Book gift guide

Sex, satire, fashion, food & literature: Nice and naughty books for everyone onyour list

The Story of O by Pauline Réage
Marie Lu's Legend series
Hugo Ortega’s Street Food of Mexico
Photo by Penny de los Santos
Grace: A Memoir by Grace Coddington
Building Stories by Chris Ware
America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't by Stephen Colbert

With less than a week left for holiday shopping, we at CultureMap would like to offer a happy medium between street brawls in Target and Neiman Marcus and just giving up and throwing gift cards at loved ones. How about a nice book?

The well-selected, gifted book literally and sometimes literarily tells a story to the receiver and has the ability to send many messages. I love you. I know you so well. I understand what you like. Please stop trying to force me to read 50 Shades of Grey.

So with a little help from our favorite independent bookstores, here is the CultureMap definitive, but completely random, book gift guide.

Contemporary literary reader

For the contemporary literary reader with shelves of signed copies and tales of meeting authors, pick up Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue. Chabon will be in Houston Jan. 28 for the first Inprint reading of the new year, so the book, a pen, and event ticket might be the perfect choice for this reader.

Movie lover

For the movie lover who’s just not into books, let him know Hollywood is with a gift basket filled with The Life of Pi, Cloud Atlas, Les Misérables (the book turned musical, turned movie), Anna Karenina, Jack Reacher, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, and The Hobbit. Do readers' imaginations project at a 48-frames-a-second or 24?

Teen reader

If instead you’re shopping for a teen reader who wants to get into the next big series before the rest of the world flocks to the obligatory movie, Blue Willow Bookshop’s Valerie Koehler suggests the Legend series by Marie Lu, who used to call Sugar Land home.

“Post apocalyptic novels are still very hot this year. In this one, the main character is a teen who is slated to become an assassin and things turn treacherous when she is sent to kill a boy who may or may not have killed her brother. Lots of action which appeals to all teens,” says Koehler.

Food lover

Need a gift for a foodie who always buys locally? Try a cookbook by a favorite local chef. Hugo Ortega’sStreet Food of Mexico is not only filled with his favorite recipes, but he includes personal stories to savor with each dish.

Fashionista

If that fashionista in your life loves the behind-the-scenes drama of the industry as much as the clothes, find some sophisticated gift wrap for Grace: A Memoir by Grace Coddington, the woman who managed to steal the spotlight from Anna Wintour in not one but two documentaries about Vogue.

Hipster satire-lover

Give the gift of historical irony to your favorite hipster satire-lover by pairing Stephen Colbert’s latest, America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't, with some ancient school Gulliver’s Travels because if Jonathan Swift were alive today, he’d no doubt have his own Super PAC.

Bibliophile

For the bibliophile who refuses to buy an e-reader and is looking for validation, Brazos Bookstore manager Jeremy Ellis recommends Chris Ware’s Building Stories: “An oversized box of 27 different booklets, each with a different format and point-of-view. This is a book to wade through rather than read start to finish. An eEdition would not be the same.”

Lovable luddite

And if that lovable luddite reader is raising little ones, Valerie Koehler recommends In My Den by Sara Gillingham because you can’t download the felt finger puppet that comes with the board book and then poke it through a Kindle.

Future forecaster

For the gambler, baseball stats lover, and fortune-teller in your life, let them know that the future can sometimes be forecast with The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail but Some Don't, the new book by this nation’s recently chosen math-nerd-in-chief, Nate Silver.

An alternative to 50 Shades of Grey

And finally for that sweet, budding-sadist friend who won’t stop insisting you have to read 50 Shades of Grey, Brazos Bookstore recommends The Story of O by Pauline Reage.

Written in 1954, “The novel, originally published in French, is described as a story of love and submission. It won the French literary prize that year and has been in print ever since,” says Ellis, who also suggests Exit to Eden, Anne Rice’s S&M romance written under her pseudonym Anne Rampling.

If those suggestions don’t send the message, throw a hardback copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer your best friend's head. Carrie Fisher would approve.

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Movie Review

Daniel Craig shines in Queer, an unapologetic tale of love and loss

Photo courtesy of A24

Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig in Queer.

As recently as the late 2010s, if a movie was made about an LGBTQ+ character, it was more than likely about their coming out experience. Romance, if it existed, was typically chaste, and actual sex was almost completely out of the question. Things have changed dramatically in the 2020s, to the point that a major movie star has no issue starring in a film called Queer.

Based on the 1985 novella by William S. Burroughs, the film features William Lee (Daniel Craig), whom everyone calls just Lee, a writer living in 1950s-era Mexico City who spends most of his time haunting local bars with friends like fellow writer Joe Guidry (Jason Schwartzman) and hitting on younger men. His early interactions in the film seem to indicate that Lee has a bad reputation within the local gay community, as multiple people avoid him or give him odd looks.

Lee senses an opportunity when he encounters a newcomer, Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey). Despite some awkward interactions, the two of them start spending time together, although Lee has much more invested in the relationship than Eugene does. Their hit-and-miss bond continues until Lee, who’s starting to get into drugs in addition to the booze, convinces Eugene to accompany him on a trip to South America.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes (making their second straight film together after Challengers), early on the film seems to be mostly about the divide between an older person who’s grown comfortable in his ways and a younger person who’s living a relatively carefree life. The introduction of drugs into the plot changes things, though, with Lee searching out more ways to open his eyes to what the world has to offer.

Guadagnino and his team use some interesting visual storytelling techniques to introduce ideas that may not be present in the actual script. The most successful, demonstrated in multiple scenes, is the superimposition of movements by Lee over what’s actually taking place in the scene. The subtle overlay gives the audience insight into Lee’s true feelings, showing what he can’t or won’t say out loud.

Music also plays a big part in how the plot is perceived, with the use of anachronistic songs from Nirvana and Prince serving to heighten certain moments. The score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is not as in-your-face as the one they did for Challengers, but it complements the film well, especially when the plot starts to get trippy in its final half hour.

Craig, who appears sweaty and disheveled for much of the film, is about as far from the suaveness of James Bond as you can get in this role. He takes multiple risks with his performance and almost all of them pay off. Starkey’s character is subdued by comparison, but still comes off well. Schwartzman and Lesley Manville are given showy roles, with both using altered appearances that make them nearly unrecognizable to deliver memorable performances.

Queer is not as accessible as Challengers was storytelling-wise, but the fact that it tells a story about gay men living their lives as they see fit with no interference or questions shows how far the film world has come in a short period of time. It also continues Guadagnino’s streak of making audacious films in a way that few other filmmakers are willing or able to approach.

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Queer is now playing in theaters.

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