CNET Book Club: Holiday 2018 gift guide special

For many readers, ourselves included, books are most often consumed via Kindle or another e-book platform. Sure, there's something lost in the transition from paper to screen, but the convenience and storage capacity of Kindle readers, or phones and tablets using e-book software, far outweighs the compromises. Except when the opposite is true.

Some books work better, or only, in physical format. We've compiled some of our favorites for a special Holiday Gift Guide edition of CNET Book Club, where we talk about awesome art books, tabletop books and just plain strange books that will never translate well to a Kindle screen. On the plus side, they make excellent real-world holiday gifts, and look better wrapped up than an e-book gift code. Many brick-and-mortar book stores are open until the wee hours in the days before Christmas, so there's still time to get someone an awesome nondigital gift.

Disclaimer: CNET may earn commission from the products featured on this page.

Dungeons & Dragons Art and Arcana: A Visual History by Sam Witwer, Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman and Jon Peterson

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

Ship of Theseusby J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Downby Gina McIntyre

Paperbacks from Hellby Grady Hendrix

The Moviemaking Magic of Star Wars: Creatures & Aliensby Mark Salisbury

Giraffes on Horseback Saladby Josh Frank, Tim Heidecker and Manuela Pertega

A spread from Wonderbook.

Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer (listen to our CNET Book Club interview with Jeff here)

Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster

The Electric State by Simon Stalenhag

Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini

The Book Club is hosted by a pair of self-proclaimed book experts: Dan Ackerman (author of the nonfiction video game history book The Tetris Effect), and Scott Stein, a playwright and screenwriter. We'll be announcing our next Book Club selection soon, so send us your suggestions and keep an eye out for updates on Twitter at @danackerman and @jetscott.

CNet

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