Love Reading and my family knows that this but won’t get me a book unless I directly ask, so the worst one has to be either the bible or the French dictionary, I lost both of them

Not Christmas, but someone gifted my daughter a very sexist first Bible for girls board book for her birth. A lot in there about obeying men? It went straight in the trash.

For reasons beyond fathoming, multiple people thought that the perfect gift for a teenage girl (me) who loved reading (specifically sci-fi, fantasy, and horror) was harlequin romance novels. Like no hate to those who enjoy them but I sincerely loathe the bodice-ripper genre as a whole.

I collect Stephen King novels and his books usually come out right before my birthday. I had to politely ask everyone to not buy me the new Stephen King because one year I got like 5 of the same book. So not a terrible book but too many of a good thing.

The book itself was great, my use of it in the first 30 seconds after opening the gift was questionable. I was about 10 years old and liked to learn unusual words and obscure vocabulary. A sibling bought me some book for Christmas, the title was something like DICTIONARY OF UNUSUAL WORDS AND OBSCURE VOCABULARY. The extended family (other siblings, aunts, uncles, my parents) were gathered around and someone said, “Go ahead, teach us a new word!”

So I opened the book at random, saw a word I didn’t know, and (after looking carefully at the pronunciation key), announced, loudly:

“COITUS.”

Evidently, I was not the only person who didn’t know the word, because someone said, “Huh? What’s the definition?” Which I then read aloud. During the immediate and profoundly awkward silence, my mom suggested it was time for cookies and egg nog for everyone!

This book was quickly set aside on the shelf and not consulted publicly again, that I can recall.

A book by Joel Osteen… I’m an atheist.

My mother got me The Secret once as a gift. The Secret is one of two things: irrational bullshit or dangerous black magic. (It’s the first one)

My in laws got both me and my husband really nice travel guides for Alaska. I think we got 3 in all, covering everything you would want to enable you to plan the perfect trip regardless of budget. (The clever ones might see where this is going…) We were not, in fact, planning a trip to Alaska, nor did we have any interest in going. My in-laws were, though!

If I’m interpreting it extremely generously, maybe they were trying to convince us to go with them and make it a family trip. We had already told them firmly no because besides not wanting to go to Alaska in the slightest, I was pregnant and not feeling like traveling.

My mother in law also has gotten me Dawn dish soap and bulk red lentils for Christmas, and has given her son, my husband, saran wrap. So perhaps interpreting it generously isn’t warranted. 🤣

My friends back in school knew I loved to read, but didn’t really care about what I liked to read.

So when 50 shades came out, they decided to gift me the box-set. Usually, I’m opposed to book burning but I wanted to make an exception for this one. It was boke-rama.

I had a stint in eating disorder treatment right before Christmas one year as a teenager. A couple in my extended family, who I have little in common with and don’t know very well, got me an ENORMOUS book of “positive thinking” platitudes. Genuinely it was ~500 pages of the kind of corny quotes you see MLM types post on Instagram ripped from their original context. I tried to comb through it to find something of value but not a single quote meant anything to me. A lot of them were religious too, and I am not religious- the atheism of my immediate family is actually a huge source of drama in the extended family so that was awkward.

I ended up giving it away to a book donation drive shortly after. They really did mean well and I appreciated the thought, but it also showcased the ignorance that my family had around the situation in an uncomfortable way…

Not me, but my friend’s terrible father bought her a book about STD’s and a book about how to be a Proper Lady one year when she was like 10. Gag.

My family knows not to gift me books unless I specifically ask for it, but a family member gifted me the box set of V.C. Andrews Flowers in the Attic series when I was like 11-12. That series is just awful, and I read it at such an impressionable age I still don’t know what they were thinking (or why I read all 4 of them)

No book at all. :( (Seriously, when I was a kid, they wouldn’t buy me books because “That’s not a present!”. Now that I’m an adult with grown kids, it’s “You work in a library, you don’t need it!” :stomps foot in temper:)

I did get an inappropriate book for Christmas when I was 14 - my Dad bought me a Robert Heinlein box set (great!), which included “Stranger in a Strange Land” (awesome), and a book which included some of his more sexually-charged works. One featured incest! My dad eventually read them all, and I got a cryptic “If you read something you don’t understand, you come ask me, ok?” When I got to that book, I was horrified, paralyzed by the knowledge that my DAD knew exactly what I was reading. :laughing:

Mine’s not all that terrible, but I started dating a very nice (and somewhat wealthy) man a few weeks before Christmas. Since we were brand new, I’m sure I got him some thoughtful but inexpensive thing, and he gave me a book. A brand new, hardcover mystery book by Patricia Cornwell that he obviously had laying around and just grabbed. A book would have been a great gift but I don’t read mysteries (but felt obligated to read this one) and once we’d have been dating a little longer he would have been able to accurately gauge my reading tastes.

We went out for years and he ended up being a stellar gift giver!

It wasn’t specifically for me, so it only sort of applies.

My local book club does a holiday party for our December gathering every year. We do a fun quiz on book-club related things and do a “steal the gift” exchange but with wrapped books.

I fully admit I hate the “steal the gift” things anyway, I don’t like stealing the gifts, I always get skunked even when the stakes are low, and I just never enjoy it. But I participate every year because it’s simple and would be weird to be the only one not participating.

It can be any book- a used one you found, one from your shelf, one you hated, etc. I DESPISE the “one you hated” part. Why would you do that to us? We’re supposed to be at least book club friends if not actual friends outside of this club.

So one year I got One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus, one we’d read in the group.
The book we all collectively despised. The one we said we were against book burning, but might just have to make an exception for.

But it was soooo freaking “funny” to put that in the blind grab bag for the steal the gift exchange.

I’m not freaking laughing.

Of course no one stole that piece of garbage from me, so I was stuck with it for the entire game and didn’t get any second chances.

That was the year I stopped trying at all when selecting my book for the exchange. Previously I’d put a lot o f thought into it and had my selection get lukewarm at best reactions, but this was the icing on the cake, I was done. And it’s coming up again in a few weeks. I half put thought in to mine. A book in my give away pile already, but it’s a collection of Victorian ghost stories. The Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas, so it fits. But they’re all hit or miss on old stuff, so I fully expect it to be a lukewarm at best reception. Oh well. I liked it, just won’t read it again, hence why it’s in my giveaway pile. It’s going to be out of my house, which is the goal, regardless, so I’m satisfied.