Willamette Week | Gift Guide 3

books & calendars
BY SUSAN WICKSTROM

Books and calendars are the quintessential gift: interesting, appreciated and easy to wrap. Most local bookstores either stock the following items or can easily order them. Here are a few great places to shop for books: Annie Bloom's Books (7834 SW Capitol Highway, 246-0053), Borders (708 SW 3rd Ave., 220-5911, and 16920 SW 72nd Ave., Tigard, 968-7576), Broadway Books, (1714 NE Broadway, 284-1726), Powell's (1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651) and Twenty-Third Avenue Books (1015 NW 23rd Ave., 224-6203).

Mind Over Matter
The brain is (arguably) the body's most intriguing organ; it's responsible for our emotions, memory, learning, dreams, addictions and everything else that makes life worth living. Mysteries of the Mind by Richard Restak (National Geographic, 256 pages, $35) takes a probing and fascinating look at how the delicate and resilient

Happy Blue Year
Helmut Newton is responsible for some of the most artistic and erotic photographs of women taken in the 20th century. His work was celebrated in a huge, 66-pound, limited-edition "SUMO" book this year, but if you can't afford the $1,500 book, the Helmut Newton Giant 2001 Calendar (Taschen, $49.99) will have to do. This 28-by-40-inch calendar bears 12 revealing photographs that will carry any skin lover into the new millennium. computer in our head works.

Justice Is Served
When most people hear the name William O. Douglas, they think of the U.S. Supreme Court. But Douglas wrote more than just dissenting opinions; he often shared his deep love of nature, particularly the Pacific Northwest. Nature's Justice: Writings of William O. Douglas (OSU Press, 320 pages, $35) is a collection of Douglas' work that defends the environment and conveys his respect for what is fair and good.

Brain Candy
As any parent will confirm, the word "why" enters into a child's vocabulary and life suddenly becomes more difficult. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it just makes kids more persistent and often gives Mom and Dad severe brain strain. But the Children's Illustrated Encyclopedia (Dorling Kindersley, 800 pages, $40, www.dk.com) can answer those mind-twisting questions with ease, covering such topics as science, technology, history and art. This volume is extremely fun to browse, even for grown-ups.

Keep Off the Grass
Most gardeners appreciate the artistic beauty of botanical illustrations. In 1613, Basilius Besler employed 10 engravers to document the greatest German garden of the time. The garden was destroyed in 1634 by the Swedes, of all people, but the drawings live on. The Garden at Eichstätt: The Book of Plants by Basilius Besler (Taschen, 464 pages, $49.99, www.taschen.com) contains the same 402 intricate illustrations as the original but costs much less than the first edition's asking price--a half-million bucks.

Stuff It
This materialistic society puts an inordinate value on objects, whether they be the trappings of everyday luxury or a breathtaking van Gogh painting. In The Value of Things (Birkhauser, 240 pages, $42), Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowski use photos and text to examine our attachment to stuff through two institutions: the department store and the museum.