Holiday Gift Guide 2009

Since the Paris Review's first issue in 1953, the august literary magazine has been sitting famous authors down and grilling them on how they work — so much so that William Gaddis expressed mock dread of being asked, "On which side of the paper do you write?" But jests aside (or better yet, included), the Paris Review Interviews four-volume box set is the perfect gift for the avid reader or would-be writer. It contains six decades' worth of conversations, from Ernest Hemingway and Dorothy Parker in the 1950s to Salman Rushdie and Stephen King in the 2000s. And though you'll learn numerous papery facts (Joan Didion constantly retypes her own sentences; Rebecca West wrote with a pencil), some of the most delightful moments are the nonliterary ones: when P.G. Wodehouse explains spats or when Kurt Vonnegut lets loose with the world's funniest joke. — Radhika Jones
Price: $50 at the Paris Review