Famous mothers/authors share Mother's Day favorites

Lindsay Deutsch, USA TODAY May 9, 2013

Books can be the best, most thoughtful gift someone can receive. 

Five best-selling authors who also are mothers -- Anne Lamott, Jodi Picoult, Debbie Macomber, Jennifer Weiner and Lisa Scottoline -- tell USA TODAY about the best book they've ever received for Mother's Day

Jodi Picoult, 46, has three children: Sammy, Kyle and Jake.(Photo: Adam Bouska)

Jodi Picoult, author of The Storyteller:

"My birthday is just around the corner from Mother's Day, so often my gifts got combined. Probably the best book I ever got for my Mother's Day/birthday was a signed first edition of the Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides — one of my favorite novels ever. My husband gave it to me! The one book that really hit home for me, in terms of being a mom, was I Don't Know How She Does It, by Allison Pearson. When I read that first scene, where a working mom takes store-bought cookies and mashes the edges to make them less perfect before bringing them in for class snack, so that the other moms will think she slaved over a hot kitchen to make them — well, I laughed out loud. ANY mom who's ever balanced a fast-paced career with motherhood would be able to relate to that."

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Debbie Macomber, 64, has raised four children.(Photo: Michael Alberstat)

Debbie Macomber, author of Starting Now:

"The best book I ever received for Mother's Day came from my own mother. The first year I was a mother, mom gave me a cookbook put together by the Women's Auxiliary of the Veteran of Foreign Wars, of which she was a member. It wasn't so much the spiral-bound book as the message that came with it and the importance of food in the family. Because mom had contributed to the cookbook she was sharing part of herself with me, passing down the heritage of recipes. In her own way this cookbook told me the importance of making meal times family events. It spoke of how often food and the effort that went behind the preparation were a mother's way of expressing love. A packed lunch (often with a note included), after-school snacks, a favorite birthday dinner. I still have that cookbook tucked away in a bookcase with an accumulation of others, but this one from mom and her friends at the VFW will always hold a special place in my heart for the silent message that came with it. Who would ever have thought a cookbook could convey so much?"
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