Who gets it: Friends who live in a tree house like four-plex in Fremont, or the friends who reside in a slick Belltown condo. In fact, your friend of family member could be a couch-surfer or a nomad, as long as they’ve got an appreciation for handmade artisan aesthetics and architecture, they’re fair game. (Though it would be nice if the giftee has access to a coffee table, for displaying their new bible.)

Why: Leslie Williamson’s image-heavy text brings them inside the homes of architecture giants such as Russel Wright, George Nakashima, Charles and Ray Eames, and Walter Gropius, where the interiors are not as clean, minimal, and sparse as you might imagine. They’re the homes of magpies, really, and the collections reveal a rough-hewn, tactile, artisan-touched world of natural fibers and daydream design.

The architects who live in these rooms truly live inside the world. It’s such an an inspiration. I bought the book for myself last year before leaving San Francisco; by the time the plane landed in Seattle I sort of felt like I had discovered a new way of life.

Where to find it: Blackbird or the Field House in Ballard, where it’s less than $50. The linked shops’ joint book collection also includes a Ralph Lauren tome for classic America types and a couple of volumes on traditional tattoos of Russian criminals. I once spent a whole sleepless night in a friend’s Brooklyn loft reading the latter. Insomnia introduces a person to such interesting subjects, huh?