Weekly Wednesdays: Top 10 Last-Minute Gift Guides
2008's Tickle-Me-Elmo: The Variegated Corn Plant
You’re really pushing it, you know? If it wasn’t for Listicles’ weekly list of lists that we didn’t get to make lists about, your partner would leave you, your kids would run away, your parents would kick you out and the cousin you find kind of hot even though you know you’re not supposed to would never talk to you again.
But fear not, last minute shopper and creepy, disappointing relative. We anticipated your penchant for procrastination and got this final flurry of listicles up first thing so you can manage your shopping hours. In this edition of Weekly Wednesdays we look back at some of the season’s best gift guides that we simply couldn’t squeeze into out daily list-making. Get your shopping checklist ready for Listicles’ Top 10 Last-Minute Gift Guides:
- Slate’s Top 10 Albums and Top 25 Singles 2008: As is their habit over at Slate, year’s end witnesses a flourish of lists presented in the format of letters between staff writers and guest critics. Their music list this year is especially noteworthy for including superstar pop music theorist and critic Robert Christgau (who included my favorite album of the year, The Roots’ Rising Down, in his Top 10, yay me!). So make a list and run down to one of your few remaining music stores, or (for the computer literate) compile a CD or playlist of singles by buying individual tracks on iTunes. Also, don’t miss Christgau signing his messages “Xgau.”
- 13 Top Air Purifying House Plants: This one is for the more green givers and health-conscious decorators who live within walking/biking/public transporting distance of a plant nursery. Forgo the predictable gift cards, media products and ugly sweaters in favor of something useful, helpful and easy on the eyes and lungs. I might just gift myself a Variegated Corn Plant. (via Apartment Therapy)
- 10 Naughty Gifts for Nice People: For the requisite sexy-stuff gift list we turn to Refinery 29’s blog The Pipeline, which offers and assortment of sex toys, straps and chains, books, mood-creating decorative objects and accessories. Our personal favorites around the office are the Kiki de Montparnasse Dutchess Cuffs, perfect for spicing up a dreary afternoon of blogging.
Slate’s Best Books of 2008: Another nod to our idols at Slate, though this year-end list comes under another format: the staff selection listicle. Here, just about everyone who has featured somewhat regularly in Slate’s digital pages this year (except, sadly, film critic and editor Dana Stevens) suggests one book of 2008. Appropriately, their picks often correspond somewhat to to subjects they cover. Our favorite, mostly on account of its brain-blowing obscurity and specificity, is music critic Jody Rosen’s suggestion, And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost (pictured).
- Entertainment Weekly Gift Guide: 25 Classic CDs: Bucking the trend of listicles proclaiming to chronicle of “best whatevers of 2008″, EW digs through the shallow layers of its music vaults. “Classic” is very relative: the oldest entry is Madonna’s self-titled 1983 album and the most recent are Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black and Radiohead’s In Rainbows. In between EW marks some gems (De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising) and some albums better left in the depths (Mariah Carey’s The Emancipation of Mimi). Nonetheless, it’s full of good ideas for someone whose collection need padding out.
- Forbes’s 15 Favorite Games of 2008: The best thing about this self-deflating list of video games for your last minute kid-gifting is their descriptions of who each game is best tailored to. Our favorite (that, incidentally, pretty much sums up our attitude to gaming) is Forbes’s pick for “Best Non-Violent Game Full of Characters You Want to Kill Anyway”, Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
- New York Times’s Top 10 Books of 2008: With one of the only remaining print book sections, the Times boils down its entire year of coverage to an easily-digestible listicle of must-reads, five fiction and five non-fiction. The entries are mostly predictable (and good, of course), with Toni Morrison and Roberto Bolaño in fiction, and books about wars in non-fiction. A favorite is Julian Barnes’ Nothing to be Frightened of, a memoir about his religious development set against popular and literary engagements with religion.
Boing Boing Charitable Giving Guide 2008: For the year-end conscience crisis crowd, this listicle of 21 charities in the US, Canada and UK is a great resource. Diverge from the cultural consumerism imperative by giving money to the Creative Commons open-information project or the UK’s NO2ID, a group working against panoptic surveillance measures being proposed by their federal government.
- Entertainment Weekly Gift Guide: 25 DVD Library Musts: In keeping with the EW gift guide above, this listicle features a smattering of very recent and slightly less recent pop culture moments, some much more deserving of your DVD collection than others. So, for instance, number 4 (impressively) goes to Blue Velvet, but number 3 is Titanic. I guess you can’t win ‘em all.
- 15 Really Useful Kitchen Items: As mostly kitchen-illiterate cooks with some serious foodie friends, this listicle from The Kitchn couldn’t have come at a better moment. Also, with the recession-appropriate mission of giving things that are practical and durable rather than frilly and quickly dated, any number of these items will be much appreciated. Less experienced chefs will probably appreciate a good cast iron skillet, while more experienced home cookers will appreciate something nifty like a Microplane Zester.
Now get shopping or donating, today is your last gift-getting opportunity before the day all people of every creed agreed to have their big annual gifting holiday.
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