The Panic of Last Minute Gifts

LUCY BURDETTE: We’re trying to cut back on gifts, because who needs more random stuff? But maybe it would be a good idea to share ideas for items for the hard-to-buy-for but necessary people on our list? First (of course) would be books written by the Jungle Red Writers! Or maybe gift certificates to independent bookstores?

But I have a few small things to suggest. On NPR a couple weeks ago, I heard a poet interviewed about his new book LOVE POEMS (FOR PEOPLE WITH CHILDREN) by John Kenney. The poems are so clever and so much on target that I ordered four copies for the young people we know.

And then there are gifts from Rancho Gordo, because who doesn’t need more heirloom beans?

Reds, any quick recommendations for those who haven’t finished shopping?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: None. NO idea. None. I used to do magazine subscriptions, but, shrugging, people probably wouldn’t love that anymore. Although my relatives give me The New Yorker every year, and I truly adore it and rely on it.  I gave my editor Beer of the Month club once, and she was very happy with that!

(Please don’t send me heirloom beans.)

Oh, though, I DID find the most amazing pencils. Truly. They are “First World Problems” pencils. And they have slogans stamped on them, like : “There’s no Pamplemousse.”  “This pencil is not the color I wanted.” “My Ripped Jeans are now too ripped.” “OMG the line at Chipotle is sooooo long” and “My Netflix won’t load.”  Those are the ones I can remember. How funny is THAT? I was laughing out loud in the bookstore. 

HALLIE EPHRON: I just bought my son-in-law, SO hard to shop for, tickets to a hockey game. I’ve given my kids museum memberships. Tickets to shows. Restaurant gift cards. And you can’t go wrong with homemade candy or cookies… but you have to make ‘em and mail ‘em. I give myself The New Yorker.

Lucy that book looks like a great gift.

RHYS BOWEN :  John and I give each other experiences these days. A trip, fancy restaurant or theater. My daughter gave me Hamilton tickets last year, which was fabulous. I can never get too many bath products or nice pens/ journals etc. But cookies? Not when half the people I know are gluten free/ dairy free, animal cruelty free. 

JENN McKINLAY: See’s Candies. It’s my go-to gift for hostesses, my postal people who mail my endless book giveaways, my hair guy. Plus, they give you samples when you shop in the store :)  I also like to hit museum gift shops for small unique and unusual gifts. My favorites are the Desert Botanical Garden, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Musical Instrument Museum. It’s a treasure hunt and there’s always something unexpected!

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Jenn, I shop museum stores as well - and folks, if there’s not one near you, many museums have theirs on-line. Interesting and unique gifts, and something will spark your imagination. Like Hallie and Rhys, an experience instead of a thing is always a good idea, especially for anyone over fifty who undoubtedly already has too much stuff and is trying to get rid of some! Theater tickets, pre-paid massages, gas cards - who couldn’t use a tank of gas?

For those of you who are shopping for teachers, I have an easy suggestion: a gift card to your local independent bookstore. (Or chain store, or Amazon, if you don’t live near an indy.) High school teachers like to read, middle grade and elementary teachers buy books for their classrooms - it’s a welcome, practical gift. I say this as someone whose husband brought home SO many apple-shaped ornaments/ candles/ note pads/ pencil holders, etc, etc...

DEBORAH CROMBIE: If you don’t have a museum shop handy and don’t have time to online order, check out your local Homegoods for last minute gifts. But don’t go at lunch, or after work, or on the weekends! I am going to try nine-thirty on a weekday morning--wish me luck! 

If you want something a little different in the chocolate department, check out Kate Weiser Chocolate, made right here in Dallas. They are edible works of art!

LUCY: Okay, Reds, your turn! Any suggestions for last minut gifts? or things that YOU would want?

THE HAND MADE'S TAIL

RHYS BOWEN: Hear Ye! Hear ye! Starting with a Sunday shout-out for Debs! her book, Garden of Lamentations made Carole Barrowman's top ten list. We are all so thrilled!

https://www.jsonline.com/story/entertainment/books/2017/12/14/best-books-2017-carole-e-barrowmans-picks/940814001/

RHYS:  We have an olive tree in the garden and this year we had a bumper crop of olives. "I know," I said. "We can make our own olive oil."

So I went on YouTube for videos on making olive oil. (there are video how-tos on everything these days, aren't there?). And I watched several videos. First one picks the olives. In Italy they place big sheets around the tree then they bang the trunks with sticks and shake the branches to knock down the olives. This wouldn't work for me as mine is on a steep bit of hillside.
Then you pit the olives--all three million, six hundred thousand of them.
At some point you have to steep them in lye or brine or some kind of solution so they are no longer poisonous--yeah, right.
Then you put them in a mortar and smoosh them into a paste.
Then you hang them in a cheese cloth with a basin underneath and leave them until liquid has collected in the basin. (several days)
Then you skim off the clear oil from the top of the icky, sludgy liquid and voila:
You have ONE CUP of olive oil!

Actually I have a Trader Joe's nearby and I can buy good Italian olive oil for $7.99. Enough to last me a month. So olive oil making will not be added to my skills this year.

The problem with do-it-yourself or make-it-yourself is that things take too long. When my kids were small I made stuffed toys and doll clothes and puppets, and frankly I could buy much better ones for the same price. But it was the love that counted, right?

One Christmas we decided that the holiday was too commercial and we'd all make hand-made gifts. On Christmas morning we exchanged candles and beaded jewelry and pillows and scarves and we said how lovely they were and thanked everyone. But the kids said, "Is that it? I get a scarf for Christmas?"
"And a wooden toy," we added. "The holiday shouldn't be all about gifts."
Small faces fell.
Then I relented. I darted into the bedroom. "I did buy a few gifts," I confessed. "Just in case."
Everyone else darted into their bedrooms. "So did we," they said.
But you know what? I still use the scarf and the pillows and the candles years later and every time I do I'm reminded of the person who made them for me!

More recently my daughter Clare pointed out that it was wasteful and polluting to use wrapping paper. So she made bright cloth bags for all the gifts. They looked nice the first year. The second year a bit more crumpled and frankly there was no fun in untying a cloth bag. At least not as much fun as ripping open paper. So I'm afraid we're still going to waste and pollute. (although I do put everything I can into bags and boxes that can be reused).

So I'm afraid it will be a non-crafty Christmas this year. The children and grandchildren are way too busy to sit down and make things. And I don't need any more candles or pillows or even scarves. I'd make home-made fudge but it would have to be lactose-free, sugar free and gluten-free for various family members, which sort of loses the point, doesn't it?

The only things I still am commanded to make are the mince pies and sausage rolls of my British heritage. I don't make my own Christmas pudding (I buy one for John and me). We don't really eat that many cookies. So it looks like a labor-free holiday ahead, which suits me just fine.

How about you? Have you ever made holiday gifts? And what else do you make?

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I am the anti-Crafts, so I don't have a good record with home made gifts. I've made cookies and fruit bread as hostess gifts, of course, but I'm afraid nothing as good as my college roommate, who for many years made her own faux-Kahlua. Delicious!

My grandmother Greuling, who lived through the Great Depression, was the queen of homemade gifts. Every year, she would give each of her grandchildren - all eighteen of us! - hand-knit mittens and scarves. I have some that are over forty years old and still in good shape. She would start in January and knit all year long.

I think she may have done more elaborate projects for her five children, although I have to confess I wasn't paying attention to boring old brown-up gifts when I was a kid. She also hand-crocheted an afghan for each of us for a high school graduation gift. Mine is in the family room right now! Thanks, Grandma!

Our Best Books of the Year.

RHYS: A newspaper called me to ask me which were my favorite books of 2014. Needless to say there were Reds among my recommendations, but also Louise Penny's The Long Way Home. and Jacqueline Winspear's The Care and Management of Lies. I felt it was a good year for the sort of books I enjoy--great sense of time and place, strong likable characters.

So which books did you particularly enjoy?
And my second question: which books are on your holiday list?
I have a couple (one was given to me early as a present by Barbara Peters. It's a Hundred Special places for a woman to visit in France..., and the other I've suggested my husband might want to order for me. It's called Lisette's List by Sophie Vreeland, and is about Impressionist art, hidden from the Nazi's in WWII I love books that are set in France/span generations/have an element of mystery/and are about Impressionist art. So I can't wait to read it.

How about you? What books are on your wish list?

LUCY BURDETTE: Books are all I tell family members if they ask what I want for Christmas. This year, my choices seem to be all about food (natch!) and France. I jumped the gun and bought myself David Lebovitz's new cookbook, My Paris Kitchen. But I'm also dying for Dorie Greenspan's Baking Chez Moi, and Anne Willen's One Souffle at a Time.

It has been a great year for Red books, of course--have adored reading the latest from Hank, and Susan, and Debs, and Rhys--and can't wait for you all to get your hands on Hallie's new one, Night, Night, Sleep Tight! And I just ordered Mary Kennedy's NIGHTMARES CAN BE MURDER, and Sherry Harris's debut, TAGGED FOR MURDER. Yay, you'll hear more about her next week!

HALLIE EPHRON: #1 on my wish list is "The World of Raymond Chandler: In His Own Words" edited by Barry Day. Chandler was such a thoughtful writer, one of the reviews quotes him on writing "The Long Goodbye, Chandler": “I watched my wife die by half inches and I wrote the best book in my agony of that knowledge . . . I was as hollow as the places between the stars.” He's a prose poet. I love reading great writers talk about writing.

And my recent favorite to recommend is a wonderful collection of short stories, "In the Company of Sherlock Holmes: Stories Inspired by the Holmes Canon," edited by Leslie Klinger an Laurie R. King. Michael Connelly writes one where Harry Bosch meets a medical examiner who's earned the nickname Sherlock. In one by Michael Sims, the Silver Blaze (the horse) is the narrator. Fun!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  I have been reading like MAD as a judge for a contest, so I can't say anything. I am reading so much my eyes are hurting. (And yes, it was indeed a wonderful year for Reds books. Quite extraordinary.)  I did give in and buy a book for myself,which I could not resist, and it's called WHAT IF. I hoped it as a book of mystery ideas (As if!) but it turned out to be a wonderful book of serious answers to hilarious hypothetical questions. Like: What If: everyone in the world went to the same place, and then jumped up and down at the same time? And: Could you make  rocket ship out of a whole lot of hairdryers?

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Yes, a very good year for REDs, wasn't it. Now if we could just all manage to get in the same calendar year, we'd have a sweep:-) Now I'm struggling to remember what else I've read...  (One of these days I swear I really am going to keep up a book journal. 2015???) Just finished Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch, which I loved. I discovered author Mark Pryor when I did a panel with him on book tour. I've started with the first in the series, The Bookseller, and am now on the second, The Crypt Thief. Loved Karin Salvalaggio's Bone Dust White. Loved Louise Penny's The Long Way Home. And, this is cheating a bit because it's not actually out until January, but I LOVED A Fine Summer's Day, the new Charles Todd Rutledge novel.

I have so many books I need to read that I haven't thought of asking for any for Christmas, just for fun, but now I want the books on Hallie's list! And Lizette's List from Rhys's list.

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: A GREAT year for Reds! Woo-hoo! I'm reading galleys for an award, so I'm a little bombarded (in a good way) with fiction, so I'm hoping for some non-fic — DRINKING WITH MEN by Rosie Shiap (my Brooklyn neighbor!), THE GRAMERCY TAVERN COOKBOOK, Amy Poehler's YES, PLEASE, and Alan Cumming's NOT MY FATHER'S SON.

I'm also obsessing over — get this — a wine scratch-and-sniff book. Yes, you read that correctly! It's called THE ESSENTIAL SCRATCH AND SNIFF GUIDE TO BECOMING A WINE EXPERT: TAKE A WHIFF OF THAT by Richard Betts. I mean, I haven't actually sniffed it yet, but... c'mon.... it sounds so fun!

RHYS: Some great suggestions here for Christmas presents, and if I might include a small plug here (since it's the last day of my week as host) If you have a child in your life and you are looking for a stocking stuffer, or you are seriously missing Harry Potter, please give my new children's book a try. It's called Dreamwalker--an adventure/fantasy novel set at a strange boarding school in Wales and it's available as a paperback and an e-book.
http://www.amazon.com/Dreamwalker-Red-Dragon-Academy-1/dp/150310205X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417847542&sr=8-1&keywords=dreamwalker+rhys+bowen

Now please share your favorite books of the year and your wishes for holiday gifts!