Present Yourself

I feel like giving you a present. Well, not all of you. I mean, yes, I do feel like giving you all presents, but I only have enough presents for one of you. Does that sound mean? Let me explain further.

This must be a thing left over from when I used to read a lot of craft blogs (I like to sew). Crafters are always making things and they always have spare bits and bobs and squares of fabric and darling little things they have whipped up in the middle of sleepless nights, and they are always giving them away to each other. They say on their blogs, “I happen to have this pile of darling fabric scraps and a pencil cozy I knitted last night, and I am going to give it all away to a random person who comments on this post.” It created a lot of camaraderie, plus, I imagine, it kept people coming back to read the blog in the hopes that next time they would be the one to win the pencil cozy.

Don’t worry, I don’t have any pencil cozies. What I do have is yet another book I picked up during my epic used-bookstore visit a couple of weeks ago. The thing is that I already own this book, a fact of which I was completely aware when I purchased it. This is a weird habit of mine. When I find nice used copies of books I really love, even if I already own a perfectly nice copy, even if they’re not rare, I often feel compelled to buy them anyway. Then I bring them home and stare at my bookshelves, which occupy pretty much all the spare floor space in my house and are so full I have begun stacking books horizontally on top of the vertical ones, and despair yet again of my sanity.

In this case, however, I conceived of a win-win solution to this problem: I would give away this book, which it just so happens I have written about at length on this very blog, to one of my readers. Not just because I need to get rid of a book. Not just because I like you. Not just because it’s the time of year when people traditionally give gifts to people they like.

But also because I like wrapping up books and tucking them in those cute little padded envelopes and trotting them down to the pharmacy-cum-post office on the corner and saying, “I would like to mail this, please,” which I always say even though what else would I be doing handing the people at the post office an addressed envelope? Don’t ask me why I like doing this, I just do. So you’re doing me a favor, really.

This copy of Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata (in case you were too lazy to click through to the link above) is a nice little rack-sized paperback that looks as if it’s never been read. It was printed in Japan as part of the “Unesco Series of Contemporary Works,” but it’s entirely in English and includes the enlightening introduction by the translator, Edward G. Seidensticker.

So here’s the rundown: Comment on my blog. I know, you were going to do that anyway, weren’t you? Weren’t you? I will make a list of everyone who comments between now and December 31st (your name only gets to go on the list once, sorry, even if you comment every day, which I would be thrilled if you did).

Then I’ll put all the names in a hat, or something, and pull one out, and mail that person the book sometime after the New Year. It’s pretty simple, really.

(I may also include a special haiku I write just for you. You never know. Haiku don’t take up very much space in envelopes.)