To give or not to give? (1)

'A book is a gift you can open again and again.' - Garrison Keilor

I meant to write this post last week after receiving my Lovecraftian Kris Kringle present, but couldn’t quite find the time. However, as we’re all still enjoying the spoils of the past few days, and, as far as I’m concerned, if you’re lucky, that booty includes a few books, I can squeeze it in now.

It centers on a piece by Jane Sullivan in the Age last weekend titled ‘Unwrapping the gift of childhood rapture’, which was about how you can divide children into two classes: those who love to get books as for Christmas (and I would add here, for any other occasion), and those who are appalled at being denied a “proper present”. She went on to wax lyrical about receiving a boxed set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy when she was 11, and wrote about feeling a special kinship with author Rick Riordan, who also treasured his memories of a yuletide LOTR gift (I myself came relatively late to LOTR – when I was about 15, via an Australian exchange student in Denmark, and promptly fell deeply in love with Strider/Aragorn. Back then, as Jane Sullivan points out, Tolkien wasn’t world famous, and to be a LOTR reader was to be part of a secret club. New members were recruited by the archaic word-of-mouth method, and when, in the wilderness of the mundane world, you came upon another LOTR reader – oh, the joy!)

Anyway, I was definitely a child who loved to receive books as presents. I didn’t get many fiction books for Xmas, but I did get stacks and stacks of encyclopedias, history, animal (mostly about horses) and science books (which sometime included things like the evolution of horses...) Basically, books that were, oooh, educational. Oh, to see that tell-tale cubic present under the tree, to sneak in prior to Xmas Eve and lift it and feel the weight of the knowledge to come – there was not the least sense of deprivation in that for me, only extreme happiness. In the Xmas photos, I’m the one in the corner leafing through some massive tome with a rapt expression on my face.
I did, however, receive a memorable fiction book for my eight birthday – Rennie Goes Riding by Monica Edwards (A quick Google reveals that I was far from the only little girl who adored that particular book - and there I thought it was my special book. Sometimes, one really should resist the urge to Google. But I did find the cover for the edition I had back then.) I think that only Black Beauty tops it in my personal ‘Horse Books that have Deeply Affected Me’ category. It’s all about a poor and suitably orphaned city girl with a great theoretical love for horses who lands a dream job in a riding stable far out in the country. She is much mocked initially because she can’t even handle the creatures she loves so much, or even ride them, but she knows what she knows, feels what she feels, preservers and ultimately triumphs. I read that book over and over until it turned to dust. Whoever it was who gave it to me, even though you no doubt forgot all about it decades ago – thank you very much.

Well, I’m running out of time again. I’ll post this and continue the ‘books as gifts’ theme later. *** oops, I tidied this post up a bit later, including the incorrect link.