Books Worth Gifting in 2023 (That Aren’t Celebrity Memoirs)

If you’ve got a family member with both a fascination for architecture and an adoration of classic sitcoms (we’ve all got one), they’ll love this book of illustrated floor plans by Inaki Aliste Lizarralde. From the iconic Brady Bunch staircase to the instantly recognizable purple door of the Friends apartment, Lizarralde crammed so, so many details into this little coffee table book, you’ll need more than a 30-minute block (with ad breaks) to explore them all. —Emily Palmer Heller

For the emo kid who wants to relive their glory days but has a mortgage and daycare bills to pay, this big book of essays and never-before-seen photos just might do the trick. Amy Fleisher Madden (who of Fiddler Records when she was just 16 years old) compiled the tome, which includes essays from emo legends like My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero and a forward by Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba. If you’re really generous, you’ll tuck a ticket to the When We Were Young festival into the spine. —EPH

Lee Friedlander started taking photos at 14. It is now 75 years later and he’s yet to stop. Being as prolific as long as he has been has resulted in the legendary street photographer putting out a couple books a year. Often, they’re organized by subject matter (for example: This year he put out a wonderful book exclusively made up of photographs of home exteriors). Framed, however, is different. Instead, the director Joel Coen was given free reign to use all of Friedlander’s work to tell whatever story he wanted, and Coen decided to focus on Frieldander’s idiosyncratic framing of images. Coen then does a masterful job sequencing the images, giving the flipping of pages a cinematic quality reminiscent of one of his films. Also Frances McDormand writes the afterward – isn’t that fun!? —Jesse David Fox

The best Twitter X account in comics isn’t run by an artist or a comic-book scribe but by academics who just really, really, really love Chris Claremont’s 16-year run on X-Men. His influential tenure at the X-books shook up the industry year after year and included memorable stories like “The Dark Phoenix Saga,� “Days of Future Past,� and “God Loves, Man Kills� — many of which inspired the franchise’s Hollywood adaptations. J. Andrew Deman’s book, which builds on the work of his @ClaremontRun account, analyzes Claremont’s plotting and rich character development throughout the run with meticulous charts, graphs, and close readings. If you were ever curious how much each X-Man talks or thinks on the page, Deman’s book has cataloged and applied it in an essay written with deep love and admiration. It’s the perfect complement for anyone looking to revisit Claremont’s run or read his enduring stories for the first time. —Eric Vilas-Boas

A fun litmus test I’ve started to do with people who have read Raw Dog is to ask them what section of the bookstore they would look for it in. Answers have included, but are not limited to: Comedy, Memoir, Culinary, Sociology, Travel, and “wherever Das Kapital is shelved.� None of those would be a wrong way of categorizing Jamie Loftus’s glorious piece of gonzo journalism, in which she and her then-boyfriend take a cross-country road trip dedicated to the book’s very namesake: the hot dog. This genre-bender manages to do the impossible: be an equally good read for hot dog lovers, hot dog haters, and even Independents! —Anusha Praturu

I know what you’re thinking, but I also know there’s a person in your life who would read 415 pages arguing that Shakespeare’s plays were not, in fact, written by the man from Stratford. Elizabeth Winkler caused a literary scandal when The Atlantic published her essay, “Was Shakespeare a Woman?� in 2019, outraging English scholars and compelling the magazine to publish a series of responses. Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies elegantly outlines the centuries(!) of doubt surrounding the authorship question and Winker’s own experience facing the wrath of the academic elite. Meticulously researched, reported, and structured, these literary feuds are pettier — and far more interesting — than anything Erin got pissy about on this season of RHONY. —Julie Kosin

The charming and knowledgeable Sohla El-Waylly brings all of her years of skill and experience in recipe development, writing, and practical advice to the weighty Start Here. The book is beautiful to look at, with a thoughtful internal layout that emphasizes large and explanatory pictures, and El-Waylly’s voice shines through in the thorough instructions. A must-have for anyone who was already a Sohla fan, and for anyone looking for a one-stop resource to excite them about being in the kitchen. — Roxana Hadadi

A24 is no stranger to putting out gorgeous screenplay books for its movies, but Stories from a Place Where All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is something more. With photos of the Mississippi residents and locations from the film, essays from director Raven Jackson, a forward by Kasi Lemmons and, yes, the full script, this is a book any cinephile would be happy to casually display on their coffee table during their Oscars watch party. —EPH

Vulture’s own Jesse David Fox wrote a book! Specifically a book about comedy, called Comedy Book. It’s essentially a how-to for engaging with the art form, with historical context and smart analysis (and, yes, jokes!) that seems more relevant by the day. Just consider this excerpt, written well before the New Yorker story about Hasan Minhaj’s tenuous relationship to truth in his act:

Truth is an impossible-to-achieve standard. What matters is the “search for truth,� as UnCabaret founder Beth Lapides explained to me, more than a “fait accompli, like, ‘This is THE TRUTH.’� The search does not have to be done selflessly, but it cannot be done selfishly. It cannot be done alone.

If you’ve got a comedy nerd in your life, they want this book. If you’ve got a loved one who insists that comedy has gotten too woke or that SNL hasn’t been funny since the ‘90s, they need this book. —EPH

In a year truly overloaded with comedy memoirs, Jo Firestone — one of the funniest comics alive on Earth — has self-published a book of her own. Ever the innovator, Firestone has done something totally unexpected with her contribution to the 2023 comedic literary scene, writing a steamy murder mystery novel that doubles as a reality TV send-up. It’s the perfect gift for a friend with a great sense of humor, or a lover, or a fan of shows like Love Island and Too Hot to Handle. Murder on Sex Island is currently ranked #1,525 in ‘Women Sleuths (Books)’ on Amazon … let’s pump up those numbers! —Rebecca Alter

To put it lightly, the MCU is having a bad year. So, if you still have some interest in how the huge machine works, in The Reign of Marvel Studios, Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales and Gavin Edwards so intricately map the beginnings of what’s now Kevin Feige’s media empire to the Disney+ era now. It’s a fascinating oral history that any Hollywood nerds in your immediate circle would love to dive into. —Savannah Salazar

If you’re hoping your loved one will take a break from thinking about the Roman Empire, look no further than this nonfiction tale of trouble on the high seas. When Great Britain’s HMS Wager set sail in 1741 during the War of Jenkins’ Ear (a real war we all knew about before this book), it was ill-prepared for its voyage. The warship needed extensive repairs and a large crew when good — and willing — sailors were in short supply. In hindsight, it’s not that surprising that the already perilous journey around Cape Horn to the Pacific proved to be disastrous. Author David Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Lost City of Z) fills this book with the extensive nautical details that are like catnip for certain history buffs, but the real feat of storytelling comes from Grann’s expert unspooling of the survivors’ competing narratives of the shipwreck and the harrowing events that came after. It’s a thrilling read that will leave you ready to play expert for Leo and Marty’s next big adaptation. —Tolly Wright

Filmmaker Sofia Coppola is nothing if not meticulous, and her Archive is a gorgeous compendium of all the inspirations, interests, and idiosyncrasies that make her films’ interiors so textured and characterized. The 488-page art book includes photographs, collages, annotated scripts, and various other behind-the-scenes keepsakes from Coppola’s directing career, from her first film, The Virgin Suicides, through this year’s Priscilla. Get it for the sad girl in your life. — RH