Read Something Gifted

What was your favorite book you received as a gift this year? I’m assuming you got at least a few, but if somehow that didn’t happen then what was your favorite bookish gift; you know what I mean, all those non-book gifts that folks just love to give to readers.

I’ll begin: mine was Read Something, a “premium readers advisory deck” created by the talented team behind Unshelved, the library comic, and other bookish fabulosity. Gifted to me by one of my favorite librarian friends from Kansas City who is, like myself, and avid reader of both books and tarot cards, this wildly inventive reading game/tool includes 101 variously-themed illustrated cards, each one of which could complete the suggestion – or the command  (the plea?) – Read Something _________.

Because I’m a librarian, and librarians are notorious for sharing things, I thought it might be fun to share this deck with you, card by card, here on Shelf Talk, inviting you all to muse on and share your own ideas, as inspired by each card’s theme. (And yes, the cards’ creators thought that sounded fun, too) So join us for this whole series of #ReadSomething posts, as we invite chance and whimsey into our literary lives. Fittingly, the first card I’m sharing is: Gifted. Which leads me to my question: What is the best book you’ve ever been given as a present? Or to flip it around, what is a book you love to gift?

Of course, giving and receiving books can be fraught, to say the least. Jen Adams’ The Books They Gave Me (and the highly addictive Tumblr it is based on) collects hundreds of accounts – funny, touching and cringe-worthy – of books received from loved ones. I’m sure it is horribly presumptuous (pretentious?) of me, but I’ve always kept a supply of stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations to gift to anyone who seems to be going through a particularly rough time. I’m sure the most meaningful and memorable book gift I ever received owed in part to the circumstances of the gift: I was seventeen, and it was from a girl I was in love with. Nevertheless, I still have and cherish that copy of Walt Whitman’s Complete Poetry and Prose, just the the third entry in the then fledgling Library of America, its unbridled sensuality and barbaric yawp now cleverly camouflaged on my bookshelf amidst yards of subsequent LOA volumes. (New to Whitman? He can be very useful for all kinds of things.)

     ~ Posted by David W.