It’s that time of year. You need holiday presents and you don’t know what to buy. Allow me to offer this gentle reminder: Books (1) are fast and easy to wrap, (2) come in multiple varieties at every price point, (3) can be ordered online or personally mailed using the U.S. Postal Service’s bargain media rate, and (4) don’t have to be new — this is a great time to support your local used bookshops, those bastions of civilization in a dark time.

When choosing books, here’s a bit of advice: Ignore the bestseller list. To give a bestseller shows — how to be kind? — a lack of imagination. What you want is something to match the personality, taste or interests of your family member or friend. For example, any foodie — or anyone who appreciates delicious English prose — will love M.F.K. Fisher’s classic “The Art of Eating,” A.J. Liebling’s “Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris” or the various cookbooks of Elizabeth David. If your best friend is besotted with the theater, you might look for — to name a particular favorite of mine — Kenneth Tynan’s “Profiles,” which celebrates a variety of stars and show people, culminating in his celebrated interview with the aging silent-film legend and sex symbol Louise Brooks. The point is this: Visit a bookstore, whether new, used or online, and spend an hour or two in focused browsing.

To help you along, below is the bookish equivalent of a sampler of holiday chocolates — an assortment of recent titles, mostly literary and historical, that not only are tempting in themselves but also hint at the range of new works available this gift-giving season.