Perfect Christmas Presents 1/5: How to book-swap + party

An experimental party concept in the form of a beautiful poster and manifest

joana breidenbach
2 min readNov 24, 2021

As I am myself always looking for original presents for friends and family, I decided this year to share my favourite ideas with you, my dear follower, reader and friend. Until Christmas I will post 5 presents for 5 people: for your best friend, your mom, your daughter or brother, your mail carrier and yourself. Some expensive, some cheap, some free.

The first recommendation is very close to my heart. Berlin artists Victor* and Siena* recently developed an experimental party concept — how to book-swap + party — designed around books and how people interact at parties.

The idea is simple:
1. You buy the beautifully designed poster and instructions and hang it up in your apartment.
2. You take a photo and send it out to a couple of friends with a location and date for your party, and then become very popular and people love you more. 3. Victor and Siena recommend telling people to bring 1–4 books and an experimental attitude. You can also, of course, do the party over zoom.
4. The parties held already were great hits, with people reading, drinking, having fun and haggling with confidence.

The poster costs 18€ and can be bought at Hallesches Haus in Berlin. You can also order it directly by mailing Victor at vfbreidenbach@gmail.com.

I will hold my own book-swap + party once this madness has eased. Drop me a line if you want to be invited. In the meantime I laugh every time I read the poster on my wall.

*Disclaimer: Siena is my editor at Being Underwater and Victor is my son.

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joana breidenbach

anthropologist, author, social entrepreneur, co-founder of betterplace.org and betterplace lab, more recently New Work needs Inner Work