38. Godmothers Travel Tumbler by Kinto.

And if you’d like to join one of our upcoming December events, scroll down.

Quotes have been edited for length & clarity. All products mentioned were independently selected. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.