ONE BOOKMARK = Skip It

TWO BOOKMARKS = Not bad, not great but worth a read

THREE BOOKMARKS = A must read!!!

When British author Zoë Heller was asked by the New York Times about the prickly people in her third novel, she told them, "If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party." The Believers opens at a party, in fact, where no one in attendance comes off as particularly bright or well-meaning, but that's exactly why Heller's book is so biting and so entertaining at the same time. The novel follows the self-destruction of a contemporary family in New York City when its patriarch goes into a coma one morning, a premise whose potential for humor would be slight in less capable hands. But the Litvinoffs are beyond dysfunctional: Parents Audrey and Joel were united early on by their leftist beliefs but have been living like strangers for years; as one daughter, to their horror, plans to become an Orthodox Jew, another realizes she doesn't want the baby she's been trying for for years, and their adopted son doesn't even bother hiding a major drug problem. If the author ever gave one of these wretches a light touch, the balance would be destroyed. Instead, it falls to you the reader to see your own hypocrisy and self-deception in this darkly funny clan.

This holiday season, books make great gifts because they give you something to do till New Year's Eve, they don't spoil like a fruitcake, and they're SO easy to wrap. Our cheat sheet offers some picks for all your nearest and dearest, from suspense fans to pop culture lovers to -- gasp! -- non-readers.

• A thriller lover who's already decoded Da Vinci will get all wrapped up in Stieg Larsson's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, a Swedish novel that got a lot of buzz this year for its unconventional investigative team of a disgraced middle-aged journalist and a troubled, punkish female hacker. Sadly, Larsson died before he could see this book in print in English; luckily, he left us a trilogy.

• The past six months have made recessionistas or recessionisters of us all. Peter Gosselin's High Wire is one of the best books I've read this year about the American economy and explains why, when times get tough, families across the country can't get back on their feet.

• Pop culture junkies are probably already aware of "Watchmen," the super-superhero movie from the twisted mind behind "V for Vendetta" probably hitting theaters in 2009. Pick up your pet movie geek a paperback collection of all 12 original Watchmen comics by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and he or she will be fully equipped for the inevitable IMDb battles.
  

• Of all the books I read this year, I've had the most discussions about Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers -- and it only came out in November! Whether you agree or disagree with the New Yorkerwriter's theories on success and how some people achieve greatness, you're sure to find something in it you'll want to talk about.
  

• Sometimes "I don't like to read" means "Sitting down with a book just isn't fun any more." But that won't be a concern with "Daily Show" correspondent John Hodgman's new book More Information Than You Require, a treasury of irreverent factoids meant to be savored.
  

• And finally, for book lovers like me, choose a book about books from a guy who would know: Author Nick Hornby's collected columns on what he was reading are my favorite works of his. His third and final collection, Shakespeare Wrote For Money, will inspire your own personal bookworm. (I couldn't even wait for Santa to buy this one for myself.) If you're going deluxe, pick up the first two collections, The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping Versus The Dirt for a merry wordy Christmas.
  

Hail to the Chief's chief! Curtis Sittenfeld's third novel American Wife was never going to be just another book about another marriage, what with its main character, shy Alice Lindgren of small-town Wisconsin, being a fictional double to First Lady Laura Bush. They were both only children who were involved in fatal car accidents as teens, grew up to be librarians and married political hopefuls, but we'll never get the juicy, candid look at life as a politician's wife from Laura... or so I'm guessing! Where American Wife loses some of its steam is where it reaches the story we all know the best -- how Alice's husband Charlie Blackwell, a Bush-like rich kid, sobers up and rises through the ranks of state politics. It's much more powerful to read about how Alice meets his crazy, WASPy family for the first time and encourages him to run even when she herself is hoping for him to lose. Every marriage has its stresses, but for some the stakes are higher than others. Two Bookmarks!

Reading Farnoosh Torabi's new personal finance book You're So Money is like getting advice from an older sibling: Some of it you've heard already -- you've got to start saving for retirement, investing is good, a few things in life are worth spending more money on -- but the repetition is good for you. New to the personal finance lexicon is the concept of the "need-want," something you don't need to survive but consider an essential part of the good life. Torabi recommends zeroing in on your "need-wants" instead of budgeting, which is a great idea in theory but can be a little problematic in our Murphy's Law-driven world. And her advocacy of buying your own place ASAP has to be taken with a grain of salt considering how she got her Manhattan apartment. If you're disciplined enough to save without a road map, lay down some hard-earned cash for this book, but if you have more "need-wants" than needs or wants, then save up for Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman.

Elizabeth Noble's Things I Want My Daughters To Know has all the ingredients of a good chick flick: Four characters who are easy to identify with go through an eventful year together, but you know in the end it's all going to be okay. After the death of their beloved mum from cancer, four sisters -- lively Lisa, uptight Jennifer, restless Amanda and barely-adolescent Hannah -- are trying to pick up the pieces and solve their problems without the counsel of the woman who raised them. Luckily the girls have a diary Mum kept while she was going through chemotherapy to guide them as well as reveal some long held family secrets. Sounds like a depressing premise, but Noble kept the mood pretty light by moving the plot along very quickly. I'm giving this novel two bookmarks because while I wouldn't read it again, it was a fun ride with some genuinely touching moments, especially when the author turned the spotlight on the girls' stepfather and his place in their world.

"The Breakfast Club" taught Brat Packers that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. The heroine of Jancee Dunn's first novel Don't You Forget About Me finds out she has a little bit of each when she faces the adult version of Saturday detention -- moving back in with her parents. TV producer Lillian Curtis is so bowled over when her husband asks for a divorce, she can't face finding her first post-marriage apartment. With time off granted from her talk-show boss, Lillian retreats to her New Jersey hometown just in time for her 20-year high school reunion. But was life really better at 17? Even if you hated high school you'll sympathize with Lillian's bouts of nostalgia, and hilarious subplots like the J.Crew sales rep she drafts as her over-the-phone psychologist are frosting on this bittersweet tale of re-finding yourself.

When British author Zoë Heller was asked by the New York Times about the prickly people in her third novel, she told them, "If you want to find friends, go to a cocktail party." The Believers opens at a party, in fact, where no one in attendance comes off as particularly bright or well-meaning, but that's exactly why Heller's book is so biting and so entertaining at the same time. The novel follows the self-destruction of a contemporary family in New York City when its patriarch goes into a coma one morning, a premise whose potential for humor would be slight in less capable hands. But the Litvinoffs are beyond dysfunctional: Parents Audrey and Joel were united early on by their leftist beliefs but have been living like strangers for years; as one daughter, to their horror, plans to become an Orthodox Jew, another realizes she doesn't want the baby she's been trying for for years, and their adopted son doesn't even bother hiding a major drug problem. If the author ever gave one of these wretches a light touch, the balance would be destroyed. Instead, it falls to you the reader to see your own hypocrisy and self-deception in this darkly funny clan.