Writers List Choice Gifts for Readers

“The Complete Phantom of the Opera,” Julia Child’s “The Way to Cook” and Umberto Eco’s new novel, “Foucault’s Pendulum,” are among the biggest sellers in Orange County bookstores this holiday season, the busiest time of the year for booksellers.

And what books are members of Orange County’s writing community buying as gifts this year? Here’s a sampling:

Robert Ray (“Merry Christmas, Murdock”) of Irvine: “I’m giving Natalie Goldberg’s book, ‘Writing Down the Bones’ (Shambhala; $8.95). It’s 10-minute (writing) exercises. It’s a Zen approach to writing and it really works. My students do it and get a lot of action out of it. If you want to be a writer you’ve got to practice.”

Elizabeth George (“Payment in Blood”) of Huntington Beach: “One thing I’m giving to several people is Jo-Ann Mapson’s “Fault Line” (Pacific Writers Press; $11.95). I like the way Jo-Ann writes about everyday life but in a manner that elevates the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. Another thing I’m giving is John Le Carre’s ‘Russia House’ (Knopf; $19.95). I like just about everything about John Le Carre. I think he is just one of the most highly skilled writers going today. With that particular book, however, I really enjoyed the characters. He draws characters exceptionally well and with very limited and disciplined use of words.”

Maxine O’Callaghan (“Hit and Run”) of Mission Viejo: “I just finished the new ‘Poodle Springs’ by Robert B. Parker and Raymond Chandler and that’s kind of good. I might get that for somebody. And there’s a new book I’m thinking about getting for a friend of mine. It’s called ‘David Lean’ (by Stephen Silverman; Abrams; $39.95). It’s really a neat book. It tells a lot about his life and has a lot of photographs of the movies he’s done and talks about the production (of his movies).”

Dean Koontz (whose new thriller “The Bad Place” (G.P. Putnam’s; $19.95) will be out in January) of Orange: “I’ve been so tangled up in things I’ve been completely out of the shopping thing. But there’s a wonderful gift book out there, come to think of it. It’s ‘Hollywood’s Golden Year, 1939’ by Ted Sennett (St. Martin’s Press; $29.95). It’s really about all the great movies that were made in 1939. It was an exceptional year--it was the year of ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ ‘Stagecoach,’ ‘Gunga Din,’ ‘Wuthering Heights’ . . . I mean when you look at the number of movies, it’s just staggering. It’s probably the most fascinating film book I’ve seen in a long, long time. I’ve been reading that myself and it’s a terrific thing to give to anyone interested in the movies.”

T. Jefferson Parker (“Little Saigon”) of Laguna Beach: “I’m going to give away a bunch of copies of ‘Keep the Change’ by Thomas McGuane (Houghton Mifflin; $18.95). It’s just a sublime little novel. I’m going to give away some copies of Jo-Ann Mapson’s first book, (“Fault Line”). They’re just real solid short stories, and they’re pretty close to the bone. I like that. I’m giving my dad a copy of ‘Jane’s Encyclopedia of Aviation’ (Portland House; $95). He was in the Air Force and always kept up on aviation developments. There are a lot of photos, capsule histories of different airplanes and different developments.”

Doug Muir (“The Midnight Admirals”) of Newport Beach: “One I want to give out is an Amelia Earhart biography, ‘The Sound of Wings’ by Mary S. Lovell (St. Martin’s Press; $22.95). I’m terrible about books--I always give books that reflect my own tastes. I read the review on it and it looked good. The other one I want to give is a collection of short stories by Yukio Mishima, the great Japanese novelist. It’s called ‘Acts of Worship’ (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 17.95). The reason I’m doing that--and maybe I can borrow it back--is I’m doing research on Japan for a future novel.”

A.E. Maxwell (Ann and Evan Maxwell) (“The Art of Survival”) of Laguna Niguel:

Evan: “We often tend to give picture books and things like that. Books are so marvelous because they can mesh so well with personalities. We just bought a travel book published in 1905, ‘The English Lakes’ by A. Heaton Cooper and W.T. Palmer (MacMillan Co.), with hand-tinted plates of landscapes from the English Lake Country. It’s for a friend of ours who is fond of vacationing in the Lake Country. It’s a perfect match. I found it at a place called the Book Baron in Anaheim. It’s a big used-book supermarket. That’s the joy of used books: Sometimes you can find extraordinary things which mesh with a particular individual.”

Ann: “I’d give anything by John McPhee, but specifically ‘The Control of Nature,’ (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $17.95). It’s three long essays about man’s ridiculous and sublime efforts to control everything from the Mississippi to the erosion of the San Gabriel Mountains. Another is a cookbook--but it’s more than a cookbook--by Jane Watson Hopping: ‘The Pioneer Lady’s Country Christmas” (Villard; $18.95). The subheading is ‘a gift of old-fashioned recipes and memories of Christmas Past,’ and I have to say it was truly like being a grandchild in my grandmother’s kitchen again. It’s quite a trip.”

Her short stories have been praised by her writing peers for extracting “the living moment from ordinary scenes” and for creating “a beguiling blend of vulnerability, humor and strength.”

The 15 short stories in Costa Mesa author Jo-Ann Mapson’s first published collection, “Fault Line” (Pacific Writers Press; $11.95), reflect the 1986 California Short Story Competition winner’s continuing exploration into the lives of ordinary people.

Mapson, 37, said the recurring themes in all of her work are “hope, betrayal and survival. I guess I’m sort of humanistic and I believe there is hope even with the greenhouse effect and the Irvine Co. looming on the horizon ready to subdivide us all.”

Mapson, a member of the Orange County writer’s group Fictionaires, said she wrote her first short story in the sixth grade and has been writing “seriously” since she was 21. But it wasn’t until 1985 that she began “sending things out on a weekly basis, working on a novel--just being very committed to my craft.”

An agent is currently circulating Mapson’s finished novel, a story that takes place in Balboa and follows three generations of the same family. “I hope that I can go to writing novels full time, but I’ll never abandon the short stories. I’ve written about six this year.

“I think the short story form is really an art form,” said Mapson. “In a novel you have 300 pages to make a reader fall in love with you. You can flirt in a novel--you can tease the reader this way and that way and keep them intrigued. But in a short story you stand alone. You have to capture the reader with the very first sentence, deliver the goods in a tantalizing manner and end with a perfect 10--or the reader will put you down.”

Mapson, who is taking Richard Linder’s short story writing class at Orange Coast College, will begin working on her master’s degree in writing later this month at Vermont College, where she will attend part of the year and also do course work by mail with a faculty adviser.

Mapson said her friend, Laguna Beach writer Cynthia Farley, “cajoled” her into submitting the “Fault Line” manuscript to Pacific Writers Press, a small, UC Irvine-based independent publisher, which has printed 2,000 copies of her book. Another friend, mystery writer Elizabeth George, wrote the introduction. “Fault Line” is available at Upchurch-Brown Booksellers in Laguna Beach, Courtyard Books in Tustin and the bookstores at UC Irvine and Irvine Valley College.

Mapson’s husband, Stewart Allison, designed the book’s cover, which features a grainy photograph of a man’s and a woman’s hands. Trivia fans take note: The hands belong to Mapson’s fellow Fictionaires members, Farley and T. Jefferson Parker.

Book signings: Jocelyn Christopher will sign “Private Dancers” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at Brentano’s in South Coast Plaza. . . . Gerald Petievich will sign “Earth Angels” from 2 to 3 p.m. Sunday at Scribners Bookstore, Crystal Court in South Coast Plaza. . . . Alicia Appelman will sign “My Story” from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday at Waldenbooks, Brea Mall.

National Writers: Free-lance writer Dan Logan will speak at the meeting of the Southern California chapter of the National Writers Club at 10 a.m. today at the Irvine Marriott, 18000 Von Karman Ave. Members, $10; non-members, $12. Includes brunch.