Category Archives: Gifts for Book Lovers

Book Ties

Is it cliche to do a post on bookish ties this close to Father’s Day? Or is it just timely? Yeah. . . I’m leaning towards cliche as well. . . so if you have to buy a gift for Father’s Day, make it a book.

But these ties are pretty dang nifty so I’ll share anyway. It’s tough to find ties with books on them without it looking like a cheap novelty or hokey. These ties all come from the fantastically fun Literary Gift Company over in the U.K. so I went ahead and converted the prices to U.S. dollars below.

The vintage Penguin Book Covers tie is pretty cool, in that pop art kind of way. But it seems even non-book people are drawn to the iconic Penguin book covers. Not sure why. This will run you $38.95.

booktie_penguinbookcovers

This Lorem Ipsum tie would appeal to anyone who has ever worked in book design before. The text has become the defacto standard for placeholder text when designing layouts. Anyone have an idea what font is used in the tie? This one rings up at $52.98.

booktie_loremipsum

Here’s a tasteful tie featuring yellow books painted by Van Gogh. Many painters use books in their masterpieces and Van Gogh was no different. This one features a stack of books he used in an 1887 painting and looks a little more classy that the other ones. This will run you $38.95

booktoes_vangogh

 

 

 

Jenga for Book Lovers

Jenga is one of my all time favorite games. It couples just the right amount of skill and tension (please, please, please don’t fall!). And now some every so thoughtful folks have combined my love of books with Jenga for the Jenga: Book Lovers Edition. How cool is that?

Jenga_Book_Lovers

Each block has a question on it, which you are to answer if you successfully remove the block from the teetering tower.

Questions have things like:

“What literary character would you like to be?”

“What’d your favorite children’s book?”

I am sure that if I was a true booknerd that I’d have some pithy quote about ‘books being the building blocks’, yadda, yadda… but I just want to play this game!

No doubt this would be fun to kick off a new book group or library event and if you have a booknerd on your list to buy for, then I imagine this would be a good fit.

Have you ever played Jenga: Book Lover’s Edition?

A Life in Books – Super Cheap

Warren Lehrer’s A Life in Books came out last year. It’s 380 illustrated pages dripping with books and books-within-books, meta-short stories and this month they dropped the price to $6.99!!! I have no idea why. It’s usually $34.99, but be sure to check this one out if you like to read about books or know someone who does.

LifeInBooks_coverIt is an illustrated novel of a fella locked up in prison recounting his time as an upcoming author. This stroll down memory lane is accompanied by covers, back cover copy, reading samples, etc. of every book this fictional author ever did. Can you get a sense of the rabbit hole that is A Life in Books? Pretty fun. Here’s an interview with Lehrer if you want to get a better idea about what the book is about and why it’s been written/built the way it is. Here is the LibraryThing page as well.

Anyway, no affiliate link. I don’t get anything out of this other than saying “Holy heck, that’s a gorgeous colorful book-about-books on sale for $6.99”. Which is a pretty fun thing to say these days.

ALifeInBooks02 ALifeInBooks01

Book Trivia Board Game

Here is a great “gifts for book lovers” that I stumbled upon: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night, is a book trivia board game all about books.

book trivia game

I haven’t played this one yet, but it sounds like something I’d enjoy. Basically, you and your friends move around the board while trying to identify books by their opening lines or book covers.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night has been for sale via a few sites around the interwebs for a while. The price floats around the $30 mark. A few of the book trivia categories are:

  • novels
  • poetry
  • mysteries
  • children’s books
  • science fiction
  • books made into movies

I have to admit that identifying a book simply by its opening line sounds tough, but maybe it’s all multiple choice. That’d be better.

Good luck and let me know if you’ve played It Was a Dark and Stormy Night. I’d like to know if it’s as fun as I want it to be.