A Real-Life Mystery

Stella and I often shop together for presents for our respective birthdays. This is easier in several ways: our birthdays are close (July and August); we both know the "rules" (books are the preferred gifts, used books are just fine, nothing excessively expensive, etc.) and we tend to prefer the same bookstores; we can always ask about a particular item because the intended recipient is there to see it; our memories are both ancient enough to have forgotten the specific gift by the time the birthday arrives, allowing some element of surprise; there's hardly ever an unsuitable gift; etc. It's almost foolproof. Almost.

E. Roosevelt

When I began unwrapping my gift yesterday, I had a pretty good idea that it was Eleanor Roosevelt's autobiography: I had seen it, held it in my hands at the bookstore, read a few paragraphs, and thoroughly approved of Stella's choice (yes, she found it; yes, she knows my tastes that well).

H. W. Brands

But that's not what it was. When the last of the tissue and ribbon headed for the floor, I found to my surprise that I held in my hands H. W. Brands's Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. With due respect to Mr. Brands, a UT history professor who has a couple dozen books to his credit and a following in his field, and notwithstanding my acknowledgment that many of "his [Roosevelt's] class" really did think FDR a traitor to it and a radical, I have to say it was not a book I'd have bought for myself. Hey, it's a free country (or so I'm told); you have to allow me my own approach to political hagiography... and this book doesn't appear to fill the bill. Now please, no lectures about reading challenging books; life is short and getting shorter birthday by birthday.

So, there are two questions. First, how did this happen? Stella admits she paid to have it gift-wrapped at the bookstore; the swap might have been accomplished there, though that still doesn't explain why the substitution was made. Second, and harder to answer, what do I do about it?

Part of me feels I should want to read the book, even if I don't really want to read it. This copy is a signed first edition, which may appeal to the collector in you, but that collector is absent in me. And it's visibly (gently) used, giving credibility to the notion that its previous owner read and appreciated the book. But part of me just wants my E.R. autobiography that I so briefly held that day a few months ago. What to do?