Buy books for the holidays!

Monday I received the first of what I expect will be many boxed pens in the professional gift-giving sphere. Today I received an equally ubiquitous coffee-cup-with-bagged-coffee-and-candy-inside.

For the same investment, businesspeople could give copies of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, How to Win Friends and Influence People, or this career book that's on my backlist to read. These would not only last longer and be infinitely more useful to the employee/colleague/employer, but a $5 mini-book looks handy--a $5 pen looks cheap.

If you haven't noticed the icon to the right of this post, it will take you to a very comprehensive guide to book-gift-giving. Books on the Nightstand has some great input, and Moon Rat's very proud of her guide, which is certainly one of the more original. In case you need another reason to buy books for presents, Joshua Henkin said so too, and you should probably listen to someone so successful. (I can't count how many times I've come across his name from just surfing)

So after all this, did I practice what I preached? Well, to be honest, I didn't even support my own genre. I've never given books as presents before and I was just too distrustful of my own eclectic tastes to buy fiction for someone else. My Dad and boyfriend are history nuts, so they were easy, and then my friend chose an interesting field to specialize in, but I just couldn't justify one for my mom. She just graduated with her bachelors in nursing last week and has not only been extremely (loudly) busy for the past year, but also has some lingering distaste for books after 18 months of forced reading, especially since she's never been a big reader. I have the Love, Lucy memoir saved, probably for Mother's day, when I think the effects will have worn off. It's certainly much cheaper than buying her a season on DVD and will probably take her more time to finish. So what did I buy?

For my boyfriend: Team of Rivals , which he'll be able to get signed when she visits our school. (Don't bother trying to figure out which one, it's not on her appearances schedule.) He's an Obama fan in addition, so that works well.

For my Dad: American Lion, which I stood in line for 30 minutes to get it signed and a signed book on Collegetown history. He only reads military fiction (Tom Clancy, W. E. B. Griffin) and he's very picky about which ones, but Southerners are lucky because local history almost always includes at least one Civil War battle.

For my best friend from high school: Confessions of a Working Girl and One Nation Under Therapy because she's in school to be a sex therapist.

All of the above books but one were bought at the local Collegetown independent book store, partially because I had a gift certificate, partially because three of them were signed/I could get signed, partially because the store is run by some nice people who have a really good relationship with the school, the author I work for, and the creative writing society I'm president of. The copy of Team of Rivals I bought was the store's only copy but I was leaving town the next day when the shipment would come in so they let me buy it. The downside: I paid up to twice the Amazon price. So I think of it as an investment in my future career.

By the way, the one book that didn't come from the indie store? One Nation Under Therapy, which I came across at the dollar store and just thought was too funny.