Books Ideas for HIM…
It’s that time of the year when people often are looking for recommendations on what books might be good to gift to a spouse, family member or close friend. I have received so many questions about what I might suggest buying for a husband, partner, boyfriend, dad or brother.
While I don’t like to generalize and everyone is different, I do find that what I like to read isn’t always what many of the male readers I know are interested in. So, if you are looking for some suggestions from some very different genres than I usually talk about here, this post is for you!
Meet Lucas!
My husband Lucas is a big reader but he also reads very different books from me. Last week I asked him if he might like to share what he has read this past year and some of his book recommendations. He was a little reluctant but I am persistent! He put this together the other night and I added the photos and book covers for your viewing pleasure!
Lucas as a Reader
Lucas has been a reader for as long as I have known him (the mid-2000s!). I remember when we were newly dating and I would first spend the night over at his house. I would borrow one of his James Patterson books to read before falling asleep as he always had a stack of them on his nightstand. I didn’t like the books very much, but I did appreciate that he loved reading too!
In 2009 we honeymooned in St. John USVI. Every day we would pack a lunch, drive to a different beach and then read, him in the sun and me in the shade. It was amazing! I am going to let him take over now to share more about himself as a reader…enjoy!
Introduction:
Let me start by saying that by no means am I a literary expert! I didn’t study literature or English in school and read the “classics” only because they were assigned. I do however enjoy reading. I read every night. Some nights it’s just 5-10 pages. Some nights it’s 40-50 pages…though those days are becoming rarer and rarer as our 9:30 PM bedtime sneaks up on us quickly with the kids staying up later now.
In fact, my motivation for sharing is partly (mostly) selfish. Perhaps “Gen the Bookworm “will be happy enough with my contributions to her blog that she’ll put her book down for a while…
Gen hoped that I could provide a different perspective on titles and authors that would be different from her mostly female readers and sharers. While I passed on an official “what’s on your nightstand series” post, Gen thought that perhaps I could provide some ideas for books that could be given to a husband or boyfriend or father as the holidays approach.
Hard Copy Books to a Kindle
Prior to receiving a Kindle as a birthday gift a couple years ago I mostly stuck with the same few authors. I’d wait until Dan Brown or John Grisham or David Baldacci (to name a few) came out with a new book and purchase the hardcover, read it, and then wait until the next book was published by one of my favorite authors. My father and I would trade books back and forth as we both enjoy the same authors.
Once I switched to reading on a Kindle (I was VERY hesitant to use a digital reader and now I read on it almost exclusively) I discovered some wonderful new authors. Utilizing the Libby App also helped me broaden the scope of the authors that I read. Often the wait times on the Libby app are quite long for newer releases by popular authors. In turn, I found that wonderful, entertaining books could be borrowed with no wait times.
Dan Brown
It also helped me to read titles from popular authors that are maybe less well known/received. (By the way, the best Dan Brown novel is a NON-Robert Langdon story. While I did enjoy Angels and Demons, The DaVinci Code, The Lost Symbol, etc., my favorite Dan Brown novel is Deception Point. I’ve read it at least a half a dozen times).
Vince Flynn
I discovered Vince Flynn recently and am working my way through as many of his titles as I can. Red War, Order to Kill, The Last Man…any of the counter-terrorism operative Mitch Rapp novels are fantastic. And you don’t have to read them in order to follow along. The Mitch Rapp character is a stone-cold bad-ass and I can’t recommend those novels highly enough!
Robert Crais
I’ve also enjoyed a couple Robert Crais novels recently. I especially enjoyed L.A. Requiem. The two Crais novels I’ve read center on private investigators Elvis Cole and Joe Pike and both were great reads.
Michael Connelly and Clive Cussler
I’ve read the Harry Bosch novels by Michael Connelly for years. I like some of Clive Cussler’s books…particularly the NUMA Files and Oregon Files novels (Devil’s Gate and Skeleton Coast were good).
Michael Crichton
Regarding lesser-known titles from popular authors…certainly most folks have either seen or read one of the many Jurassic Park adaptations, but I found Pirate Latitudes to be entertaining. It was kind of cheesy and far-fetched, but it was a perfect vacation read from our recent family trip this fall.
Archer Mayor…also a fellow Vermonter!
The Archer Mayor, Joe Gunther novels are good reads (I read Tag Man most recently and am waiting for my dad to finish his newest novel Bomber’s Moon). And Archer Mayor is from Vermont!
Tom Clancy
I’ve always enjoyed Tom Clancy and am currently reading Command Authority. Though the new Amazon Prime series “Jack Ryan” is affecting my enjoyment of both the book and the show…I NEVER pictured CIA operative Jack Ryan as John Krasinski!
Non-Fiction
Most of my reading is fiction. The occasional non-fiction titles I read are typically auto-biographies by an athlete or musician that I am fond of, however, after watching Chernobyl on HBO (which I HIGHLY recommend…even though this is a book blog!) I read Voices from Chernobyl.
It was incredibly powerful and moving, and also obviously sad and emotional. It is based on the author’s interviews of over 500 “eyewitnesses” that were involved with the victims, clean-up, medical care of victims, etc in the years following the Chernobyl disaster.
(I was also recently gifted The Boats in the Boat and I have that on my reading list.)
Hopefully, this is helpful! While I’ll still purchase new releases from my favorite authors, I’m happy to have stumbled upon authors that I’d previously never read.
And bad news loyal readers…the bookworm was already asleep when I went upstairs 🙁
I told Lucas I would let him write whatever he wanted and I would just copy and paste it…so I hope you enjoyed his recommendations, and his humor! 😉
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