Last Minute Gift Ideas for Dad

Father’s Day is just a few sleeps away and along with spending the day hanging out with a top guy, we also like to give him a treasure or two just to thank him for being awesome.

Here are our top picks for last minute Father’s Day gifts…oh and don’t forget to have a look at the shipping times for the books…if you want to be able to wrap it and hand it to Dad in person you may need to click on Amazon Australia (they ship within 24 hours) or Booktopia or Readings…otherwise there is the option of buying a kindle version or a gift voucher.

Far From The Tree by Andrew Solomon

This one is for Dads who like to remind you that you are just like them. Sometimes your child – the most familiar person of all – is radically different from you. The saying goes that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But what happens when it does? Drawing on interviews with over three hundred families, covering subjects including deafness, dwarfs, Down’s Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, disability, prodigies, children born of rape, children convicted of crime and transgender people, Andrew Solomon documents ordinary people making courageous choices. Difference is potentially isolating, but Far from the Tree celebrates repeated triumphs of human love and compassion to show that the shared experience of difference is what unites us.

Calypso by David Sedaris

This is great for the Dad who loves a good chuckle. If you’ve ever laughed your way through David Sedaris’ cheerfully misanthropic stories you might think you know what you’re getting with Calypso. But you’d be wrong. When he buys a beach house on the Carolina coast, Sedaris envisions long, relaxing vacations spent playing board games and lounging in the sun with those he loves most. And life at the Sea Section, as he names the vacation home, is exactly as idyllic as he imagined, except for one tiny, vexing realisation: it’s impossible to take a vacation from yourself. With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny as it’s a book that can make you laugh ’til you snort, the way only family can. This is beach reading for people who detest beaches, required reading for those who loathe small talk and love a good tumour joke.

The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli

For the Dad who loves physics and space, this book will be a winner. The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Reality is Not What it Seems takes us on an enchanting, consoling journey to discover the meaning of time. Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while scientists have found that its structure is different from the simple intuition we have of it. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe. With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery. The Order of Time shows that to understand ourselves we need to reflect on time – and to understand time we need to reflect on ourselves.

The Seven Good Years by Etgar Keret

A brilliant, life-affirming, and hilarious memoir from a master storyteller. The seven years between the birth of Etgar Keret’s son and the death of his father were good years, though still full of reasons to worry. Lev is born in the midst of a terrorist attack. Etgar’s father gets cancer. The threat of constant war looms over their home and permeates daily life. What emerges from this dark reality is a series of sublimely absurd ruminations on everything from Etgar’s three-year-old son’s impending military service to the terrorist mind-set behind Angry Birds. There’s Lev’s insistence that he is a cat, releasing him from any human responsibilities or rules. Etgar’s siblings, all very different people who have chosen radically divergent paths in life, come together after his father’s shivah to experience the grief and love that tie a family together forever. This wise, witty memoir is full of wonder and life and love, poignant insights, and irrepressible humour.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

This novel is for Dads who like to get lost in a book. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North. In Whitehead’s razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.

Enjoy your Father’s Day!