Go green and get Christmas gifts covered
Though the fine white ash drifting down from Lamma Island power station may pass for snow on Christmas Day, in bookshops this will be a green Christmas. The physical, philosophical and political environment dominate non-fiction titles as writers throughout 2006 asked readers to reflect on the sort of people we have become and how to change this unpretty picture.
Memoirs should prove popular gifts this year. Foremost is Bill Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid (Doubleday, hardback, HK$240), about a simpler time when radiation fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing, pesticide DDT and smoking cigarettes were all good for us. His recollection and reflection on childhood in 1950s small-town America is superb.
Art and cultural critic Robert Hughes reflects in Things I Didn't Know (Knopf, hardback, HK$218) on how we are, for good or ill, a product of our past, but by no means prisoners to it. Great art can tell a lot about who we are, but effort is required to discern the truth. Gaining knowledge is about being open to new experience rather than closing the mind to anything that might challenge the stupefaction of blissful ignorance. Marvellous stuff.
A surprise catch-all is Greg Norman's The Way of the Shark - Lessons on Golf, Business and Life (Atria/Elbury, hardback, HK$285). Not wanting to judge a book by its cover, his publishers seem torn between which part of Norman's story will sell better. Elbury has gone for the game, what it has taught him about life and how his passion has allowed him to make a substantial living from his love. US publisher Atria pushes the business angle on its cover and is probably the more honest of the two.
Getting back to basics is Bob Dylan, whose new album this year will likely find him a new generation of fans. Publishers have been close behind, with Bob Dylan: The Essential Interviews, edited by Jonathan Cott (Hodder & Stoughton, hardback, HK$304) purporting to be the master in his own words, though sometimes in need of firmer editing, and The Bob Dylan Encyclopaedia (Continuum, hardback, HK$370) by Michael Gray, to name but two.
For the classically minded, and those of a more cinematic bent, the perfect present may be encyclopaedic reference tomes on music and film. The Time Out Film Guide 2007 - 15th Edition, edited by John Pym (Time Out, soft cover, HK$359) has 1,552 pages on just about every film. There are brief descriptions, technical details, and the formats each has been released in. For music buffs, there's the 693-page Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs Yearbook 2006/07 (Penguin, soft, $305), edited by Ivan March, Edward Greenfield and Robert Layton.
In the war of words, another transatlantic battle seems to be unfolding. The Times Quotations: From Homer to Homer Simpson (Times Books/HarperCollins, hardback, HK$270), a more populist alternative to the authoritative Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, up against The Yale Book of Quotations, edited by Fred R. Shapiro (Yale University Press, hardback, HK$475). The latter aims to 'correct' what it believes is the under-representation of the US among history's quotable quotes. Handy if one needs to know 'Take it off, take it all off' was a slogan invented for Noxzema Shaving Cream.
Hong Kong's Luxe City Guides (Luxe Asia, soft, HK$70), which has carved a niche in the travel trade with its quirky tips on what's hot and not in a growing number of cities around the world from an anonymous cast of insiders, has a rival for the traveller's back pocket in the form of the Wallpaper* City Guide (Phaidon Press, soft, HK$79), with 20 cities covered this year and 40 more next. Buy both.
One place not covered and coveted by the travel market is Timor Leste, annexed as East Timor by Indonesia in the mid-1970s and in its infancy as an independent nation. Hong Kong photographer Daniel J. Groshong visited and Timor-Leste: Land of Discovery (Tayo, hardback, HK$350) makes up in the imagination of the images what it lacks in the title.
Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century, edited by Alex Steffen (HNA, boxed, HK$400), is full of practical knowledge. There's a foreword by Al Gore, whose Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (Bloomsbury, soft, HK$240) has focused attention on collective responsibility and individual action.
So there's some serious thinking to be done, and Jay McInerney provides fuel for thought with A Hedonist in the Cellar (Bloomsbury, hardback, HK$208), a collection of his writings on the good grape and the genius it can inspire.
