The Perils of Book Gifting

I've begun to feel guilty when I give someone a book.

Or maybe not guilty, maybe something more akin to wariness -- I'm afraid to give a book.

Because when you give someone a book, it's not giving someone a DVD or movie tickets, which requires two hours of time, two hours that requires virtually no mentally energy. No, you're requiring five to ten hours of their time. And especially if the book is dense or difficult, you're requiring a thick chunk of concentrating brain matter.

I'm not even talking about being wary about giving books to my non-literary friends. I'm talking about people who genuinely love literature (and Literature). What if our tastes differ? What if they simply never read it? (Because then they feel guilty around me for never reading that book I gave them, and I feel bad because it wasn't a good enough choice for them if they didn't prioritize it)

Plus, everyone I know literally has twenty books in their TBR pile. I see the pile when I visit their house, exiled to the corners of their desks and in a pile next to the leather reclining chair, all these books screaming to be read. These are all books that have been waiting for months, perhaps years, for their chance in the limelight, and how presumptuous of me to assume that my book might cut in line and vault itself to the premier spot.

Or, conversely, how presumptuous of me to add yet another book to the book of the TBR pile. It's like giving someone with forty-five emails to send out yet another email that needs to be sent. Except it's an email that takes a large number of hours.

And with books, you really have to love them to give them. Films, boardgames, videogames, none of these gifts require true passion. "I Like This" is enough of a reason to spur the giving of this kind of gift. But with a book, if it deserves gift status, you better be in platinum love. That book better light flares in your soul, it better move you to gnashing of teeth and/or bountiful tears, it better make you jiggy with the universe.

On one level it's very silly to be complaining about such a thing. In literary circles, in book-reading circles, this is what we do, we read books. And it's fun. And we love it. And we couldn't stop if we tried. But perhaps because of our media-oversaturated-culture we're bombarded with so many articles, blogs, television series, films, iPod games, computer games, Playstation games that one feels the need to apologize for daring to offer a gift that requires so much energy and time.

But I will continue to dare. I will still give books. Sometimes with a bit of a twinge of guilty, sometimes with trepidation, sometimes with an apology, but I can't help myself. I love them, and you better love them too. You better. Or else when I come over, two years post-book-giving, and see it lying at the bottom of your stack, I just won't ever talk to you again.

Or maybe next gift-giving opportunity, I'll just get you a pop-up book, with large print and big pictures. You know -- just to be sure you have the time to read it.

Comments

[Levi Stahl]

Knowing this problem, I tend to give books the same way I write about them (and used to hand-sell them in my bookselling days): explaining with great enthusiasm why I think the one in question is wonderful, but being clear that I understand that my taste is not everyone's. I try to hedge as much as possible, and tell the person I'll understand if they get forty pages in and just don't feel like continuing. But it seems worth it nonetheless, because when you do give a book to someone for whom it turns out to have been just right, there are few better gifts.

This reminds me of my favorite line from Anthony Powell's _A Dance to the Music of Time_ (which itself is a very good example of the book I give warily). It's not entirely appropriate, for the narrator isn't talking about actually giving books, but of the value they inherently offer--yet it does nicely illustrate the gap between what we might derive from a book and what another might get:

"I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illustrates life only for those to whom books are a necessity. Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already."