Merry Christmas, Everybody

No gift ideas today. If you haven't finished shopping, well, we're open till 6:30. For the rest of you, some audio/video entertainment:



"The boys of the NYPD choir were singing 'Galway Bay,' and the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day."

Happy holidays, everyone!

Rep Picks: Laura Webb

Laura Webb is our Simon & Schuster rep. Here are her holiday picks this season:

Just After Sunset
by Stephen King
Price: $28.00
I’ve long been a fan of Stephen. I haven’t long been a fan of short stories. I like getting drawn in to a story, feel a bond with the characters and then get the daylight scared out of me! But with Stephen, it doesn’t matter if I’m reading his article in Entertainment Weekly, a major opus or his short stories, I always walk away satisfied. Just After Sunset is a fantastic collection that displays King’s phenomenally broad readership (stories published in the New Yorker, Playboy and McSweeney’s and including the 25,000 word story “Gingerbread Girl” published in Esquire)—the first collection since King guest edited the bestselling Best American Short Stories 2007.

Team of Rivals
by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Price: $21.00
Team of Rivals is an oldie, but it is current enough to be carried by President Elect Barack Obama. I love Doris’ ability to make you feel like you are in the room, listening to history being made. That Lincoln succeeded, Goodwin demonstrates, was the result of a character that had been forged by experiences that raised him above his more privileged and accomplished rivals. He won because he possessed an extraordinary ability to put himself in the place of other men, to experience what they were feeling, to understand their motives and desires. It was this capacity that enabled Lincoln as president to bring his disgruntled opponents together, create the most unusual cabinet in history, and marshal their talents to the task of preserving the Union and winning the war.

Bakewise
by Shirley O. Corriher
Price: $40.00
I am not one to make you leave without dessert. If you have ever seen Shirley school Alton Brown on the why, wherefores and how tos of Baking on TV Food network, then you know she is a charmer. This book will answer all your, “but I followed the directions!” questions and offer up a tasty new bunch of recipes to test your new found skills on.

It's Coming on Non-Denominational Winter Holiday, They're Cuttin' Down Trees

It's December 10, which means that I'm now allowing myself to admit that it's the holiday season (I try to wait until we're double-digits into December before diving in with both feet. Otherwise I get burned out on Phil Spector Christmas tunes). Rather than get into the gift giving spirit (others have done that better than I), I thought I'd get into the gift receiving spirit. because whoever said "t'is better to give than to receive" never got a gift from my mother-in-law. Seriously, she throws down for the holidays.

Every couple of days I'll highlight a gift that I would like to receive. Some of these gifts will be things you could get at your local independent bookstore (especially an incredible independent bookstore that recently redesigned its website and carries all kinds of cool products and not just books), and some will be things that you would have to go elsewhere to find. I suppose if you're shopping for someone like me then you could use these posts as a gift giving guide.

Today's gift is actually a gift I've already received (and given). It's the 5-Year Diary, designed by Tamara Shopsin and published by The Icehouse. My wife got me one of these recently, and I love it! Not only is it total design porn - with its cloth cover and its smoothe, creamy pages - but it's one of the most useful gifts I've received in recent years.


The concept is simple: on each page of the diary is a date - December 10, for example - and then five spaces to write something. Each space has 20__ written next to it. Enter the year, then write down what you did that day. You can be as creative as you like, but you've got to be brief, as the space on the page is limited. This is a good thing. Brevity is making a big comeback thanks to Twitter, and the 5-Year Diary fits perfectly into that meme. At the end of the five years, you can look back at what you did each day. The diary also includes a book log so you can track what you read over that time, as well as a map to mark the places you've been.


But it doesn't have to stop there. You could get a second diary and write down what you ate at each meal that day. Imagine an exact record of what you ate for five years. That has to be worth something, right? The possibilities are limitless. This gift has forced me to keep a journal (of sorts) something I've never had the discipline to do with any regularity. Who knows, maybe I'll even make a blog out of mine when it's finished, although that's already been done quite well here.

(Christmas tree photo from this site.)

Buy Books This Holiday Season!

I've said before that books make great gifts, and now there's a blog dedicated to that very notion. Some bloggers have banded together to form Books for the Holidays. At their site, you can get gift recommendations, wish list ideas, and even suggest a gift.

In the spirit of the season, I thought I'd offer up my holiday wish list (Note: My wife already surprised me with one book this year, Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which I'll be reading next).

Watchmen, by Alan Moore
Everybody says this is amazing, so I'm hoping to read it before the movie comes out.

The Devil We Know, by Robert Baer
When Robert Baer talks, I listen. His first two books, in addition to being very informative, are really entertaining. I can't wait for this one, which focuses on Iran.

Venus Drive, by Sam Lipsyte
I've written about Sam Lipsyte a bunch of times on this blog, but I've never been able to find this book. Somebody who really likes me could do much worse than find this book for me.

In the Drink, by Kate Christensen
I've been lazy in not ordering this for myself. Maybe somebody else will be more assertive than I've been for myself.

Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell
Yeah, me and everybody else this year. Major anticipation for this one.

That's just a few things I'd like to get this year. What are you dying to have someone buy for you?