Merry Christmas!
Read Joy Williams in Harper's.
Today feels like the first day of vacation (multi-part shopping expeditions completed, fresh soap procured for every folded guest towel, presents wrapped, stickered, and bowed; bows saved for next year, Venetian luxury stockings folded away). I hope everyone is enjoying having their mother—or similarly-aged figure with a penchant for anti-organic products—clean their kitchen as much as me. It just isn’t the same when I do it!
My greatest gift-giving-triumph was simple, and even obvious: princess dresses for my niece. My mother gave my husband a multi-part lefse making kit, which comes replete with a laminated recipe and a seven-hour lesson. Lucky him! I must admit, it’s a relief that gift guide season is over, but Gift Guide will continue apace, with the focus slightly weighted towards books in this pre-taxes season. This is off to a rough start; I’m returning a late John Banville book to the library today, not for me! Joe fared better with yet another book by Marguerite Yourcenar. He even got a compliment from the librarian! (Not that it’s a competition, but Jesus Christ!)
The New Yorker’s Gideon Lewis-Kraus tipped me off that the next big book is The Hill by Harriet Clark, out in May. I finagled a PDF, and will report back before the holiday is finished.
I will include one final gift guide for men by a man. Written by the enigmatic Stanley Schtinter. The first entry does mention me, so ignore that, but my husband flagged immediately that he’s getting the Japanese butter knife for his father.
I was thinking a lot about the general uselessness of gift guide gender categories this season. One would be better off grouping people by interests and preoccupations than relations. For instance, the only group of women that have anything in common are women who are pregnant or have newborns, and you can gift them as a block without particular taste. But not no taste. Sarah Blakley-Cartwright alerted me that the underwear sets from The Six make for particularly good gifts. You just size one up from their previous size. (Hatch is ugly! Resist!)