Book gift guide

Sex, satire, fashion, food and literature: Nice and naughty books for everyoneon your list

The Story of O by Pauline Réage
Grace: A Memoir by Grace Coddington
Building Stories by Chris Ware
Hugo Ortega’s Street Food of Mexico
Photo by Penny de los Santos
Marie Lu's Legend series
America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't by Stephen Colbert
Salt Lick Cookbook by Jessica Dupuy and Scott Roberts

With only a few days left for holiday shopping, we at CultureMap would like to offer a happy medium between fighting the frenzy at NorthPark and just giving up and throwing gift cards at loved ones. How about a nice book?

The well-selected, gifted book literally and sometimes literarily tells a story to the receiver and can send many messages. I love you. I know you so well. I understand what you like. Please stop trying to force me to read 50 Shades of Grey.

Without further ado, here is the CultureMap definitive, but completely random, book gift guide.

Movie lover
For the movie lover who’s just not into books, let him know Hollywood is with a gift basket filled with The Life of Pi, Cloud Atlas, Les Misérables (the book turned musical, turned movie), Anna Karenina, Jack Reacher, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and The Hobbit. Do readers' imaginations project at 48 frames per second or 24?

Contemporary lit reader
For the contemporary literary reader with shelves of signed copies and tales of meeting authors, pick up Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue.

Teen reader
If instead you’re shopping for a teen reader who wants to get into the next big series before the rest of the world flocks to the obligatory movie, we suggest the Legend series by Marie Lu, who used to call Sugar Land home. In this post-apocalyptic novel, the main character, a teen, is slated to become an assassin. Things get nutty when she is sent to kill a boy who may have killed her brother.

Food lover
Need a gift for a foodie who always buys locally? Try a cookbook by a favorite Texas chef. Hugo Ortega’s Street Food of Mexico is not only filled with his favorite recipes, but he also includes personal stories to savor with each dish. An equally good idea is the Salt Lick Cookbook by CultureMap Austin dining editor Jessica Dupuy.

Fashionista
If that fashionista in your life loves the behind-the-scenes drama of the industry as much as the clothes, find some sophisticated gift wrap for Grace: A Memoir by Grace Coddington, the woman who managed to steal the spotlight from Anna Wintour in not one but two documentaries about Vogue.

Hipster satire-lover
Give the gift of historical irony to your favorite hipster satire-lover by pairing Stephen Colbert’s latest, America Again: Re-becoming the Greatness We Never Weren't, with some ancient school Gulliver’s Travels. Because if Jonathan Swift were alive today, he’d no doubt have his own Super PAC.

Bibliophile
For the bibliophile who refuses to buy an e-reader and is looking for validation, we like Chris Ware’s Building Stories, an oversized box of 27 different booklets, each with a different point of view. It is a book to wade through rather than read start to finish.

Lovable Luddite
And if that lovable Luddite reader is raising little ones, we recommend In My Den by Sara Gillingham, because you can’t download the felt finger puppet that comes with the board book and then poke it through a Kindle.

Future forecaster
For the gambler, baseball stats lover or fortune-teller in your life, let he or she know that the future can sometimes be forecast with The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail but Some Don't, the new book by this nation’s recently chosen math-nerd-in-chief, Nate Silver.

An alternative to 50 Shades of Grey
And, finally, for that sweet, budding-sadist friend who won’t stop insisting you have to read 50 Shades of Grey, try giving her The Story of O by Pauline Reage, described as a story of love and submission. It won the French literary prize in 1954, the year it was originally published, and it has been in print ever since. Another option is Exit to Eden, Anne Rice’s S&M romance written under her pseudonym, Anne Rampling.

If those suggestions don’t send the message, throw a hardback copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer at your best friend's head. Carrie Fisher would approve.

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Movie Review

Michelle Pfeiffer is an unappreciated mom in Oh. What. Fun.

Photo courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios

Michelle Pfeiffer in Oh. What. Fun.

Of all the formulaic movie genres, Christmas/holiday movies are among the most predictable. No matter what the problem is that arises between family members, friends, or potential romantic partners, the stories in holiday movies are designed to give viewers a feel-good ending even if the majority of the movie makes you feel pretty bad.

That’s certainly the case in Oh. What. Fun., in which Michelle Pfeiffer plays Claire, an underappreciated mom living in Houston with her inattentive husband, Nick (Denis Leary). As the film begins, her three children are arriving back home for Christmas: The high-strung Channing (Felicity Jones) is married to the milquetoast Doug (Jason Schwartzman); the aloof Taylor (Chloë Grace Moretz) brings home yet another new girlfriend; and the perpetual child Sammy (Dominic Sessa) has just broken up with his girlfriend.

Each of the family members seems to be oblivious to everything Claire does for them, especially when it comes to what she really wants: For them to nominate her to win a trip to see a talk show in L.A. hosted by Zazzy Tims (Eva Longoria). When she accidentally gets left behind on a planned outing to see a show, Claire reaches her breaking point and — in a kind of Home Alone in reverse — she decides to drive across the country to get to the show herself.

Written and directed by Michael Showalter (The Idea of You), and co-written by Chandler Baker (who wrote the short story on which the film is based), the movie never establishes any kind of enjoyable rhythm. Each of the characters, including competitive neighbor Jeanne (Joan Chen), is assigned a character trait that becomes their entire personality, with none of them allowed to evolve into something deeper.

The filmmakers lean hard into the idea that Claire is a person who always puts her family first and receives very little in return, but the evidence presented in the story is sketchy at best. Every situation shown in the film is so superficial that tension barely exists, and the (over)reactions by Claire give her family members few opportunities to make up for their failings.

The most interesting part of the movie comes when Claire actually makes it to the Zazzy Sims show. Even though what happens there is just as unbelievable as anything else presented in the story, Showalter and Baker concoct a scene that allows Claire and others to fully express the central theme of the film, and for a few minutes the movie actually lives up to its title.

Pfeiffer, given her first leading role since 2020’s French Exit, is a somewhat manic presence, and her thick Texas accent and unnecessary voiceover don’t do her any favors. It seems weird to have such a strong supporting cast with almost nothing of substance to do, but almost all of them are wasted, including Danielle Brooks in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo. The lone exception is Longoria, who is a blast in the few scenes she gets.

Oh. What. Fun. is far from the first movie to try and fail at becoming a new holiday classic, but the pedigree of Showalter and the cast make this dismal viewing experience extra disappointing. Ironically, overworked and underappreciated moms deserve a much better story than the one this movie delivers.

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Oh. What. Fun. is now streaming on Prime Video.

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