By Dean Unger.
Placing a good book into a book lover’s hands reaches them in a way no other gift can. Gifting books, if done with a little thought and preparation, can be a rewarding mutual experience. But short of asking the person you are buying for what the most important books in their lives are, or what subjects interest them, buying books for someone else can be a complex undertaking, especially when talking about non-fiction and special interest subjects.
There are some general guidelines that will make your book gifting experience everything it should be. By putting some thought into gifting a book you are not just giving a book, but contributing to the literary experience of another. Determine whether you are buying a book intended strictly for entertainment or enjoyment value, whether more for educational purposes, to introduce an important literary experience or to add to the existing collection of friend or family. Depending on what objective you aspire to, the necessary legwork goes up in ascending order.
The real secret to successfully gifting a book is in taking the time to get to know something about the person you are buying for. What are their interests? What line of work are they in? Do they have any hobbies?
Buying for those closest to you is likely already in hand, but with patient observation and good conversation it’s not difficult to buy successfully for an acquaintance or workmate in your gift pool. Almost everyone has a favourite title from childhood – that quintessential book that opened up a magical world through which they escaped for a short time and upon their return, left them with an indelible impression. Find that book and you’ve got a friend for life.
It would be possible to present an exhaustive list of pre-war classics, childrens’ literature from the late nineteenth century, specialty non-fiction books written over the last century and a half that are still available at a reasonable price, or for that matter, contemporary fiction authors who have withstood the acid test and will likely, in a hundred or so years, be looked upon with the same favour we now admire Robert Louis Stevenson, Victor Hugo, Arthur Conan Doyle. Any of these make a good choice. But ultimately, as already mentioned, the book you buy should be determined by the tastes and interests of the person you are buying for.
Part 2
Several years ago I was out looking for the quintessential book for an historian friend of mine who was fascinated by the art and science of lock and key. I happened on a copy of F.J. Butter’s On Locks and Locksmithing, published by Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons in 1926. The author was a good writer who possessed a unique flair for storytelling. Among the great technical information not found in any of the modern works, he related many vivid anecdotes and tales that fired the imagination, not the least of which is an entertaining account of impassioned feuds among lockmakers who would finance lock-picking contests pitting their own wares against those of their competitors. Each respective interest would hire the best ‘picks’ in the business to try and solve the others’ locks in the least amount of time. The gift had the desired effect, so much so that I had to entertain myself for the remainder of the visit while my compatriot lost himself in the book.
On another occasion I happened to overhear a friend talking about a book he had read as a child, called Ranger Sea Dog of the Royal Mounted, a young adult novel written by Charles S. Strong. He was so taken by the story that he was inspired there and then, closed book still in hand, to become a member of the RCMP. A young man true to his ambition, he went on to have a prolific career not only as a policeman, but in the Canadian military as a champion marksman, a volunteer in the U.S. Marines where he was one of few Canadians to do several tours in Vietnam, an extended career with an intelligence agency and a groundbreaking career with the RCMP. All because he had been inspired as a child by a book.
What is my favourite? I was in grade one. We were taking our weekly trip to the school library, single file down the vast hallways of elementary institution. Of the thousands of available titles for the taking I reached up and pulled a majestic copy of Howard Pyle’s, King Stork, illustrated by Trina Hyman, in her signature style – flowing, feathery strokes, well-defined lines, in slightly washed but still vibrant colours. The book transformed me. I remember being shaken to the core by some of the pictures and perhaps wondering what on earth a book like this was doing in the hands of children.
But it wasn’t the pictures alone that impacted me, it was the story – a parable similar in vein to the original Aesop’s Fables which are said to be evolved from ancient oral history, tales told in caves and around fires through history at times before the invention of censure and perhaps, in some cases, better judgement. As an aside though I’ve since accumulated what are now some of my fondest bookish memories of reading scary stories up late in bed and loosing my page for dropping the book in a hurry to get the covers up around my head.
Most every book published leaves an indelible impression in respect of relative subject matter, prose style and tradition and thus takes its place in the written works of humanity. To an artist friend I once gave a coveted copy of Secret Formulas and Techniques of the Masters, by Jacques Maroger, originally published by Studio Publications, in 1948. At present this is not an easy title to find, but hopefully some publisher with admirable foresight will see fit to bring it to light again. Maroger was the former technical director of the laboratory of the Louvre Museum, Paris, and President of the Restorers of France. Born in Paris in 1884, he later studied under artists Louis Anquetin and Jacques Blanche. Largely influenced by Anquetin, who worked with the likes of Degas, Renoir, Lautrec and Van Gogh, Maroger devoted his life to the research and study of the Old Masters’ artistic principles, techniques and materials, focusing primarily on the reconstruction of their oil painting mediums.
Maroger’s book was the result of those years of research and experimentation. In it he reveals recipes and methods of extracting true color as devised by Theophilus, Van Eyck, Antonello da Messina , Leonardo da Vinci, Velasquez , and a few others. Maroger himself writes that since the knowledge of great painting techniques of the Renaissance was so mysteriously lost to the world during the seventeenth century, artists have toiled desperately to rediscover the methods used by these artists and their progeny.
To Maroger, it seemed to look upon the canon of the work done since, there was something lacking “in the material on their palates”, robbing artists of the same eminence, qualities of color, brilliance of surface and modeling that he masters had achieved. Maroger’s book was written for the modern artist still haunted by this “apparently unattainable perfection”, to aid them in their search for the aesthetic holy grail. Only one legitimate printing of this great work has been done to date, a true sleeping giant of the art world.