Mother's Day gift guide 2025: Books for every kind of mum

Business Times

07-05-2025

Elegant cookbook
Como Simple by Christina Ong
[SINGAPORE] When Singapore entrepreneur Christina Ong opened The Halkin in London in 1993, she wasn't simply launching her first boutique hotel – she was laying the foundation for a culinary vision shaped by years of travel in the fashion world. In 1995, The Halkin's restaurant, helmed by Stefano Cavallini, earned the first Michelin star ever awarded to an Italian chef outside Italy.
The moment affirmed Ong's belief that food could be as transformative as design. Today, Como Hotels and Resorts has grown into a global portfolio of 18 properties, from Bhutan to Burgundy – each with cuisine as carefully considered as its decor.
Como Simple by Christina Ong. PHOTO: COMO
Recently, Ong launched Como Simple, a luxurious cookbook that distills her lifelong love affair with flavour. Curated by Como's vice-president of culinary Daniel Moran and culinary director Amanda Gale, it's part travel diary, part family scrapbook and part culinary philosophy.
Inside are 114 thoughtfully adapted recipes from famous Como collaborators such as Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Masaru Seki. Dishes include South Indian curries from the Maldives, Tuscan pastas, Balinese nasi goreng, and chef Malcolm Lee's legendary crab and pork ball soup. The tone is thoughtful, nostalgic and quietly luxurious – much like the properties themselves.
Como Simple is the perfect gift for the mother who craves worldly flavours while proudly waving the Singapore flag.
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Personal essays
Mothers And Other Fictional Characters by Nicole Graev Lipson
Published earlier this year, Lipson's book of essays is a philosophical testament to the complexities of womanhood, motherhood and the restless mind that refuses to be tamed by either. With prose that is both gentle and unflinching, Lipson explores what it means to be a thinking woman mulling about love, memory, ageing, grief, desire and the impossible balancing act of modern identity.
Mothers And Other Fictional Characters by Nicole Graev Lipson. PHOTO: CHRONICLE PRISM
The book reads like a series of elegant collisions: raw emotion meets intellectual rigour; intimate self-examination meets cultural critique. Lipson doesn't offer neat conclusions to what it means to be a smart, modern woman. She accepts doubt, contradiction and ambiguity. She interrogates the myths of motherhood, the roles women inherit and perform, and the narratives women are told about love, family and selfhood.
These essays are deeply felt, but not sentimental. They turn to literature, history and episodes from her life to examine how women move through the world – and how the world influences them. Lipson's book offers not just a meditation on motherhood, but a blueprint for how a woman (or man) can live with awareness, compassion and honesty.
Gender-swapped fiction
Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo
Xiaolu Guo is an acclaimed Chinese-born, London-based author who writes in both English and Chinese. Her new novel, Call Me Ishmaelle, is a feminine reimagining of Herman Melville's 1851 classic Moby-Dick, the legendary tale of a crew of sailors pursuing a white whale on the high seas.
Flipping the script in fresh and surprising ways, the narrator this time isn't a man named Ishmael – but Ishmaelle, a teenage girl from coastal Kent who dreams of a life at sea. To free herself of the social constraints imposed on women, she binds her chest, cuts her hair and signs onto a whaling ship disguised as a boy.
Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo. PHOTO: PENGUIN BOOKS
In the original version, the ship is led by the white Captain Ahab, with his peg leg and raging vendetta against the whale who bit his leg off. Here, Ahab has been replaced by Seneca, a free black man haunted by grief and driven by a quieter, more introspective kind of madness. Guo reimagines other characters as well, such as a Taoist monk who reads the I Ching between whale sightings.
At half the length of the original version, Guo's novel feels fresh and more intimate – yet still epic. It is the perfect pick for a mum looking for an adventure novel with a woman at the centre of the action.
Inspirational picture book
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman
If mum doesn't have much time to read but appreciates beautifully designed books, get her this title by much-loved illustrator Kalman. The premise is deceptively simple: a book about women 'holding' things.
But Kalman's subjects – both famous and familial – hold more than just objects. Her 86 illustrations include that of Virginia Woolf 'barely holding it together', Gertrude Stein 'holding true to herself', and Kalman's own grandmother 'holding the weight of the world'.
Women Holding Things by Maira Kalman. PHOTO: HARPER
These whimsical and poignant images show the emotional and physical 'weight' women carry with them for much of their lives. Their accompanying texts explore the profound themes of identity, memory, and the burdens and joys women bear – creating a tapestry that is both personal and universal.
Women Holding Things is gentle, funny and deeply human, celebrating the strength and complexities of being a woman.
Photography
The Women Who Changed Photography, And How To Master Their Techniques by Gemma Padley
This part art history, part how-to guide elevates the coffee table book into a beautiful tribute to 50 groundbreaking female photographers. Spanning centuries and countries, the book includes pioneers such as Anna Atkins, whose cyanotypes of ferns laid the foundations of photographic documentation, and avant-gardists such as Claude Cahun, who bent gender and identity through surrealist portraiture.
There are fashion renegades such as Nadine Ijewere, whose vibrant compositions reimagine beauty norms, as well as contemporary artists such as Cindy Sherman, Pushpamala N and Shirin Neshat, with their unique explorations of womanhood in American, Indian and Iranian societies, respectively.
The Women Who Changed Photography, And How To Master Their Techniques by Gemma Padley.
What makes this book more than a glossy tribute is its interactive ambition. Padley doesn't just spotlight the artists; she invites the reader in. Each profile is paired with insights into the photographer's style, practical breakdowns of their technique and creative exercises encouraging readers to try it themselves.
The result is a book that teaches as much as it inspires – one that doesn't just sit pretty, but asks to be studied and dog-eared. Whether mum is a budding photographer or someone drawn to stories of women who frame the world differently, this book is an empowering addition to her shelf.
All titles are available in Kinokuniya and/or on Amazon.