Books, Presents & Gifts

When I give material stuff, it's a book...

Same here. Liping never gets tired of books and neither do I. It may get a bit repetitive, but the only thing I would really like to get as a present is a good novel.

For my parents it is mostly tickets for a play, a concert or something like that or else they might get an overland bus trip or a cruise on a ship. Last time they got this one (www.hurtigruten.com) from their four sons together. My ancestors from my father's side come from Norway and the trip goes through many fjords all the way up to the North Cape in the Arctic.

The 2004 one is still in the planning stages somewhere in the Mediterranean.

What I'd really like to get them one day is this one (www.aranui.com) -- but I think right now it is more than a little bit above the budget. This isn't a cruise-ship, but the regular supply ship for the remoter islands of French Polynesia.

I've pretty much given up on books for other people, though. Time and again I find that they don't read them. It looks as if they have more important things to do than read books. Maybe reading the newspaper or magazines, I wouldn't know. Or perhaps everyday routine life is eating up all their time.

Just a little while ago I mentioned that I got a big box of 16 old and rare books via StevPete [Thanks again, Steve!!!] and a friend of mine mentioned that those books would last him ten years or more. I very much doubt that they will last me more than a couple or three months.