Books, of course.  The answer’s so easy it barely needs thinking about.

Things are bad right now, with the recession biting deep, companies going bust all over, joblessness, and the doom-sayers in the media enjoying themselves more than they have for some time.  A new campaign has been launched called Books Are Great Gifts.  You can visit their website if you want, but really you shouldn’t need to because the facts speak for themselves.  Books are great gifts.  I can turn around and browse my heaving shelves now, and remember just who bought me some of my books, and when, and what I was doing when I read them.

That copy of Good Omens by Pratchett and Gaiman was bought by my mate Richard in our late teens.  A bit tatty now, I still remember reading it before we went off together to a Motorhead gig.

Ian McEwan’s Saturday was handed to me by my mother just before she went blind, and later passed away. It’s the last book she ever read.

King’s The Stand was bought for my eighteenth birthday by an old friend I’ve lost touch with (Anthony Joslin, where are you?)

And there are many more …

Books are unique (matched only perhaps by CDs) in that as well as a useful present, they become a part of your history.  Read the spines on your bookshelves and your past comes to life, in the same way that each individual world inside those covers develops a life of its own the minute you start reading.

Buy books.  Buy mine, that would be nice, but any books will do.  You don’t even need to get off your arse … just log on to any of the online booksellers.

Happy reading this Christmas.