Ideas for literary holiday gifts
And all of a sudden we find ourselves in December. The dark, the cold and the holidays. Whether you like them or not, you’ll have to get through them in order to get to a new year. Our favorite part of the holiday season is gifts. We can spend hours searching for the perfect thing to give to the people we love. And a great gift is a literary gift, of course! Here are five tips to get your book bestie the perfect gift.
Book Subscriptions
We all have that one friend who says: ‘I would like to read more, but I just don’t know where to start.’ Completely understandable, there are so many great stories out there and sometimes we just need a little help narrowing it down. Book subscriptions are a great solution. There are a lot of different options, but we recommend Book of the Month. Every month they give you a selection of five different books and they deliver your pick to your doorstep. A great way to try out different genres and find your reading jam in 2023.
Book merch
Of course we also all have that one friend that is so well read, that picking a book for them is just an impossible task. The solution: book merch! A personalized bookmark, a pin with a quote from their favorite author, a beautiful mug for their favorite reading drink.. Etsy is filled with it! Our personal favorite? LiteraryEmporium! They have great gifts drenched in a sauce of classical works of fiction.
The perfect notebook
We love encouraging the people around us to get their own stories out on paper as well. Even if they’re the only ones who will read it. There is always merit in writing it down, even if you have no idea what the merit is. The hunt for the perfect notebook is a never ending one. The perfect kind of paper, just the right size and a cover that you just can’t get enough of: Decomposition Books have it all! These notebooks are also made of 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, so they’re kind to our planet as well.
Bookstore crawl
In this crazy world that brings us from January to December in the blink of an eye, there can never be enough excuses to spend time with the people you love. Gifting someone a bookstore crawl is a great way to ensure some quality time with them in the year to come. Find a city in your area and do some research on what bookstores are around. You’ll be surprised to see that there’s much more literary action than that one perfect bookstore you usually go to! Visit them one by one and treat the gift receiver to a great lunch along the way. Bonus bookstore crawl tip: pick a book for each other during the day and exchange them at the end of the day.
Organize a Silent Bookclub
The greatest gift of all is time to read. Gift your friends with a monthly or quarterly Silent Bookclub. How does a Silent Bookclub work? You get together in a cafe, where you spend some time ordering drinks and catching up on life events. When that’s out of the way, you set a timer. For however long you want (we recommend an hour) you read in silence together. And when your reading hour is over, share quotes or other things you loved about what you just read. It’s a great way to spend time together in a low-effort but definitely high-quality way.