And Why You Should Buy Books for Your Best Friends

By Freelance Writer and Books Author Denise Turney

Books make the best gifts for a bounty of reasons. Art and entertainment are just two good reasons why your friends love to get books as gifts. Other reasons are hidden gems, to them and to you. Chance to improve your friend’s cognitive abilities is just a start, a benefit with long lasting effects. Then, there’s the psychological and emotional benefits.

Fascinating Artwork Pops

Let’s start with art!

A rare and skillful artist’s pen has helped to craft the artwork on the finest of book covers. Who thinks of paintings, drawings and sketches while shopping for books to give as gifts? Yet, it’s often the artwork on the cover that attracts your eye, isn’t it?

Explosion of vibrant, rich colors. Smooth or rugged texture. Moving shadows and odd, unique shapes. Admittedly, there are book covers so masterfully created that they are a work of art all by themselves.

Check out these winning book covers. See if you can spot what attracts thousands of readers to these covers. Are any of them your favorite, just for the cover alone?

13 Reasons Books Make the Best Gifts

As if highly crafted artwork isn’t enough, here are 13 more reasons why books make the best gifts. If you read merely for entertainment, several of these advantages might surprise you:

1. Stronger brain – While reading, the brain’s visual cortex is activated. The temporal lobe and frontal lobe are other parts of the brain that are activated while you read.¹
2. Better empathy – The ability to understand and relate to another person based on emotions they’re experiencing is sharpened while reading good books. How so? Reading stories that spark emotionally charged memories, gets the limbic system fired up. Link loving emotions to a scene in a novel about forgiveness, romance or happiness and you could improve your ability to relate to people in real-life.
3. Faster learning – Read more, learn more and faster. The more you read, the easier it is to comprehend what’s being shared on the page.
4. Rewires the brain – Iris Reading shares that reading, “makes the brain rewire itself and creates white matter, making communication within the brain efficient.”²
5. Improves memory – To pull this one off, read books that challenge what you already know. Pulitzer Prize winning authors dig deep into the human condition. These authors also use complicated sentence structure to convey a message, enough complication to challenge you as you read.
6. Broader vocabulary – Back to those challenging novels and nonfiction books. Keep reading stories that challenge your current understanding, and watch your vocabulary grow.

Treasure These Rewards

Looking for more reasons to treat your family and friends to great stories? Here you go!

1. Choose Education – Who doesn’t love to learn! Reading books is a low-cost way to expand your education. When you think about it, there’s hardly a classroom, postsecondary course or certificate-granting webinar that doesn’t require you to read a book to complete the training.
2. Unleash your imagination – Science fiction and fantasy novels aren’t the only stories that free your imagination, letting your wildest dreams feel alive. Facts and history tidbits you read in nonfiction books rev up your imagination too.
3. Positive mood shifts – Just like it’s impossible for most people to multi-task, it’s impossible to place equal focus on a project or concern and the pages of a good book. Start reading positive literature, and you could go from feeling angry or anxious to feeling hopeful and happy.
4. Enjoy a good night of sleep – You don’t even have to read a lot of books to relax and start drifting into the sweetest sleep, fading memories of the last pages of an intriguing story still in your thoughts. If you’re an avid reader, you know how sweet sleep can be after you’ve been reading for entertainment for two to three hours.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

1. Great media alternative – Imagine seeing an exciting or soothing story scene pop up instead of a negative news piece two to three times a week. What impact do you think that switch would have on your mental health and overall emotional wellbeing?
2. Deeper dive – A sure way to get to the heart of a situation, historic or modern, is to read through personal journals, history books, biographies and autobiographies.
3. Inexpensive gifts – E-books cost as little as $.99. Paperbacks, including brand new paperbacks, can be purchased for as little as $5. It’s hard for other gifts to compete with the benefits gained from reading books and their low costs.

Major Reason Books Make the Best Gifts

Not every gift offers 13 benefits, and at such low cost. It really is hard to top books when it comes to gift giving and for so many wonderful reasons! Yet, most of all, the good you gain from reading books stays with you.

Honestly, what gifts offer rewarding effects that stay with you like the effects gained from reading books? You don’t even have to keep a physical book at your side to enjoy the benefits. It’s not like wearing a coat, suit, hat or dress.

Pick stories that your friends and family absolutely love, and you’ll send the message that you care. Select stories the people in your life love, and you’ll let those people know you’re paying attention. It sends the message that you know what they like, and that you’re willing to do the good it takes to make them happy.

It’s Getting Easier as Books Make the Best Gifts

Now, that isn’t to say that finding the right titles for your friends is always easy. Fortunately, booksellers, particularly indie and local bookstore owners, know hundreds of titles that might make a perfect gift. If you’re in luck, you might live in an area that hosts a book fair around the holidays.

Talk about a shortcut to good book gifts. Who knows. You might even get these printed gifts autographed by the authors, potentially increasing the gift’s value. This gain is year-round. After all, new books are published every day.

Good stories, from classics to contemporary stories to the best nonfiction, make great birthday, anniversary, retirement and holiday gifts. The next time you sit down and enjoy a good story, ask yourself if it wouldn’t be sweet to share that experience with a friend by gifting them with a similar experience, all through the pages of a book.

Resources:

1. Areas of the brain involved in reading and writing – Psychology Info (psychology-info.com)
2. What Happens In The Brain While Reading? | Iris Reading