2025 Bossy Holiday Book Ideas for Your Gift List
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 24 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Bossy Book Gift Ideas
Each year I offer lists of Bossy book gift ideas for the holidays, including a number of books I'll personally be giving as gifts (if you're on my gift list, please avert your eyes!). This is the only time I post about books I may not have read: promising reads for particular people in my family and circle of friends.
The books here were all published in 2025, so it's their first appearance on my site. I hope you find a book or two in these lists to delight someone you love--or to give to yourself!
You can also check my past Bossy gift idea lists (linked below) for quirky books, perennial classics, modern favorites, nonfiction must-haves, or other titles that might be perfect for the people on your holiday list!
2024 Bossy Book Gift Guides
2023 Bossy Book Gift Guides
2022 Bossy Book Gift Guides
2021 Bossy Book Gift Guides
2020 Bossy Book Gift Guides
Bossy Independent Bookstore Love
A Bossy book-buying note: If you're buying books this holiday season, please support your local independent bookstore. They need and appreciate our business! (The book covers on Bossy Bookworm link you to Bookshop, a site that supports the beloved indies that keep us swimming in thoughtful book recommendations and excellent customer service all year round.)
I love my local independent bookstore, Park Road Books. They have a fantastic selection of titles, staff members offer spot-on recommendations (and sparkling personalities!), and they can order almost anything they don't have in stock. If you're local, please give them a try.
For the Bird Lover
01 Bird Talk: Hilariously Accurate Ways to Identify Birds by the Sounds They Make by Becca Rowland
I have multiple bird lovers on my gift list--and if you look through past Bossy gift lists you'll find other great bird-related titles.
Bird Talk offers 101 bird songs accompanied by fun, informative ways to link a sound to a specific bird and remember it. Whether a bird sounds like a kettle whistling, a truck beeping as it backs up, or as though it is calling "cheeseburger, cheeseburger," Rowland lets you know which common or rare bird you're hearing.
Author Becca Rowland is also the book's illustrator.
Bonus: I'm also giving this book recipient the game Bird Call, which is described as a lively and delightfully absurd five-minute party game for three to eight players.
For the Fan of Five-Star Novels
02 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
This quiet, epistolary novel witnesses the creaky, sometimes difficult shifts and realizations that a septuagenarian achieves around her health, children, past secrets, friendship, romantic relationships, and previously unknown blood relatives near the end of her life.
It's lovely to witness main protagonist Sybil as she slowly allows herself to face the past, addressing difficult issues in the present, and allowing for surprising adventures in her life. The Correspondent offers messy, imperfect characters in often difficult situations, and they find their way through by changing and growing.
This was a rare five-star Bossy read for me. You can find my full review here, and you can find other five-star Bossy reviews here.
For the Teen (or Grown) Sports Fan
03 Expensive Basketball by Shea Serrano
I mentioned Shea Serrano's book Basketball (And Other Things) in a past gift list, and it's a title my teens have loved, along with Movies (And Other Things) and Hip-Hop (And Other Things), which are all big hits around here.
Serrano's Expensive Basketball explores iconic moments from the world of basketball, particularly those that can't be quantified or expressed through statistics.
From "The Final 196 seconds of Kobe Bryant's Career" to "Shaq's Three-Year Path of Destruction"; and from "The Sue Bird Backpedal" to "The Twelve Iconic Game 7s" and much more, Serrano uses wit and helpful obsession to explore pivotal players and points in history.
I noticed that one review claimed "all of the chapters are bangers," so I think this is going to be a success.
The book features original illustrations by Ian Klarer.
For the Tween Mystery Fan
04 The Midwatch Institute for Wayward Girls by Judith Rossell
Along with The Egypt Game and The Westing Game, two classic favorites from my own childhood that I push on preteen readers whenever I get the chance, I'll be giving a certain someone this 2025 title, described as "a whimsical, adventure-filled mystery about a young orphan at the edge of society who finds herself at the center of a city's secrets."
Maggie Fishbone finds herself at The Midwatch Institute, an orphanage where she expects to meet a bleak existence. But the place is filled with young ladies solving mysteries, protecting the city, and fighting bad guys.
Judith Rossell is also the author of the Stella Montgomery series.
For the History Lover
05 Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough
I have a personal interest in Viking stories, so I was intrigued by the sound of Eleanor Barraclough's nonfiction Embers of the Hands.
Barraclough examines artifacts such as "remnants of wooden gaming boards, elegant antler combs, doodles by imaginative children and bored teenagers, and runes that reveal hidden loves, furious curses, and drunken spouses summoned home from the pub" to extrapolate about everyday life in medieval Nordic lands, asserting that our idea of ruthless, roaming warriors is that of a minority of Vikings.
Barraclough is also the author of Imagining the Spiritual North and Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas.
For the Music Lover
06 Heartbreaker: A Memoir by Mike Campbell
I'm a fan of memoirs, particularly musicians' memoirs, and I'm excited to read Mike Campbell's Heartbreaker--and to give it to a music lover on my gift list.
Heartbreaker is described as "a fast-paced, tender-hearted rock ’n’ roll memoir for the ages, Mike Campbell’s Heartbreaker is part rags-to-riches story and part raucous, seat-of-the-pants adventure, recounting Campbell’s life and times as lead guitarist of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers."
For what it's worth, this title currently has 4.7 of 5 stars on Goodreads, one of the highest ratings I've seen.