It's #Booksgiving again!

#Booksgiving, y'all, is my translation of Iceland's Jólabókaflóð (yo-la-bok-a-flot)—the annual tradition, most of a century old, of giving your gifting circle books for the long winter's nights ahead. As Iceland is a far northern country that straddles the American and Eurasian geological worlds, let's adopt this idea woth more than usual glee. A country like Iceland has a lot to teach us quarantine-weary global Southerners about how to spend a lot of time indoors whether one wants to or not.

What's so different about the idea of giving books for the holidays, I hear you ask. And rightly so, as most US, Canadian, and UK publishers rely on the gifting season for most sales...but the focus of #Booksgiving as I'm calling it isn't the buying. It's the reading. On Christmas Eve, Icelandic families exchange their gifts, and then...wait for it...settle in and read their new books! This is the beauty of the custom. "Thanks for the book, Aunt Lurlene," as it hits the shelf behind the laundry-room door. "I bet it's a corker." And fire up the PS5!

Maybe try this new idea, this read-as-a-group idea, in this straitened economic holiday season. There won't be a big gathering; there might not be much bling; but instead, a room full of people who love each other enough to stop fighting and be still in their own company...and read! If it works in snowed-in Iceland, it can work is bottled-up Keokuk, can't it? You'll never know without trying.

A formally organized holiday observance celebrating the immersive, escapist pleasures that reading offers is ideal to adopt in a crazy climate of lockdowns, easings leading to skyrocketing infections, and the general insecurity and instability of this unique year. Icelandic publishers, like publishers across the world, depend on Holiday sales to fuel their activities for the other ten and a half months of the year.

The Icelandic book industry, however, benefits from the unique, government-sanctioned and supported "Bókatíðindi" or book catalog containing listings of the titles Icelandic publishers are hoping you'll fall in love with and give as gifts. It is mailed free of charge to every household! And, in case you're thinking "well, how many publishers can there be in a country with fewer residents than the Upper West Side?" the fact is that Iceland publishes more books per capita than any other country on Earth: 3.5 per 1,000 people! Add to that the fact that one in ten Icelanders will publish a book in their lifetime, and the effect and the appeal of this long-standing custom are made clear.

So in this Plague Year, this completely abnormal and hopefully never-to-be-repeated solitary-confinement Christmas, I'm suggesting that you add this relatively inexpensive and supremely easy gift-giving strategy to your list. It's always been easy to order someone a book online, well since 1995 and the launch of Amazon anyway; and the idea of spending a newly socially distanced Christmas Eve in your jammies with cocoa, warm socks, and a book you got (or gave yourself!) as a gift sounds pretty darned good. Let's make cranberry juice out of those cranberries that Fate lobbed at us! (Okay, the "lemonade-from-life's-lemons" metaphor doesn't translate to Yuletide very well. Don't @ me.)

So what I'm going to do, not for the first time!, is review only the books I believe will make wonderful gifts for yourself and your readerly loved ones. You can always use the search box at the top left of the screen to find "#Booksgiving" suggestions from all the years I've been yodeling this idea into the internet's vastness. This year's reviews, all of which are recommendations, will happen between now and Yule. Signing up for emails of new posts will make sure you get inspired...and will be able to follow the links to procure the books or ebooks. (As a reminder, I do not use affiliate links, and you do not see any advertising on this blog. I am unpaid except in free books...and believe me that's enough for me!)

Happy ending for 2020? We're not out of the woods yet, but try a new slant on our Western consumer-society's wretched excess-fest. One that privileges the quiet, intimate pleasure of reading with someone you care for. I guarantee it can't hurt to try.