Yesterday I participated in a book holiday called Novellus that a friend of mine created last year as a way to ease the drear of post-holiday winter. Eight of us participated and were secretly assigned gift book recipients. Then, we could go onto the website and add our personal book preferences and what we already own lots of etc. We could also send anonymous questions to our assigned recipient to further clarify what they might be interested in.
I tend to get ridiculously excited for whatever holiday is coming up next. I don't think I really have a favorite holiday, I just like holidays in general. I love a theme and I love having something to look forward to. And it turns out this applies just as much to made up holidays- I was so invested in refreshing the page everyday because, as it turned out, the questions people anonymously asked were answered non-anonymously and publicly visible on our gift exchange page. It was so fun to see what people were asking and answering! And then, about a week after our exchange assignments were made, the questions petered off. I assume this was because people already knew what books they were getting each other, but there were still two weeks left of anticipation and I needed more continuous dopamine hits. Which was when I discovered that anyone could ask anonymous questions of anyone else! So I took it upon myself to become and agent of chaos and ask a question of a different person each day for the two weeks leading up to the exchange.
I got a lot of good info about what books people were interested in. With all this good information, I took my role as Master of Book Pandemonium to the next level and picked what books I would have gotten for each of them if I had been their assigned gift giver. Then I drew the covers of my book recommendations onto cards for each person (and listed some additional recs inside the cards, too). I thought they came out pretty good, and people seemed excited to receive the additional book recs based on their interests. Only one of my recommendations (The Red Tent) had previously been read by the person I gave it to, and it was one that I had kind of guessed, but on the smallest chance that she hadn't read it, I thought she should because I knew she'd love it.
In addition to the book recs depicted by the covers, I suggested: The Family Outing by Jessi Hempel, Leg bu Greg Marshall, The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson, The Long Way to A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, Honey & Spice by Bolu Babalola, Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez, Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson, Forty Autumns by Nina Willner, Sourdough by Robin Sloan, and Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory. And the books I actually brought to the swap were The Book of M by Peng Shepherd (for my specific recipient) and Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke, which I put in the yankee swap because it's a hilarious and absurd quick read and I thought pretty much everyone would enjoy it.
Two days before we met I sent a reminder into the group chat that people should make sure they answered any questions and it was when some of the people realized questions they hadn't asked were being answered by their assigned recipient. A comment went up asking if someone was asking additional questions for "general interest" or if something could have gone wrong and assigned multiple people the same recipient (whoops!). My favorite part of the whole ordeal is that one of my friends was like "We all knew that was Aleena, right? I saw someone was asking people extra questions and was immediately like this is clearly Aleena." While I'm usually a big rule follower, I have to say I am also a fan of lighthearted mischief- especially when it involves books!
In addition to the specifically assigned book swap, we had a yankee-swap style exchange, so everybody brought two books and left with two! It was super fun.
All in all, a really wholesome day and one well spent gathering with friends who share a love of reading.
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