Booking Through Thursday–Gifts

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hosted by Booking Through Thursday

This week’s question:

It’s my Dad’s birthday today, which makes me wonder … do you like to give books as gifts? I’m usually torn. I love giving and sharing books, but it can be hard. The giftee can be difficult to please, or you don’t know what they’ve read (or what they thought of books they have read). Even people who love to read and love to get books can be hard to gift books to … so, does that make you pause and reach for the neckties or DVDs or sweaters … anything BUT a book at gift-giving time? How do you feel about getting books yourself? Are you picky or easy? (For the record, I’m told I’m VERY hard to buy for, even though I’ll read just about anything … go figure.

I don’t like to give books as gifts. I think books are really difficult to buy for people. If someone is a reader, it makes it easier, but what KIND of reader? If I can narrow down what kind of books he or she reads, the next question is Has he/she read this book already? If I can somehow answer that question, I’m good, but that’s rare.

I love to share books as gifts, but I am always slightly offended when someone gives me a book WAY outside of my normal genre if the book is within the gift giver’s genre. It says “Hey I know you like reading, but I’m going to give you books I like instead of figuring out what kind of books YOU like.” So I don’t want to be that kind of gift giver. I’d rather get a gift card because to me, that says “hey I know you like to read, but I don’t know what books you’d like specifically.”

For other readers, I usually buy gift cards or reading related stuff that readers would enjoy, like coffee mugs with books on them. Gifts that I would like to receive if I was difficult to shop for. I love wish lists and goodreads pages, though. Having a wish list of books a person wants is awesome, because I’ll have a field day buying books that I know the person will LOVE.

I’m think I’m probably easy to shop for because this is what I do. If someone is paying attention, I have lists of books I want all over the place. And I’m not picky. But usually, I ask for kitchen stuff for holidays. I buy myself books all the time, so I usually ask for things I neglect to buy for myself. =)