Top 5

Present ideas for book lovers

Mike Pollitt | Thursday 2 December, 2010 10:58

It’s December. Which makes it time to start buying presents. Don’t leave it too late, or you’ll find yourself rushing round on Christmas Eve like a lunatic, desperately trying not to get your sister a scarf for the thrid year running. Snipe speaks from bitter experience. If you happen to know a book lover, here a five ideas for a distinctive literary gift. NB. None of these are Kindles, which are the devil’s work.

The latest Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but this new project is beautifully conceived. He’s taken his favourite book and, in a burst of alchemy, created from it another book. Is the final product more or less than the sum of it’s parts? Snipe hasn’t read it yet so we don’t know. We’d love to find out.

A pretty little wordy necklace
These are cute. Necklaces the pendant of which contains the word of your choice cut out from an old dictionary. Very sweet.

Quirky bookmarks
Now, no one is suggesting you just get your beloved some bookmarks for Christmas. That way lies a smack in the face. But if you’re gifting a book, they add a lot of extra thought for very little extra cost. This way lies extra slices of cake and various other Christmassy rewards.

Penguin’s new Fitzgeralds
It wasn’t Snipe’s intention to recommend something from the Penguin website. Give us some credit for occasionally trying to be original. You cannot, however, argue with pure beauty, and that is what lies before us here. As if the novels weren’t good enough, just look at the covers. Gaze at them. Drink them in like a jazz age cocktail. The design for Tender is the Night is…well…I’m going to stop before I embarrass myself in public. (Full disclosure: the author of this Top 5 is a gimp who owns two books on book cover design. It’s weird).

Classic fairy tales
Sometimes you know someone likes books, but you don’t know what sort, or what they’ve already read, or whether they’re going to turn their nose up if you get them the latest Twilight/Millennium/Dan Brown etc. This is a good solution. It’s timeless, but has a contemporary feel. It’s nostalgic, but edgily gruesome. It’s cute, but has dark, foreboding illustrations. Problem solved.

Or, if all else fails, get them a Mills and Boon. At least you can guarantee they’ll read it.

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