What to Actually Give a Reader for Christmas

Published 25 September 2026 · Updated 25 October 2026

Buying a book for someone who reads a lot is oddly harder than buying for someone who doesn't. The bar's higher — they have real, specific taste, they've probably already read whatever's on the bestseller table, and a guess that misses badly just becomes a paperback that sits unread on a shelf, politely thanked for and never opened.

The mistake worth avoiding

The most common one is picking from a "best books of the year" list without actually knowing whether it matches what this specific person likes. Those lists are written for a general audience, not for your sister, who only reads espionage thrillers, or your dad, who hasn't touched fiction since 1994 but will read any nonfiction about naval history you put in front of him.

Better options, roughly in order of how well you know their taste

If you know their taste well: a book by an author they already love that they haven't read yet, or the next one in a series they're partway through — genuinely low-risk, since you're extending something they've already told you they like rather than guessing at something new.

If you're not confident, but they keep a wishlist somewhere: just check it. This sounds almost too obvious to say, but it's the single most reliable fix available, and it's exactly what a shared wishlist is for — removing the guessing entirely rather than trying to get better at guessing.

If there's no wishlist and you genuinely don't know: a voucher for a bookshop, or credit toward Bookshop.org, beats a randomly chosen title every time. It feels less personal on the surface, but it reliably produces a book they actually wanted, which matters more in practice than the wrapping-paper moment of watching them open it.

If you want to give something book-adjacent instead: a proper reading light, a decent bookmark that isn't a scrap of paper, an hour somewhere quiet with no interruptions — readers generally don't own too many books already, but they very often own too few good reasons to actually sit down and get through them. This is the right route for anyone with a teetering unread pile; what to buy someone who already has too many books goes through the options properly.

The question worth just asking directly

"What's on your wishlist at the moment?" is not a cop-out question. It's the single most useful thing you can ask a reader in the run-up to Christmas, and most people are relieved to be asked rather than left to guess what you'll pick. The same question scales to a group, which is why a book Secret Santa works far better when everyone shares a list first.

This is exactly what FolioStory's wishlist is built for — a single, always-current list you can point people to directly, with buy links already attached so nobody has to go searching for the right edition. Once someone marks a book as bought, everyone else can see it's covered without seeing who took it, so nobody buys the same thing by accident. The owner can see that an item is spoken for too, which is why a long list is worth more than a short one — there's a whole piece on asking for books without ruining the surprise if you're on the receiving end this year.