In the season of gift-giving, the ratio of books bought to books read tilts heavily toward the bought.

Such gifts carry with them a whiff of self-congratulation, as well as flattery. They say: I’m smart, and I think you are, too.

Sometimes the idea of the book — and its physical presence — is as important as content. “I think they become features in the intellectual landscape,” said Alberto Manguel, author of “A History of Reading” and “Homer’s the Iliad and the Odyssey: A Biography,” out this month. “You don’t need to climb it or visit it, you just need to know it’s there.”