Gift Books

If you're just shifting into shopping gear and in a quandary as to what the fashionable woman or man on your list might want, head for a bookstore. Some wonderful books dealing with fashion and style have been published this year and here's a look at my favorites:"Jewels of Fantasy: Costume Jewelry of the 20th Century"Edited by Deanna Farneti Cera ($85, Harry Abrams)The price is steep, but not as steep as the value of many of the pieces inside this book, which will please any lover of baubles.

As a 2004 Olympian and national sailing champion, Carol Cronin knows a thing or two about wind. The Bethesda native was named for the Category 3 storm that rearranged part of the East Coast landscape from North Carolina to Maine in 1954. But that's not how she came to write her first book, Oliver's Surprise, about a young boy and the Great Hurricane of 1938. The story was a Christmas gift last year for her 11-year-old nephew that downsized to become a paperback. More about that later.

President and Mrs. Clinton might not be popular in every American home, but their newly redecorated White House quarters clearly are in fashion, if one can judge by several works about Victorian taste likely to be among the bounty of new gift books collectors will be unwrapping this holiday season. (Home libraries are fashionable again, thanks in part to the first family.)Victorian America"Victorian America: Classical Romanticism to Gilded Opulence," by Wendell Garrett, edited by David Larkin (Rizzoli, $65)

Whoops. Only four days till "Christmas Day" and you still "... Need a Little Christmas" -- perhaps even "A New Deal for Christmas"? Or, maybe you're afraid it'll be a "Hard Candy Christmas" because you can't find the right gift for your friend, the theater junkie, the one who can identify the shows these song titles are from. (For everyone else, the answers are below). Here are some suggestions: Photographer Howard Schatz's stunning coffee-table book, In Character: Actors Acting (Bulfinch Press, $50)

Have yourself a merry little Christmas -- and a merry big book. We all desire a charming combination of beauty and brains to enjoy during the holidays, so in lieu of (or in addition to!) that special person, check out one of these gift books. At their best, they combine scholarship with elegance, and should do good things to your head as well as your coffee table.Fine artBooks of drawings usually don't boast the dazzle characteristic of the biggest, brightest holiday art books. Instead of color and gloss, they offer subtle grays and sepias and tasteful matte pages.

'Tis a few weeks before Christmas and wherever one looks, gift items are calling, including some books. The authors are hoping buyers will appear, to snatch up their stories now that the season is here. There are memoirs and memories, warm fuzzies galore, there are mothers and misers and helping the poor. All have happy endings, all are packaged up neat, for a last-minute gift or a treasure to keep. And now comes John Snyder with a keepsake to share, about a golden ring and a young girl who cared.

Choral society to present 32nd Christmas concert The Carroll County Choral Society, under the direction of Herb Sell, will present its 32nd annual Christmas concert at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow and Tuesday at Westminster High School. The program, "Holiday Joy," will feature "Mary, Did You Know?" "Sweet Little Jesus Boy," "Go Tell It," "Caroling, Caroling," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and the Hallelujah Chorus. Concert accompanists will include Beverly Wells, Lew Keyser and Gary Mauck. An offering will be taken.

A Democrat triumphed -- at least on the best-seller list. Bill Clinton wrote the big book -- his fulsome autobiography -- of 2004. Bob Dylan weighed in on his own enigmatic existence and porn star Jenna Jameson bared herself -- in words, not just photos. Philip Roth imaged a nightmare America that cozied up to Adolf Hitler, and the 9/11 Commission's report on a real nightmare in America became an acclaimed best-seller. Tom Wolfe published a new novel, and critics thought it was a nightmare.

From time to time on these pages we pose a question, related to books, to two or three dozen smart people, and publish their answers. Today, on the page facing this one, there is a series of neat little stories about gift books that have had unusual impact. I hope they may aid and comfort our readers in this gift-choosing season.I am grateful to our respondents, busy people all, including Mayor Schmoke, with his generous-hearted citation.Searching my memory, I find I have given away so many books that no single miracle stands out. But I hope you find the others' answers helpful - more so than the endless holiday listings published by many newspapers and magazines.

"Sex" on the coffee table?Not in most households, we dare say. Besides, "Sex" -- Madonna's metal-bound, Mylar-sealed, media-hyped foray into the world of gift books -- seems to either bore or offend most people, so unless your Christmas list is filled with people like Aunt Sado and Uncle Masochism, you'll probably want some alternatives.Here are some of our picks from the scores of coffee-table books that come out this season. And most can be wrapped in holiday rather than plain brown paper.

A Democrat triumphed -- at least on the best-seller list. Bill Clinton wrote the big book -- his fulsome autobiography -- of 2004. Bob Dylan weighed in on his own enigmatic existence and porn star Jenna Jameson bared herself -- in words, not just photos. Philip Roth imaged a nightmare America that cozied up to Adolf Hitler, and the 9/11 Commission's report on a real nightmare in America became an acclaimed best-seller. Tom Wolfe published a new novel, and critics thought it was a nightmare.

'Tis a few weeks before Christmas and wherever one looks, gift items are calling, including some books. The authors are hoping buyers will appear, to snatch up their stories now that the season is here. There are memoirs and memories, warm fuzzies galore, there are mothers and misers and helping the poor. All have happy endings, all are packaged up neat, for a last-minute gift or a treasure to keep. And now comes John Snyder with a keepsake to share, about a golden ring and a young girl who cared.

Choral society to present 32nd Christmas concert The Carroll County Choral Society, under the direction of Herb Sell, will present its 32nd annual Christmas concert at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow and Tuesday at Westminster High School. The program, "Holiday Joy," will feature "Mary, Did You Know?" "Sweet Little Jesus Boy," "Go Tell It," "Caroling, Caroling," "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and the Hallelujah Chorus. Concert accompanists will include Beverly Wells, Lew Keyser and Gary Mauck. An offering will be taken.

Lynn Janney was baffled: Why were second- and third-graders leaving Govans Elementary School during the school day and crossing York Road? Simple, a teacher replied: to get to a library. The school didn't have one, so pupils used the city library across the street. A year after that discovery, Janney, a reading volunteer at Govans from Butler in Baltimore County, and her friend, Lynn Rauch of Ruxton, have changed that - raising $50,000 and applying a good deal of sweat to create an inviting place in school for Govans' 400 pupils to read and learn.

Do you have theater-lovers on your Christmas list? Here are some gift suggestions.One of the most stunning coffee table books we've come across this season is the updated, expanded edition of "Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire." Written by Taymor and Eileen Blumenthal, this hefty volume was first published by Abrams in 1995, before Taymor had won her Tony Awards for "The Lion King."Now heftier still, it has new chapters on five additional Taymor productions, including "The Lion King"; her soon-to-be-released motion picture, "Titus"; and her 1996 production of "The Green Bird," which will be revived on Broadway later this season.

From time to time on these pages we pose a question, related to books, to two or three dozen smart people, and publish their answers. Today, on the page facing this one, there is a series of neat little stories about gift books that have had unusual impact. I hope they may aid and comfort our readers in this gift-choosing season.I am grateful to our respondents, busy people all, including Mayor Schmoke, with his generous-hearted citation.Searching my memory, I find I have given away so many books that no single miracle stands out. But I hope you find the others' answers helpful - more so than the endless holiday listings published by many newspapers and magazines.

This is the year of crafts. Unless it's the year of California wine. Or the year of celebrity photography, baseball nostalgia or the book made into a movie made into a book about the making of the movie.A case could be made for any of those titles, from the looks of this year's gift books -- those lavish, expensive tomes so easily wrapped and beribboned and placed under the tree en route to the coffee table. Here are some that caught our eye from the tonnage published in time for the holidays.

What book are you giving this season to people who are very special to you, with the firm hope that their lives will be enriched by reading it?And what book would you give to a prominent person whom you have never met, but would very much like to know?In two sentences or less explain why those books and identify the stranger.Parris GlendeningGovernor of MarylandA children's book, "The Day Jimmy's Boa Ate The Wash," by Trinka Hakes Noble, is my book for a special person. There are few greater joys than reading to children.