Gift Books for Christmas

Philip Womack stuffs himself with Gift Books for Christmas, covering everything from inkblot tests, via glow-in-the dark jelly, to knitted dogs and everyone's favourite (or not) meerkat. 

If you’ve ever wondered about the sanity of your relatives, the perfect Christmas present for any one of them is The Redstone Inkblot Test (Redstone, £11.95). You look through the blots, feel which ones you’re most drawn to, and then read out the results: they are surprisingly accurate. I’ve already tried it on myself and my flatmates – you’ll be glad to know that we’re (mostly) normal. It will while away that long Christmas afternoon (with any luck without causing any major arguments).

So, too, will Best in Show: Knit Your Own Dog (Collins and Brown, £12.99) by Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne. “Stitch that bitch”, as the authors cheerfully announce. This is a quirkily charming book and the results look brilliant (including a Westie with an adorable wispy face).

 

 Another one for the doers and makers is Jelly with Bompas & Parr (Pavilion, £14.99) by Sam Bompas and Harry Parr. Though the recipes are easy to follow, the wobbling dishes are spectacular: anything can be made into jelly – champagne or liquorice, for instance, and there is bubblegum vodka jelly, and another that, mildly disturbingly, glows in the dark.




From sweets to sweats: the detailed instructions and splendid illustrations will mean that those who like to hotfoot it outdoors on Boxing Day will love Britain by Bike (Batsford, £16.99) by Jane Eastoe; their stay-at-home chums will prefer to perspire slightly less with Ed Ikin’s Thoughtful Gardening (National Trust, £14.99), which manages both to offer excellent practical advice on keeping the shrubberies in shape and to look rather elegant.




 Heartier husbands will love You Cannot Be Serious! (Fourth Estate, £14.99) by Matthew Norman, a selection of the most tormenting aspects of sport that’ll break the ice between male members of different families.






 Bibliophiles are recommended to test the learned waters of Love, Sex, Death and Words (Icon, £20) by John Sutherland and Stephen Fender, which takes us on an urbane, day-by-day amble through the year, recounting events of literary import. Here you will find an abundance of mortarboard humour and recondite jewels: the truth behind Thomas Carlyle’s wedding night, for instance.




 Those of a quizzical bent will adore Schott’s Almanac 2011 (Bloomsbury, £16.99); when I told a 15 year-old that I remembered when the first one came out, he said: “What? But isn’t it, like, really old?” It contains the usual oddly absorbing facts, laid out with an eye for mischief (ought Stephen Gately really be in “Great Lives”, above J D Salinger?).

Quiz-lovers will also be tickled by The QI Annual 2011 (Faber, £12.99) by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, which brings to you the letter “H” and, as well as giving the low-down on hermaphrodites, hamsters and honey, also includes a priceless Famous Five parody (“Five Holiday at Home”), with a distinctly masculine George, and a Julian who’d rather be an exotic dancer.




 A follow-up to last year’s blindingly successful Am I Alone in Thinking…? is I Could Go On… (Aurum, £9.99), edited by Iain Hollingshead, another selection of the missives that didn’t make it onto the letters page of this very newspaper. “Who is Jonathan Ross?” asks one of them. They display a mixture of gumption, brio and gleeful silliness that will make Telegraph readers snort in agreement.


See more recommendations on http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/8176851/Gift-Books-for-Christmas.html