The Christmas Book
Books are containers for stories, but some books are a story all their own.
Some stories are books.
And some books are stories.
A book is special kind of gift.
It’s not something that just some mere tchotchke to collect dust on the shelf.
A book is different unless the this is happening to the books you give people. Then I suspect you should find better books or better people.
A book is a commitment. Its says “I think you’ll spend a few hours enjoying this.”
For a voracious reader there is no better gift.
A book says something about the giver too.
It says that I spent a while looking for this. I sojourned among the shelves and pranced along the pages, and read and read and read some more until I found something you might like.
I was in the bookstore reading the spines until it was dark. I walked up and down rows of books. For a bookworm there is no better search.
And books can be a tradition.
At least it was for me.
Every year, I would spend at least some part of December looking for a book.
A special book.
Each year, for several years in a row, I would give my grandfather a book for Christmas.
He read a lot. Mostly thrillers and books about military history, as grandfathers tend to do.
I would usually go for the military history ones and the search was always fun. He had a particular affinity for airplanes, and spent time as an Airman in the Air Force.
So, I typically found books about airplanes and pilots. Usually from the World War II era.
Each year, another book.
I have those books now.
So now I have a new tradition.
Each year I pick one of the books from the stack and I’ll read that one. Books about airplanes and soldiers from another era.
I’ll always have the books.
The Christmas books.
