I live in the south of England and though there used to be over a dozen second-hand and antiquarian booksellers nearby (within easy driving distance), almost all of them have closed down in the past few years.
There’s now only three nearby that I’m aware of, plus a couple of small sections within flea markets that mostly deal with old books with decorative bindings. It’s horribly sad, my favourite thing in the world is browsing around old bookshops and making discoveries, which you just can’t do with Abebooks.
I think I’m lucky that there’s still a handful near here, things seem to be even worse in the rest of the country.
Recently I took a few days off work and made a pilgrimage to Hay-on-Wye for a long weekend just to go around all the bookshops there. Maybe lots of bookshops gathered together in a town like this, where they’ll attract book lovers as tourists, is the only way that experience will survive.
Admittedly it wasn’t given as a gift, nor was it terrible, just strange.
When I was around 14 my mother came home from work and gave me a book to borrow/read that one of her friends had given her and said “I think your son will probably like this.”
It was The Cement Garden.