/lit/ - Literature

>>23345581
Something by Jules Verne because your dad sounds boring.

>>23345581
Something by Carlyle or the Transcendentalists.

>>23345581
Never gift a book to someone. They don't make good gifts, unless it's a higher quality version of a book they already like.

>>23345610
No I've been gifted a book I've read before. I didn't read it. I read for what's inside the book, not what the book looks like on the outside.

>>23345581
The Old Man and the Sea

Kon Tik
I love the chapters where they build the weird raft and when they're chilling out at sea, just dudes rocking and eating fish that threw themselves on deck.

Look for an old used copy with the painted cover.

>>23345581
I hate my dad. Despise him. I know that's not what you asked, just sayin.
Idk. Get him a card and a scratch ticket.

>>23345586
he should probably do drugs, be twenty and go to college to be less boring. maybe a one month travel vacation where he backpacks around and annoys foreigners

>>23345581
Growth of the Soil, by Hamsun, obviously.

>>23345610
Why do faggots and women only care for how pretty a book looks on your shelf than the actual contents of the book? Books make great gifts, so long as a person reads it and you know their tastes/interests. I can give multiple examples of why gifting books is a very thoughtful thing to do for someone.

>>23345794
It's very difficult to gauge someone's actual tastes, especially for people who think that they can. This is especially detrimental for books, which require a large time investment to experience. Hypothetically, I'd prefer if someone got me the first edition of my favourite book than give me a book that's based off their estimation of me.

>>23345794
where did you get the idea that he cared about the look of a book? he's right, books make bad gifts because there's a huge chance you got the person a wad of toilet paper. i dont care about history for instance. if you get me aome gigantic tome on the fall of rome it will sit on my bookshelf for a year then get thrown away.

you either get lucky or know the giftee extremely well. in most other cases you just handed them a paper weight.

>>23345792
Seconded

>>23346009
>>23346073
What do you talk about with your friends? Do you not know well enough what they like/dislike? Do you guys lack deep connections? I'm not recommending you buy a book for someone you hardly know, like a stranger. But surely you can gauge your good friends'/partner's interests quite easily?
Here's some examples of when book giving was positive for me:
>girl I fancied, huge Roman history buff. Gifted her the Aeneid by Virgil and later Satyricon by Petronius
>ex-gf, huge sci-fi nerd, gifted her Asimov's Foundation series
>friend, massive Nazi, gifted him Mein Kampf
>friend who wants to start getting into reading, gifted him 1984
>friend is Jewish stemcel, gifted him Sapiens.
Maybe I'm just not as autistic as you guys

>>23346191
ive always found that peoples taste arent so a to b. my dad reads all kinds of sci fi and home improvement/wood working stuff but never read a single one of the cabinet maker handbooks or asimov novels i got him. my older brother likes comedy and americana but never ended up reading the charles portis novels i got him. same with friends etc. books to me seem like the kind of thing that people will get for themselves. the time investment makes it real personal, kind of like shoes.

>>23345581
Joseph Conrad short stories
Jack London Sea Wolf

>>23345780
>backpacks around and annoys foreigners
The backpacker IS the foreigners?

>>23346505
as of right now, between me and the (overwhelmingly likely) american OP, the natives of the hypothetical country are foreigners to us.

>>23345594
Emerson on Carlyle:
>He is not mainly a scholar, like the most of my acquaintances, but a practical Scotchman, such as you would find in any saddler’s or iron-dealer’s shop, and then only accidentally and by a surprising addition, the admirable scholar and writer he is.

>>23345581
Edward Abbey perhaps

>>23345581
Black Company

OP here, thanks for the recommendations. I'm leaning towards Kon-Tiki and Growth of the Soil so far.
>>23345594
This is also interesting. I might go with it for next year.

>>23348684
I would be very concerned and disgusted if my child gave me Growth of Soil.

>>23349181
I'm trans, btw, thought I should let you know.

>>23345610
Books are great gifts as long as you know the tastes of the person you're gifting to

kind of a lazy recc but he'd probably like melville's other major works like omoo, typee, redburn, whitejacket.

John Muir or Robert Frost maybe