1. Make the book the message
The title, for example. The impatience of the heart, from Zweig, it is a good courtship. But beware: this game is wicked. There are kamikazes with bad intentions. I was recently told of an insurmountable case. A gesture of hostility demonstrated with the gift of a book. It was Christmas and one relative gave another a Campsa Guide. It could be understood as a cold invitation to peninsular tourism and to put land in the middle. The problem is that the damn guide was from 1993 and they were already in 1997. Declaration of war.
(to a boss: Seize the moment. This is a gift in morse. If you want to be rebellious without looking like it, here’s some advice: From the office, by Robert Walser (Siruela). The Swiss writer hated the castration that the closed and bureaucratic space of the office entailed. A dream crusher. A vomitorium of discipline and monotony. And obedience to the boss. Here is one of Walser’s portraits of the office worker: “When she appears before her boss, a furious complaint on her mouth, white foam on her trembling lips, is she not the image of meekness itself? A dove would not defend his right with greater benevolence and meekness.
(To a co-workerlet’s continue with Robert Walser, a free spirit and another magnificent book to put the world of work in its right place: The Tanner Brothers (Siruela). Here’s a fragment: “I don’t have time to stay in one profession,” Simon replied, “and it would never occur to me, like many others, to rest in a profession like on a spring bed. No, I would never achieve it, not even if I were a thousand years old.” Because? Simon explains it very simply: “I don’t want a future, what I want is a present. It seems more valuable to me. “You only have a future when you don’t have a present.”
2. Dedicated by your favorite author
As? Go to a presentation of his. Write to him, to the publisher, to whoever. Chase him down the street. Do whatever, but get dedicated. An option for those who are cold-blooded: dedicate it at the end, on the last page, without revealing the secret. The surprise will be insurmountable. The gift extends over time. And you will know if he has really read it or not.
(If the gift is to a father or a mother: Find out which school manual he used in his childhood. Or what was the first book she remembers reading. Or what collection of comics was his favorite. Those titles are never erased. Look for them on Todocolección or Wallapop. Buy it. Give it to him well wrapped. When you open it, a whole world will be reborn.)
(to a son: The island of the treasure. I have a friend who buys his son all the different editions he can find of this Stevenson classic, and the boy is already of age. They read it together when all the treasures were yet to be discovered. A wonderful tradition. Could be done with The little Prince. Or with any other book that has sentimental value. It is a way to share a collection. A treasure on dry land).
3. Important: make an effort to dedicate the book
Try to write in the dedication what you would say to your face if it weren’t for the damn shame.
(To a person who never reads: A big challenge. There is an option: The long march, by Stephen King (Debolsillo). It was his first novel. It is a competition where one hundred walkers take the start in a totalitarian and dystopian United States. Whoever stops walking is executed. Whoever resists and wins the test can ask for anything he wants for the rest of his life. It engages, makes you think, and you can see the boundless talent of the writer from Maine. A criticism of the society of the spectacle. A reflection on extreme competitiveness).
(To a very fine reader: Book of restlessness, by Fernando Pessoa, in Portuguese. Specifically, in the beautiful and cheap edition of Tinta da China. It is special to have one of the best and most unknown books of the 20th century in its original language, so beautiful and accessible. If you already have it, you won’t have it in that edition. You have to listen to it with Carminho’s music in the background on a rainy day thinking, yes, that it’s all fiction).
4. What was the first book you gave your partner?
It has been many years. And? Give it back as a gift. With a new dedication. Write shared experiences in the margins of each page. It stains the entire book. Make it a unique copy.
(To an elderly person: The harsh spirit, by Gonzalo Hidalgo Bayal (Tusquets). He is one of the best writers in Spanish. Baroque, profound, Ferlosian: that is, deeply playful. Their books Intervenor Paradox and white poppy field they are beautiful. He is the author of two out-of-print books (written in 1988 and 1993) that Tusquets should rescue: Miserable was, lady, the audacity and The oblique fence).
5. Avoid lists
No prizes. Nothing from the best sellers. It’s too vulgar. Editorial gregariousness. In Spain, only 0.1% of published titles sell more than 3,000 copies. Only one in a thousand. Sometimes, distinguishing yourself means being one of the crowd.
(To someone you don’t know: It matters as much that you like the book as the image that the volume will give of you. Anything too light ruins you. Something too high pushes you away and makes you proud. That book will be a calling card. Giving away a book you already have is a resounding failure. You have to avoid something mainstream. There is an option: A little blue in the landscape, (Minuscule Ed.) by the Frenchman Pierre Bergounioux. Very fine, introspective, poetic. Here goes another one: The kingdom of Celama (Debolsillo), the trilogy of the last Cervantes Prize, Luis Mateo Díez. Exquisite prose. Poetics of the interior).
6. Gift premium
Accompany the book with a designer divider, a Moleskine or Leuchtturm1917 notebook for taking notes, and a Kaweco pen or fountain pen. All in the same package. Complete experience.
(To a beginning teacher: I return to Robert Walser, with his unforgettable title Jakob von Gunten, a diatribe against disgraceful teaching. The diary of the beloved Jakob begins like this: “You learn very little here, there is a lack of teaching staff and we, the boys of the Benjamenta Institute, will never amount to anything, which means that tomorrow we will all be very modest and subordinate people. The teaching they give us basically consists of instilling in us patience and obedience, two qualities that promise little or no success.” There is another book that makes anyone want to be a teacher. Story of a teacher, by Josefina Aldecoa (Anagrama). The teachers of the Republic, the human impact of war, the entire adversity against a person with a vocation to teach).
(to a journalist: The incidents of Watergate collected in The secret man (Unpublished Ed.), where the legendary reporter Bob Woodward reveals who Deep Throat was after the exclusive, jealously guarded for thirty years by the Washington Post, was sold for money to Vanity Fair: a prosaic ending to a romantic story. A metaphor for this time)
7. A gift with a checkbook
If you know which author he really likes, buy him the entire collection of his books. For example, the García Márquez library. Whole. To the gross. It doesn’t matter if you already have many of them: it will be an opportunity to reread them new. And if you have to go one by one, even searching through second-hand bookstores or stealing from libraries, much better: more merit and more emotion.
(To someone on the left: Here are three, to compensate for your convictions: The end of ‘Homo sovieticus’ (Cliff), where Svetlana Aleksievich reflects what happens when a utopian world collapses inside souls; Mud sweeter than honey (La Caja books), a look at communist Albania done with great style by Margo Rejmer (also author of Bucharest); and Journey to the crime village (Books of the Asteroid), which tells of the massacre that the forces of the Government of the Second Republic caused with some poor unfortunates in 1934, masterfully narrated by Ramón J. Sender. The b side of that idealized republic).
(To someone from the right: There are two proposals to balance your look. Pereira maintains (Anagrama), by Antonio Tabucchi, and the trilogy of M. (Alfaguara) the colossal project that Antonio Scurati has written about Mussolini. One shows the daily claustrophobia of a nearby and unknown dictatorship. The other teaches how fascism fattens, grows and bursts).
8. Self-gifts are prohibited.
Don’t give your partner the book you want to read. It’s a gift, not a savings plan.
(To a teenager approaching university: That book that begins like this: “If you’re really interested in what I’m going to tell you, the first thing you’ll want to know is where I was born, what all that stuff was like during my childhood, what my parents did before they had me, and so on. David Copperfield style, but I don’t feel like telling you about any of that. First because it’s a drag, and second, because my parents would have a fit if I were to talk to them about their private life.” That start of The catcher in the rye (Alianza Ed), by JD Salinger, can change a life. To hell with the grades. To hell with them likes. Long live Holden Caulfield: the best company).
9. Always wrapped in gift paper
Both. Never a new unwrapped book. And an important aspect: Better a thin book than a thick one if there is trust; Better fat than fine if there isn’t one.
(To a sports fan: A book by Czechoslovakian Ota Pavel: The price of triumph (Ed. Sajalin), where he portrays the human factor of different athletes, including Emil Zátopek. For cycling lovers, The Giro d’Italia (KO Ed.), Dino Buzzati’s delicious chronicles of the first post-war Corsa Rosa, with Italy destroyed by bombs and a country swirling around two myths: Coppi and Bartali. And about football, a rare warning about Mágico González: The genius who wanted to have fun (Ed. Altamarea) by Marco Marsullo. Camarón comes out and many crazy nights of Cadiz bohemia. Very well written)
(To a gay friend: Stop saying lies (La Caja Books). 80s. France. A closet that doesn’t open. A love that cant be forgotten. Its consequences over time. A passionate story against intolerance and the hiding of feelings written by Philippe Besson).
10. Write him a book
Of poems. Of aphorisms. Of fragments. A succession of shared memories. A long letter. Whatever. You can stay for several years. Time is no excuse. You’ll finish it. From 50 pages to whatever. Buy a notebook and get started. And if you want to touch the sky, ask a printing company to lay it out and print two copies. My grandfather did it and he was over ninety years old. He is now 98.
(To a budding writer: construction zone (Anagrama), by Leila Guerriero: what strength, how much truth, what polished phrases. In a long string of tips for being a journalist or writer, she highlights the last three: “Have something to say. Have something to say. “Have something to say.”
(To you: A small whim and a big one. The small: Buffalo Bill Romance, a book beautifully edited by Media Vaca. An original story written by Carlos Pérez with heroes, villains, poets, adventurers, bearded women, giants and other specimens from human zoos, those monster fairs linked to the transition to modernity. The big whim: You’ve seen it a thousand times and you’ve never dared. It’s time: the case with two red and black volumes of Acantilado with the Interviews from The Paris Review. One hundred literary portraits in the form of a question and answer to the greatest of the second half of the 20th century. There is a stellar moment in the first interview, with William Faulkner. He asks: “There are those who say that he does not understand what you write, even after reading it two or three times. What would you suggest to them?” Answer: “Let them read it four times”).
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