My wife an I are giving up on stocking stuffers this year because we seem to have an over-supply of stocking stuffers left over from past years. So, we said to hell with buying more Chapstick, Pears Soap, and Tic Tacs.

We do give each other books as Christmas gifts, but usually from a Christmas list rather than intuition. I read 10000000 books a year and that makes it hard for my wife to give me something I haven’t read. She reads fewer books and sticks to a group of authors she likes. Neither of us feels confident enough to buy each other a book unless we know (from a Christmas list) what we both really want.

Since some of my novels are available in paperback, I’m biased when I suggest that paperbacks make great gifts. Better yet, when you give them as stocking stuffers, you don’t have to wrap them. That’s a plus for me. While my wife can wrap gifts better than the gift-wrapping lady at the mall, the gifts I wrap guarantee that people will think I was sipping moonshine while I wrapped them.

When either of us splurged on a stocking stuffer, we’d put a gift card on it saying it was from Santa. No harm, no foul. Or, when we gave candy, we made sure there was enough of it to share. But as the years went by, all the old, utilitarian stocking stuffers didn’t work anymore because we each tended to buy them whenever we ran out. And, over time, we both realized that those gifty books sold in the front of the Barnes & Noble stores didn’t really work because nobody ever read them anyway.

As it turns out, each one of us has a storage locker in the garage with one thousand tubes of Chapstick, several hundred Snickers bars, enough Scotch tape for all of Google’s offices, rolls of Kodak film that we wouldn’t know where to get developed even if we were still using our old Honeywell cameras, shoelaces for an army, enough Q-tips to scare all those ear doctors who say, “don’t stick these things in your ears,” and fruitcake that’s been passed from one family to another since Herbert Hoover was President.

So, we agreed on the “no more stocking stuffers” plan. We don’t have a fireplace in this house, so we don’t hang stockings anyhow. They sort of degenerated over time into grocery sacks of stuff.

However, those of you who are steadfastly maintaining the old ways–that is, stocking stuffers–can switch over from office supply store nicknacks (extra pens and boxes of staples) and drugstore nicknacks (toothbrushes and Hall’s cough drops) to paperback books. Forget Kindles and Nooks and get the real thing! Avoid Amazon if you can and go to your local bookstore where real people are trying to earn a living by curating books that your loved ones will really appreciate.

Before you go to the bookstore, you need to break into your loved ones’ rooms and see what’s already there. Steal their Kindles and Nooks for an hour or so and make sure you don’t duplicate what they are reading on their screens, poor bastards. Years ago, we used the word “grok” to imply that we understood somebody or something. If you grok your loved ones, you can pick out books they’re most likely to enjoy.

If they don’t enjoy them, they’ll love you for trying your best even if you have to remind them that it’s the thought that counts.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of stocking stuffers named “Conjure Woman’s Cat,” “Eulalie and Washerwoman,” “Lena,” and “Sarabande.”