Instead of our regular Lit Bits post, we've gone all seasonal and are recommending some of our best reads of the year for your wish lists.

Jess Ruston:

I would pick One Day, by David Nicholls. As well as having a beautiful cover which makes it a lovely present, it's a delight on the inside from start to finish - astute, funny, sad, touching, and above all, true.

Debi Alper:

Too Many Magpies by Elizabeth Baines. Deceptively simple, a beautifully crafted novel in which every word seems to have multiple layers of meaning. Also The Killing Jar by Nicola Monaghan. The narrator of this book is a character who will remain with me for ever. At times, almost unbearable painful but ultimately uplifting and life-affirming.

Emma Darwin:

The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore (Faber) is a new and glorious compendium of one of my generation's finest short story writers. Each of Moore's stories is a Tardis-like miracle, holding more inside itself - more feeling, thought, history, hope and despair - than seems possible before you go inside.

 Elizabeth Baines:

Ninni Holmqvist's The Unit: a stunning Swedish debut which presents an all-too-believable dystopia where those no longer useful to society submit to incarceration in the seemingly idyllic 'Unit'. Through prose as calm and dispassionate as the atmosphere of the Unit, Holmqvist presents a deeply moving as well as thought-provoking story. The English translation due for publication in the UK in March 2010 by OneWorld.

Brian Clegg:

We Need to Talk about Kelvin by Marcus Chown - A wonderful, readable popular science book: for entertainment value, and driving pace, Kelvin never lets the reader down. From the start we are bombarded with amazing facts, driven by Chown's very effective idea of taking everyday aspects of human existence and exploring the exciting science that lies behind them.

Tania Hershman:

Feeding Strays by Stefanie Freele, an astonishing collection of 51 very short stories, intense, rich and deeply imaginative. I defy anyone to read more than one story without having to put the book down to let it sink in.

Sarah Salway:

Keri Smith's How to Be An Explorer of the World made me think most this year about how I can look at, and record the things, I see every day. Although it's not necessarily a book for writers, it's about that sideways 'what if' glance that helps us make up original stories.  Michael Pollan's A Place of My Own is a great description of how we create and inhabit our environment. Also good on the creative, and practical, process of designing something solid.  Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall because it made me remember all over again that joy of getting lost in a book. Except you're not lost, you're just living a different life and it was like being a teenager again, being forced back blinking into the real world to cook supper etc. Except, of course, no teenager I've known cooks supper. hmm... getting a bit caught up here. Just to say. Good book!

Dave Roberts:

Another vote for One Day from me. Lovely book, which will make you very popular with the recipient. Also enjoyed Death, Destruction and a Packet of Peanuts by Chris Pascoe. It's about a history buff and his idiot friend visiting English Civil War battle sites, and dropping in on the local pubs while they're there. Very funny and superbly brings that particular chapter in history to life.

That should be enough to keep you going for a while.  Happy festivals of  light to all our readers!

Looking forward to seeing you in the next decade.