FOR YOUR MINCE PIES ONLY

Like everyone else we've been trying to ignore the growing heaps of tinsel and novelties in the shops ... Yes, Christmas lurks. But despair not, for here are two little publications to make pressie-buying easier. The Booksellers Association is distributing 2.5 million copies of their Books for Giving through bookshops and letter-boxes. Their rallying-cry is "Buy a gift for life - buy a book" (with today's bindings? Are they joking?). And a worthy, middle-of-the-road selection it is too. In fiction Brian Moore, Pat Barker, and Iris Murdoch rub up against Ken Follett, Anne Rice, Dick Francis and Iain Banks (the precis of Whit neatly gives a chunk of the plot away) and Amis, M is dumped yet again for the "deliciously wicked"Amis, K.

There are various sections - Travel, Nature, Biography and the dreaded Humour - but the Booksellers Association evidently doesn't think anybody wants verse. Step forward the Poetry Society with Poetry For Christmas, the title of a free booklet and also of the Autumn issue of Poetry Review (pounds 4.95). Their choice is solid: The New Poetry, Ted Hughes's furry manimals, The Dead Sea Poems, the Penguin Mods, R S Thomas. But there are some piquant newcomers to sample, like Deryn Rees-Jones, Anvil New Poets 2 and the chirpy rhymester Sophie Hannah. Poetry Review has a dig at Hannah's sell- out The Hero and the Girl Next Door (Carcanet pounds 6.95): it "divided the [Forward Prize] judges, a majority feeling that she is a twentysomething Wendy Cope clone; the minority view is that she is far odder and more interesting than that". What did happen to Pam Ayres ... ?

! 'Books for Giving' and 'Poetry for Christmas' are available free from good bookshops