What to give to book lover who has enough books?

Over lunch, a few days ago, a friend and I tried to come up with a gift idea for her mother’s 80th birthday. It was no easy task. The woman in question is still active, travels often, lives in a small space and follows a dedicated “less-is-more” philosophy. She’s already downsized and has distributed family heirlooms and other treasured objects to her three children and four grandchildren. She wears only a few sentimental pieces of jewelry and has all the small appliances she needs. As we ate our salads I asked questions and made suggestions. But my friend is a creative woman and over the years she’s made a lot of special gifts for her mother and she’s made donations in her mother’s name. And, she was running out of ideas. “What are the things you have shared with your mother,” I asked. “What do you think of when you remember happy moments with her?” “Well,” my friend replied. “She’s always been a big reader. She still loves a good book.” But, my friend hastened to add, her mother no longer likes to keep a lot of books around. For Christmas, the family gave her an e-reader and she has only to push a button to have a new titled delivered straight to her hands. As we were talking, I remembered happy moments spent with my mother and grandmother, our noses buried in favorite books. My mother and I would share the long sofa in the living room, one of us at each end, and spend an entire Saturday reading. My grandmother read each evening, sitting near the lamp. It was the way she rested at the end of a long day. I loved to curl up at her side and read my own book. The two of them were always giving me the name of a good book I simply had to read at some time in my life. The list grew and there were some I didn’t get around to reading until they were both gone. I’ve often regretted that, wishing I could tell them what I got out of the book they were so sure I would love. And that’s when it occurred to me that my friend could simply compile a list of quotes from books recommended by her mother. I suggested the idea and she loved it. She spent the next several days thumbing through the books her mother loved and had recommended. My friend has lovely handwriting so she wrote the title of each book followed by a favorite quote. At the end of the page she wrote a short note thanking her mother for instilling in her a lifetime of reading. The gift does everything it was meant to do. It honors my friend’s mother’s love of books. But, because it carries no extra weight, it also honor’s the woman’s determination to live with less. And, most importantly, it comes straight from the heart.