Entertainment

The best books for Christmas gifts in Canberra: Colin Steele's suggestions

If you're looking for a Christmas book gift, there are some delightfully varied offerings available across a wide range of subjects.

Shaun Usher's Letters of Note was an international bestseller in 2014. He has now followed up with More Letters of Note, (Canongate, $59.99), each accompanied by full page illustrations, covering "the heartfelt, the historically significant, the tragic, the comic and the unexpected". Amongst the 122 letters are Jane Austen complaining in November 1800 to her sister Cassandra that she drank too much at a ball and Richard Burton's moving letter to Elizabeth Taylor after she left him in 1973.

Beatrix Potter's September 1893 letter, with illustrations of four rabbits, marks the first ever appearance of Peter Rabbit, while Katherine Mansfield, in March 1923, tells her husband's mistress, Princess Elizabeth Bibesco, to stop sending love letters to him, "I do not like scolding people and I simply hate having to teach them manners". Usher concludes his delightful potpourri of correspondence that there is "no correct way to consume this book . . . whichever letter you land on will offer you a snapshot of history".

Tom Adams is a noted English artist, whose work over 70 years includes advertising, portraits, posters, film work and, most notably, book covers. Tom Adams Uncovered, (Harper Collins, $54.99), is "designed to reflect my life through my pictures". Although "it is not a written autobiography", there are many personal insights in his comments accompanying the numerous full-page colour illustrations. Adams first came to notice with his famous 1963 cover of John Fowles' The Collector. Other iconic book covers, mixing fantasy and realism, were undertaken for Eric Ambler, Desmond Morris and not least Agatha Christie. Adams' most famous corpus of work is undoubtedly the 150 Agatha Christie paperback covers from the1960s and 1970s. All the covers have captions by Adams, with commentaries by Christie historian John Curran. Tom Adams Uncovered is an ideal Christmas present for both Christie and graphic art lovers.

Another beautifully produced book is renowned French artist Rebecca Dautremer's​ illustrated version of Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland, (Hodder, $29.99) issued to mark its 150th anniversary. Carroll's full text is reproduced alongside numerous imaginative and surreal full-page colour and line drawings in an excellent value hardback book.

The weather is a perennial topic in England, so Alexandra Harris' fascinating survey, Weatherland. Writers and Artists Under English Skies, (Thames and Hudson, $55), is sure to generate interest. Harris traces through literature and art, "the weather as it is daily recreated in the human imagination". Harris' comprehensive survey begins with Roman legionaries feeling the cold on Hadrian's Wall and ends with contemporary concerns on climate change. Literary figures cited over the centuries include Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Romantic poets, Jane Austen, Benjamin Britten and Ted Hughes.

Harris supplements her text with 60 carefully chosen illustrations. She ranges from the expected, like Constable's and Lowry's clouds, to the unexpected, such as an unusual Roman mural of an English winter and a small glass goblet bought at the Thames Frost fair in January 1684. Harris says "I have tried to hang a mirror in the sky, and to watch the writers and artists who appear in it." Her nine extremely readable chapters are superb reflections of that theme.

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Norwegian author, Jostein Gaarder​, is best known for his bestselling Sophie's World, which was translated into 60 languages and sold more than 40 million copies. His young adult novel, The World According to Anna, (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $24.99), follows 15-year-old Anna, through her dreams in 2012, to a climate-change ravaged world of 2082. Here, Anna meets her great-granddaughter, Nova, who castigates Anna for her devastated bleak world and demands Anna change history. Unfortunately, Gaarder's narrative polemics for action on climate change dramatically affects the novel's overall balance and lessens its otherwise intriguing blending of Arabian magic and 21st century history.

An excellent Australian young adult collection, Rich and Rare, (Ford Publishing, $24.95), edited by Paul Collins, comes with a stunning cover by Shaun Tan, who also contributes a short story The Greatest Cat Ever Lived. While aimed at YA audience, the short stories will also appeal to many adults. Many distinguished Australian authors, such as Kerry Greenwood, Libby Hathorn, Lucy Sussex and Gary Crew contribute short stories across genres, such as crime, history, SF and fantasy. Local Canberra authors Tania McCartney and Tracey Hawkins also feature. The Ford Street website has interesting reading notes and questions for classroom discussion, spinning off the stories, on issues such as school bullying and the impact of social media. An exemplary collection on several levels.

Many Australian schoolchildren have grown up with Isabelle Carmody's post-apocalyptic Obernewtyn Chronicles, which began publication in 1987 and now concludes with the seventh volume, The Red Queen, (Penguin, $32.99). This final book, running to more than 1100 pages, sees "misfit" Elspeth Gordie, the 'Seeker', although impacted from her previous struggles to save the world, retaining her great moral strength, in order to face the final threat of the 'Destroyer. Carmody mixes all the classic fantasy tropes with social and ethical questions, although new readers must start at the beginning – a fictional equivalent of Christmas DVD box set bingeing?

Graphic novels now rival many fantasy books in terms of sales and one which covers a legendary figure in comic book is bound to appeal. Stan Lee, now 92, is the creative force behind many Marvel comics, including the Incredible Hulk, Spider-Man, and the X-Men. In Amazing. Fantastic. Incredible, (Touchstone, $45), Lee has combined with Peter David and artist Colleen Doran to capture the major events in Lee's life in a hardcover full-colour, albeit at times hagiographic, memoir.

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