Gift Ideas for Book Lovers
Happy Christmas! We are super duper excited that today, Christmas Day 2021, our website is going live to coincide with our first Christmas podcast episode. You can listen to the episode here!
If you aren’t reading this on the 25th of December, I can’t believe you missed the grand unveiling of our website, our self-centred Christmas present to you all. So selfish.
Obviously, I’m joking, and our present to you is much better than that. Apart from a long discussion about Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck, and A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, we tackled gifts for book-lovers in our Christmas episode. We understand that not everyone wants to listen to us rambling on about it, so here’s a summary of the ideas we came up with!
Monthly Subscriptions
Gifts that keep giving can be great, with many options out there for things you can give book-lovers without choosing something that the recipient may not like, may already own, or whatever other reason you may have for not wanting to actually make a choice.
We came up with a number of options, as you may want to facilitate book-buying of physical books, or give the gift of audio books. This is great when you don’t know the taste of your giftee, as you can give them the option of choosing their own book but not having to buy it with their own hard-earned cash.
Examples we found included an automatic top-up card such as Bookily in the UK, or my personal favourite Audible, which is available more globally.
Book Themed Candles
Lucia found book-themed candles that incorporate the smells that might be associated with some of your favourite characters. Wouldn’t it be lovely to light a Rhys flavoured candle and settle down to the next book in Sarah J Maas’ “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series?
Wick and Fable were the company she found - but a brief Google illuminates many more options.
Page Overlay
Do you ever read your book in an atmospherically lit room and find your eyes straining, but don’t want to put on, as I call them, the Big Lights? I covet one of these, so I had to put it on the list - it’s an LED page overlay that lights up your book as you read it. I’d love one so I could read in the car without having an iPad screen distracting the driver with its brightness. There are many options available - here’s one on Amazon to give you an idea of what I mean.
Enamel Pins
These are perfect for those who love particular quotes, locations, characters or even witticisms about being a reader (“Go away, I’m reading!). Again there are many options, and the one we found was LiteraryEmporium.co.uk, although while checking out all the links I also noticed that one of our suggestions for clothing also does them.
Book Journal
Lucia loves bullet journalling her reading, but I find the blankness of a bullet journal page mega daunting. I found these lovely looking journals on Books and Thread Co where most of the hard work has been done for you already - all you have to do is fill in the page when you’ve read a book. It would last me a couple of years with a hundred pages, so less prolific readers would find this lasts a lot longer!
Clothing
This is very similar to the enamel pin idea in that if there is a particularly sassy character who you love, but you want to display it more boldly! I can think of a lot of quotes that would be brilliant as snappy little t-shirt slogans.
Lucia suggested Blissfully Bookish, which has got a huge selection of options. I have used RedBubble in the past, which is also great.
Page Markers
I watched a video about the House in the Cerulean Sea by Katie Colson when we were reading that. If you’re a very up-to-date listener you’ll know that episode isn’t out yet…something about writing blog posts before the episode comes out because we record so far in advance! Anyway, long story short, Katie uses page markers to note down specific sections of books including quotations, characters she likes, etc etc.
Even if this isn’t a habit you already have, it’s something that could be useful - all of our cooking books are full of these!
Example from Amazon but you can get them everywhere. The ones I use in our cooking books are sloth themed…totally ridiculous, but a fun little nod to my slight eccentricities!
Custom Dust Jackets
Lucia got particularly passionate about this! If you’re one of those people who loves keeping their hardback books pristine, or when they make a great display on the shelf, this is a good option. Juniper Books does book jackets for many of the most popular series that look great on the shelf, and are consistent throughout the series - none of that annoyance when a publisher changes the animation style halfway through a series!
Even if this isn’t something you think is a good idea, I strongly urge you to check them out. They look fantastic, and I have my eye on the Outlander set, which is stunning.
Book Box
If you do know what the taste of your loved one is, there are literally hundreds of book boxes that you can choose from. The idea is that you get a box a month (or whatever other interval you choose) and select a theme, which may be “everything goes”, or more specific such as YA fantasy, romance novels, adult fiction, etc. There are a number of options including multiple books, other items that are book-related but not books (this is where I got the idea for the LED page light from). We put together a very short list of these, but just hit Google for more ideas.
Owl Crate
Fairy Loot
Illumicrate
Nerdy Book Box
Hand Me Down Book Club
Book of the Month
Are you a book-lover who has a taken a fancy to one of these gifts? What do you reckon of our selection? I suspect there’s something blindingly obviously not here, but let me know.
Merry Christmas! See you all in the New Year.
Keep reading,
Corrie