10 New Books You’ll Want to Give (and Get) This Christmas

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1. Game Changers: The Unsung Heroines of Sports History by Molly Schiot

This big, beautiful, illustrated hardcover offers profiles and portraits of pioneering women in sports history. Based on the Instagram account @TheUnsungHeroes, Game Changers is a dramatic record of people who shattered their glass ceilings.

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2. Carry This Book by Abbi Jacobson

One of the stars of Broad City has a secret talent: drawing the imaginary contents of famous people’s personal bags. Ever wondered what Oprah carries in her purse? Abbi has some ideas.

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3. The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer

There’s something to be said for honesty. This is a big book of science fiction stories. Over 1,000 pages long, featuring classics and newcomers, edited by two of the biggest names in science fiction today, this book is the cornerstone of any good collection.

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4. Some Writer!: The Story of E. B. White by Melissa Sweet

For the kid who already knows and loves Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan, this cute, illustrated biography of E. B. White will prolong the magic while educating the next generation of storytellers.

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5. Sequential Drawings: The New Yorker Series by Richard McGuire

Two years ago he blew our minds with Here, a groundbreaking graphic novel that depicted the same vantage point, inside the same house, over the course of many millennia. Now he’s going small. This is a collection of Richard McGuire’s “spots” for The New Yorker—those tiny black & white drawings that fill in the cracks between articles. Each one is a subtly clever story.

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6. A Ghost Story for Christmas (series), by various authors, illustrated by Seth

Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens, H.G. Wells, and others wrote Christmas stories—tales of suspense and excitement for families to read to each other at the holidays. Now the artist Seth has illustrated them, and a small press in Canada is releasing them as tiny little paperbacks. They’re collectible, sharable, and very readable.

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7. The Art of the Affair: An Illustrated History of Love, Sex, and Artistic Influence by Catherine Lacey and Forsyth Harmon

Original portraits of famous people, along with the other famous people they had sex with (or were inspired by). Like how you keep a map in your head of all your friends who’ve had sex with each other. Or is that just me?

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8. The Vonnegut Encyclopedia by Marc Leeds

Newly expanded and revised, this is the perfect book to give that insatiable Vonnegut fan in your life, if only to shut them up. (Pairs well with Ginger Strand’s recent double biography, The Brothers Vonnegut.)

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9. The Art of Archer by Neal Holman

If you love Archer, then, first of all, what’s wrong with you, second, let’s be friends, and finally, this is a pretty great book. Not only for the backstories and the Japanese hentai porn featuring Archer characters (yep), but mostly for the layer-by-layer analysis of how they build the visuals for the show. It’s pretty amazing.

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10. Horace and Agnes: A Love Story by Lynn Dowling

This book is a photo essay about a horse and a squirrel who fall in love, using real people with large plastic masks to portray the various characters. I don’t know. Sometimes Christmas takes a weird turn.

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