Ideas, reflections and stories from D.J. Gifford.
We have become very good at giving people books. But what if the book isn't really the gift? What if the most valuable thing you can give someone is permission to stop, put everything else aside and actually read it?
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I thought my hearing difficulties had taught me to listen differently. It took writing my memoir to realise they had also taught me to notice differently, and that the things we notice often become the memories we keep.
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A life probably makes more sense when you look backwards. What once felt like separate chapters can begin to look like different seasons of the same journey, each leaving something behind for the next one.
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We have become very good at giving people books. But what if the book isn't really the gift? What if the most valuable thing you can give someone is permission to stop, put everything else aside and actually read it?
Read Article →
I thought my hearing difficulties had taught me to listen differently. It took writing my memoir to realise they had also taught me to notice differently, and that the things we notice often become the memories we keep.
Read Article →
A life probably makes more sense when you look backwards. What once felt like separate chapters can begin to look like different seasons of the same journey, each leaving something behind for the next one.
Read Article →
I could ask you to buy my book. Instead, I'm going to suggest something slightly different. If you're going to give someone a book, give them something that might actually make sure they have time to read it.
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There is something strange about an industry where the packaging can sometimes appear before the thing being packaged. Authors are encouraged to build the cover, the mood and the audience while the story is still taking shape.
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Of course we judge books by their covers. We have to. The cover is often the first invitation to discover what is inside. The more interesting question is whether we do exactly the same thing with people.
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Saying hello is easy enough. The interesting part begins afterwards. Once someone has opened the door to a conversation, what we choose to ask, notice and share determines whether it becomes another passing interaction or something we remember.
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The internet gave us access to information that previous generations could only dream about. Somewhere along the way, though, we may have stopped carrying some of the skills that helped us find, understand and remember that information.
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At some point, saying hello seems to have become a responsibility we expect somebody else to take. We wait for the introduction, the invitation or the right moment, even though the simplest conversation often begins with one person deciding to speak first.
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I've never been particularly interested in travelling simply to arrive somewhere. The attraction was often what I didn't know yet - who I might meet, what might happen and where a decision made that morning could lead by nightfall.
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Most people don't need another reason to own a book. They need a reason to finally open the one already sitting beside the bed. Sometimes the best gift isn't another book at all. It is the time and permission to read one.
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I thought I was writing a travel memoir. The further I got into the story, though, the more obvious it became that the destinations weren't what I remembered most. It was the people I met and the conversations I had that stayed with me.
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We have never had more ways to show people who we are. Yet being visible isn't necessarily the same thing as being known. Somewhere between the person and the packaging, something can get lost.
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I have never been particularly comfortable with the idea that I should already know everything. Some of the most interesting parts of writing, publishing and building something myself have come from discovering how much I still don't know.
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Writing a book and finding the people who want to read it are two very different jobs. Publishing my first memoir has made me think much more carefully about who the right readers actually are.
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There was a time when getting lost while travelling wasn't something you could solve by pulling a phone from your pocket. In the 1990s, getting somewhere often meant asking someone, trusting a guidebook or simply seeing where the road took you.
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When I look back at the experiences that stayed with me, they aren't necessarily the biggest adventures. Often they are the smallest moments - something somebody said, a conversation, a look or an ordinary interaction that meant more than I realised at the time.
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Losing some of the ability to hear clearly changed more than the way I listened. It made me pay closer attention to what people were doing, how they were reacting and what was happening around the words.
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Before Ricardo Bumachunski became the name guiding readers through my memoir, he existed somewhere much earlier in my life. This is the story of where the name came from and why it eventually became part of the way I told my story.
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The challenge is deliberately simple. Notice somebody you might normally ignore. Say hello. Ask a question. Find out something you didn't know. It doesn't require an app, a subscription or a complicated plan.
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We can follow the lives of people we've never met, know what strangers ate for breakfast and watch their holidays unfold. Yet the person living next door can remain almost completely unknown. When did that become normal?
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Why do so many people say they don’t read books? Perhaps they’re too busy, but perhaps we’re also very good at promoting books to people who already read twenty or more a year. D.J. Gifford explores whether reaching more readers might require us to think differently about which books we promote and who we promote them to.
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There are subjects we spend years teaching and then there are skills we simply expect people to figure out for themselves. Organisation is one of them, despite how much of adult life depends on being able to plan, prepare and follow through.
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I could have started with the ideas. Instead, I started with the story. The experiences came first, and only after looking back at them did I begin to understand the lessons that were sitting inside them.
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There are plenty of ways to write about travel. I deliberately chose not to write mine as a catalogue of destinations. The places matter, but the people I met, the conversations I had and the things I noticed mattered more.
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