Posted Wednesday December 16th 2009
by Nikesh Shukla

Oh mum and oh dad what to buy you both for Christmas? And sister too.

My family is notoriously difficult to buy for and this year, with book sales dwindling (not it would appear because of people reading online or on e-readers but because people are reading LESS! Less? What?) I decided I would buy a book for everyone for Christmas, inspired by Booktrust's own A Gift for Life campaign. The problem is, my family are impossible to buy for.

They're not as voracious as I am when it comes to the written word. My mum reads Stardust magazine religiously, the Bollywood gossip equivalent of Heat. My dad reads whatever free newspapers are thrust into his hands as he sleepily he enters the tube. And my sister- well, the only thing my 25-year old sister reads is the titles of songs on her iPod. This is my chance, I decided this year, to give them the gift of reading. If I buy them all a book for Christmas they'll have to read it right? Except, it would appear, it's not that easy. I've got to find something that appeals to them.

First up is mum. She used to read a book every two days- now watches television till her eyes droop. What to get you? I flick through her television choices. She likes watching holiday programmes and the weather channel. She is planning to go to the Far East next year on holiday with my dad. She likes stories about the rest of the world. She wanted to be an air stewardess as a child. So what to get her?

Well, there's the inevitable travel guide to Thailand for her, with lots of maps and pictures to keep dad happy, but she'll need something to read on the plane. I opt for The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, hoping that the short story structure and the vivid tragic vulnerable characters will be enough to draw a once-prolific reader back into reading books with big ideas, with heart and emotion and scope and beauty.

Dad likes biographies. I know that much because the only two books he has ever owned were kept on my shelves. They were biographies of Richard Branson and Aristotle Onassis. Dad is also getting more sentimental as he gets older. A few years ago, he and I made the journey back to Mombasa, Kenya where he was born to retrace his roots and see his beginnings. Barack Obama made the same journey and handily wrote a book about it. Dad will like the biography element, the optimistic tone and the familiarity of landscape (the same Kenyan ancestry journey). Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama is the book for him.

Now my sister- a difficult proposition. She is a big film buff and spends a lot of time glued to her television watching movie channels and DVDs. She is hot on everything current in Hollywood and Bollywood and likes big budget romance/action fare. She also quite likes the look of that Robert Pattinson chap. Well, this one is easier than I initially thought. She's getting the first Twilight book for Christmas. And she'll enjoy it because she's seen the film and she loved it and now the book can paint in the details, give the canvas of the film a deeper more textured gleam. And hopefully when she's finished and enjoyed Twilight, we can manoeuvre her into reading more and more.

This shopping trip has been exhausting and I could have done it all with three clicks online. But the hours of absorbing literature in my local bookshop, talking through my choices with the helpful bookseller, and feeling a bit more ownership of the decisions I made with that bulge of books in my bag, I know that it's going to be a very happy Christmas.

I only hope they're planning to get me that Wii and a copy of the gorgeous new United States of McSweeneys for Christmas.