How to Buy Books for Your Book-y Friends
Buying books is one of my favorite pastimes. Allow me to bestow my knowledge upon you for this holiday season.
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Hi friends. I hope you’re tucked in somewhere tight with a cashmere throw and a hearty snack.
Things to Do
A pandemic is a tough time to be in a choir. The Young New Yorkers’ Chorus has managed to be a wonderful solace even when operating entirely virtually: we’ve had music score studies, game nights, guest speakers, and unique virtual rehearsals since March. For this upcoming Giving Tuesday, I hope you’ll consider supporting YNYC so we can continue sustaining our artistry and community. You can donate on our website (which we are in the middle of overhauling, pending funds!).
The Wholigan Tip Jar, a mutual aid network developed by fans of the Who? Weekly podcast to support each other financially during the pandemic, now lets you set up recurring donations on PayPal.
Welcome To Chinatown launched a book drive for grade school children before the holidays. The program will “gift 2-3 books, curated from a list of diverse, BIPOC children’s book authors, before the holidays and provide these students an accessible and joyful reading experience at home with physical books they can own.” You can learn more and donate here.
The Book
I finished Plain Bad Heroines by Emily Danforth last night for a book club. The LA Times describes it best as a “queer historical meta-novel” that follows two tales at a ~haunted~ Rhode Island boarding school separated by a century. If you’re in the mood for “an exquisitely plotted, winkingly crafted romp” that luxuriates in a gorgeous landscape of haunted towers, overgrown flora, Hollywood glitz, and Victorian drama, this is the Sapphic 600-page book for you.
It has a litany of extratextual elements that both conjure and flout traditions of gothic novels and “bears more than a trace of 21st century meta-fiction but has deeper roots than that, as does meta-fiction itself, piling on all the tropes of self-aware 19th century novel writing.” Quite literally, the book includes maps, illustrations, extraneous footnotes, epigrams, and an omnipotent narrator that braids together all of the elements to trace the lives of its five main characters (all of whom are queer, and are depicted as such in a refreshing way). It’s a book of literary tricks that come together to make something really special, albeit a little too long. I might be more willing to forgive this tendency given that I took (and adored) a course in college about Gothic literature, but I think it really does lend to the book’s sense of fun.
It’s also a rare book where my loyalties were tested: there were moments when I really, truly hated each main character and then adored them by the next chapter. The New York Times identifies Danforth’s deft crafting of each character—even ostensibly minor ones—as a component of “a new kind of lesbian fiction” that fully develops unique motivations and personalities for each of its many queer characters. The ending of the book does have a bit of “maddening ambiguity,” as the NYT puts it, but I think the rest of the book’s charm and glamor makes up for it. (And, for what it’s worth, I think the latter half of the NYT review is a little harsh.)
We Interrupt This Program With Some Shopping Content 4 U
I’m sure by now you’ve been inundated with gift guides of every kind ahead of this holiday season, and it’s not even December. After reading several guides about buying “reading gifts” for “book lovers” and the “literati” that “aren’t books,” which tend to range from mediocre to fine, I thought it might be helpful to share some general rules of thumb I like to use when buying for my fellow bookworms.
How To Buy Books For Your Book-y Friends
There are generally four ways you can buy books for people. I am of the persuasion that buying a book is always a good choice, so these designations are all predicated on the fact that you’re already getting kudos for going the book-buying route. Good on you!
That said, there are methods to buying books that will serve you better than others. Below I’ve outlined the four ways I’ve seen books bought for myself and others. They are in order of ascending quality, based on my experience.
1. Buy a bestseller.
Bestsellers have that designation for a reason: everyone has them, and lots of people enjoy them. It’s a great choice if you don’t know much about your recipient (think a far-flung cousin or work acquaintance in Secret Santa). The problem, of course, is that there’s a big chance that your recipient already owns or read it. This one is low risk and often low reward.
2. Buy a book that you know someone wants.
This is a guarantee that the recipient will get a book they actually want to read, but is also significantly less fun for the gifter. This is a decent system for a relative you don’t talk to all that often, or a friend whose tastes are particularly tough to pin down. It’s low risk for you and high reward for them, albeit a little impersonal.
3. Buy a book that, based on its subject matter or style, you think someone else will like.
This one is a gamble because, frankly, I like a lot of things that I do not want to read about. It’s also a technique that might unintentionally pigeonhole your loved ones into particular categories for years to come. (“Anna loves cats, so this cat encyclopedia would be a great gift to go with last year’s cat socks!”)
But done right, you might really pick something wonderful. For instance, I was supposed to go to France this year on a vacation that was cancelled. A book that has been translated from French, or set in one of the places I was supposed to go, would be a thoughtful homage.
I’ve found that the key to this approach is to only attempt it for someone who you know quite well, including the kinds of books they’ve liked or disliked before. (You can also lurk on their Goodreads profile to find out some of this information.) It’s the biggest risk and challenge on this list, but can be really wonderful and thoughtful when done right.
4. Buy a book that you really love and want to share with others.
This is a great option to buy for someone who appreciates a personal touch and also isn’t too finicky about their reading habits. (And frankly, even if they are, this is the epitome of a gift whose thought counts most.) I would always prefer to get a book that has some meaning to someone else—maybe even with a little inscription in the book about why it’s special, though you’ll want to know ahead of time if someone is particular about book condition—than a generic book choice. The key is to pick a book that the recipient might not have; if it’s a book like Jane Eyre that you want to gift, it’d better be a really nice edition. This is a low risk and high reward option because, even if your bookish recipient has a copy of a book or has read it before, they’ll appreciate the intimacy involved with sharing your own favorite book.
If I’ve accomplished my goal, I’ll soon be receiving several personally inscribed copies of everyone’s favorite book in the mail. But if I’ve scared you off with my solipsistic theories, there’s one good gift-giving rule you can apply to just about everything: buy someone a gift that you’d like to receive yourself. Here are a few genuine suggestions of things to buy your bookish friends that aren’t necessarily books you’ve selected, but also aren’t, like, an antiquarian magnifying glass with lines from Little Women on it:
Signed books and first editions. One of my prized possessions is my first edition of Beloved by Toni Morrison, which Martin gave to me as a gift several years ago. A lot of bookstores have signed copies of books you can hunt down, and stores like The Strand and online retailer AbeBooks have lots of rare and collectible editions for sale. If you know someone has a particular favorite book, they might appreciate receiving a special edition.
Book subscription boxes. The best thing about a book subscription box is that you can find one as general or as specific as you’d like it to be in terms of subject matter, and you can generally customize the length of the subscription based on the amount of money you’d like to spend. Some examples:
Books Are Magic: Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Cookbooks, Middle Grade, etc.
Books & Communi-Tea: A monthly book club that meets over Zoom, complete with a featured tea to match each book.
Call Number: Specifically celebrates Black authors across genres, with options for Fiction, Nonfiction, YA, Indie, etc. Typically quarterly.
The Ripped Bodice: Two romance book selections per month, along with fun candles and pins.
A personalized book recommendation service. I love nothing more than completing surveys and talking endlessly about books I’ve enjoyed, so a personalized book recommendation service is perfect for me (and your bookworm goddaughter or whatever, I am sure). The Page One Books subscription service gets personalized to suit your recipient’s tastes, and a service like Tailored Book Recommendations has a number of price points based on if you want to actually buy the books or just the recs.
Book-specific merchandise. This kind of gift should only, and I repeat ONLY, be purchased when you know that your recipient is deeply infatuated with a book or property. This should NOT be done if you know someone has read a book that is typically popular and part of a franchise, and therefore has a lot of corresponding merchandise easily available for purchase. Examples of this being done well include:
A personalized print of a person’s favorite books, like this gorgeous example on Etsy. Please note that you have to actually decide which books should appear in the print, rather than a generic print of random books. This will require knowing your recipient rather well.
Candles inspired by characters and settings, like the ones from Smiles + Light Candle Co. (I have two from them already and they’re lovely.) This is the kind of gift done well if you are similarly infatuated with said book, because you’ll ~just know~ how some characters and settings are ~supposed~ to smell. Do not buy generic “library scented” candles for anyone, because libraries primarily smell of dust.
Bookstore merchandise. I love nothing more than receiving sweatshirts, tote bags, beanies, notebooks, mugs, and tumblers from local and independent bookstores that have invested in making good merch (even if I’ve never been there). I wear a shirt from The Last Bookstore in LA at least once a week, and often use a tote from the Locust Valley Bookstore.
One of the most important things about buying books and book-adjacent things for your friends and family this holiday season is to buy them from a bookseller you like and want to support. 2020 decimated foot traffic for small businesses, particularly tiny bookstores that now have to pandemic-mandated limits on the amount of people in their stores.
I’d like nothing more than to see a bookmark in my gifted book from a diverse-owned bookstore (here’s a list of them organized by city and state), or a bookstore that’s remodeling to be accessible and inclusive for its patrons (like Bluestockings, the anarchist NYC bookstore), or a shop you love to frequent that I can one day visit, too (like Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, which I visited once last summer and wish I could visit regularly). Use Amazon as a last resort, rather than a first stop.
Okay! I’m off my high horse. If you’ve been bored to tears reading this nonsense, feel free to instead consult CrimeReads’s list of the best crime books set on islands; the NYPL’s best books of 2020; or Penguin Random House’s book gift guide, segmented by topic (for each book you purchase through their list, one book will be donated to We Need Diverse Books, a non-profit seeking to put more diverse books into the hands of all children).
See you later, and happy book-buying! If you’d like specific book recommendations from me for your various loved ones, just reply to this email and I’ll get back to you. Until next time, I’ll be petting my neighbor’s cat who has taken to snoozing in my bed when I’m not looking.