Booking through Thursday
This week's question:
Buy a Friend a Book Week is October 1-7 (as well as the first weeks of January, April, and July). During this week, you’re encouraged to buy a friend a book for no good reason. Not for their birthday, not because it’s a holiday, not to cheer them up–just because it’s a book.
What book would you choose to give to a friend and why?
Impossible - there's no one-book-fits-all formula. In fact, buying books for other people, especially one's friends, is not always an easy thing, unless you've heard them mention titles they're interested in. It'd be like buying a friend a handbag ...
However, other people are a joy to buy books for. I know my dad loves English history, aeroplanes and anything about World War II, so there is almost always something in the bookshops that he would love. And my mum likes historical romances, and any romantic fiction or chick-lit, so choosing books for her is always a pleasure.
But the question is about books for my friends.
And they're all such big readers, and prolific readers, and have such varying tastes in books, that this is too hard, so I'd probably settle for giving them tokens!
5 comments:
My middle brother used to be crazy about aeroplanes. Somewhere doen the line, he was too busy to pursue anything on it.
Recently I bought him a book on that very topic. You should have seen the look on his face! Not one to show his emotions, he was mighty pleased with me!
I'm with you, Les: it's too too hard! For my dear friends whose taste is similar to mine, the trick is to buy something I'm desperate to read - and then give it very quickly! I had great success giving many copies of Caroline Polizzotto's Pomegranate Season ... and my thanks-for-having-us-to-stay gift for my brother and sister-in-law in Melbourne (both big sports fans) was Nathan Jarvis's Origin of the Speccies.
Yes, speed is everything if you do venture into book-giving! The good books get recommended, bought or borrowed and read so quickly. And I'm such a slow reader that if I do find myself loving a book, it's a sure bet that you, or my other reader friends, will have read it weeks before, 'done' it at book club and moved on!
Peter Temple, Andrea Camilleri, started collecting Margery Allingham again; history, esp. WWII; biog - just finished Ava Gardner's, deeply moving. Currently reading history of the secret service in Britain, Complete Plain Words (in the bag for the tram), and How to Read a Church. You can buy me anything. The best thing is to give a book you yourself hold in esteem.
Has Margery Allingham been re-released? Andrea C's stuff is on my list to look for. I know you're easy to buy for: good detectives or cold-climate gardening is always a safe bet for Susan!
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