Holiday book gifting

The turn of the year is the time when book readers everywhere pull out their reading lists. Major news publications publish articles rounding up the best books of the year. People review how many books they finished compared to their new year’s resolution goal. Countless blog posts and email newsletters are sent out with subjects like “Books I Read in 2022.” For a brief few weeks in December and January, there is an endless stream of book recommendations that flood email inboxes, landing pages, and social media posts.

The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 has at least 200 titles on it. I tried counting all of them but I got tired of counting when I reached 170…

I’m an eager participant in the yearly book recommendation ritual. One of my favorite things to do at the end of the year is to review everything I’ve read, making complicated charts on my reading trends and ranking my completed books against each other. This data analysis is easy since I’m one of those people that meticulously tracks my reading habits. At this point, my book tracker goes back ten years and includes 250 finished books (and counting!). From this massive record of book details, I feel confident in recommending the very best titles to anyone who asks.

A graph of my yearly reading statistics since 2012 that compares completed fiction vs non-fiction books. I finished 47 books total in 2022, a personal best!

On the other hand, I am also conscious of book content overload. My unread book list is infinitely expanding and it gets an especially huge chunk of new rows at this time of year like clockwork. I’m an especially fast reader but even I still can’t keep up with all the books on my backlog. It’s hard to prioritize new book titles, even from people who I respect and know have reading tastes very compatible with mine. I have an ever-increasing stack of purchased books waiting to be read, reminding me of the deep backlog. By the next time I’m at the bookstore or library, weeks have passed and I have forgotten which titles have been recommended to me.

A few years ago, I discovered a better way to recommend books with my friends & family: doing an annual book gifting tradition. This method cuts through the endless books-of-the-year lists and reduces cognitive burden.

It’s a very simple process:

1. Choose the best books that you read this year.
2. Write up a short summary of why you picked those books.
3. Send out an email with a signup form for the free book gift. Recipients can choose between a physical book, e-book, or audiobook.
4. Order copies of the book.

I love this because it has positive benefits for everyone involved. Recipients get a free gift–who doesn’t love free stuff? It’s great for me too since books are a pretty affordable way to send friends & family a fun, off-list holiday gift. I also find that the people who receive the free copies are more likely to read them. My gifted book is put on the top of their already-purchased book stack, a visible reminder to read it when people reach for their next book, so I have a higher chance of receiving a message later with thoughts and reactions! And on top of all that, I can help support my favorite authors and local bookstores by ordering the books from Bookshop.org, which shares the proceeds with an independent bookstore of your choice.

Here are my top picks since I started the tradition: An ongoing list of great books.

Usually I also try to include a second- and third-place choice from different genres. I read a lot of science-fiction and fantasy and, unsurprisingly, I tend to heavily favor books from those genres. Each year, I include approximately 2-3 runner-up books as well, in case folks have any genre or book type preferences. The majority of books I gift are my top recommendation, with about a third coming from the runner-up options.

Comparison of book selections for the top (65.9%) vs the runner-up (34.1%) picks over the last 6 years.

The statistics for the book types and genres of the top picks. 66.7% of the top picks were fiction, and exactly 50% of all the top recommendations were science fiction. Like I said, I have some favorite genres!

The overall set of books I’ve recommended (including runner-ups) is more diverse. More than half (57.1%) are actually non-fiction, and the top categories are dramatic fiction (19%) and non-fiction social-studies (19%) books. Next highest genres are science fiction and non-fiction essay collections (14.3%).

I’d strongly recommend anyone adopt this tradition as their own. It’s been a real joy to me and my loved ones over the years. Even while life gets busier and wilder than ever, I will make time to send these book gifts during the holidays. Hopefully, I am still doing this many years from now.

Let me know if this post inspires you to start your own book-gifting tradition!