Gifting books for X-mas: a guide

Books are the safest of Christmas gift-giving bets: everybody likes to read, right? Even if your special (or unspecial) someone doesn't really read, we've got you covered. This year's Tyee Christmas Book List -- our second-annual selection of worthy titles and possible recipients features everything from naughty picture books to pretty foodie tomes, as well as the much-touted How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. You might want to keep that one for yourself.

For your hippie neighbour who likes to let it all hang out:

 
Wreck Beach by Carellin Brooks (Transmontanus).

For the yuppie neighbour who spends more time on his shrubs than you do with your children:

 
Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden by Don Gayton (Thistledown Press).

For that hard-to-shop-for fan of graphic-novel memoirs about once-famous Chinese acrobat/magicians who taught Orson Welles about showbiz and were once the toast of vaudeville but today are unjustly forgotten, as told by the acrobat/magician's great-granddaughter, a Vancouver filmmaker who discovered a lot about herself and her family as she researched this fascinating story:

 
The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam: An Illustrated Memoir by Ann Marie Fleming (Riverhead/Penguin).