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Read Alberta Holiday Gift Guide

Even though it doesn’t quite feel like the holiday season yet (where is the snow?!— we want to curl up with a good book and some hot cocoa while snowflakes fall peacefully outside), Read Alberta’s 2023 holiday gift guide is here. 

As one does around this time of the year— we got a bit carried away… and who wouldn’t with so many great books to choose from! We’ve curated six holiday gift lists for every type of reader on your list. Below you’ll find links to each of the lists, as well as a few bonus books that we love, but don’t quite fit into the categories we’ve chosen. 

ALL THE WORLD’S A MALL
By Rinny Gremaud, translated by Luise von Flotow

All the World’s a Mall details a whirlwind world tour in five stops: Edmonton, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and Casablanca, chosen because they are home to some of the biggest malls on the planet. Cities within cities, these malls are wonderlands where visitors come from afar to: walk, eat, sleep, watch, swim, ride, photograph, and, of course, shop. With a curious, critical, and sometimes ironic eye, Swiss journalist Rinny Gremaud recounts her travels to and through these monstrous spaces of excess, relaying her conversations with patrons, employees, and executives, and contemplating the effects of globalized commerce. Informative and thoughtful, exhilarating and exhausting, jet-lagged and always air conditioned, All the World’s a Mall is a truly memorable, hallucinatory adventure.

All the World's a Mall

Rinny Gremaud

Published: Sep 22, 2023 by University of Alberta Press
ISBN: 9781772127126

Accessible icon: a stick person inside a circle. Available as an accessible eBook

П’ять колосків / FIVE STALKS OF GRAIN
By Adrian Lysenko, Illustrated by Ivanka Theodosia Galadza

Five Stalks of Grain is the powerful and haunting tale of tragedy and survival during the Holodomor, the terror-famine that claimed millions of lives in Soviet Ukraine. This impactful graphic novel is now also available in Ukrainian.

Five Stalks of Grain

Adrian Lysenko (CA)

Published: Nov 15, 2022 by University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 9781773853758

ALBERTA COMICS: HOME
Edited by Alexander Finbow, Shea Proulx, Emily Pomeroy

A 224 page comics anthology celebrating the comic creators connected to Alberta, featuring 43 short comic stories and cartoons inspired by the theme ‘home’. Within the pages you will find a curious mix of pathos, optimism, humour, hope, and reflections on all the different things ‘home’ really means.

Alberta Comics: Home

Jillian Fleck

Published: Sep 14, 2022 by Renegade Arts Entertainment
ISBN: 9781989754160

BOGART CREEK 3
By Derek Evernden

Collecting the latest and funniest of Bogart Creek, Derek Evernden’s laugh out loud funny single-panel comics of absurd and dark humour. If life scares the hell out of you one minute and cracks you up the next, you’ll feel right at home in Bogart Creek.

Bogart Creek 3

Derek Evernden (CA)

Published: Apr 06, 2022 by Renegade Arts Entertainment
ISBN: 9781989754108

CHRISTMAS CAROLS
By Tonya Lambert

The traditional Christmas carols we know and love today have been around for many years, even centuries; each one has a fascinating story behind it. In this read-aloud collection, Tonya Lambert reveals stories and the trivia behind popular Christmas carols, traditional and contemporary–the music, the lyrics, the composers, the singers and the time and traditions around which they were written.

Christmas Carols: The Stories Behind the Songs

Tonya Lambert (CA)

Published: Sep 27, 2012 by Blue Bike Books
ISBN: 9781926700397

Accessible icon: a stick person inside a circle. Available as an accessible eBook

WE NEED TO DO THIS
By Alexandra Zabjek

We Need to Do This is the story of Alberta women’s shelters. Based on dozens of in-depth interviews, it traces the evolution of a progressive social movement in a traditionally conservative province. Beginning with the women who founded the first shelters, and continuing through the establishment of the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters to the present day, We Need to Do This is a story of hope and survival for the women’s shelter movement and for the mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, and daughters it continues to serve.

We Need to Do This: A History of the Women's Shelter Movement in Alberta and the Alberta Council of Women's Shelters

Alexandra Zabjek (CA)

Published: Sep 15, 2023 by University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 9781773854922

Accessible icon: a stick person inside a circle. Available as an accessible eBook