Sometimes, you just want to give someone a big and luxurious beautiful book. Here are five suggestions:

"Tiger, tiger, burning!" Selected by Fiona Waters and illustrated by Britta Teckentrup. (Gossip Crow, $40.)

Reading a short article every morning is a great way to start the day. Some people read religious texts; I have been reading daily entries in Nature magazines, but poetry is another good choice. The series is selected by Fiona Waters, a Scottish writer, publisher, and bookseller. It focuses on animals, mainly wild animals, but some are domesticated. Bullfrogs and dragonflies, monkeys and giraffes, owls and elephants, bears and fleas. The poems she collects come from all over the world, one per day throughout the year. Britta Teckentrup's digital illustrations are astonishing and gorgeous. The eye-catching tiger image on the cover stares at you straight from the jungle, inviting you in.

"The Art of National Parks", Author: Fifty-nine Parks. (Earth perception, $45.)

Fifty-Nine Park is an artist group in Texas that started printing posters for rock concerts-some artists still do this, but the group has also expanded into other areas. This book is a collection of posters they commissioned and screen printed to celebrate the country's national parks. This is a lovely collection of the styles of artists from all over the world-some pay tribute to old WPA posters; some are very realistic, some are very stylized. Glenn Thomas's sun-dappled redwood forest in Sequoia National Park looks like a pristine paradise. Dan McCarthy's star-studded night sky above Zion National Park is beautiful and mysterious. Elle Michalka chose pink and green to represent the hills of Theodore Roosevelt Park; the row of horses passing through the bottom of her poster looked wild and free. Part of the poster sales revenue is donated to the National Park System.

"Chinese Store Cat" by Marcel Heijnen. (The Thames and Hudson Rivers, $24.95.)

In the cramped shops of China, cats have a practical purpose-they can kill mice. But cats are cats after all, and when they do this they look noble and careless, as if they were the person who hired the shopkeeper, not the other way around. This set of photos and haiku is a wonderful glimpse of the Chinese business world-mom-and-pop shops, restaurants, grocery stores, butcher shops. In each photo, it is sometimes difficult to find (but worth looking for), an unsmiling, good, and indifferent cat. Dutch photographer Marcel Heijnen has lived in Asia for nearly 30 years. These intimate photos not only make me want to travel to Beijing—they make me, a man who keeps dogs for life, want to raise a cat.

"Little Women", by Louisa May Alcott, curated by Barbara Heller. (Chronicle books, $40.)

I have read "Little Women" many times since I was very young, so much so that I feel that the four-and-three-month-old girl is my own sister (and I, to some extent, is Joe-never forget me My parents named me Laurico for some reason). This edition contains the complete novel and adds physical copies of the letters, manuscripts, and poems of the book. These copies are enclosed in glass envelopes that you can pull out to read. Written in ancient scripts, the ink turns brown (probably because of the age), and the paper looks very old. These are very close to the real letters you will get and the letters of Marmee and Meg and others. Laurie's handwriting in his farewell letter to Joe is aptly ornate, decorated with ornate floral decorations.

Dostoevsky's best short story. (Folio Society, $80.)

Seven stories by Russian masters, including "White Nights" and a novella-length "Underground Notes", cleverly translated by David Magasak, introduced by Joyce Carol Oates, and installed in the solid In a black school bag. Harry Brockway's stark black and white prints reflect the dark and cold atmosphere of the book. Oates pointed out that Dostoevsky understood the "tragic dilemma" of mankind: He knew that love is the supreme value, but he was ecstatic about his evil. "It was Easter Monday," "The Farmer Mare" began. "The air is warm, sky blue, the sun is high,'warm' and bright, but I fell into a gloom." Deep research. There is no better winter reading.

Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor of the Star Tribune book. book@startribune.com.

Laurie Hertzel has worked at Star Tribune as an editor and writer for more than two decades. Prior to this, she was the writer and editor of the Minnesota Monthly and the Duluth News Tribune.

© 2021 Interstellar Forum. all rights reserved.