Mary Gaitskill

A man bites a woman’s breast with the aim of drawing blood, before taking a cigarette lighter to her stomach. The woman’s lack of arousal at this cruelty causes the man to enquire angrily why she lied when she told him she was “a masochist.” A young secretary is spanked by her boss for mistakes in her typing, before he masturbates over her naked behind. In a conversation between two young adulterous lovers, a woman casually admits to “flirting... like wild” with a man after she discovered he had “broke his girlfriend’s jaw.” These snapshots of masochism, warped desire and sexual depravity made Mary Gaitskill famous when her short story collection Bad Behavior first appeared in 1988.

Our turkeys were stuffed and now we are too. Reclining helplessly in the recovery position, our thoughts turn to feasts future. What better way to show your friends and family that you love them, and also that you have impeccable taste, than sending them a book? In The Spectator’s stocking-stuffing December issue our staff, writers and friends make their seasonal suggestions for Books of the Year: stack upon stack of the most riotous reads, bibliographical beauties and pandemical page-turners. P.J. O’Rourke The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, by Gibbon, because in this year of scourge and collapsing polity it seemed apposite. And only Volume I, due to reader fatigue after 582 pages and the shift in Volume II to the history of Byzantium.