I want to talk about the experience of giving a book away. Not recommending a book — physically removing a copy from your possession and putting it into someone else's hands. It's an act that commits both parties to something.

I keep a small stock of books I buy specifically to give: currently, This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay, H is for Hawk, and a collection of short stories by an author I discovered five years ago. The giving copy is different from my reading copy. I don't annotate it. It's a neutral object until it belongs to someone.

The best response I ever got was a letter, not a text. The person I'd given A Visit from the Goon Squad wrote three pages about what the book had done to them. I'm keeping the letter inside my own copy.