Books for Christmas: our pick of the best reads to leave under the tree

Gavin Francis’s Adventures in Human Being (Wellcome, £14.99) is an imaginative mapping of the body. Francis, an Edinburgh-based GP, uses tales from his own surgery to show how our concept of bodies has changed over time; if you’re feeling generous, a good companion book would be Canongate’s reissue of A Fortunate Man (£14.99), John Berger’s 1966 account of country doctor John Sassall. It comes with a new introduction by Francis and original photographs by Jean Mohr.

Finally, for those interested in endings, Atul Gwande’s heartfelt and necessary book Being Mortal (Wellcome, £8.99) is a wonderful meditation on how to live the good life with death in sight. Gwande asks the serious questions: why should dying be a medicalised experience? And, is living longer necessarily a good thing?

The music buff

Ronnie Browne’s down-to-earth autobiography That Guy Frae The Corries (Sandstone Press, £20) would be ideal present for someone who haunts the folk pubs of Edinburgh or enjoys belting out Flower Of Scotland at national events. 2015 was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra; jazz fans will already own The Voice, Volume One of James Kaplan’s biography of Sinatra; they’ll need Volume Two: Sinatra: The Chairman (Sphere, £30).

John Szwed does a thorough job of uncovering the messy truth of Holiday’s life and putting her music centre stage in Billie Holiday: The Musician & The Myth (William Heinemann, £20). For those who like their jazz offbeat, Marcus O’Dair’s Different Every Time: The Authorised Biography Of Robert Wyatt gives a well-researched account of a gloriously uncompromising and madcap musical polymath.

Sonic Youth were pioneers of discordant rock and Kim Gordon’s memoir Girl In A Band (Faber and Faber, £14.99) gives a punchy and punky account of how and why.

For the classical concert-goer, try Ian Bostridge’s Schubert’s Winter Journey: Anatomy Of An Obsession (Faber and Faber, £20). Bostridge has performed Winterreise, Schubert’s 24-part song cycle, over 100 times. He gives an enlightening song-by-song examination of this "first and greatest of concept albums".

The new parent

Books will be as important as a good Moses basket for anyone whose home resounds to the patter of tiny feet. The classics are a safe bet and can be found in all good book stores. Let the wild rumpus begin with Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are. Janet and Allan Ahlberg’s Each Peach Pear Plum is a great way to introduce nursery rhymes and fairy tale characters. Lastly, Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar feeds the imagination with colour and comedy. To help children learn Scots, pick up something from Itchy Coo, the Scots imprint for children, which has recently released The Gruffalo in Scots (£6.99) and The Gruffalo’s Wean (£6.99), both translated by James Robertson.

Debi Gliori, creator of the ubiquitous Book Bug, has crafted a unique style over the years so try Dragon Loves Penguin (Bloomsbury, £6.99). A heart-warming tale set in a cold climate, it is perfect for a winter child. For a story of mayhem in the house, Edinburgh’s erstwhile Makar Ron Butlin has written Here Come The Trolls! (Birlinn, £6.99).

The political junkie

Leaving the media scrum behind, Peter Geoghegan’s The People’s Referendum: Why Scotland Will Never Be The Same Again (Luath, £9.99) is a travelogue through the country during the months leading up to the independence referendum. It shows how ordinary politically-engaged folk across the nation were really the heart and soul of the debate.

For some serious capers, try Owen Dudley Edwards’s How David Cameron Saved Scotland, And May Yet Save Us All (Luath, £9.99), an ironic letter to the Prime Minister telling him how he won the referendum; or, Barton Swaim’s The Speechwriter (Simon and Schuster, £14.99), an account of Swaim’s time working in the spin room of a now disgraced governor in South Carolina; Republican politics has never been more farcical.

James Meek’s Private Island (Verso, £12.99) bridges the gap between journalism and history to explain with brilliant clarity how haphazard privatisation in the last 30 years has damaged Britain in myriad ways.

For something dark and bracing, Mohamedou Ould Slahi’s Guantanamo Diary (Canongate, £12.99) was handwritten in a prison cell in 2005. Partly redacted by the US authorities, it is a captivating story of an innocent man surviving day-to-day under the most egregious conditions.

The detective inspector

Jill Leovy’s Ghettoside: A True Story Of Murder in America (Vintage, £8.99) focuses on the killing of a black teenager in Los Angeles to open up an investigation of her own into the causes of homicide in America and how the best detectives deal with it. Modern crime-solving is a scientific affair and in Forensics: The Anatomy Of A Crime (Wellcome, £18.99), Scottish crime writer Val Mcdermid unveils the mysteries behind toxicology, DNA analysis and facial reconstruction. No armchair detective should be without it.

The interwar years were a less bloody time in crime fiction, and all the better for it. In The Golden Age Of Murder (Harper Collins, £20), Martin Edwards tells the story of writers like Dorothy Sayers, Agatha Christie and Antony Berkeley, who formed the Detection Club, a coterie of like-minded individuals who enacted some strange rites and laid the foundations for the modern crime story.

And if you want a master craftsman, Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret novels are being republished by Penguin. There are a multitude, but if you’re stuck for choice The Cellars Of The Majestic (£6.99) blends a murky underworld of blackmail and prostitution with the splendour and shenanigans of the wealthy.

The wayfarer

Dreamers of the open road will enjoy Paul Theroux’s Deep South (Hamish Hamilton, £20). Theroux drives from his home in New England to the southern states, where Faulkner’s words "the past is never dead … it's not even past" still ring true. Theroux doesn’t bother with the bright lights, but goes out in search of the ordinary man and woman. He finds a poverty-stricken society where the remnants of the American Civil War still divide the population.

Malachy Tallack’s 60 Degrees North (Polygon, £12.99) is a round-the-world trip following the 60th parallel in a quest to find out how other cultures live in relation to the land. Starting in Shetland and moving through Greenland, Siberia and the Nordic countries, it is also a personal journey in search of a home in the world.

All stravaigers need a glossary of the landscape close at hand and Robert McFarlane’s Landmarks (Hamish Hamilton, £20) is a word-haul reminding us that each distinct place has a particular language knotted into its fabric. McFarlane illuminates how that language is used by the best writers of place, from the Cairngorms' Nan Shephard to JA Baker, who picked his way through coastal Essex in search of peregrine falcons.

The sporting type

Richard Moore knows all about speed. He represented Scotland as a cyclist in the 1998 Commonwealth Games. In The Bolt Supremacy (Yellow Press, 18.99), he attempts to find out how Jamaica can churn out so many world-class sprinters. There are, of course, cultural reasons, including a Jamaican dietary favourite: yams. But where there are races and money to be won there is the whiff of corruption.

FIFA and scandal are also never far apart and Andrew Jennings was the Panorama investigator who doggedly pursued the truth behind the allegations of criminal activity. He lays it all out in The Dirty Game (Century, £12.99). For something more gentle, and gentlemanly, Richard Tomlinson’s Amazing Grace (Little Brown, £25) gives a generous innings to the life of WG Grace, the first batsman to be an international superstar.

And considering firsts, boxer Benny Paret was almost the first man to die live on television. Before his world title match in 1962 he taunted his opponent Emile Griffith for being a homosexual. Griffith pummelled him unconscious in the ring and Paret never woke up. Donald McCrae’s A Man’s World (Simon and Schuster, £20) tells of Griffith’s life, summed up by the tagline: "I kill a man and most people forgive me … I love a man and many say this makes me an evil person."

The historian

Jane Dawson’s biography of John Knox (Yale University Press, £25) rewrites the stereotype of Knox as a misogynist and killjoy whose influence was restricted to the Reformation in Scotland. In giving depth and complexity to his character, Dawson shows he was part of Reformations throughout Europe, that he wasn’t always quarrelling with Mary, Queen of Scots, and that, yes, he did shed a tear or two.

James Hunter’s Set Adrift Upon the World: The Sutherland Clearances (Birlinn, £25), is a heartfelt history of the Clearances in a now emptied county. Hunter resurrects the voices of the dispossessed and the story of the livelihoods lost and subsequently remade in far flung regions.

For two unconventional history books, try Andrew Keen’s The Internet Is Not the Answer (Atlantic, £9.99) and Peter Stanford’s Judas: The Troubling History Of The Renegade Apostle (Hodder and Stoughton, £20). Keen details the origins of the digital world, which grew out of the US Military’s ARPANET in the 1960s and is now the plaything of corporations. He lucidly explains how the internet might not be that bastion of freedom many think it is. Judas is a colourful and nuanced cultural and historical biography of this much-maligned figure and looks at scripture, art and architecture down the ages.

The literati

Penguin’s Little Black Classics make perfect stocking fillers. Christmas is a Victorian tradition so pick a 19th-century author. RL Stevenson’s gothic story Olalla (80p) is a sinister gem. If Dickens is a must, there’s The Great Winglebury Duel (80p).

Finding a new voice is always a pleasure for dedicated followers of fiction. Ayelet Gundar-Goshen’s debut novel One Night, Markovitch (Pushkin Press, £10) is a wonderful tragicomic saga. Zeev Feinberg and Yaacov Markovitch travel to Europe during the Second World War to marry two women they’ve never met so they can bring them back to the safety of the Jewish homeland. Yaacov, however, decides he’d rather not divorce his wife, hoping that one day she might love him for real.

Marilynne Robinson’s Lila (Virago, £8.99) is the third of her Gilead novels. With her usual grace, she traces the life story of John Ames’s wife. For a real treat include Gilead and Home to complete the set.

Andrew O’Hagan’s The Illuminations (Faber and Faber, £17.99) opens with a vision of falling snow, perfect for a Christmas morning. This compelling novel is about a pioneering photographer with dementia called Anne Quirk and her grandson, Captain Luke Campbell. They are reunited when Luke returns from war and Anne’s real and imagined past starts repopulating their present.

Lastly, for the poetic soul, and for some necessary reflection at year’s end, you can’t go wrong with Kathleen Jamie. Her new book is The Bonniest Companie (Picador, £14.99).