You Have the Perfect Book for a Friend. There’s Just One Problem. They Don’t Want It.

I was with my bestie the other night and we were moving one of her shelves when a book fell off. Not just any book… but the book. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. We shared a look – countless unsaid words. And then continued moving the shelves.

Years ago, I’d given her The Mists of Avalon telling her how much I loved it and how she simply had to read it. She never did. Around the same time, I was heading to India and she gave me her precious copy of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. She believed India would change my life (it did, I picked up a parasite) and that I would adore the book. I couldn’t get past the first chapter.

Often, we give others the books we love, or think they should read, rather than what they actually want to read. I asked my Better Reading colleagues what they thought of this.

Melissa

For the last two years at Christmas I have bought my two best friends my two favourite reads for the year – last year it was Boy Swallows Universe and The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. After unwrapping them and commenting on the beautiful covers I never heard another word… it’s nearly Christmas time again!

Bec

I absolutely loved the book Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco. It’s a YA historical fiction. I bought it for a friend after raving about it for weeks. To her credit, she read it. And despised it.

What are the books you loved and shared with a friend, who didn’t feel the same way about the book?