At Powell's, we feel the holidays are the perfect time to share our love of books with those close to us. For this special blog series, we reached out to authors featured in our Holiday Gift Guide to learn about their own experiences with book giving during this bountiful time of year.Today's featured giver is William Gibson, author of The Peripheral.
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What books are you giving to friends and family this holiday season and why?
Glow by Ned Beauman because it's brilliant, tight, funny.
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway because it's like Douglas Adams wearing Joseph Conrad, but better, and the author's imagination is utterly, delightfully peculiar.
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes because I love ardent intra-genre contemporary weirdness, and her Detroit is superb.
What's the best book you've received as a gift?
A two-volume omnibus of Sherlock Holmes, from my mother, when I was 10.
What's the strangest book you've received as a gift?
18 Folgate Street by Dennis Severs. As close a thing as there is to a book that is a haunted house.
Do you have any book-related holiday traditions?
Every November I go over all the book reviews in that year's editions of Fortean Times and tell my wife which ones I think I'd most like.
What book(s) are you planning on reading over the holidays?
I think I may reread Kellow Chesney's The Victorian Underworld, which is perhaps my single favorite work of nonfiction.
What type of book makes the best cold-weather reading?
I seem to particularly enjoy good historical nonfiction in the winter.