What are you getting for Mother's Day?

Do you give gifts for Mother’s Day? My children use to buy something from the Mother’s Day stall at school for me but now my older two like to buy something from the shops. We try to make it small so, for me, a book is my ideal gift as I can’t think of anything I would rather do than while a way a few hours reading a book. Hopefully I might get breakfast in bed as well!

I was thinking – what books would I like this Mother’s Day? I looked at a book store catalogue of a major chain that arrived in my post box this week and I thought the selections were very stereotypical.  In the catalogue were:

• Jodi Picoult. I don’t mind her books but I’m not sure that that’s what I want to read on my special day;

• Family meal type cook books. While I love cookbooks, unless it’s got some kind of story woven in, a book about slow cooking or family meals in a flash is like giving me electric appliances for my birthday which my husband knows is a “no no” if he wants to stay in my good books.

• Chick lit. We might choose these books for ourselves to read, but our better halves and children should beware that they’re not implying we’ve lost all our brain cells raising said children;

• Biographies about inspiring women. I’m not sure Susan Boyle is my idea of a role model, and some of the others just make me feel inadequate as I look at my daily routine of taxi driver for the kids, cook and housekeeper for everyone.

• Travel to far away places – not for me this year. My son is going on a more exotic trip with his school than I will have this year.

• Body and diet. These made me really laugh.  I'm not sure that it's a good idea for a man to give The Feel Good Body by Jennifer Fleming and Anna Louise Bouvier, for example, to his partner on behalf of the children and I not sure how I would feel if my teenage sons gave it to me or how my mother would feel if I gave it to her.

What I’d like to get for Mother’s Day:

For my foodie passions: Sunday’s Kitchen by Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan.

Those living in Melbourne may be familiar with Heide, the home of John and Sunday Reed, and sanctuary at various times to many Melbourne artists and writers such as Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Charles Blackman. This is part history book, part cookbook and sounds fascinating. A review of the book can be found here.

For the fiction reader: The Second-Last Woman in England by Maggie Joel

This book intrigued me after I read about it in a blog called Bookbath which I follow (you can read the review here). Set after World War II, the story starts with a murder. It is not the murder that is focus of the book though, as apparently the perpetrator is know at the outset. It is the relationships between the main characters during the year prior that are important.

A biography to make us think how fortunate we are: Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox.

I, like many of my age group, loved the Back to the Future movies and TV shows that Michael has appeared in during the 1980’s. When he wrote his first book, Lucky Man, on living with Parkinson’s disease after being diagnosed at the young age of 30, I meant to read it but have never got around to it. I now have it beside my bed to tackle soon. I think he is such an inspiring person, and I’m sure his approach to life is very different these days from when he was at the pinnacle of his acting career. It’s good to be reminded sometimes as to how lucky we are.