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The 2015 Holiday Gift Guide

By Jesse Kornbluth
Published: Nov 30, 2015
Category: Beyond Classification

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This holiday season feels different. Charleston, Paris, San Bernardino, any place where a guy with a gun and a grudge makes a play for a Guinness World Record — the avalanche of death cascades. The new new normal: Safety is a thing of the past. We’re all “soft targets” now.

Danger sometimes terrifies, sometimes excites. But what it most reliably does is sharpen the senses. Food, the arts, love — over the last few months, they’ve become more vivid for me. Have you noticed this too?

La Rochefoucauld wrote, “No one can look long at the sun or death.” This is especially true in holiday season. So this year’s holiday guide is short on instruction and self-improvement, long on pleasure. And another thing: I’ve served up a lot of inexpensive gifts — a Timex watch for $22, an exquisite box of Italian pencils for $11, a classic collection of Motown duets for $5. I do this for two reasons. First, so you can indulge the desire to be generous to many people. The second reason is much more important to me now that I live in a neighborhood where the line of hungry and poor people at food pantries and soup kitchens is longer each day: I want to be more generous — and I want to help you be more generous — to charities and causes.

FYI: It often happens that I haven’t reviewed a single book on The New York Times list of 100 Notable Books. This year we agree on two: Joseph Kanon’s Leaving Berlin and Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Now to the guide….

THE FIRST GIFT OF CHRISTMAS
HeadButler.com: The 100 Essentials
Yes, my book. Because it saves me the trouble of listing anything from the greatest hits (2004-2014) here. (I know this is unreasonable. So I cheated and listed a few. But only a few.) Because it will help you decide what to give and who to give it to. And, if I may say so, because the book is a good gift all by itself.
Read about it here.
Buy the paperback from Amazon here.
Buy the Kindle edition here.

HOLIDAY STUFF
The Snowman
A boy in rural England builds a snowman. At midnight, as the boy looks out his window, the snowman lights up. The boy runs outside. He invites the snowman to tour his home. Then the snowman takes his hand. And off they fly, over England, over water, to the North Pole. There, Santa gives the boy a scarf. The boy and the snowman fly home. As the boy is going inside, the snowman waves — a wave of goodbye. The boy rushes into his arms and hugs him. The next morning, the snowman’s just a few lumps of coal and an old hat. Did that magical night really happen? The boy reaches into his pocket and finds the scarf. He drops to his knees and, almost as an offering, places it by the snowman’s hat. Fantastic story. Amazing animation. The most beautiful song. This 22-minute film is the very definition of perfection. For kids 3 and up.

A Christmas Carol
Not the 28,000-word original, the one that no one reads aloud to the end. This is the reader-and-kid-friendly 13,000-word edition that I abridged and Paige Peterson illustrated. You’ll never miss those 15,000 words.

Phil Spector: A Christmas Gift for You
Phil Spector is a killer and a sleaze, but as a writer and producer, he was magic, both with black groups (The Ronettes, Crystals, Ben E. King and more) and white (The Righteous Brothers). This is simply the best holiday album ever made.

Christmas with the Tallis Scholars
In the great choral pieces of the Renaissance, we find magnificent voices blending together to sing, in harmony, their praise to the Almighty. Today, we hear that holy music, delivered intact, in the recordings of The Tallis Scholars.

FOR CHILDREN
The Polar Express
The essential gift of the season for kids and the adults who love them. The story: On Christmas Eve, a father tells his son that there’s no Santa Claus. Later that night, a train packed with children stops in front of the boy’s house. He hops on and travels to the North Pole, where Santa offers him the first toy of Christmas. The boy chooses a reindeer’s bell. On the way home, he loses it. How he finds it and what that means — that’s where you reach for the Kleenex.

The Book with No Pictures
A book for 5-to-8-year-old children.
A book for 5-to-8-year-old children with no pictures.

Blackie: The Horse Who Stood Still
Christopher Cerf and Paige Peterson co-authored a whimsical, mostly true, rhyming story about a horse that wouldn’t play the game: Most colts are frisky but Blackie was not/ Blackie liked standing still! Yes, he liked it a lot!/ “What’s the hurry? There’s so much to see/Standing here in the shade of a juniper tree…” Peterson’s delightful illustrations make this a book that kids will want to look at while a parent reads Cerf’s droll verses. Ages 6-12.

THINGS
Portable Phone Chargers
The AmazonBasics Portable Power Bank, which is about the same size as a Samsung Galaxy S3 and just a smidge thicker, is a veritable tower of power. Plug it in at night — it takes 6 to 8 hours to reach full charge — and you can use it to charge an iPhone (4-5 times), Nexus (4.1 times), Galaxy S5 (2.6 times), the Galaxy Note III (2.3 times) or an iPad (once.) Not bad for $24.99.

Perfetto Pencils
Louise Fili’s pencil case and pencils makes me think of the Italy of the 1930s and 1940s. It’s very clean, very precise, very bold design: a sturdy case, with twelve double-sided, two-color pencils. $10.88. Want multi-colors? Here.

Egyptian Magic
The ingredients are olive oil, bee’s wax, honey, bee pollen, royal jelly and bee propolis. And — so it says — “divine love.” With the exception of the last “ingredient,” you could whip it up yourself. But you couldn’t improve on the original. What does it heal? Burns, scrapes, skin irritations, diaper rash, sunburns, eczema, psoriasis — and more.

Pu-erh Tea
It looks like a cow pie. But it has taste benefits. Milk and sweetener are superfluous — this is a rich brew that delivers a modest caffeine hit along with a welcome hint of natural sweetness. It may also have health benefits. Alice Waters drinks Pu-erh tea. And swears by it. “My cholesterol went down 100 points since I started drinking this,” she says.

Proraso Shaving Cream
Proraso was formulated by a venerable company in Florence in 1948. More often than not, the man who used it dispensed a small amount in a bowl and applied it with a brush. That’s no longer common, but don’t let the absence of a shaving ritual stop you. The ingredients remain unchanged. All natural, of course.

Anthelios Sunscreen with Mexoryl
Anthelios costs more than creams that protect against sunburn. The thing is, those creams don’t offer long-lasting protection against Ultraviolet-A rays (UV-A). And UV-A doesn’t cause sunburn — it causes cancer. Me, I’d rather pay more now and dramatically reduce the chance that our daughter, my wife and I get skin cancer.

T3 Bespoke Ionic Ceramic Tourmaline Hair Dryer
A high-powered woman in media; you’ve seen her hair — wrote me to praise this dryer. I may be a man, but I can listen; I ordered one right away. And it came to pass that my wife became insanely happy at 6:30 AM. I asked her: “It feels gentle, and yet it dries my hair faster. I was told I would never have another bad hair day, and I haven’t. I don’t understand how it works, but it is easier to get my hair to do what I want it to do. The only conclusion is magic.” Actually, it’s not magic. It’s “100% crushed Tourmaline jewels.”

TaoTronics Dimmable LED Desk Lamp
The footprint is small. The design is sleek. It looks chic and expensive. has a one-touch, 3-level dimmer and an I’m-leaving-the-room “escape timer” that turns the light off after an hour. The bulb is estimated to last 40,000 hours. The arm is adjustable. It uses 75% less electricity than an old-fashioned lamp. It folds for easy transport. It’s no heavier than a small bag of feathers. It costs $26.99.

Zojirushi Stainless Steel Vacuum Insulated Mug
Reader review: ‘I bought one of these on your recommendation and I can’t stop telling people what a great buy. You say this keeps coffee/tea hot for 6 hours. Well, sometimes I put coffee in at 10 PM — and it is still steaming when I open it at my work desk the next day at 8 AM.’’

Knitwear
“i knit, therefore I am,” says Lucy Nathanson. And does she ever. In winter: hats, cowls, infinity scarves and the occasional labor-intensive sweater. (Samples: here.) In warm weather: organic cottons. Her slogan: “for all ages, genders & personalities.” (Samples: here.) Special orders? Ask.

Mental Clarity
Reader Review: “I ordered Mental Clarity when I was felled by flu and feeling sure that I’d never be able to do my nonprofit’s annual fundraising appeal nor in fact ever write anything useful ever again. There seemed to be a Black Dog factor in the brain fog, along with the sneezing & coughing. Lo, what to write came clear and the Black Dog disappeared. If the appeal goes well, I’ll have to credit your finding Mental Clarity.”

Unicorn Pepper Mill
The mill is made of easy-to-wipe-clean plastic. Black plastic; like the Model T, you don’t get a choice of color. There’s a large, easy-to-open hole near the top that allows you to fill the cylinder with peppercorns. You adjust the grind on the bottom with a simple thumbscrew. Then you grind. Batteries? Oh, please.

Timex Easy Reader Watch
Esquire rates the Timex #1: “”The simple retro face looks cooler than some watches that cost six times as much.” The Easy Reader Timex for men, with a 10-year battery, costs $21 at Amazon. The women’s model has a bit more style and costs a few dollars more. Unfair, but still a crazy bargain.

Yamaha Micro Component System
Reader Review: “The Yamaha system is the best I’ve ever heard, and easy for a low-tech person such as myself to install. When my high-tech brother visited and said ‘What’s this?’ and popped his iPhone in to test it, his only comment was ‘Wow!’”

Moleskine Notebooks
The leather-like cover takes more wear than you’ll ever give it. The elastic band is useful both to keep the notebook closed and to mark your place. There’s an inner pocket to hold business cards, receipts and small photographs. The spine is sewn, not glued, so the cover lies flat when it’s opened. The paper is acid-free. What’s not to love?

BINGE
Borgen
To call it “the Danish ‘West Wing’” — but with a female President — doesn’t begin to describe it. Stephen King beat the drums for it, calling “Borgen” the best show of 2012. I’d go further: “Borgen” is some of the smartest TV ever made. Can you stream it? No. You have to buy it. Trust me on this: If you buy season 1, you’ll go right on to 2 and 3.

State of Play
When was the last time you watched six hours of anything and found yourself moving closer to the edge of your seat as it headed toward its conclusion? “State of Play” — the BBC series, not the stinker of an American movie — starts simply. Sonia Baker falls to her death in the London subway station. Did she fall? Commit suicide? Or was she… pushed? That’s the last simple question in the mini-series. For, that same day, a kid gets killed in another part of London. No connection. Not possible, really — Sonia Baker was a young research assistant to Steven Collins, chairman of the prestigious Energy Select Committee. The kid? A nobody. At the newspaper, investigative reporter Cal McCaffrey and his colleagues start to dig. Great dialogue, great acting, great surprises.

COOKBOOK
V Is for Vegetables: Inspired Recipes & Techniques for Home Cooks — from Artichokes to Zucchini
A great many cooks have adopted the vegetables-at-the-center-of-the-plate religion, with animal protein as a side dish, garnish, afterthought — or non-presence. (They ignore what the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki noted: “You have to kill vegetables too.”) Michael Anthony hasn’t surrendered to the Meme of Vegetables. He includes fish and meat recipes “because that’s the way I eat.” He just happens to like to eat vegetables more: “I am a cheerleader saying, ‘Hey, you can do this. Give it a try.’ I tell readers, ‘Set yourself up like this in the kitchen and you’ll be able to cook this quicker.’”

FICTION
Old Filth
No one really knows Edward Feathers. He’s held it all in. Only when his wife dies does he become unmoored enough “to flick open shutters on the past.” And because Jane Gardam knows everything about this man’s life — every hidden event, every unspoken longing — what she delivers in 289 pages is an unimaginably satisfying and involving book. “Old Filth” is like no other recent novel I can name; it reads as much like exhaustively researched biography as brilliantly paced fiction.

Married Sex: a Love Story
From the New York Times review: “Kornbluth’s debut novel, about a happy marriage interrupted by a ménage à trois, could easily have coasted on its promise of titillation. Instead it is a skillfully written, lighthearted and clever story that manages to be steamy but never salacious… Kornbluth has a screenwriter’s ear for witty banter, and the novel hinges on the charming voice of its narrator.” Okay, so it’s not a Times Notable Book. And you could wait for the movie. But…

The Queen’s Gambit
My favorite book. A reader agrees: “I don’t read mysteries. I don’t read thrillers. I’m a Barbara Pym kind of reader, who likes books in which the big events are cups of tea. But I got ‘The Queens Gambit’ out of the library and couldn’t put it down. I gave it to my husband, who definitely does read thrillers, and he gulped it down in a day.”

James Salter: A Sport and a Pastime
“She cannot be satisfied. She will not let him alone. She removes her clothes and calls to him. Once that night and twice the next morning he complies and in the faint darkness between lies awake, the lights of Dijon faint on the ceiling, the boulevards still. It’s a bitter night. Flats of rain are passing. Heavy drops ring in the gutter outside their window, but they are in a dovecote, they are pigeons between the eaves. The rain is falling all around them. Deep in feathers, breathing softly, they lie.”

MEMOIR
Bringing Home the Birkin — and cheap fake Birkin bags
There is a waiting list for Birkin bags — at $12,000 to $200,000 — but when Michael Tonello moved to Europe, he discovered a way to jump the line at Hermès. And then he re-sold the bags. For a profit. And then he wrote a book: “Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World’s Most Coveted Handbag.” And now I’ve found — on Amazon — fake Birkin bags for as little as $69. What a world!

The Tender Bar
J.R. Moehringer’s father, a noted disc jockey, was out of his mother’s life before J.R. was old enough to remember that he was ever around. (“My father was a man of many talents, but his one true genius was disappearing.”) His mother, suddenly poor, moves into her family’s house in Manhasset, Long Island. In that house: J.R.’s mother, grandmother, aunt and five female cousins. Also in that house: Uncle Charlie, a bartender at Dickens, a Manhasset establishment beloved by locals who appreciate liquor in quantity — “every third drink free” — and strong opinions, served with a twist. A boy needs a father. If he doesn’t have one, he needs some kind of man in his life. Or men, because it can indeed take a village.

TRAVEL
Atlas of Remote Islands (Fifty Islands I Have Never Set Foot on and Never Will)
The author disdains any island you can easily get to. The more remote the destination, the more enthusiastic she is for it. Like Peter I Island in the Antarctic — until the late 1990s, fewer people had visited it than had set foot on the moon. A one-of-a-kind treat.

SPORTS
Levels of the Game
This is an account of a single match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner in the semifinals at the U.S. Open in Forest Hills. But as the title suggests, a game — any game, at any degree of competition — is not just about competence. How you play is a revelation of character; how you play is who you are. Many tennis buffs think this is the best book ever written about the sport.

Johnny U: The Life and Times of John Unitas
We’re talking about a genuine hero — and not just because he is regarded, almost universally, as the greatest mid-century football player. Unitas is thrilling to read about, and to think about, because his struggle took place in the open, in real time, with the outcome uncertain and physical pain guaranteed. Unitas never complained. He never made apologies. He had a job to do, and it was his responsibility to get it done. And he did it. thrillingly.

FASHION
Fashion Lives: Fashion Icons with Fern Mallis
Mallis was the Executive Director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America from 1991 to 2001. She created Fashion Week, which generated a fortune for the city, before moving on to IMG Fashion and her own fashion and design consultancy. Why no reality TV show? Producers found her “too nice.” But in this format, a friend talking to 19 designers, photographers and editors produces revelations.

GARDENING
Carolyne Roehm: At Home in the Garden

This unapologetic Valentine to one of world’s most spectacular gardens is a 304-page, huge (11” by 14”), 7.4 pound object. At Roehm’s home, there are three formal gardens, rose gardens, parterre gardens, pool gardens, and topiary rising to the heavens like Brancusi’s Endless Column. You get the idea. In her words: “a garden that threatened to give Versailles a run for its money.”

LUXURY
The World of Madeleine Castaing
As World War II ended, Madame Castaing opened her first boutique in Paris. Never had there been a shop like this. For one thing, it did not look like a store — it was a series of rooms that looked as if someone lived in them. And no two rooms were alike. Indeed, no single room had an identifying theme or style. English Regency tables, Swedish chairs, a Russian couch — her rooms didn’t make statements, they told stories.

HOME
Mark Hampton On Decorating
Talk about being born for the job! When Mark Hampton was wearing shoes, his feet were exactly 12 inches long — he could pace off a room without a tape measure. As the most celebrated designer of the ’80s and ’90s, he paced the privileged rooms of President and Mrs. George H.W. Bush (including the White House, Blair House, the residence of the Vice President, Camp David and more), Brooke Astor and a gaggle of Fifth Avenue gazillionaires. But he was remarkably unpretentious — he knew everything about everything, but he never peered down at the less knowing. In these pieces, he doesn’t lecture, he just… talks. And illustrates his favorite places and pieces with his charming watercolors. We were friends. I miss him. But when I open this book, he’s right there.

COMEDY
Mitch Hedberg
“An escalator can never break — it can only become stairs.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend. I just know a girl who would be really mad if she heard me say that.”
“When someone hands you a flyer, it’s like he’s saying, ‘Here, you throw this away.’”
“I order a club sandwich all the time, but I’m not even a member.”
“When I was a kid, I lay in my twin bed, wondering where my brother was.”
“Do you think that when a guy got the idea for a bong that a black light popped on?”
“Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read.”
“I have no problem not listening to The Temptations.”
“I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just gonna ask where they’re going and hook up with them later.”

MUSIC
Otis Redding
Otis Redding was one of those Olympians who are fantastically good at everything. He could shout. He could dance. He had a straightforward, honest, high-testosterone presence — he was, as one of his hits had it, a “love man.” Watching footage of him performing is a revelation. Who wrote the book of love? This man. Also worth buying: this and this.

Josh Ritter
The best rock CD made for grown-ups this year. And I’m not alone in thinking that. One song here has 1 million hits on Spotify.

Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
The duets of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell were recorded in forever ago 1967. What songs were on that CD? Oh, just classics: “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” “You’re All I Need to Get By.” “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.” “If I Could Build My Whole World Around You.” Yours for a ridiculous $4.99.

Don Henley: Cass County
Henley’s new CD, which draws on the Americana of his East Texas upbringing, captures the textures, environments, dreams and cultural imperatives of this landscape and framed them in a redefined modernism. Is it country? All 16 songs have a natural poignancy that stirs the spirit. You’ll hear a pedal steel guitar on most tracks, a melancholy underpinning that weaves a tapestry of elegance and yearning.

Krishna Das
I don’t have the slightest clue what the words mean — the lyrics are the Hindu names of God, mostly — but my ears like the way Krishna Das has made chanting accessible to my hopelessly western ears. I like to start my day with these 12 minutes (below). Seven minutes in, a choir starts to sing “I Want To Know What Love Is,” and I just… lose it. Not an uncommon experience. By the end of the chant, I’m clear and high, much more the person I want to be. Others report this too. Try it?

BONUS VIDEO