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If you're not a parent, if you're an aunt or uncle or neighbor, books are an amazing gift.

I love everything about books. I love the content, the way they look and even the lovely way they smell. I think a book collection says something about you as a person, and certainly my books are something I'd want to pass on for future generations.

I'm an appreciator. I love all kinds of books, and I want others to love them, too.

I love to both give and receive very old books.

Books stay with me and have shaped me and made huge impacts on my life.

Reading is such a personal thing to me. I'd much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore, and let that person choose his or her own books.

My first book was the book that changed my life.

If I give a book as a gift, it is invariably a children's book with beautiful artwork and a simple text. I adore the feel of them, the care taken in the artwork, and the high visual stimulation that sets off the simple but often powerful message the text conveys.

This is what I have discovered - and it has been a gift in itself - that books live over and over again in different people's minds. That I might mean one thing as I write, but a reader's experiences will take it somewhere else. That is like a conversation, I think. It is a true connecting up.

Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.