It’s last minute, right? At this point, its a race between Santa and Amazon Prime. You, like me, is yet to buy anything worthwhile for your friend/colleague with whom you are partying on the Christmas day. And you don’t want to look absurd with just that bottle of D’Asti from Trader Joe’s. Well, here’s an idea. A tried and tested one. Pun intended.

Walk into your reading room and locate the tower of books that is stowed away at the corner. Books that have been given to your by your friend, boss, grandma or your dad. Books that have been read, waiting to be read or will never be read. They have surface dirt, they appear torn, their spines damaged due to mishandling, discolored, some have ingrained stains, scribbled at the margins and some even have mold.

Look at their spines – On the top of the pile is Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Then there is Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker. Followed by Black Swan, The Essays of Warren Buffett, Good to Great, The Lean Startup, The Alchemist, Dracula, Rendezvous with Rama, Slaughterhouse-Five. Don’t give up now, work through the pile. Way below is all the stuff you acquired from your dad’s library – The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, Lolita, Middlemarch, The Brothers Karamazov. You stop and wonder when you will ever get to read that Dostoevsky’s magnum opus. You also find a Modesty Blaise, Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction, Chase’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish and PGW’s Piccadily Jim. Under the lamp there is Seth Godin’s Linchpin and Thiel’s Zero to One. All of these books have changed a bit of you and made you into who you are.

Just pull out a book, may be The Lean Startup or The Slaugtherhouse-Five. Why not Middlemarch? Just pull one out, it actually doesn’t matter. This is your curation with judgement already made on each of these books. You have already spent a few hours or days with most of them.

Pick a book, open the flap and write down – Batteries not required. Funny? May be its a friend you are gifting this to but you don’t want to be too informal. How about something more simple – For Kayla, on Christmas 2017. From my bookshelf to yours but read it before it hits your bookshelf. Or how about we borrow the words of wisdom by JK Rowling – Words are, in my not-so-humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic. Enjoy!

Given its a used book, how about we beautify it? No this isn’t some JSON to beautify so let’s just tie a bow around it and present it without a wrap. A gift wrap makes the book ugly, IMHO.

via GIPHY

In any case, at this point, your used books are faster than Santa and Amazon Prime. Simpler to wrap and they don’t break your bank. Used books are the ultimate re-giftables. More importantly you are sharing a piece of your world with them. Just do it!

Crossposted: LinkedIn