If you love books like I do you may be wondering about the title of this post. I mean, why shouldn’t you just give books?
The answer: You should. Give lots of them. Especially to me.
But, if you want to give something handmade*, you might like to try one of the following ideas. That is, if you can get past the wanton destruction of innocent books.

Book Notebooks
I made these doodle pads for Newt for Christmas a few years ago. First I picked up a couple of used Harry Potter paperbacks and cut off the covers. Then I trimmed blank white paper to fit and had them bound at Kinkos. Easiest craft ever and she loved them. Win. Win.

But what to do with all the pages?

Book Wreath

I made this wreath for my living room using these instructions. Wouldn’t that make a fun gift?

A Hiding Place
For your chocolate:

Secrets:

Or even ironic storage for your e-reader:

The site where I originally found book hollowing instructions no longer exists, but there are a lot of tutorials out there.
This is a good one.

Other Constructive Book Destruction
This one is not a craft, but Wreck This Journal seems to fit well on a this list.
Newt loved her copy to pieces, quite literally.

This is still my favorite page, though I think she may know a few more words she could add to it now.

I wrote a whole post about it here.

What do you think? Are you charmed by my crafty creativity? Or horrified at my destruction?
What books would you like to creatively destroy?

*We have a tradition of creating one handmade gift for each other every year. Come back Friday to see what I’m making Newt this year.