I'm sure many of you are wracking your brain for the perfect gift for your loved ones (and acquaintances) this holiday season. The great news is that one can never have too many books. Whether the people in your life read nonfiction or fiction, long tomes of history or short thought-provoking stories, epic romances or skin-crawling horror, the Modern Library has a book for them.
To help point you in the right direction, I've asked the Modern Library team to share what they'll be gifting this holiday season. Hopefully they will spark an idea to solve your gift-giving woes.
Happy reading, and happy holidays!
—Erica Gonzalez, Assistant Publishing Director
Rachel Rokicki, VP Publishing Director
Sharing books during the holiday season has always brought me joy. Watching a friend or family member unwrap a book brings with it a magical feeling of discovery or rediscovery.
This year I plan to gift my mother Arthur Conan Doyle's first Sherlock Holmes mystery: A Study in Scarlet. Some of my fondest memories growing up were solving and discussing mysteries with her (particularly the TV adaptation of Holmes, starring Jeremy Brett). A Study in Scarlet originally appeared in 1887 in Beeton's Christmas Annual magazine. Our edition features an introduction by Anne Perry, and I look forward to discussing this locked-room mystery with my mother all over again.
For my father, who enjoys action-adventure books, I will gift wrap Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. Verne's entertaining novel follows Phileas Fogg as he wagers his fortune in a bet to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. My dad has always instilled in me a love of travel, and I'm excited to enter a lively conversation with him about the story and the many locales featured in the book.
For my brother, an avid reader of classics as well as contemporary work, I will gift Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Stanley Corngold. This edition also features essays by Philip Roth, W.H. Auden, and Walter Benjamin. A singular, disorienting story, The Metamorphosis follows Gregor Samsa as he awakes one day to find himself transformed into an insect. I am keen to discuss this unusual story and its themes with my brother.
In this very first Holmes mystery, the detective introduces himself to Dr. John H. Watson with the puzzling line "You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive," and so begins Watson's, and the world's, fascination with this enigmatic character. READ MORE »
Shocking his stodgy colleagues at the exclusive Reform Club, enigmatic Englishman Phileas Fogg wagers his fortune, undertaking an extraordinary and daring enterprise: to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days. READ MORE »
"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Franz Kafka begins his masterpiece. READ MORE »
After savoring the Cazalet Chronicles over the course of a year, I finally finished the last book in Elizabeth Jane Howard's phenomenal series. I'm now determined to spread the gospel, so I'm planning to gift readers in my life the box set of all five novels, which follow an upper-class English family from just before WWII through the late 1950s as they reckon with tremendous ups and downs in their personal lives and in their country. Think Downton Abbey in novel form, chockablock full of memorable characters and their loves and losses, triumphs and setbacks, over the course of two decades. It's the perfect cozy read for anyone who wants to sink their teeth into a big historical family saga, which is my usual book vibe around the holidays.
Sarah Bode, Marketing and Publicity
What's everyone really thinking about when they think about the Roman Empire? Myths and epic journeys, innovation and world domination?
Upon recently entering a new decade of my life—and surviving the pandemic—certain questions began to percolate: Why are we here? How should we live our lives? How can we protect ourselves against the stresses and pressures of daily life? How should we deal with pain and misfortune? At the figurative fork in the road, I turned to philosophy (instead of religion), picking up Marcus Aurelius's foundational Stoic text Meditations. With brevity, Aurelius attempts to answer these questions. You breeze through his reflections and anecdotes; his thoughts reading like a series of tweets. And even though he's writing about a life as an emperor of a fallen world 2,000 years ago, you find solace in this man's struggles. You may not have armies to command and laws to write, but you do have a life to live. Through these meditations, I learned what kind of life I want to live.
I first encountered The Awakening by Kate Chopin while in college. She was sequestered to the syllabus of a Women in Literature course. I found the main character, Edna, disarming and charming, not unlike Elizabeth Bennet. Through her struggles with modern life—imposter syndrome, motherhood, marriage troubles—you feel the push and pull of gender roles, somehow even more potent a century later. Edna's complexity affirmed my burgeoning feminism and inspired me to begin to confront—what all does it mean to be a woman in a man's world?
There is no doubt that Anne Rice is a quintessential American author who resonates through our cultural zeitgeist. You can't pick up a vampire story (or in my case, rewatch episodes of The Vampire Diaries—a guilty pleasure!) without seeing her influence. She is, after all, the mother of vampires. Listening to the audiobook of Interview with the Vampire, seduction drips from every word in Rice's narrative—like blood down the neck of supple victim. The framing of the story, an interview with "the boy", offers an interesting perspective of Louis de Pointe du Lac's life from human to vampire. And it also provides readers a cozy nook. Settle in as the world and life Louis recounts devastates, serenades, and haunts you.
Nearly two thousand years after it was written, Meditations remains profoundly relevant for anyone seeking to lead a meaningful life. READ MORE »
With its forthright treatment of sex and depression, The Awakening, first published in 1899, was so shocking to turn-of-the-century readers that it was neglected for decades. Rediscovered in the 1960s, this brief, beautiful novel is considered a landmark of early feminism. READ MORE »
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