I admit it: I love giving books as gifts because 1) it’s always a challenge to come up with something that the recipient will like, and 2) getting it right is a huge rush. And hey, books are gifts that keep on giving because you can always pass them around when you’re done with them 🙂
The books I gave this Christmas:
“Something Borrowed” by Emily Giffin
- To whom: Mom
- Why: My mom loves her rom-com novels. After a long day at the bakery, all she wants to do when she gets home is relax AKA no thinking involved. I’ll probably give her a Julia Quinn novel next year.
“Dog Tricks” by Mary Ray and Justine Harding
- To whom: Dad
- Why: because we have two American Cocker Spaniels at home who my dad loves as much as his (human) children 😛
“1,000 Places to See Before You Die” (2nd edition) by Patricia Schultz
- To whom: Mom and Dad
- Why: because these two folks love to travel. Upon browsing the book, they were tickled to find out that they’ve already been to quite a few places on the list. Mom always says that we (her children) are way luckier than she was because we started traveling while we were still young. (My parents took me on my trip out of the country when I was 12, compared to my mom first going abroad when she was almost 30.) My mom also believes in spending her hard-earned money on experiences like traveling instead of on stuff.
“Leviathan” by Scott Westerfeld
- To whom: my younger-younger brother
- Why: because he likes to read (OMG IT MAKES ME SO HAPPY TO WRITE THAT). After successfully getting him hooked on Harry Potter (after many years of trying!), I steered him towards Neil Gaiman (The Graveyard Book gets a thumbs-up), then Eoin Colfer (he says Artemis Fowl is okay), then Rick Riordan (he loves Percy Jackson). For my encore, I figured I couldn’t go wrong with an Aurealis Award-winning steampunk novel that was also listed by YALSA as one of their “2010 Best Books for Young Adults”. Will be borrowing this book from him once he’s done with it.
- To whom: my younger sister
- Why: because I needed a novel targeted towards teenage girls that did not feature 1) vampires, 2) werewolves, 3) angels, 4) demons, 5) shapeshifters, or 6) some other supernatural thing. Seriously. I asked the guy at the Customer Service counter in Fully Booked if he could recommend something and all he could say was “Uhhhh….”. *facepalm* Thankfully, I remembered that Danes lent me some Sarah Dessen books via Kindle (that I haven’t read yet >_<) and Danes would never give me anything shitty.
For my other brother, my Christmas gift was doing all of his Christmas shopping and gift wrapping plus a Doctor Who shirt 😛
Happy holidays everyone and have an awesome 2012!
