Something Good #105: A Time of Gift Guides
Things I like, that your friends and lovers might like too.
This started as a recommendations letter, and while I may sometimes stray from that mandate, I’m bringing it all home this week for the holidays.
This is a list of things I like, and that your friends and lovers might also like. Disclaimer: clicking on any of the links below will NOT help support this newsletter. I could not be bothered to sign up for any affiliate programs. If you want to support what I do, I ask that you give something to my Doctors Without Borders fundraiser. (More about that after the guide.)
A book from a cool press
Notting Hill Editions is a British publishing house founded by the late Tom Kremer, the man best known for… popularizing the Rubik’s Cube? (I didn’t know any of that until about 30 seconds ago, when I clicked on the “Our Story” page of the publisher’s website). I discovered NHE, which is dedicated to “the lost art of the essay,” earlier this year, and immediately fell in love with both their booklist and their glorious, unjacketed hardcovers. (Excellent detail: the page numbers are printed in colour. See above.)
I loved Wandering Jew by Dennis Marks, a psycho-geographical search for the elusive Austro-Hungarian-Jewish novelist Joseph Roth across the remnants of a vanished empire.
Three decades ago the borders of Europe and Russia were still in Neville Chamberlain's words ‘a faraway country of which we know little’. Then in the late 1980s the landscape of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Ukraine was radically transformed. The Iron Curtain lifted to reveal one perfectly preserved stage set after another, all painted in faded pastels—the pink, green and gold favoured by Emperor Franz Joseph. Beyond the urban scenery of Mitteleuropa sat the smudged landscape of muddy plains, framed by dense wooded hills, familiar to me from the journeys taken by Carl Joseph during the novel [The Radetzky March]. Much of it had scarcely changed since he crossed it with his mistress in a wagon lit just before the First World War. As I followed the railway tracks eastward through towns with evocatively unpronounceable names like Brno, Cluj and Przemysl, I could see how fifty years of communist paralysis had frozen the frame.
There are lots of other great choices here, and lots of great travel writing for Barely a Book Club fellow travelers, basically take your pick. (If you’re having trouble finding them in your local bookshop, NHE’s books are distributed in North American by New York Review Books.)
A camera
A 35mm point-and-shoot camera and some rolls of film will delight almost anybody who likes to take pictures, and that’s everybody now, isn’t it? I wrote about my champagne-coloured Samsung Maxima Zoom last time, but really, it could be anything, the Samsung isn’t even a particularly good camera. The film emulsion here will do all the work for you (Kodak 200 or UltraMax 400 both good, readily available choices, although no longer cheap—film is a pricey hobby). Find a camera in an attic or junk shop or get a pre-tested one from an expert, whichever you like. The images won’t all come out but the ones that do will look so different from phone pics that it’ll be like the recipient is receiving 36 new gifts every time they process a roll.
A newsletter
Subscriptions make amazing presents. People are often reluctant to get them for themselves but are so grateful for them, and they provide year-round satisfaction and reminders of the giver’s wisdom and generosity.
The only problem is that certain subscriptions (we’re all looking at you, New Yorker) can fill your home with paper faster than you can read and dispose of it. So why not gift an e-newsletter not unlike the one you’re reading?
I recommend Read Max, by longtime friend of the newsletter Max Read. Max is insanely smart and funny and has great taste. His newsletter is worth it for the recommendations alone, which are never run-of-the-mill (obscure ‘90s thrillers, enigmatic novels in translation, chill albums), but his wise and trenchant analysis of culture, politics and the whole passing scene makes it a no-brainer for the smart person in your life.
Another great newsletter is Andrew Liptak’s Transfer Orbit, a thoughtful and always informative review of the latest in sci-fi and fantasy; his new book roundups are a highlight of every month. Plus there’s a whole current of Vermont-ness (Andrew also works for the Vermont Historical Society, and bits of local culture often find their way into his writing) that I always appreciate from up here a few miles north of the border.
A book by a genius novelist taken from us too soon
A Place of Greater Safety is an absolute doorstopper of a historical epic from 1992 by the late, lamented Hilary Mantel. The French Revolution is both backdrop and subject here, in a novel that follows the tangled lives of revolutionaries Maximilien Robespierre, Georges Danton and Camille Desmoulins, a lifelong, complicated friendship that would ultimately (spoilers) collapse on itself and destroy them all. It really feels magical, Mantel’s ability to create living history out of the million atoms of information she must have ingested in her research. You are there, physically, psychically, spiritually, as you inhabit the minds and bodies of her characters. (And there are hundreds of them, all historical, and somehow I never lost track of them all, thanks to Mantel’s invisible narrative scaffolding.)
A watch
I liked my Apple Watch a lot until the evening when I got a notification on its screen from Uber, urging me to sacrifice a teenager at the altar of techno-capitalism (“Sign a teen up for their own Uber account and give them the freedom they crave”). Horrible! I want out!
I was done with smart watches as of that moment. Give me something stupid.
The watch I settled on isn’t stupid at all, but nor is it a conduit for evil notifications. It’s a Japanese-market Casio, part of their Lineage series. This gleaming timepiece features both analog and digital displays, is made of titanium so it is super soft and light and doesn’t give me a rash like the other, lesser metals do, has a sapphire crystal that doesn’t scratch, is solar-powered so you basically never have to change the battery, and syncs every night via a radio transmission from the atomic clock at Fort Collins, Colorado, so it’s always perfectly in time. It’s a little miracle.
The only problem is, you either need to find it on eBay or from a reseller as it’s only officially for sale in Japan. However, you can find a Casio model with the same cool solar and atomic clock features in North American under their “Wave Ceptor” branding. They just aren’t made of titanium nor feature a sapphire crystal. So I say go for a Japanese model; they’re pretty easy to dig up.
A mind-bending book about the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu
Keen readers of this newsletter will recall my interview earlier this year with John Higgs, author of The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, about the transgressive, self-destructive UK band of the title, which was just about to come out in North America for the first time. Well, it’s now available, and I heartily recommend it. At the time, I wrote:
To Higgs, the KLF were characters in a story much larger than these two men, who found themselves on the precipice of fame and power at a hinge moment in our civilization between the Cold War and the internet era. Their act of destruction, so contrary to the values of capitalist society, inaugurated the coming millennium through an incandescently powerful symbolism that continues to resonate.
I stand by those words, and still recommend this book heartily to lovers of magic, music, and mystery. Find it at an indie bookstore.
A little video game machine
I have been a fan of the retro game handheld format for a few years ago now, ever since I picked up a Miyoo Mini from AliExpress. These little devices are made of off-cast technology from discontinued cell phone models (obsolete Blackberry screens, non-state-of-the-art chips) and cast into new life as miniature video game libraries of Alexandria. Most are capable of playing, and containing, the entire history of video games up until the PlayStation era or so.
As a kid, I never owned more than a few games at a time; diving into the endless world of retro-gaming over the last few years, I discovered all sorts of sequels and continuations for games I had loved that I hadn’t even realized existed (such as Phantasy Star IV, pictured). There is something about the hobby that feels like archaeology, like comparative literature, like time travel. It’s really just fun as hell.
This year’s retro handheld sensation is the Anbernic RG35XXSP, modelled after the much-beloved sandwich-style Gameboy Advance SP from 2003. It closes up into a very satisfying little square and comes wonderful semi-transparent Jolly Rancher colours. You can buy it directly from Anbernic’s site, and if you live in the U.S.A., I’d grab one now before the anticipated tariffs come into effect.
A movie about movies
My friend Chandler Levack’s I Like Movies was an indie film hit last year, and deservedly so; it channels the joys and agonies of youthful cinephilia with marvellous humanity and humour, through the lens of teenage video store clerk Lawrence Kweller (an inspired performance by Isaiah Lehtinen). It’s now available on DVD; buy it at a video store near you, if one still exists!
My daughter Charlie asked if she could contribute to the gift guide and I could not refuse. She recommends:
The Chirri & Chirra books by Japanese author and illustrator Kaya Doi (these are truly marvellous)
The Keeper of the Lost Cities series by Shannon Messenger
The very strange and endearing Catwings books, about cats with wings, by Something Good patron saint Ursula K. LeGuin
Finally, “my baby dolls” (this one is open to interpretation)
As mentioned above, if you do want to support this newsletter in some way, or just support a good cause this holiday season, may I suggest you contribute to the ongoing Something Good fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders? Donate at this link and drop me a line; in exchange I will send you some beautiful, risograph-printed bookplates by James Braithwaite. I’ll also match your donation, up to a reasonable limit.
This edition’s red-and-green colour scheme was unintentional—but I like it. Another good gift idea: any of the books we read for Barely a Book Club this year, along with links to the relevant posts.
In our next edition, I will outline a winter reading list. Until then, if you like what you read here, tell a friend or subscribe right here:
