My favorite part of the holidays is giving someone a book. I’m that person who gives everyone on my list a wrapped book then I joke it’s a box of socks. My least favorite part of the holidays, however, is realizing months later they still have not opened that book.

The secret to a happy pairing?

Being honest about who that person is, not who you want them to be. With this in mind, what follows are the best gift books of the season, paired to some very specific people.

For the Constant Reader

It’s hard to beat a Folio Society edition of a favorite book. They are to literature what the Criterion Collection is to movies, only much older, offering contemporary classics and established landmarks in keepsake editions ripe for posterity. Their latest includes“The Binti Trilogy,” the great sci-fi epic from Flossmoor-native Nnedi Okorafor, featuring illustrations by David Palumbo that cement the series in a long history of genre fiction. Even nicer: The elegant linocuts by British artist Becca Thorne that spot a new edition of Maggie O’Farrell’s modern classic“Hamnet.” For children: A vibrant reissue of“Pippi Longstocking,” quirkily manic as its heroine.

For Chicagoans Not From Chicago

“Clout City: The Rise and Fall of the Chicago Political Machine,” by Columbia College’s Dominic A. Pacyga, is an accessible one-stop history that returns the familiar story of how Chicago works to its cultural, street-level roots, from the Great Fire to the “rusted-out remnant” of Mike Madigan. If that sounds too familiar, might I suggest a newer epic about doing the same thing and expecting a different result: Danish writer Solvej Balle’s“On the Calculation of Volume,” a cult smash with “Groundhog Day” vibes, the story of a woman trapped in Nov. 18 who meets others lost in the same time. (Volume III just came out and it’s addicting.)

For the Museum Fiend Who Can’t Make it to Everything

The catalog for Wrightwood 659’s“The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity 1869-1939” is as ambitious and absorbing as the exhibition, a vast internationally-minded study of how fine art portrayed homosexuality for centuries; what packed the Lincoln Park gallery earlier this year is now tucked alongside deeper dives into Russia, Japan, Brazil.“Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” is the catalog you needed after the moving new exhibit at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, a way to slow down and read all of those instructions on many of Ono’s works, prompts for creating your own art. One catalog for an exhibition that never made it to Chicago:“3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art 1964-1980,” organized by Skidmore College, is great fun, a roundup of the objects, the pop irons, stools, mannequins, tiny diners and more, constructed by the fabled Hairy Who art collective and Barbara Rossi, Ed Paschke, etc.

For the Restlessly Creative

Elizabeth McCracken’s“A Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction” boils 35 years of teaching creative writing into 280 practical points, from the siren’s song of punctuation to the danger in striving for perfection. It’d make a nice companion to“Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady,” an elegant illustrated diary from 1905 by the English artist Edith Holden, pairing her watercolors with daily thoughts about the moors, the grass, the birds… If you fear hand’s-on life lessons are being lost to iPads, try“Little Woodchucks: Offerman Woodshop’s Guide to Tools and Tomfoolery,” which Nick Offerman wrote as a step-by-step manual for kids to make toys and little libraries, but hmmm, I know an adult who might benefit even more…

For Your Debby Downer

I can barely write this, I’m so hypnotized by“The Penguin Book of Cults,” a fascinating batch of news accounts, papers, Roman tales, forming a first-person history of Branch Davidians, Jonestown, Kansas City “vampires,” even a sect in the late 19th century formed around a Rockford man who said he was Jesus Christ. Sound too peppy?“Wish We Weren’t Here: Postcards From the Apocalypse” collects Peter Kuper’s celebrated four-panel editorial comics for the Washington Post and others, explaining our existential threats — sea-level rise, plastic waste — in a blink.

For the Indomitable Swiftie

“Taylor Swift: All The Songs: The Story Behind Every Track” is not authorized, and landed too late to include “Life of a Showgirl,” but here’s nearly 500 nicely illustrated pages on every track, all the boyfriend clapbacks, all the backstories, all the hidden messages. After that, if you can no longer see the Swiftie forest from the Swiftie trees, Gus Morais’“Taylor Swift: Unofficial Search & Find Biographies” will finish off your eyesight: Think “Where’s Waldo” with Lollapalooza-dense scenes inspired by Taylor, harboring, somewhere, tiny cartoon Taylors.

For the Owner of a New Coffee Table Who Wants to Seem Interesting

The key to a good coffee table book is very large, offbeat images of a deceptively obvious subject. Take the sculpture of“Haas Brothers: Uncanny Valley,” the exhibition catalog for the Texas-born millennials’ Cranbrook Art Museum show outside Detroit. You think furniture, and then no, wait — brains, corral, Muppets…“Wild Ocean: A Journey to the Earth’s Last Wild Coasts” is a doorstop with actual coral, then comes the twist: cattle on a beach, a volcano of chub off Ecuador. A lack of explanation here only enhances the mystery.“Martha Graham Dance Company: 100 Years” is a large portrait of poise, yet, really, it’s a study of great costuming, spotlighting 25 seminal productions.“Italy: In the Footsteps of the Great Artists” comes across like a travelogue but zeroes in cleverly on the art of altars, palazzos and villas, straying from museums to tell the stories of many lesser-known great works tucked away into the everyday country.

For Blockheads

Is there a person alive who doesn’t like “Peanuts”? From 2004 to 2016, Fantagraphics republished all 17,000 Charles Schulz newspaper strips in 26 volumes, with introductions by Matt Groening, John Waters, Barack Obama… This holiday all 26 are being reissued— including“The Complete Peanuts 1969-1970” and “The Complete Peanuts 1997-1998”— to mark the 75th anniversary of “Peanuts,” and I can’t think of a nicer tribute to tangible media. For the newbie:“The Essential Peanuts” is a best-of wrapped around an often touching history, with appreciations, dives into the TV specials and old paperbacks, plus a set of stickers and postcards and a Snoopy patch.

For the Armchair Chicago Architect

Robert Loerzel, online man about town, terrific historian, has gathered, with James A. Pierce,“The Uptown: Chicago’s Endangered Movie Palace,” as thoughtful a revival as that seemingly-stalled Northside marvel itself may ever receive. (Finger’s crossed.)“Chicago’s Fine Arts Building: Music, Magic and Murder,” by Keir Graff, one of the building’s resident writers, is a mountain of archival insight, coupled with a sweet set of portraits of contemporary tenants. Pointedly more prosaic:“Chicago Homes: A Portrait of the City’s Everyday Architecture,” by Carla Bruni and Phil Thompson, is a richly illustrated taxonomy, and a readable explainer, of every brick flat, apartment courtyard and pre-fab dwelling in Cook County.

For the Cousin Who’d Rather Be Hooping in the Driveway

“Air Jordan,” by art book publisher Assouline, starts with a sneaker fetish, then covers so much cultural ground — from Michael Jordan-branded french fry packets to a foldout of seemingly every rap lyric namecheck of Air Jordans — the shoe plays like a pebble in an ongoing ripple. A must for Bulls obsessives. Stephen Curry’s“Shot Ready,” certainly pretty, is closer to self-help than revelatory. Far more insightful is“Masters of the Game,” a collaboration between former Tribune sports writer Sam Smith and former Bulls coach Phil Jackson, who essentially chat about NBA legends — sports history as bull session.

For a Fresh Look at Classic American Artists

“South Africa, 1977/1978,” reminiscent of Gordon Parks and Robert Frank, collects images of everyday segregation and resistance, mundane and epic. The photographer is Chatham native Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, who spent decades obscured by her better-known husband, Arthur Ashe. If you’re looking for a compact, lively art education in a single book,“Meaning Matter Memory: Selections from the Studio Museum in Harlem” gathers 250 artists (including Chicagoans Dawoud Bey and Theaster Gates ) in the collection of this venerable Manhattan museum, which just relocated after 57 years. Much broader:“The American Art Book” updates a classic Phaidon best-of survey, pulling together 500 representative pieces, from 17th-century portraiture to conceptual performance, into a reminder of how American art only thrives with American diversity.

For a More Playful Art Book

There’s no shortage of coffee-table appreciations of Kerry James Marshall.“Kerry James Marshall: Rythm Mastr — This is How it Begins” is the first focused squarely on the Chicago-based artist’s 25-year-long sidebar into comics, placing them in the context of his fine art and the history of Black characters in comics. Speaking of lesser-known side gigs:“Garbage Pail Kids” compiles all 206 stickers that Art Spiegelman (with a smaller team at Topps) created in the mid-80s, clearly inspired by underground comix. (The book even includes a bonus pack of stickers.) OK, now this is super fun:“Drawn to MOMA: Comics Inspired by Modern Art,” created by the New York City institution, asks 25 cartoonists to make an original piece about a visit to MOMA. Chris Ware, being constitutionally unable to do anything easy, contributed a whole poster (which is folded and included at the back).

For Comedy-Obsessed Chicago

“Comedy Nerd: A Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures,” Judd Apatow’s sweet scrapbook of candids and anecdotes, from “Freaks and Geeks” to “Anchorman” to seemingly every stage appearance and producer credit, is a heap of charm; whoever receives this will curl into it for hours. Same for“John Candy: A Life in Comedy,” Paul Myers’ just-the-facts biography, with a nice delve into Candy’s Second City stint in Chicago. Speak of the devil: Anne Libera, Second City’s director of comedy studies, has“Funnier: A New Theory for the Practice of Comedy,” a trove of practical advice for anyone thinking about going pro.

For Someone Edgy yet Approachable

Diane DiMassa’s“Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist,” a zine staple of the early ‘90s Chicago, returns not having aged an inch: Here are the first 20 comics, made as “rage therapy,” DiMassa says, addressing gender and mental health, yearning for community. Speaking of creatively activist: Ben Passmore’s furious graphic novel“Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance” finds the author forced to time travel through moments — the Black Liberation Army, 1900 Louisiana — when Black Americans picked up guns and fought back. Nothing, though, is as surprising as“The Complete C Comics,” writer Joe Brainard’s brief delve into abstract, free-associative ‘60s comic books, with parodies of “Nancy” and “Archie” and collaborations with Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery …

For Those Without Enough Time in the Day

Anything from The Best American series, still going at 110 years old. Six volumes now, including “The Best American Short Stories,” “The Best American Food and Travel Writing” and “The Best American Essays.” A nice way of catching up over winter, finding new voices, reading a must-read piece you missed. Okorafor edited “The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy,” and Susan Orlean assembled “The Best American Science and Nature Writing.”

For the Sibling Itching to Sneak Out to a Movie

“Godzilla: The First 75 Years,” co-written by Chicago-area kaiju know-it-all Ed Godziszewski, is the absolute last word on the ageless monster, a history full of storyboards and interviews and charming backstage production stills. Genuinely fascinating, even if your speed is more…“Making Mary Poppins,” Todd James Pierce’s concept-to-premiere tell-all, so thorough that now I know songwriters Bob and Dick Sherman, who wrote “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” also came up with “You’re Sixteen,” which Ringo Starr later turned into a creepy smash. Too earnest? Cartoonist Nathan Gelgud’s“Reel Politik” asks a question you never considered: What if there was a casual Sunday-comics-esque strip about insufferable movie snobs? (Yes, that’s a recommendation.)

For the Recently Radicalized

Turn to the Library of America. Their new edition of“The Origins of Totalitarianism” expands Hannah Arendt’s first major book, including excised chapters and annotating a prescient map of why Stalinism and Nazism rose simultaneously. Impossible to set aside:“Jim Crow: Voices From a Century of Struggle, 1876 to 1976,” a two-volume collection of speeches, congressional testimony, Chicago Defender reporting, pamphlets by Ida B. Wells — a first-hand account of Reconstruction, Chicago’s 1919 “Red Summer,” the Boston busing crisis…

For Dad Rockers of the ‘70s-‘80s

Paul McCartney’s“Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run” offers a welcome breather from Liverpool, a collaboration between McCartney, filmmaker Morgan Neville and presidential speechwriter Ted Widmer, who gathered a sometimes juicy oral retelling of the disorienting, platinum years after the Beatles.“Iron Maiden: Infinite Dreams” is light on reading material but heavy on everything else, a huge visual history of the 50-year-old metal institution, from early diaries of its founders to a truly cool gallery of fans’ denim vests.“The Grateful Dead: Photos and Stories from the Formative Years, 1966-1977” is a coffee-table love-in, a decade of candids by Jim Marshall, music’s most Zelig-like of documentarians. He shot the iconic Johnny Cash middle-finger picture, Dylan album covers, and he was there before there were Deadheads — here’s 300 pages of proof, culled from 52,000 images.

For Original Stocking Stuffers

Bloomsbury Publishing brings the historical, critical approach to superheroes it did for albums in its “33 1/3” series, inviting smart writers to the“Marvel Age of Comics.” The first three, small and colorful, turn a critical eye on the Avengers in ‘70s, Doctor Strange in the ‘60s and, best, Frank Miller’s “Daredevil: Born Again.” Even tinier: Biblioasis’ ongoing“A Ghost Story For Christmas” series, an addicting revival of the Victorian-born tradition of reading scary stories at holidays.

For the Reader Who’s Read Everything

It’s hard being disappointed by a smart new edition of what they already love, and who doesn‘t love “Pride and Prejudice”? Rizzoli’s “British Library Facsimile Edition,” made for the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, is a lovely reproduction of the 1813 first edition in three volumes, in an eggshell blue case, with a bundle of Austen’s letters. For more contemporary taste: Vintage, to counter censorship challenges to Toni Morrison‘s works, is reissuing 11 classics, with new covers and introductions. The first includes “Sula” with an essay by Jesmyn Ward and “Beloved” with an appreciation by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers.

For a Nostalgic Christmas Vibe

I can’t begin to say how happy I am to see a new reissue of“Norman Rockwell’s Christmas,” which an aunt gave me in the 1970s and I somehow misplaced. It’s the 1977 original, same O. Henry stories, same poems, same letters to Santa — without any updating. Same goes for Lee Friedlander’s“Christmas,” 70 years of slightly seedy, kind of ironic, charming black-and-whites of iffy nativities and roadside yuletides. The joyous commercialism that Friedlander finds is unabashedly celebrated in“The Mattel Archive,” a decade-by-decade cataloging of forgotten toys and Barbie makeovers. Ideal for anyone who misses the old Sears holiday catalogs. If you need a reminder that not all of the great holiday traditions have been discontinued,“Chicago’s Holiday Train” by Daniel Moreno is a modest, gentle photo celebration.

For the Impossible to Buy For

Think rando. They were a teenager once (or still are). The new reissue of 1995’s“Teenagers in Their Bedrooms,” shot by Adrienne Salinger after graduating from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, remains a powerful, disarmingly revealing set of portraits of kids in their domains, their anxieties and obsessions pasted to their walls.“Stuff: A New York Life of Cultural Chaos” could almost be a grown-up sequel: Kim Hastreiter, co-founder of the hipster mag PAPER, shows off the hidden charm of a hoarding impulse, grouping decades of sweaters, ceramic peanuts, newspapers, Obama tchotchkes, brand knockoffs. Every few pages, she pauses to tell stories about her famous friends, whom she also collects.

None of that seems promising?

“It’s Snowing!: Fashion, Art, Design and Winter Sports,” with its irresistible bright blue and pink cover, collects centuries of examples of how winter sports influenced wallpaper and tin toys and ski jackets and ski boots and ceramic figurines and tourism posters and fashion design. Here is the ideal gift book: Nothing about it sounds interesting, but then hours later, they’re still flipping.

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