Reading
Picture the reader in your life. The one who already owns more books than they have shelf space for, who reads in the bath and on the bus and in the queue at the post office, who quietly glares at you when you interrupt their narratorial sighing with a ‘what’s happening today?’ They should be easy to buy for. They’re not, and it’s not because they’re fussy or hard to buy for. It’s because most gifts for readers are either painfully obvious or wilfully fussy: a cat-shaped bookmark, or perhaps a mug that someone has engraved with a quote about reading. Things that loudly declare ‘reader’ without actually understanding what reading means to a person who reads.
We curated this list because we wanted more options than that. We’ve picked carefully so that each item on the list will make someone’s reading life better, not just more aesthetically pleasing. That difference is important to us. A high quality reading light that doesn’t cast light all over the room at 2am waking up your partner is good. A beautiful edition of their favourite book is something they’ll treasure forever. A bookstand that holds a hardback up open so they can sit and eat their lunch without dog-eared pages is something they’ll hate to loose and won’t buy themselves but will use everyday.
We’ve also picked things that work for different kinds of readers. We love bookshops as much as the next reader but not every reader has heaps of books on the go at once. We’ve picked things for the readers who bury themselves in one book at a time as well as ones with four piles on their bedside table. Commuters as well as bedtime readers, people who read seventy percent of their books in the bath and the people who do ninety percent of their reading in one armchair. This range isn’t for completeness’ sake. There’s overlap because readers are people, and the best gift is the one that understands how someone reads, not just that they do.
There are no novelty items here. We haven’t included anything that looks like a cute gift but that would get tossed aside by a real bookworm. Everything we’ve included is something we’d gift ourselves to the person who reads matters to. It’s the only bar we’ll accept.