You don't usually put books in stockings but Kevin Guilfoile's A Drive Into the Gap is so reasonably priced ($6.95) and such a compact size (69 pages) that it fits perfectly into the stocking-stuffer category. It's also bloody brilliant, so a nice surprise to share with the reader in your life who likes books about fathers and sons, baseball, writing or heartfelt real-life mysteries. Special bonus if they know who Roberto Clemente was.

Basically, anyone who enjoys a good story which, in this case, also happens to be true.

I bought A Drive Into the Gap after reading Walter Biggins' review at Bookslut. It's about Guilfoile's father, who has Alzheimer's, and the mystery behind the bat that Clemente used for his 3,000 hit. It's also a bit about baseball, which Guilfoile's father worked in, and storytelling - especially about mythic moments - and about how Barry Bonds is a jerk. (I knew it!!!) (Okay this is only a couple of pages in the book but still, I KNEW IT!!!)

It's just a lovely little book, a quick but thoughtful read, and something different from standard stocking fare.

I also recommend some of the Field Notes notebooks as unexpected gifts. They are surprisingly addictive - you wouldn't think little notebooks would be so useful in the electronic age but they are. I love mine and use them to keep track of the different writing projects (big and small) that I'm involved in, as well as the standard daily "To Do" list.

Oh - and put some pens in the stockings! These are SEVEN YEAR pens and they are very reasonably priced and super cool. Pens are always good for the stocking. (I always put in scratch-off lottery tickets and coffee cards too.) (Oh and magnets which are always a good thing!) (And bookmarks!!!!) (And I buy an issue of a magazine that I think my husband would like but hasn't picked up.) (This doesn't fit in the stocking, but I put it underneath it.)

Hmmmm, what else? Oh - I also always put in Burt's Bees lip balm because, well, you can never have enough lip balm in the winter.

I love stocking stuffers. They make me happy. :)

I keep thinking I'm going to feel 100% any moment now because I first got sick two long weeks ago and yet still, something is not quite right. It's all very frustrating.

I did read Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin in the midst of all this illness however, and I enjoyed it immensely. The basic facts of the Alice in Wonderland biography are here: Alice Liddell Hargreaves was the inspiration for the famous book, her father was dean of Christ Church, Oxford and that was how the family came to know Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll). Dodgson took photos of Alice and her sisters, he spent a lot of time with the girls and one afternoon trip he told them the Wonderland story and at Alice's urging later wrote it down. Then something happened between the Liddells and Dodgson and there was a brutal falling out and they never really spoke again. Later, Alice became very close to Prince Leopold (as in brother to the King and son of Queen Victoria) and they broke up - although they each named a child after the other.

Whew!

Benjamin takes all these facts, including Alice's eventual marriage and the birth of her three sons (sadly, two died in WWI), and folds them into a novel about her life that is enormously compelling. She writes about her complicated childhood as the daughter of a very important man (and one of the only married men at Oxford) and shows how difficult it was to stand out in such a big family. A lot of Alice's childhood struggles were ordinary and utterly predictable but the friendship she developed with Dodgson was something altogether different and just what it was about is a literary mystery for the ages.

Benjamin doesn't drop any major bombs here and she shouldn't; her restraint is perfect and lends itself well to this complicated history. What Alice did, what Dodgson did, what her sister and mother and father and everyone thought (and the source of their motivations) are handled with care and empathy. That is what makes Alice I Have Been so believable - you can see the history unfolding exactly as the story does and by the time Leopold comes onto the scene you are so caught up in Alice's life that you really wish the book would abandon the truth and give us the story we want (Alice as a princess!!).

And don't even get me started on the deaths of her sons. Brutal, absolutely brutal.

Melanie Benjamin has also written about Ameila Earhart and Mrs. Tom Thumb - if they are half as good as her treatment of Alice, then they must be read as well.

I have been crazy sick for the past week and a half so all writing of all kinds (like here) has been pretty much impossible. I have been reading a bit though and wanted to highly recommend Alice, I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin. I'll be writing more about this novel of the real Alice, (Alice Liddell Hargreaves), in the next day or so but wanted to mention it now when I had the chance.

Also, there will be an Alice in Wonderland 2 apparently, due out in 2016. Hmmmmm.