Best Books to Gift to Someone: List of Great Books to Give as Gifts to Everyone on Your List

Looking for the best books to gift to someone? Whether you’re looking for beautiful books to give as gifts to friends, coworkers, or family, we’ve got you covered. 

Here is a list of famous and most loved books from different genres:

“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee: A Great Gift

“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“1984” by George Orwell

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey

Meet Samantha: All-Time Favourite

“The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle – A Treasured Non-Fiction

“Atomic Habits” by James Clear – A Great Storytelling

The Motivation Manifesto – Best Gift to Aim for Motivation

“Becoming” by Michelle Obama – Celebrate Women

“Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson – Biography for the Book Club

“Educated” by Tara Westover – Memoir for Book Lovers

“The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien

“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card

Lessons In Chemistry

“Children of Dune” by Frank Herbert.

“Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” by Stieg Larsson

“The Silence of the Lambs” by Thomas Harris

The Wager, A Tale of Shipwreck by David Grann 2023

“The Joy of Cooking” by Irma S. Rombauer – A Cookbook 

“Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child

“How to Cook Everything” by Mark Bittman

“Humans of New York” by Brandon Stanton

“National Geographic: The Photographs” by Leah Bendavid-Val – An Omnibus

“The Complete Calvin and Hobbes” by Bill Watterson – For Happy Reading

Name Is Barbra

So what makes us experts in the best books to give someone? Well for starters, we recently had a book gifting incentive program in our office…

Our office has always had a unique approach when it comes to employee engagement. To boost engagement and morale, HR has come up with fun ideas in the past that include customized swag baskets for top earners or free lunches for everyone on Fridays. 

But a few months back, they decided they wanted to switch things up. HR had been handing out baskets and free food to employees for years to show employee appreciation and encourage employee engagement, but they decided it was time for a change. No one’s sure why, honestly. The gift baskets and free lunch were working because engagement and overall sales have been up for the past few years, but I guess HR was feeling creative and wanted to try out something new…

So that’s where HR’s new book incentive came into play. I guess one of the HR employee’s kids recently celebrated national reading month at school, which takes place in March. Well, that employee – Brenda – decided that she wanted to bring some of that enthusiasm for books around the office. Well, that was Brenda’s reasoning for this new book incentive at least. 

We’re all pretty sure that Brenda had an ulterior motive behind the newfound encouragement of books in the workplace. A lot of people have had some glaring misspellings and grammar mistakes in their emails lately. We think this was Brenda’s not-so-subtle way of telling us we should be more diligent when writing our emails. We assume that she’s hoping that giving employees books as incentives will inspire us to write our emails a bit more particularly. 

So, Brenda began putting together lists of classic books to give as gifts and even some of the best nonfiction books to give as gifts. These niche lists included titles such as The Great Gatsbyand A Brief History of Time. 

Brenda came up with tons of niche lists of books. Each time we met a goal or marker in the office, or anytime a special occasion came up, we were able to choose a book from one of the lists and that book would get gifted to us. Here’s how that went, as well as some inspiration for some of the best books to gift someone in your life.

Best Books to Gift Colleagues 

Since we’re a business, one of Brenda’s first lists was the best business books of all time. This list of best business books included:

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Atomic Habits by James Clear 

Pulitzer Prize Feature Stories for the Keeper

Brenda realized that she had such a knack for creating lists, that she started publishing these lists and putting them on blogs where she’d list them as the best books to gift colleagues or the best book to gift a CEO. These lists were so good that a lot of us used her list of books for work colleagues come Christmas time. 

Best Books to Gift a Friend 

Brenda started publishing more and more lists on her website, such as best books to gift a friend. She even started getting more specific, creating lists such as the best motivational books to gift a friend or inspirational books to gift a friend. 

These lists included titles such as:

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Custom Journals

Best Books to Gift a Woman 

Another one of her lists was the best books to gift a woman. The list titled The Best to gift a Female Friend includes titles such as 

• Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap
• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
• Becoming by Michelle Obama

Best Books to Give as Gifts to a Man

After her list of the best books for women, she of course published a list titled “Best Books to Gift to a Man”. Hey, I won’t lie, a lot of the ladies in the office used her best book to gift to her husband when Valentine’s Day rolled around. Because let’s be honest, sometimes men are just so tricky to buy for! Which is why her best book to gift a friend on his birthday list was a huge hit.  

Best Book For Someone You Love 

We also all used Brenda’s best book to gift someone you love list on Valentine’s Day. We even saw Tom from Accounting reading up on Brenda’s list of the best romantic books to gift your girlfriend. Even though he’s been single for the past 10 years. Brenda also published a list titled the best book to gift your crush and so many more.

Brenda spent so much of her time compiling lists book gifts and publishing them on her website, that she barely had time to do any of her actual work at the office. Eventually, our boss had to have a chat with Brenda. Especially since she’d completely abandoned the office’s book incentive to work on her own book list passion project. That’s when Brenda announced that she was quitting her position in the office to work on her book blog full-time.

After that, the incentive was completely canceled. We went back to handing out customized swag and other custom gift baskets as incentives in the office. We never saw Brenda again after that, but some of us still check her book blog when we’re stuck on what to give one of our friends or coworkers.