Book Club Gift Exchange Ideas: A Line From a Book You All Read

It's the December meeting. Someone brought the good cheese. The book is half-discussed, the wrapped gifts are already on the coffee table, and everyone set the same price limit and quietly went over it.

A line from a book you read together is a gift only that room understands. It says I was there for that chapter.

Here are five: Brontë on choosing happy, Tolstoy on what greatness needs, Shelley's Creature at his most dangerous, Poe on dreams, and Bierce on the person who won't stop talking. We went back to the page each one came from: the 1847 novel and its prefaces, the Maude translation, the 1818 first edition, the 1849 newspaper, and the 1906 book that came out under a title Bierce hated. Under each one is what we found, plus a question to bring to the meeting.

Our founder once tried a new book club. The first pick was a romance novel. Fair enough. She asked what was coming next quarter. There was no list. The second pick was another romance. She asked again. Every book coming up was a romance. She never went back.

She read her share of Daphne du Maurier and Victoria Holt in school. She just wanted the next book to be something else. The right club is the one where you'd all argue about the same line. This list is for that club.

Good gifts start with the person, not the product. Here, the person is everyone who finished the book.

Model photo created with AI. The printed line is real.

For the friend who laughs first and loudest. Shop the tee →

Which line for which club:

• The club that read Jane Eyre: Brontë, on a tee.
• The club that survived War and Peace: Tolstoy, on a tee, an organic tee or a journal.
• The October horror pick: Shelley, on a tee or a journal.
• The host who carries the books: Poe, on a denim tote.
• The member who wants a word in edgewise: Bierce, on a phone case.

For the club that read Jane Eyre

"I would always rather be happy than dignified."

— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), Chapter XXXIV

This is the friend who laughs first and loudest, and doesn't apologize for it.

The full sentence is longer, and it changes the line. St. John Rivers has left the room without shaking Jane's hand after a quarrel. Diana tells her to go after him. Jane says: "I have not much pride under such circumstances: I would always rather be happy than dignified; and I ran after him—he stood at the foot of the stairs."

It doesn't work. She asks him to shake hands, and gets "a cold, loose touch." He tells her he has nothing to forgive, "not having been offended." Jane's verdict closes the chapter: "I would much rather he had knocked me down."

Something most readers skip: the prefaces. The second edition, signed "Currer Bell" and dated December 21, 1847, is dedicated to Thackeray, "if he will accept the tribute of a total stranger." By the third edition, April 13, 1848, "Currer Bell" was writing again to say that "my claim to the title of novelist rests on this one work alone." Other novels were being credited to the name.

For the discussion: Jane chases St. John and gets nothing back. Was she right to go after him anyway? And when did you last choose happy over dignified?

The full story of the line is on its quote page, and we wrote about how Brontë wrote through the dark.

For the club that survived War and Peace

"And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent."

— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1869), Book XIV, Chapter XVIII, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude

Some clubs spend a whole year on this one. This is the gift for the person who kept everyone on schedule, and who knew which Bolkonsky was which.

The line comes at the end of a chapter where Tolstoy steps out of the story to argue with the historians. Napoleon is retreating from Russia, and the books written since keep finding greatness in it. Tolstoy lists the moments they praised: Marshal Ney escaping by night, "abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths of his men," and the Emperor "escaping home in a warm fur coat."

Here's the detail that surprises people. The same chapter quotes Napoleon's own famous line, "Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas": from the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Tolstoy notes that "the whole world for fifty years" had been repeating it. Then he answers it. To call something great without measuring it against right and wrong is "to admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness." Our line follows.

For the discussion: Who in the book do we call great, and would Tolstoy agree? Pierre? Kutuzov? Natasha? Then try it on a character from another book your club read this year.

Model photo created with AI. The printed line is real.

Every last page of it. Shop the tee →

It's also on an organic tee and a journal.

For the October horror pick

"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful."

— Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (first edition, 1818), Volume III, Chapter III

Every club has one member who argues for the Creature. This is theirs.

He says it the night Victor tears apart the companion he had promised to make. In the 1818 text, the same speech has already warned "beware!" once. This time there's a semicolon, and then the reason. A few lines later comes the threat that drives the rest of the novel: "I shall be with you on your wedding-night."

Two things a book club can check for itself. First, the 1818 title page carries no author's name. The dedication, to William Godwin, Mary's father, is signed only "THE AUTHOR." Second, the punctuation depends on your copy. The free Project Gutenberg text many groups read prints it as "Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful," and numbers the chapters straight through, so the scene is in Chapter 20. The tee keeps the 1818 semicolon.

For the discussion: The Creature says losing his last hope is what made him fearless. Is that power, or just nothing left to lose? And who is the real monster by this point?

Model photo created with AI. The printed line is real.

Team Creature, and proud of it. Shop the tee →

It's also on a journal. And no, nobody in the novel shouts "It's alive!" Here's where that came from.

For the host who carries the books

"All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream."

— Edgar Allan Poe, "A Dream Within a Dream," The Flag of Our Union (Boston, March 31, 1849)

The one whose living room it always is. The one who carries the extra copies, the folding chairs and the bottle someone forgot to bring. A tote is a host's gift.

Read the poem through and you'll notice something about our line. In the first stanza it's a statement: "All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream." The poem ends by asking it again as a question: "Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?"

Poe had been working toward it for years. The editor T. O. Mabbott traced the poem back through a version from 1829 to one called "Imitation" from 1827, revised so completely that no line of the first survives in the last. It finally ran in a Boston newspaper in March 1849, the year Poe died.

For the discussion: Statement or question? Did Poe make up his mind? Read both stanzas aloud and vote.

Shop the denim tote → It's also on a tee and a sweatshirt. If your club likes Poe, check the shelf for the "Poe quotes" he never wrote first.

For the member who can't get a word in

"BORE, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen."

— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Every book club has a member who's read the book twice and the reviews three times, and tells you about all of them. This gift is not for that person. It's for whoever sits next to them.

Bierce says in his 1911 preface that the dictionary "was begun in a weekly paper in 1881." In 1906 much of it came out as a book under a different title, The Cynic's Word Book, "a name which the author had not the power to reject or happiness to approve." We opened a scan of that 1906 edition. BORE is already in it, word for word.

The same preface complains that other humorists "had helped themselves" to parts of his work, and he wanted it on record that the lines were his. A book club can appreciate a man who wanted credit for his lines.

For the discussion: Write your own Bierce-style definition for one character in this month's book. One sentence. Read them out. Winner picks next month's book.

Model photo created with AI. The printed line is real.

Says nothing. Phone says it for him. Shop the phone case →

We wrote more about Bierce and his dictionary here.

One tip for the exchange

Write the chapter on the gift tag: Jane Eyre, Chapter XXXIV. War and Peace, Book XIV, Chapter XVIII. Whoever opens it can find the page and read the whole passage to the room.

Not sure which line is theirs?

Take Find Your Line and choose For someone else. Answer five quick questions with them in mind, and it'll point you to lines that might fit.

Or browse the Quote Library and wait for the line that makes you think, that's them. For the reader who already owns every edition, try gifts for people who underline books.

If we can't verify it, we don't print it.

Questions we get

When do I need to order for Christmas?
We can't guarantee holiday delivery. For your best shot at Christmas, order by Thursday, November 26.

What's a good book club gift exchange idea?
A line from a book the group read together. Set a price limit, and write the chapter on the tag so the person who opens it can read the passage aloud.

Where is "I would always rather be happy than dignified" in Jane Eyre?
Chapter XXXIV (34), when Jane runs after St. John Rivers to make up after a quarrel.

Did Ambrose Bierce call it The Devil's Dictionary from the start?
That was his title. A 1906 book edition came out as The Cynic's Word Book, a name he said he had no power to reject. The 1911 edition restored The Devil's Dictionary.

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The Quoteiac Team: Posts with this byline are researched, written, and edited by different members of our team, each working from their own interests and strengths. Every quote is checked against its original source before it goes up.