Dec 1, 2015

The Holiday Gift Guide is here! We discuss a sort-of genre of books that we can't quite put a name to. Plus, we recommend The Grownup by Gillian Flynn and Gratitude by Oliver Sacks.

Download the Books on the Nightstand 2015 Holiday Gift Guide!
This year, sharing the Gift Guide on social media could win you free signed books! Every time you share the guide on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, linking to this page and using the hashtag #BOTNS2015GG, you’ll be entered to win a complete set of our Booktopia Petoskey 2015 authors’ most recent books, signed by the authors! Runners-up will receive one signed book. Don’t forget that using the #GiveaBook means that Penguin Random House will donate a book to a child in need, so throw that hashtag on your post/tweet as well! We’ll randomly choose winners just after Christmas, and mail out the books in early January. Good luck and Happy Holidays!

What Do We Call This? (06:14)

After reading What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas, a listener wrote in asking if, like young adult, there should be a category for older adults. We discuss what that category could include, what it should be called (we have no idea), and will categorizing books that way limit their audience?

• I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
• On My Own by Diane Rehm (on sale 2.2.16)
• Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
• Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
• Bootstrapper by Mardi Jo Link
• The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
• Any Human Heart by William Boyd
• The Hot Flash Club by Nancy Thayer
• Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
• The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein

Two Books We Can't Wait For You to Read (23:36)

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn, is a short story newly released in a special small hardcover. The story follows an unnamed narrator who, in her scam job as a medium, is called in to investigate the evil that's pervading a family. But is that evil coming from the old Gothic house they recently moved to, or is it coming from the sullen teenage son full of anger and threats? In true Gillian Flynn fashion, you will be kept guessing!

Gratitude by Oliver Sacks, is a beautiful hardcover containing the four essays written for The New York Times by Dr. Sacks in the two years leading up to his death. These powerful and moving essays are filled with universal truths and should be read and re-read by everyone.