Home ยป Hot Type for the Holidays: Best Holiday Gift Books for Travelers 2020

Hot Type for the Holidays: Best Holiday Gift Books for Travelers 2020

by Our Editors
Best Books of the Month and Best Gift Books for 2020

Hereโ€™s a sled full of reading and gift suggestions for the holiday season.

Jim Gladstone

One sliver of silver lining to being largely housebound through 2020’s pandemic has been the chance to reengage with the joy of reading. So many of us have tapped back into the pleasures that emerge from uninterrupted hours of time with a good book. Whether between hardcovers, on a tablet screen, or through earbuds, books provide a dependable way to travel through time and space, even when weโ€™re physically restricted. Whether itโ€™s to learn more about the world weโ€™re struggling with today, or to escape into the realms of fantasy and imagination, reading is a gift we can easily give to ourselves and others during even the most trying times. Hereโ€™s a sled full of suggestions for the holiday season.

QUIRKY QUEER FANTASIAS
The real world slathered in magical frosting
Boys of Alabama - Best Books of the Month, Best Gift Books for 2020Boys of Alabama (Liveright. $26.95. www.genevieve-hudson.com), โ€œAmerican boys are clever, thought Max, and they want to trick you.โ€ Max is a German teenager unexpectedly transplanted to rural Alabama when his father, who works for Volkswagen, transfers to a U.S. plant. His preconception of southern youth is modeled on Tom Sawyer, who he recalls conning his neighbors into painting a fence. In the contemporary America of Genevieve Hudsonโ€™s bewitching salamagundi of a first novel, the locals have different tricks up their sleeves: The small town of Delilah is home to a holy rolling Fundamentalist church where worshippers, including most of Maxโ€™s school football teammates, handle snakes and speak in tongues. Max also struggles with strangeness of his own: For one thing, heโ€™s gay; for another he has the power to revive dead things. Maxโ€™s closest new American friend is a genderqueer Latinx goth kid named Pan, who, thanks to Hudsonโ€™s provocative resistance of virtually every stereo-type her characters might suggest, is not a butt of bullying who Max swoops in to save. Merging Norman Rockwell charm, Shirley Jackson chills, and achy teen romance, Hudson builds a singular fictive world with a lyrical tone all its own.

BUY BOOK When you purchase a book from our curated Bookshop.org shop we earn an affiliate commission. The books are independently reviewed by our book editor and the potential commission does not influence the review in any way.


Moonstone: The Boy who Never was - Best Books of the Month, Best Gift Books for 2020Moonstoneโ€”The Boy Who Never Was (Farrar Straus Giroux. $15. www.sjon.siberia.is). Originally published in 2016, this eerie, erotic historical fantasy by the poet and novelist Sjon takes on new urgency in the era of the coronavirus. Set in Reykjavik, Iceland during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918, this haunting, under-200- page tale follows a 16-year-old rent boy whose obsession with silent film blends with his dreams and his fevered imagination. Balancing sex, cinema and horror in a shimmering equipoise, Sjonโ€”with the impressive translator Victoria Cribbโ€”will creep into your head with this unshakable story of alienation and strange magic. Like its title, this is a spooky, sparkling gem.

BUY BOOK When you purchase a book from our curated Bookshop.org shop we earn an affiliate commission. The books are independently reviewed by our book editor and the potential commission does not influence the review in any way.


Related Articles

Conditions

New York
overcast clouds
54%
10.7mp/h
100%
32°F
34°
30°
32°
Sat
36°
Sun
44°
Mon
45°
Tue
48°
Wed

Passport Magazine has always been a resource to guide, inspire and encourage LGBTQ travelers and their friends to discover deeper, richer and more fulfilling experiences at home and around the world through compelling story-telling online, in print, with video and through live events.

ยฉ 2024 Passport Magazine โ€” All Rights Reserved โ€” NYC USA

Adblock Detected

Please support Passport Magazine by disabling your AdBlocker extension from your browsers for our website.