When you give someone a book, you invite them into another mind, another heart, another world. Books teleport the reader across space and time into a realm of possibility limited only by human imagination. Any of our individual lives contain only a tiny sliver of the range of experiences life has to offer. Books are portals through which to glimpse what other kinds of lives might be like.
That’s why books make such great gifts.
If you need gift ideas, check out the best books I read in 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018. My books also make great gifts, particularly Ensorcelled with its striking design, endearingly petit form factor, and intoxicating spirit of adventure.
And now, a book I love that you might too:
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm is a mind-bending psychological thriller about a secret agency tasked with fighting dangerous “antimemes”—ideas that refuse to be remembered. Plenty of stories start with a clever high-concept premise and just let it play out. This one pushes its premise to extremes I never imagined possible, ratcheting up an astonishing amount of tension along the way. Reading it, I asked myself over and over again: Is this the climax? Where could the story possibly go from here? Somehow the story always found a satisfying place to go.
Things worth sharing:
Robin Sloan featured Ensorcelled in his 2025 gift guide, which is a big deal to me in no small part because I’ve never successfully browsed one of his gift guides without purchasing at least three things: “Ensorcelled, the new novella from Eliot Peper, is a work of imagination and precision: my favorite of his books so far. Voice-y, evocative, and suspenseful, it’s also short, and we LOVE a short book: a dream in one sitting. You should pick up Ensorcelled because it’s a great story, a mini-bildungsroman with a throughline of game design, but you can also appreciate the meta level here, which is that Eliot is somebody really doing the damn thing: writing and publishing at a very high level, under his own steam.”
Fascinating essay from Derek Thompson on why all media that is not already television is becoming television.
Natasha Balwit-Cheung, How to Sail a Building: “All good adventure stories contain a moment of real coziness. There has to be a little bit of something homey to illustrate the stakes of the quest, and the reasons for discomfort endured.”
James Yu, a subscriber to this humble newsletter, is doing a panel about writing and AI with sci-fi short-story maestro Ted Chiang and researcher Nina Beguš on Tuesday.
Maria Popova, How Not to Waste Your Life: “The measure of an unwasted life is not what outlives it but how it was lived—how much integrity and authenticity and creative vitality filled these numbered days, these unrepeatable hours.”
If you’re hosting meals during the holidays and want to play beautiful instrumental music that creates atmosphere without impeding conversation, I recommend the album Hijos Del Sol from Hermanos Gutiérrez.
Morgan Housel, The Art of Spending Money: “Every smart person I know is a voracious reader who also says that every smart person they know is a voracious reader.”
Oh, and if I’m giving someone something other than a book, it’s probably Fat Gold olive oil or Dandelion chocolate.
Thanks for reading. We all find our next favorite book because someone we trust recommends it. So when you fall in love with a story, tell your friends. Culture is a collective project in which we all have a stake and a voice.
Best, Eliot
Eliot Peper is the author of twelve novels, including Foundry, Bandwidth, Cumulus, and, most recently, Ensorcelled. He is also the head of story at Portola and works on special projects.
“A campfire fable for the digital age.”
-Ozan Varol on Ensorcelled
