As for Qs: Gift ideas for parents, writing prompts, GF recs, mycareer

Heyyyyyy I know I said I was going to answer questions about pregnancy and second-kid agita in the next round but I gave it a shot and ended up feeling a little allergic to kid-related Qs right this moment. I’m sure I’ll get in the mood again but today I thought I would turn to more non-parenting related topics.  

 Q: Ideas/recommendations/thoughts on books to buy as gifts for 70+ year old parents who like to read, but read very different books than me? (but did enjoy, for example, Olga Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead?)

 The NYRB classics subscription, though a bit luxurious at $125 (on sale!), is a great bargain: 12 books, delivered monthly, all of them guaranteed to be interesting. Among the 12 there is bound to be at least one major hit, and possibly all 12 will be hits with one or the other of your parents.  The other thing I thought of right away is also an NYRB book, Josh Cohen’s The Netenyahus. My dad, not usually one for fiction, picked it up during a recent visit and I’m still waiting to get it back so I can read it!

 Q:My 12-year-old niece really loves to write short stories and share them with me. I don't have much to say when giving her notes (what do I know?) but of course I encourage her. The stories are pretty imaginative, perhaps trying to tackle some subjects beyond her years (again, what do I know) and I have a feeling she's partially mimicking whatever she's reading or watching on tv. For example, I love this gem of a sentence in a story about a 20-year-old who has literally never left her house. "Lindsey tells me everything she does at school, what the lectures were like, the difference between Gilmore Girls Yale and real-life Yale." Long lead up to my question but she asked me to give her writing assignments (drum roll...what do I know!) so if you have any writing prompts for a 12-year-old girl, let me know.