Connected Dots Holiday Gift Guide
Giving season has arrived! Are you looking for something to surprise and delight your loved ones? Whether you’re shopping for an artist or a poet, a gardener or a cook, we have ideas for you: books we’ve worked hard on, books we love, books that will bring joy and wonder to the special people in your life.
For the Artist and Poet
Wonder Walls
Where others see a blank wall—or ceiling or floor—Roxy Prima and Phoebe Cornog, the masterminds behind Pandr Design Co., see possibilities. Over the past five years, Phoebe and Roxy have painted more than 225 vibrant, eye-catching murals, from Atlanta to Albuquerque, Pennsylvania to Puerto Rico. Now, the pair are sharing their tips, tricks, and techniques for approaching your own blank walls in Wonder Walls, a friendly how-to guide, full of inspiration for transforming any space from one-note to wondrous. To learn more about the book—and why murals make us happy—check out our interview with Phoebe and Roxy. Then, pick up a copy of their book for your favorite artist (or yourself!).
Find the book here.
The Joy of Watercolor and Get Started with Gouache
Remember, as a kid, the simple delight of sitting down to paint, to draw, to color, to create? The joy of bringing something from your imagination to life on the page? Emma Block believes that, no matter how old you are, you can find that joy again. That’s what inspired the multidisciplinary illustrator, whose work has appeared in books and magazines, on textiles and even atop brownies, to write The Joy of Watercolor, a delightful book featuring “40 happy lessons for painting the world around you.” Two years later, Emma followed The Joy of Watercolor with Get Started with Gouache, a primer on the underrated medium. Check out our interview with Emma to learn more about the books, and where she finds her own inspiration. Her books are sure to have you looking at the world with fresh eyes.
Find The Joy of Watercolor here and Get Started with Gouache here.
Love Found
“Poetry,” William Wordsworth wrote, “is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” Little wonder, then, that the world is full of poems about that most ardent feeling of all: love. Like love itself, these poems appear everywhere, in all forms and fashions, colors and textures. We love a great love poem and, recently, we worked with Jessica Strand to collect 50 of our favorites—poems we’ve kept, poems we’ve memorized, poems we’ve read again and again—into a beautifully illustrated anthology, Love Found. In its pages, you’ll find the wondrous words of master poets such as Pablo Neruda and Percy Shelley, E.E. Cummings and Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams and William Shakespeare. It’s the perfect gift for your favorite poet, favorite person, or favorite romantic.
Find the book here.
For the Gardener
Cut Flower Garden, A Year in Flowers, and Discovering Dahlias
Erin Benzakein, the farmer-florist behind Floret Flowers, still remembers dropping off her first flower delivery, a jar of sweet peas. Her customer was so moved by the flowers’ scent—and the memories they aroused—that Erin decided in that moment to devote her life to making other people’s lives more beautiful with flowers. She built out her flower farm, cultivating acres and acres of creamy peach roses and pale-pink zinnias, dip-dyed anemones and vivid-hued dahlias. To help others create their own dream gardens, Erin wrote a book packed with tips on planting, cultivating, and harvesting blooms: Cut Flower Garden. She followed that book with A Year in Flowers, a guide to creating stunning seasonal arrangements, and Discovering Dahlias, a primer on growing and arranging the beloved flower—one of her very favorites. Pick up Erin’s books, and start daydreaming. Oh, the blooms you’ll grow!
Find Cut Flower Garden here, A Year in Flowers here, and Discovering Dahlias here.
The Art of Wearable Flowers
A bodice crafted entirely out of delicate snow-white blooms. A bow tie made of succulents. An otherworldly floral “tattoo” comprised of pansies, tillandsias, and tiny green berries. Florist Susan McLeary’s living creations look like nothing you’ve ever seen, a wondrous marriage of floristry and fashion. But the Michigan-based creative isn’t just passionate about crafting living art pieces using flowers and foliage. She also loves teaching others to harness the magic of flowers and, last year, she published a book to help readers create their own ephemeral masterpieces: The Art of Wearable Flowers. Gift a copy of the book to the fashionable flower lover in your life, then marvel at their creations.
Find the book here.
The Flower Workshop and Seasonal Flower Arranging
Ariella Chezar talks about flowers the way a chef talks about ingredients: with passion, feeling, and a deep understanding of their every nuance. Out of that love and reverence come her lush, foraged arrangements: living artworks that transform a space into something more, something magical. Ariella tapped into that passion and expertise to create two inspiration-packed books on floral design: The Flower Workshop and Seasonal Flower Arranging. Illustrated with full-color photos, these volumes give step-by-step instructions for creating stunning floral tableaux of your own. You’ll never see flowers the same way again.
Find The Flower Workshop here and Seasonal Flower Arranging here.
For the Cook
Mochi Magic
We like to think of mochi as a sort of choose-your-own adventure food. After all, depending on how you prepare and serve the Japanese treat, it can be savory or sweet, and you can mold the chewy rice dough into almost any shape you like! Kaori Becker loves mochi so much that, in 2016, she and her mother, Yukiko, started teaching mochi-making classes. Those courses became so popular, Kaori was inspired to create Mochi Magic, a beautifully photographed guide to making mochi treats of your own, from bacon-wrapped mochi to mochi brownies and cupcakes. To learn more about the book—and why playing with mochi is a lot like playing with Play-Doh—check out our interview with Kaori. Then, pick up a copy of Mochi Magic, and start making magic of your own.
Find Mochi Magic here.
Feed Your People
My family has a tradition, each year, of throwing a vodka and latke party, where we bring friends and family together for a night of good food and good cheer. Hosting these parties, I’ve come to realize, as others who’ve attended big, beautiful gatherings have, that nothing brings people together quite like gathering around a table, over a meal. In that spirit, I called chefs, grandmas, and cookbook authors, and collected their big-batch recipes into a book: Feed Your People. Illustrated with gorgeous photos and packed with tips and tricks for feeding a crowd, the book features recipes from such big-hearted chefs as Alice Waters, Preeti Mistry, Bryant Terry, Angelo Garro, Tanya Holland, and Gonzalo Guzman. We hope you’ll pick up a copy, and get inspired to feed your people this year.
Find Feed Your People here.
Simply Ramen
Is there anything more comforting than a piping hot bowl of ramen? The rich, umami broth, the slurpable noodles, the fresh vegetables and, on top, that perfectly soft-cooked egg? Learn to make scratch ramen yourself, with Simply Ramen as your expert guide. Written by Amy Kimoto-Kahn, a fourth-generation Japanese-American and a graduate of the Miyajima Ramen School in Osaka, Japan, this friendly book provides a complete course in making ramen at home—whether you’re cooking for one or for 12. Recipes are categorized by difficulty, so you’ll know what to tackle first. We especially love the spicy tofu ramen and the California ramen, a spin on the California roll featuring crabmeat, avocado, and cucumber.
Find the book here.
Black Food
With a cover featuring massive, vivid-hued letters atop a black background, Black Food immediately makes you stop and take notice. Dive in, and you’ll find the whole book is equally captivating: a heartfelt tribute to Black culinary ingenuity that weaves together essays, recipes, poetry, and art into a joyful celebration of Black foodways. Edited by James Beard award-winning chef Bryant Terry, Black Food includes both well-loved favorites and fresh takes, from BJ Dennis’s Okra and Shrimp Purloo to Jenné Claiborne’s Sweet Potato Pie. We can’t wait to cook our way through this book, while swaying to the tunes on the accompanying playlist, curated by Bryant himself.
Find the book here.
Vietnamese Cooking Any Day
Andrea Nguyen has been honored with the James Beard award (for The Pho Cookbook) and the IACP Cookbook Award (for Unforgettable, a biography cookbook about Paula Wolfert that she edited). The Vietnamese-American author has also been recognized with another intriguing accolade: in 2009, Slate.com honored her as a great “recipe detective,” for her special skills in translating foreign flavors for American cooks. Recently, Nguyen put those recipe detective skills to work, writing Vietnamese Food Any Day. In this welcoming cookbook, she lays out easy-to-follow instructions for creating delicious Vietnamese dishes, from bahn mi to Vibrant Turmeric Coconut Rice, at home—using ingredients that are readily available at national supermarkets. Pick up a copy, and find out why the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR named the book as one of the best cookbooks of 2019.
Find the book here.
Bottom of the Pot
What, exactly, does home taste like, to you? For years, Naz Deravian has been searching for that very taste in her own kitchen. Naz, born in Iran, fled with her family during the Iranian Revolution at age 8. She grew up in Rome and Vancouver, before settling in Los Angeles as an adult. Once there, she craved the dishes she had grown up eating: the bowls of hearty aash, steaming pomegranate and walnut chicken, and tahdig, crispy Persian rice. Naz called her mom to get the recipe for tahdig, pencil and notebook in hand, and, from there, she found her way back home through the kitchen, documenting her experiences through her blog. That blog fed into the creation of Bottom of the Pot, a heartfelt book of recipes and essays exploring the idea of home. Pick up Naz’s beautiful, generous book, and cook up a bountiful Persian meal for your loved ones.
Find the book here.
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