Five Reasons Everyone On My List This Year Is Getting Something For Their Bookshelf
I am sixty-three and I have given a great many bad presents. This is the first idea in years that has worked on absolutely everybody.
The Quick Take
- The best presents replace something ugly that the person would never replace themselves.
- There is a shelf sign in nineteen different book genres, so the choosing is the gift.
- They slot down between the books, so they do not need a surface at all.
- Everything is between £22.99 and £29.99, and none of it looks it.
- I bought two, gave one away, and kept the knight. I am not sorry.
It is all from one place — the bookshelf decoration collection at Evely Rose Boutique. Eighteen small things, nothing over £30.
I got here by accident. I had spent most of last December buying the usual: a scarf for my sister, hand cream for the neighbour, something for my husband that he opened politely and put down. Every year the same, and every year the same feeling afterwards — that I had bought things rather than chosen them. Then in January I bought myself a little hanging sign for the bookcase in the back room, for no reason at all, and spent the next six weeks noticing it every time I walked past.
The best gift replaces something she would never replace herself
Think about what is actually on most people's shelves. A mug full of biros. A dusty something brought back from a holiday in 1998. A photo frame with the picture that came in it. Nobody keeps these things on purpose, and nobody ever gets round to replacing them either, because who spends their own money on tidying up one shelf?
That is the whole trick of it. A present can do the thing she would never do for herself, and it costs less than the scarf she will put in a drawer.
It proves you know what she reads
This is the one that changed my mind about the whole idea. The shelf sign comes in nineteen genres — Romance, Dark Romance, Western Romance, Fantasy, Science Fiction and the rest — and you have to pick one.
Which means the present is not really the sign. The present is that you knew. My sister reads nothing but fantasy and has done since she was fourteen, and the look on her face was not about a £22.99 ornament.
It does not need a surface
Most gifts arrive needing somewhere to live, and in a house that has been lived in for thirty years there is nowhere left. Every windowsill is spoken for.
These do not ask for a surface at all. The post slides straight down into the row of books, where it disappears between two spines, and the piece hangs off the arm in front of them. No drilling, no picture hook, nothing to dust around. You are not giving somebody another thing to find room for — you are giving them something that lives in space they already have.
Nothing is over £30, and none of it looks like it
The signs are £22.99. The figures and the hanging pieces are £26.99. The lamps are £29.99. I expected something flimsy for that and got black scrollwork with a proper weight to it.
It also means you can give a real present to the people who are difficult to buy for — the brother-in-law, the woman from the walking group — without it becoming a £60 decision. And if you are buying for several people at once, the discount steps up as you go: two is 10% off, three is 15%, four or more is 20% and a small gift turns up in the parcel.
I ordered two and could not give the second one away
The knight was meant for my brother-in-law, who reads a great deal of history and is impossible to buy for. He stands at the end of a row holding the books up, reading his own little book, and he is faintly ridiculous in a way I liked enormously.
I kept him. I ordered another one for my brother-in-law and told nobody. That is the fifth reason, really: it is the only category of present I have ever bought where I ended up wanting one myself, and I have since started looking at other people's shelves when I visit, which is a strange way to go through life but there we are.
Would I Buy It Again?
I have bought six so far this year, which answers that. Four went to other people and two stayed here. If you only take one thing from this: buy the one that says something about the person. The genre sign for the reader, the knight for the one with all the history books, the snowman for whoever keeps Christmas going in your family. The specific one lands. The generic one is just another ornament.
— Diane
A word of sense before you go: these are small decorative pieces, and the lit ones are a soft glow rather than a reading lamp, so do not buy one expecting to read by it. Individual designs do sell out, particularly the seasonal ones closer to Christmas, and the genre signs go at different speeds depending on the genre. If you are buying for several people it is worth doing it in one order, both for the discount and because they then arrive together.
