A man was walking in New York City when he passed a street vendor with books laid out on the pavement. In the $1 pile was a copy of the latest Philip Roth novel, which he’d loved. He picked it up, turned to the first page – to find a very loving inscription, written by himself, to his newly ex-girlfriend.
This is a true story, says rare book dealer and author Rick Gekoski, told to him by a good friend. “He said it was very embarrassing. I said: ‘Did you buy it?’ He said, ‘Of course. Then I threw it in the nearest wastepaper basket.’”
The tale provides excruciating evidence of the pitfalls of buying books as presents – thought to be less personal than jewellery, but far more telling of the giver (and what they think of the recipient) than anything that comes in a turquoise box from Tiffany. Not to mention infinitely more likely to be passed on.
Gekoski shared his friend’s story in support of his two rules on buying books for others. “The first is, always save a receipt” – the reason being, if a book has jumped into your mind as the perfect present for someone, it has doubtless occurred to someone else. When Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves was published in 2003, Gekoski recalls, “everybody got five copies for Christmas” – then tried to regift them to others who already had several copies themselves.
And the second rule? “Never write an inscription in a book, unless you’ve written it yourself.” (He is bemused by authors who do not like to give their own books, lest they be thought of as self-promoting.)
Gekoski suggests people restrict their sentiment to an enclosed card, in part to encourage people to own fewer things, and to extend the life of the book. “A third of everybody’s gifts end up in somebody else’s house, or in Oxfam. No matter how much you love the person, you’re basically defacing the book.”
It is possible that as a rare book dealer Gekoski has a particular bias on the matter. For those who buy secondhand books, past lives evoked by inherited personal inscriptions may be part of the appeal. And for those who give new books, writing in the inner leaves may be the final flourish that transforms them into presents, like an artist’s signature.
Yes, it is self-involved – but arguably the gift of books says more about the giver than it does the recipient. In a recent New Yorker profile, Jamie Lee Curtis said she buys People Will Talk, a 1985 collection of show business interviews by film archivist John Kobal, “all the time” to give as gifts – most recently, to her Knives Out director Rian Johnson, “as a way to sort of say hi”. (The interviewer, Rachel Syme, admitted that she herself bought 10 copies as a result.) At least part of the satisfaction of giving books lies in at best signalling your own taste, and at worst imposing it. If you are not giving a book you loved so that the recipient can agree with you about its brilliance, you are attempting to demonstrate your mastery of the brief, pinpointing the title that will delight them most, that they don’t already own. But good etiquette is to “choose for the recipient, rather than what you think they should read,” says Dave Kelly of Blackwells.
One way to alleviate the influence of ego is to seek help from a knowledgeable (often independent) bookseller. Kelly remembers being recommended as a gift for his hard-to-buy-for father a few years ago a “lovely old hardback edition” of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell’s 1914 critique of capitalism and social inequality in Edwardian England – which is entertaining as well as edifying. “I’ve failed many times before to change his politics, but this actually worked,” says Kelly (who threw in a le Carré as a sweetener).
I have heard of Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race serving as a similarly instructional gift: pointed, certainly, but with plausible deniability.
Another reason books make great gifts is because they can be both intensely personal and impersonal. And, Gekoski says: “Nobody gets hurt when you give them a book. You give them a sweater and it’s too small, you hurt their feelings.” (On that point, Kelly says that although a cookery book can yield a lifetime of shared meals and be beautiful to own, dieting books are probably best avoided as gifts.)
“A book is only a book,” Gekoski says, “and you can always take it back.” Stakes thus lowered, Kelly suggests one book to give generously this year: Greta Thunberg’s No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference. And, in the spirit of minimising environmental impact, it is best handed over unwrapped.
