By now, I’m really sweating.  Not because I’ve just completed a spectacular hike or am on vacation on a tropical beach, but because there is less than a week until Christmas, and I still have a TON of shopping to do.  Ah, procrastination.

I have some friends with whom I agree to exchange books for Christmas.  It’s nice because there’s a general price limit without setting a specific limit, and it’s always fun to get books and give books as gifts.  It’s also nice because those mega-bookstores are decent places to go in a desperate fit of last-minute shopping…they do a pretty great job of displaying books that you can spot and grab and be done with it…  In honor of that, here is Her Side’s final (and desperate) gift guide of the season:

Holiday Gift Guide #3

Gifts for your bookworm friends…or for yourself.

Daily Coyote.  Shreve Stockton.  On the “Related Ramblings” tab, and again in an earlier post, I talked a little about Shreve Stockton, who moved to Wyoming on a whim, accidentally adopted a coyote pup, and is now raising him.  The blog is great, but the book is also great.  It’s a good, quick read, with beautiful photographs.  Yes, I’ve given this as a gift.  It was well received.

Desert Solitaire: A Season In the Wilderness.  Edward Abbey.  This is Abbey’s best work, in my opinion — a tale of his time as a ranger at Arches National Park, at a time when Arches was more…primitive…than it is today.  This book inspired me to love the desert.

My Side of the Mountain.  Jean Craighead George.  This blog got its name (you didn’t know this, did you?) from this children’s book (middle grade?) about a boy named Sam who runs away from home to the Catskill Mountains, lives in a hollowed-out tree, and becomes friends with a falcon and a weasel.  Everyone loves a good runaway story — particularly those of us with wanderlust — and this book will make you want to try to live in a tree yourself.

On the Road.  Jack Kerouac.  So it’s kind of self-indulgent, rambling, and chaotic.  Sometimes it’s engrossing, sometimes boring.  But you know what?  So is a road trip.  This is kind of an essential, and a classic, which means that one will either love it or hate it.  Why not at least give it a try?

Down the Great Unknown.  Edward Dolnick.  In 1869, a slightly obsessed one-armed man named John Wesley Powell led a crew on what was essentially a rafting expedition down the Colorado River and into the Grand Canyon.  It wasn’t easy; the choice of watercraft wasn’t great, the supplies didn’t last, and it was harrowing.  But the tale is incredible, and this book tells it well.

My Book.  I haven’t written one yet, but I might, and when I do, you should definitely give it as a gift to everyone you know.   Right?  Who’s on board?