Seeking out a natural gift for Christmas? Try After Cézanne (Bloodaxe, £12; Tablet price £10.80), a marvellous bringing together of paintings with poems in response both to the works themselves and to their maker, Paul Cézanne. This book offers us good reproductions of the paintings, poems which seem to shadow them, and just enough about the man himself to enable us to feel thoroughly rooted in his life. Part biography, part critical interpretation, part self-revelation, this delightful gathering, written by Maitreyabandhu, a Buddhist monk, is extraordinarily engaging and readable.