Don’t know what to get your significant other this Christmas or New Year? Get them a book. You can never go wrong with that. But people have varied interests and tastes and the kind of writing that appeals to one might not to another. So, The Week has readied a list of books keeping just that in mind.

For the adventurous soul
Wonderlust: A Spiritual Travelogue for the Adventurous Soul
By Vicki Kuyper

Wonderlust contains 30 spiritual travelogues of the author’s adventurous journeys around the globe that include everything from hiking along the Inca trail to riding a dogsled across the Arctic tundra.  For a wanderer with a curious mind, this is a great work to ponder over something more than just places and people and question a higher mystery as well, as they embark on their journey. Each chapter is a mini journey that stretches across seven states, 15 countries, and five continents. A personal journey section is included for personal reflection and journaling.

For the business-minded 
The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan
By Sebastian Mallaby

Sebastian Mallaby’s biography of Alan Greenspan is the result of over five years of research based on untrammeled access to his subject and his closest professional and personal intimates. It brings to focus the mysterious point where the government and the economy meet. A careful biographer, Mallaby is particularly effective in debunking the conventional view that Greenspan – an acolyte, in his youth, of the libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand – was a free-market ideologue who was blinkered to the risks of financial instability and reflexively opposed to all financial regulation. A must read for the significant other who’s into intensive researches and aspirations.

For the beautiful philosopher
The Republic
By Plato

Presented in the form of dialogue between Socrates and three different interlocutors, this classic text is an enquiry into the notion of a perfect community and the ideal individual within it. Plato is an exquisite poet and craftsman. There is nothing accidental about what he writes; there is nothing superfluous. Even the minutest seeming points are there for good reason. Part of the joy of reading Plato for the third, fourth, fifth time is to see each time a bit more about what he is doing and why he is doing it, to come closer to appreciating his extraordinary genius and encountering ever more deeply this incredible mind.

For the romantic at heart
Bared to You
By Sylvia Day

“He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I’d never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily.” – Lines that will definitely tug at your heartstrings.  If your other half is into the likes of 50 Shades of Grey, they will love Bared to You with the same intensity.

For fitness enthusiasts

Strong is the New Beautiful
By Lindsey Vonn

In Strong Is the New Beautiful, Lindsey lays out the never-before-seen training routines and her overall philosophy that have helped her become the best female skier in the world – tailored for women of all shapes and sizes. Lindsey backs up her fitness program with advice on what to eat and how to work out, and kicks readers into high-gear, helping bolster their self-confidence and build a better body image, with the tips and tricks she’s learned as a pro. She emphasizes getting strong over losing weight, and eating right over eating less. Vonn goes over her own challenges with dieting, unhealthy eating, body image insecurities, and almost career-ending injuries, and also cites research studies.

For the funny bones

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
By Bill Bryson

Like millions of his generational peers, Bill Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around his house and neighborhood with an old football jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel about his neck that served as his cape, leaping through tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing awful evildoers (and morons) in his head, as The Thunderbolt Kid. Warm and laugh-out-loud funny and full of his inimitable, pitch-perfect observations, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is perhaps the best book Bryson has ever written. It will enchant anyone who has ever been young.

 

For the dreamy soul

Kafka on the Shore
By Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home to escape a gruesome prophecy and to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and is now drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Murakami, besides writing touchingly about love, loneliness, and friendship, likes to blur the boundary between the real and the surreal – we are treated to such oddities as fish raining from the sky; a forest-dwelling pair of Imperial army soldiers who haven’t aged since WWII; and a hilarious cameo by fried chicken King Colonel Sanders.

For the curious soul
Why Do Men Have Nipples?
By Billy Goldberg and Mark Leyner

Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during a visit to the doctors but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. This book will answer all your hidden queries. Why does your head ache when you drink your milkshake too fast? Can you lose contact lenses inside your head forever? Why does asparagus make my pee smell? Why do old people grow hair on their ears? Compiled by Billy Goldberg, an emergency medicine physician, and Mark Leyner, Why Do Men Have Nipples? offers really funny but factual answers to some of the big questions about the oddities of our bodies.

 
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