It’s the holiday season, time for an end-of-year book flood

With cold dark nights upon us, I am embracing what people in Iceland have done for years.

During World War II and beyond, there weren’t many book publishers or book imports in Iceland, since it’s far away and has a small population. So toward the end of the year, the few publishers and bookstores there brought out a “flood of books” for people to stock up.

“Jolabokafloo” (end of the year book flood) has morphed into a tradition now that has family and friends giving each other books on Christmas Eve—each person gets a book—and then each person hunkers down to read for the evening.

I told one friend about this and she said, “Doesn’t sound very communal.” I’ll give her that, but I imagine, after the meal and laughing and good cheer dwindle, it’s a nice way to close out the evening.

I’ve tried this tradition for a couple of years. I suspect I get more out of it than some of my book receivers. The fun is in picking something I imagine the person would enjoy and then shipping the (hard copy) book off to the gift recipient. The danger will be that some of them listen only to audio books, others read only on an iPad, so the notion of a real book will be confusing to them.

My friend who says this tradition doesn’t sound communal has only recently shifted completely to reading on her iPad and says this is a way to avoid collecting more “stuff” (i.e., hard copy books) in her life. A bit of a damper, indeed.

So my attempt may fail, but I’m going to give it another year or two.

If you need a way to slow your rapid-fire holiday life down, think of giving a book from a “book flood,” and enjoy the slow pace, if only for an evening.

Happy end of the year.

Nancy Napier is a Boise State University distinguished professor. nnapier@boisestate.edu