Worried About the "Death" of Books? Then Give More as Holiday Gifts

Books are not going to die, not so long as there are people.
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Whatever the truth about the future of books, media speculation about "the death of the book" is hard to avoid. In a Los Angeles Review of Books essay published in April 2011 under the title "The Death of the Book," Ben Ehrenreich noted that Google matches on "death of the book" jumped from 11.6 million to 11.8 million while he was working on his essay. Six months later, the same phrase produces "110,000,000 results."

I don't buy it. Books are not going to die, not so long as there are people -- books matter more than ever, in fact, the more people find their attention spans spliced and diced so that forming one clear thought becomes more and more challenging. Books are the ultimate antidote to all that dilution of focus.

So what can we do if we love books and want to support book-reading? We can all read more books, of course -- and make a commitment to giving more books as gifts for Christmas or birthdays or graduations or any occasion that presents itself.

This idea is of course not new. My first job, back in the 1970s, was at the Little Professor Book Center in San Jose and the week before Christmas was always insane with long lines of last-minute shoppers wanting their piles of books wrapped.

Nothing against last-minute shopping, but I think there is room to turn gift-giving into an art form and to devote time and imagination to mulling over just the right book choice for just the right person.

For example, my brother Dave wanted to give our father some science fiction books to read. My father, now 85 (Happy Birthday, Dad!), had for many decades complained about science fiction novels being nothing but "pulp," not worth the paper they were written on, compared to his beloved Zane Grey novels. Brother Dave mulled titles for weeks, consulted me and our expert-on-all-matters-science-fiction brother Greg and came up with two choices, including Dune by Frank Herbert. My father at first balked, then devoted long stretches to reading the book and came away impressed.

"I have finished my first science fiction experience!" He emailed the family. "I did Dune!"

His horizons were broadened. And I think Dune would be a great gift for many people -- a fun and exciting read.

In a somewhat related direction, I would also strongly recommend The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which was first recommended to me by my buddy T.J.'s daughter Ellie.

Chad Harbach's novel The Art of Fielding, which I reviewed here at HuffPost Books, is a great choice, too -- but as with all gift-giving, it helps to have read not just an Amazon review or two, not just Michiko Kakutani in the Times, but the book itself. Some would-be gift recipients might have issues with the plot line about amorous relations between a student and the college president. Hard to predict such things.

I reviewed Charles Mann's fascinating 1491 for Salon when it came out in 2005 and ended up giving it as a gift to multiple family members. We all had a good time talking about it. Nonfiction books that open up whole new worlds are an especially good gift, I think.

For anyone who runs even just a little and has not read Christopher McDougall's potentially life-changing Born to Run, that's an easy call: a great gift.

Those are just a few suggestions. What about all of you? Who has tips for can't-miss book gifts?

What are books you've received as gifts over the years that you ended up especially loving? Or book gifts that did not go over so well?

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