The thing about books is that you can often browse online or walk into any bookstore and find a book for someone, whether they are booklovers or not. Everyone likes something, and there are books written about everything, so whether it’s a travel guide, an activity book, a how-to guide, or a novel featuring what they love (sports, food, travel), there is something for everything.
Getting something novel (pun totally intended) for the booklover is easy if you think about his or her other interests as well. You can strike gold twice if you go about it that way.
I love books and I love dogs, and this year I’ve come across quite a few books that amped up my love for each by combining them.
I didn’t get a chance to review Old Faithful: Dogs of a Certain Age, but when I saw it, I knew it was a book that I — the owner of a 15 1/2 year old sweetie — would enjoy. I think it would also appeal to photography buffs and anyone who loves touching stories of loyalty and love.
Fans of memoir>, and especially those like me who enjoy memoir and dogs, will love All Dogs Go to Kevin as much as I did. This is the story of a young woman deciding to pursue a career in veterinary medicine and her stories of the animals and the families who she cared for, all while growing her own family and having her own fur babies.
While the above book is a bit of memoir with a lot of great dog stories, Julie Barton’s Dog Medicine is 100% pure memoir. Julie writes personally about her descent into major depression, in the 90’s when treatment and medication wasn’t nearly as common or accepted. The book spans ten years or more, going back and forth between her years growing up in a typical family with some atypical anger issues, and her current adult life.
The Snoopy Treasures is a great collector’s edition for fans of Peanuts, the comics business, and trivia. This is such a unique book containing 12 sections, most with some sort of pull-out memorabilia encased in an envelope, such as recreations of such items as a baseball pennant from the 60’s and 70’s, a letter from President Ronald Reagan to Charles Schultz, the last Peanuts strip ever printed and more. I’m looking forward to giving it to my 11-year-old buff, but I wouldn’t recommend any younger than that, because there is a lot of information presented.
My 11-year-old son saw me reading this book, and after judging it by the cover, he determined that he HAD to read it. Because it was a totally clean read, I let him. The Dog that Saved Stewart Coolidge is a light, enjoyable read, the kind of book you might buy for your conservative niece or little sister, or your grandma.
For fiction lovers there are so many options. Many authors seem to focus on stories about the relationships between dogs and humans, and how prominently a dog is featured on the cover is usually a good indicator of the subject matter. Try out authors Ann Garvin, Lucy Dillon and Allison Pace.
Disclosure: Some of these resources were sent for review from the publishers. Affiliate links are included above.
