Colm Tóibín, Robert Macfarlane, Elif Shafak, Michael Rosen and more share the novels, poetry and memoirs that make the perfect gift

I love giving books as presents. I rarely give anything else. I strongly approve of the Icelandic tradition of the Jólabókaflóðið (Yule book flood), whereby books are given (and, crucially, read) on Christmas Eve. Nan Shepherd’s The Living Mountain is the one I’ve given more often than any other; so much so that I keep a stack of four or five to hand, ready to give at Christmas or any other time of the year. It’s a slender masterpiece – a meditation on Shepherd’s lifelong relationship with the Cairngorm mountains, which was written in the 1940s but not published until 1977. It’s “about the Cairngorms” in the sense that Mrs Dalloway is “about London”; which is to say, it is both intensely engaged with its specific setting, and gyring outwards to vaster questions of knowledge, existence and – a word Shepherd uses sparingly but tellingly – love.

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© Composite: Getty Images

© Composite: Getty Images

© Composite: Getty Images

While turning 98 years old is an accomplishment in itself, Lois Tryon will do one better on Tuesday, her birthday: she’ll also become a first-time author. Read More

In that bygone world, the postman was of paramount importance. Fat envelopes were fatal, thin ones ecstatic. Plath and Hughes stared through the blinds and accosted him when he came. Had they won an oatmeal-naming contest? Had a poem been taken? I caught the very tail end of this life. It was important – we can no longer imagine it – to believe in this way. In a dream she recounts in the journals, Plath describes her brother, Warren, 'discovering me about to bed with someone whose name was Partisan Review'. You may believe these institutions create your ambition; they do not. It is inherent, or inborn, or created in you by adversities, luck, love or the lack of it. The real document is already written: her diaries, a biography of aim. from Arrayed in Shining Scales by Patricia Lockwood [LRB; ungated]