Every year at this time you start thinking about the great holiday dilemma. What do you buy the person on your list who has everything? Well, no one really has everything, but some people may be hard to shop for because no gift seems personal or general enough. Books are the perfect balance between personalized and universal, fun and intelligent. Your gift recipient doesn’t even have to be a book lover to love the book you give, as long as you put some thought into selecting just the right one.
Kelly Petersen Wong, bibliophile and founder of FictionDB.com, an online database of more than 200,000 works of fiction, offers a few tips for finding just the right book:
* Go with what you know – “If you know the recipient likes a certain author, check to see if that writer has published under a pen name that your loved one might not be familiar with,” Wong suggests. “Your gift recipient might enjoy a slightly different flavor of fiction from a favorite author.” You can search by author name and find not only a list of titles, but a list of pseudonyms and titles written under each pen name. For example, popular romance novelist Linda Howard is actually the pseudonym of writer Linda Howington.
* Get the latest – Your recipient might already have a few works by a favorite author, but not the latest thing that writer has produced. “Many people wait for a new book to come out in paperback, so if you buy the newest hardcover edition you’ll probably be surprising them with something they want, but wouldn’t buy for themselves,” Wong says.
* Venture in a known genre – Your intended giftee doesn’t have to be a book fan in order for you to find something he or she would like. Does he live for Monday Night Football? Check out a list of authors who write about the sport. Or, search by genre. Is she a home design fanatic? Find a mystery featuring an interior decorator.
* Use online tools – You could spend hours in a bookstore shopping. “And if you’re like me, that’s not a bad thing,” Wong jokes. “But most of us have limited time to devote to holiday shopping, so online buying makes more sense.” Look for websites that give you the greatest flexibility to search for just the right book, without the need to sift through the sales clutter of big book sites.
Sites like fictionb.com, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com offer free access to more than 50,000 author book lists and 200,000 unique titles. Series lists, synopses and pseudonym information are all presented in a simple, easy-to-use format. You can search by author book lists, series, sequels, synopses, and pseudonyms. Buying is as easy as clicking on the link “buy” next to each title listing.
