More 2025 Bossy Book Ideas for Your Holiday Gift List
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 3 days 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.
As in my book list from last week, the books here were all published in 2025, so it's their first appearance on my site. I hope you find a book 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!
2025 Bossy Book Gift Guides
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 Info Geek
01 Phenomena: An Infographic Guide to Almost Everything by Camille Juzeau
Colorful, contemporary illustrations on 124 topics shape this intriguing, modern version of an encyclopedia perfect for infographic fans.
Anchored in scientific research, Phenomena explores a wide range of scientific, historical, and cultural subjects that overlap and blend into one another, creating a loose narrative around the visual representations.
The striking book makes accessible topics ranging from dinosaur size to the wonder of fireflies, from the mysteries of the Big Bang to the anatomy of snowflakes, from permafrost to the history of yoga, and from magnificent maps of animal migrations to space pollution, Phenomena can be explored alone in short bursts or exclaimed over in a group.
For the Empty Nesters or Grandparents
02 A Meal for Two: Recipes to Treat Your Favorite People by Emily Ezekiel
Whether the cook is offering a nourishing meal to a best friend, parent, roommate, or partner, A Meal for Two's offerings range from quick, 15-minute recipes (Crispy Gnocchi with Corn, Ricotta & Spinach, or Cheeseburger Tacos) to a slightly more involved situation (Schnitzel with Kohlrabi Slaw or Vodka Gochujang pasta), to more fancy weekend endeavors (Spicy Makhani Paneer Curry & Fresh Parathas), plus desserts and drinks for two, and tips for leftovers.
The 95 recipes can inspire a reader learning to cook for a new person in their life, an empty nester reshaping mealtimes, or someone cozied in on a Saturday for an elaborate dinner.
For the Janeite or Gilded Age Fan
03 Jane Austen's Fashion Bible by Ros Ballaster
This year marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth, and I've loved the many Jane tributes and renewed attention for the author.
Jane Austen's Fashion Bible showcases color illustrations from Regency magazine La Belle Assemblée and are paired with passages from Austen's novels such as Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma: "From elaborate evening gowns and elegant walking dresses to charming seaside outfits, Jane Austen's Fashion Bible brings to life the world of Jane Austen."
Ros Ballaster is a writer and a professor at Oxford University who focuses on eighteenth-century literature and is an expert on Jane Austen.
For the Coulda-Been-a-Marine-Biologist or Coffee Table Book Fanatic
04 Wild Ocean: A Journey to the Earth's Last Wild Coasts by Peter and Beverly Pickford
I was recently at a Favorite Things party where a coffee table book was the focus of sanctioned stealing. It was a book of beautiful tennis courts around the world and a tennis-playing crowd, but I think a beautiful coffee table book is a widely coveted item. Beauty and luxury, thick pages, and the secrets another world inside--who could resist?
The acclaimed photographers who created this startlingly beautiful book first spent four years researching, documenting, and exploring coastal habitats, capturing areas of largely untouched oceans and adjoining coastlines and between them, where most marine life exists.
For the Mystery and Puzzle Lover
05 You are the Detective: The Creeping Hand Murder by Maureen Johnson and Jay Cooper
November 1933. London. Seven people receive mysterious letters. Someone knows their terrible secrets. They are summoned to a posh townhouse where one is stabbed right in front of the others, but somehow no one saw a thing. Can you help Scotland Yard solve the mystery?
This interactive locked-room mystery allows readers to identify the murderer in a grisly crime, after considering various suspects, reading police interviews, viewing crime scene illustrations, and studying newspaper clippings.
Maureen Johnson is also the author of Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village (a book I mentioned in a previous gift list), as well as the young adult Truly Devious mystery series (here's a link to my review of book five, with links to each of the prior installments) and other novels.
For the Biology Major or Science Buff
06 Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach
Mary Roach is smart, curious, funny, and simply the best at taking a scientific topic and diving in, bringing a reader along for a strange, sometimes stomach-turning, always fascinating ride.
In Replaceable You, Roach explores the evolving, advancing science of body part replacements, venturing into a burn unit in Boston, a xeno-pigsty in China, and a stem cell "hair nursery" in San Diego; spending time with an iron lung from the 1950s; and traveling across Mongolia with cataract surgeons. She interviews "researchers and surgeons, amputees and ostomates, printers of kidneys and designers of wearable organs."
Mary Roach is also the author of other nonfiction works, including Grunt, Stiff, and, most recently, Fuzz.