Before you give someone a book you love, there’s a certain hesitation. A moment of uncertainty. With the book in your hand and your arm outstretched, you briefly wonder if it will land. Are they going to read it? Will they experience the same emotions you did? Giving someone a candle or a gift card doesn’t cause the same level of anxiety. It is more akin to how one feels prior to making a confession. which provides some insight into the true nature of book-giving.
In this sense, books are peculiar objects. Technically speaking, they are inexpensive; a paperback costs less than a round of drinks or dinner out. However, giving someone a book seems like a more significant gesture than most things you can accomplish with twenty dollars. The object does not contain the weight. It can be found in the selection. For someone you care about, you don’t pick a book at random. You consider. You recall what they told you about their lives, their uncertainties, and their obsessions. You evaluate whether they are prepared for the same experience by taking into account what the book did to you, such as how it moved, disturbed, or rearranged something. The real gift is that assessment, that thoughtful moment of focus. The book is simply how it is presented.
This has long been observed by cultural anthropologists. Books carry a weight of intention that doesn’t translate to a wine bottle or a scented lotion set, which is why they are more common at milestone birthdays, graduations, and funerals than at informal gift exchanges. Giving someone a book and spending the evening reading it has become a national ritual on Christmas Eve in Iceland thanks to a custom known as Jõabňabóð, or the Christmas Book Flood. The intimacy inherent in that custom—two people in the same room, by themselves, sharing their individual stories—says something about the power of books over other presents. The recipient is invited to an interior location.
Perhaps the exposure that comes with book-giving is what makes it feel so intimate. Giving someone a book that changed the way you think about failure or a memoir that brought you to tears on a commuter train is more than just suggesting reading material. Your inner life is taking shape. You’re saying, “This is what moves me, and I believe it may also move you.” It’s simple to misinterpret such an offer as arrogant. Offering a map of one’s own emotional geography and trusting the recipient to navigate it is, however, one of the more generous things one person can do for another.
Additionally, people’s choice of books to donate often reveals more about them than they may be aware. You can learn something about what they think the world needs from someone who consistently presses the same slim philosophy text on everyone in their vicinity. When someone finishes a book about grief and silently leaves it on a friend’s doorstep following a loss, they are expressing themselves in a way that verbal condolences frequently cannot. Books serve as a sort of stand-in language for feelings that are difficult to express verbally, such as those that are too complex or raw. Therapists have been known to insert titles into discussions with patients dealing with anxiety or divorce for a reason. The book doesn’t interfere. It is waiting.
When it works, the shared reading experience improves a relationship in a way that is difficult to duplicate in other contexts. You finish the same book with a friend, and all of a sudden there’s a third item in the room: a story that you both experienced separately but now share. You can debate the conclusion, stand up for a character that the other person finds objectionable, and repeatedly quote lines until they cease to be lines and become shorthand. These kinds of exchanges give friendships a texture that is hard to characterize but instantly identifiable to those who have experienced them. With a shared inner life that was developed book by book over many years, it is both closer and stranger than typical friendship.
It’s simple to forget that a gift doesn’t need to be received flawlessly in order to be effective. Not every book that is suggested ends up being a favorite. Many fall flat, are read halfway through, put down, and spend two years on a nightstand. That’s alright. Making a decision still conveys that you were paying attention, that you considered what this particular person might need, want, or be capable of, and that you cared enough to take the chance of being mistaken about their preferences. In a time when the majority of gifts are designed to be safe and simple to return, the willingness to guess, commit, and possibly fail is a form of intimacy in and of itself.
Seeing people pass books to one another makes it difficult to ignore the fact that the custom endures despite the digitization of everything around it. There are e-readers. There are audiobooks everywhere. Nevertheless, people continue to carry physical books across rooms at parties to press into someone’s hands, wrap them in brown paper, and tuck handwritten notes inside the front cover. Particularly, the handwritten inscription—a few lines on the title page, perhaps a date—makes a mass-produced item seem unique. Those inscriptions become the focal point decades later. The storyline wanes. The inscription remains. Sometimes the most significant thing in a book is the person who gave it to you and the reason behind it.
Giving a loved one a book is fundamentally an act of hope. You’re hoping it will be read by them. I’m hoping it makes an impact on them. I’m hoping they’ll want to talk to you later. And something is already being given in that hope—attention, faith, and the unique generosity of believing that someone is deserving of the risk of being fully known.
