#Gift Guide

[torpublishinggroup]

Tor Publishing Group is BACK with a guide of books to gift the people in your life…and yourself!

For the friends who love a good scare all year round…

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

Evil in Me by Brom

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

Escape with fantastical folklore…

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

When Among Crows by Veronica Roth

Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

Forbidden romance to keep you warm…

Swordcrossed by Freya Marske

The Stars Are Dying by Chloe C. Peñaranda

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

Beloved bestselling authors to add to your TBR… 

Wind and Truth by Brandon Sanderson

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Not enough books? Don’t worry, we have another GET BOOKT: THE BOOKENING guide to help you out!

[the-huntington]

𝚂𝚑𝚘𝚙 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙶𝚒𝚏𝚝´𝚜

𝟏.𝑳𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒊𝒂 𝑽𝒊𝒍𝒏𝒖𝒆 𝑷𝒊𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘𝒔 𝟐.𝑨𝒄𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒂 𝑪𝒖𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒊𝒏𝒔 𝟑.𝑷𝒍𝒖𝒎 𝑩𝒐𝒘𝒍 𝟒.𝑻𝒐𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝑻𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒑 𝟓.𝑻𝒐𝒊𝒍𝒆 𝑪𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒍𝒆 𝟔.𝑭𝒂𝒓𝒎𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒔𝒆 𝑫𝒊𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒊𝒓 𝟕.𝑭𝒍𝒐𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝑪𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒎𝒊𝒗 𝑽𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝟖.𝑶𝒓𝒚𝒏 𝑺𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒂𝒔𝒆

𝙽𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚎𝚝 𝙶𝚒𝚏𝚝𝚜 𝙱𝚢

@sims4luxury @kerriganhouse @ bambisims

[cbbyzac]

A Charming Pink Gift Guide for the Holiday Season❄️🧁💗⭐️

It's with a heavy heart that I share this will be the final post from CB for a while, as we will be shutting down. I'm currently uncertain about when I will return, but I am incredibly grateful for the support and love you've shown over the years. CB has always been my passion and joy. Take care, and I hope to see you all again soon!

[emmastudies]

Free Intentional Spending Tracker for Notion

It's Day 8 of the 12 Days of Giving!

Track your wishlist and fill in details to help make more informed decisions regarding your purchases. Comes with an comprehensive way to categorise your wants & seeing the impact on your budgets. Whilst this has budgeting features, it's more about how you're spending and making sure those purchases are considered. Features include:

spending goals for 2024

active wishlist & watching space

detailed digital wishlist and budget impact

wishlist categorises & year budgeting

pre-populated dates with calendar view for revisiting items after "cool off period"

gift gifting ideas (by idea, rather than recipient for more intentional gifting!)

recipient database

Download Free Here

Check back in each day for a new free item! Hopefully they're all useful and a fun way to end the year 🥰🎁

[70sscifiart]

The Last-Minute Sci-Fi Gift Guide

There's only one thing worse than procrastinating on getting gifts for your loved ones, and that's procrastinating on putting together a guide to help out everyone else with all those gifts. It's Dec 12, so you can decide for yourself which I'm doing.

Art book: Worlds Beyond Time, $32

If you follow this blog, you might have heard of this one. I published Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s this year after five years of work on it, and I think it's really good! 400+ images, 100+ artists, with lots of fun art history and jokes.

Also, it's just $20 right now if you order through my publisher and use the code SKIPTHELINE! Cheapest it's ever been!

Card game: Coup, $14

In this "social deduction" card game, you play as a government official in a future dystopia who needs to backstab their way into power. Everyone starts out with just two cards in this bluffing game, so the tide can turn pretty quick when players start assassinating each other's cards. The fast pace makes it a good gift for someone who loves spies but thinks they don't like card games.

Game to play over Zoom: Bad Spaceships, $3

If a bluffing game stresses you out, try Bad Spaceships: It's a collaborative world-building game in which you roll dice to see what area of your spaceship connects to another, forcing you to spitball exactly why this is the case. As the game puts it, you might fix the hull by playing Tetris, or charge your weapons in the swimming pool. You're basically getting weird prompts to tell a story that can evolve over the course of the game.

It's such an indie game that it comes as PDFs you download from itch.io, but you can play it just as well over Zoom, if you're looking for an excuse to catch up with your old digital nomad college friend.

Movies/TV: Streaming service gift card

Gift cards are all well and good, but you can personalize them by recommending a few of your favorite shows as well. I suggest:

Hulu: Cowboy Bebop

Apple TV+: Severance

Criterion Channel: Ravenous, Paprika, Strange Days

Paramount+: Yellowjackets

Amazon Prime: The Devil's Hour

But to be honest, this entry is just an excuse to talk about the new Max show Scavenger’s Reign. Inspired by the work of French artist Moebius and with a clear debt to famed 70s animated film Fantastic Planet, this stylish sci-fi show features a bunch of humans trying to survive on a beautiful but hostile alien world. Perfect for lovers of fictional nature.

Vintage sci-fi

This Etsy shop has some good stuff, like the 1971 Frank Kelly Freas NASA poster above, a bit of history that I even mentioned on page 167 of my art book.

Penguin science fiction postcards, $28

These postcards have a ton of very cool sci-fi covers I've blogged in the past – great value if you want a lot of art for a low cost.

Meteorite pendant necklace, $34

I think we all know what kind of rock your loved ones need around their neck: A chunk of meteorite straight out of the 1576 Argentinan meteorite fall.

Book recs

For astronauts: Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, The New Guys: The Historic Class of Astronauts That Broke Barriers and Changed the Face of Space Travel by Meredith Bagby

For comedians: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, Even Greater Mistakes: Short Stories by Charlie Jane Anders 

For sleuths: Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson

For crafters: Knits of Tomorrow: Toys and Accessories for your Retro-Future Needs

For the resistance fighters: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley, An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

For slasher movie fans: Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare

Syd Mead "Biomorph Vehicle" button down shirt, $49

T-shirts aren't classy enough for the world's coolest visual futurist, Syd Mead. I haven't actually bought this incredibly odd shirt, but I really need to.

Art prints (and more) from 70s sci-fi artists

Artist shops can be surprisingly hard to track down on the internet, but here's a short list of ones I've come across. All of these artists are featured in my book (except one), so you can read up on them before you commit to a print.

Michael Whelan 

John Harris

Syd Mead

Don Maitz

David B Mattingly

Peter Andrew Jones - Jones was one of just a few artists who declined to be included in my art book, but he has a distinct, colorful style that I would have loved to have featured!

Finally, here's one extra bonus, just for everyone who made it to the end of this article: The UK-based educational charity Centre for Computing History sells three big officially licensed John Harris posters featuring these three artworks, famous for their use as covers for Sinclair programming manuals.

It's a great deal that I've never seen mentioned anywhere, and Harris' work has a timeless quality that makes it great for an unassuming wall decoration. If you're outside the UK, the shipping costs will be a pain, but there's no better deal for a classic sci-fi poster.

[burymagdalene]

Was struck by boredom this morning: What I think Spencer would gift on an anniversary/birthday/Valentine’s occasion.

[liketwoswansinbalance]

A Gift-Giving Guide* by the Twins

*Don’t take this too seriously.

Warning: implied trauma incoming.

⸻

Rhian: Even if the person you’re buying a gift for isn’t important to you, you still must put in the effort to make a Good impression. Thus, if you can’t find anything your recipient would truly enjoy, just find a suitable substitute. Something, anything really, non-specific that no one will contest with will do. In addition, the gift must be of an acceptable quality, and as long as you invest in the gift’s presentation, you will probably not fail. Remember: as a giver, you’re more likely to be judged or faulted for an oversight sooner rather than later, so you must wrap the gift impeccably, with embossed paper and matching ribbons. Your best-laid plans will be the holiday equivalent of “dress to impress.” You’ll be less vulnerable to critique that way. And no one, absolutely no one, will shame you or claim you haven’t tried and given your all!

⸻

Rafal: What matters most about a gift are its contents and what such contents mean. No one will care what empty shells of wrapping paper look like, if they don’t like the contents. So, it’s best to choose a gift your recipient wants so desperately that they won’t be able to refuse it. Prepare for an influx of emotion from your recipient if they’re that type. And, it’s all the better if you went to great lengths to acquire the gift for them, and make that known, implicitly, so they don’t catch onto your power play. If you took every expense, you’ll deserve their recognition and henceforth, should subtly remind them, after the season’s over, of what their lives would be without your gift, of exactly how deprived they would feel if they didn’t have it. Then, they’ll subconsciously feel indebted to you and won’t ever leave you, for they’ll be too occupied by gratitude and guilt to consider other, worthless options or stupid exchanges, especially when they’ve already received something substantive of the objective, best quality because you know what’s best for them. Oh, and never give them the receipt. They can’t change their mind if it’s too late and they’ve already committed to something that cannot be replaced.

[rebirthgarments]

Do you want to buy presents but help families in Gahhzahh instead of sending your money to a terrible corporation? You’re in so much luck! go to queercripslovepal.substack.com to check out our guide! This week on our Substack we’re offering many different items to purchase and raffles to enter that will send direct aid to our friends in Pal-eh-stein. Go buy yourself or someone else something cute, knowing that you’re giving back at the same time! We include great items including : Pins and prints by @k8deciccio Jewelry by @cambio_co Art prints by @christinebydesign Bracelets from @pieces_for_palestine and @elenafromaustin Stickers form @disabilityarchiveslab Hand sewn pins by @daniknightdraws Zines from @how.jude.rolls Garments , zines and stickers from @rebirthgarments And rahffles from @iwantgolde and @maggsdao ! They are all supporting different families! Image description: A light gray background with beige stars and green pine and holly leaves around the corners. A white square in the center holds a QR code and the text “Queercrips Love Pal Holiday Gift Guide | Support families in Gahhzahh this season! | queercripslovepal.substack.com “ Love from @rebbiest and @rebirthgarments !

[chubbiichii]

Froggy and Mushroom Clay Tic Tac Toe Board

ETSY

[s-andthecity]

self care holiday gifts 🛍️

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

My next book is The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation: it’s a Big Tech disassembly manual that explains how to disenshittify the web and bring back the old good internet. The hardcover comes from Verso on Sept 5, but the audiobook comes from me — because Amazon refuses to sell my audio:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

Amazon owns Audible, the monopoly audiobook platform that controls >90% of the audio market. They require mandatory DRM for every book sold, locking those books forever to Amazon’s monopoly platform. If you break up with Amazon, you have to throw away your entire audiobook library.

That’s a hell of a lot of leverage to hand to any company, let alone a rapacious monopoly that ran a program targeting small publishers called “Project Gazelle,” where execs were ordered to attack indie publishers “the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle”:

https://www.businessinsider.com/sadistic-amazon-treated-book-sellers-the-way-a-cheetah-would-pursue-a-sickly-gazelle-2013-10

[Image ID: Journalist and novelist Doctorow (Red Team Blues) details a plan for how to break up Big Tech in this impassioned and perceptive manifesto….Doctorow’s sense of urgency is contagious -Publishers Weekly]

I won’t sell my work with DRM, because DRM is key to the enshittification of the internet. Enshittification is why the old, good internet died and became “five giant websites filled with screenshots of the other four” (h/t Tom Eastman). When a tech company can lock in its users and suppliers, it can drain value from both sides, using DRM and other lock-in gimmicks to keep their business even as they grow ever more miserable on the platform.

Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

[Image ID: A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise -Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI”]

The Internet Con isn’t just an analysis of where enshittification comes from: it’s a detailed, shovel-ready policy prescription for halting enshittification, throwing it into reverse and bringing back the old, good internet.

How do we do that? With interoperability: the ability to plug new technology into those crapulent, decaying platform. Interop lets you choose which parts of the service you want and block the parts you don’t (think of how an adblocker lets you take the take-it-or-leave “offer” from a website and reply with “How about nah?”):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

But interop isn’t just about making platforms less terrible — it’s an explosive charge that demolishes walled gardens. With interop, you can leave a social media service, but keep talking to the people who stay. With interop, you can leave your mobile platform, but bring your apps and media with you to a rival’s service. With interop, you can break up with Amazon, and still keep your audiobooks.

So, if interop is so great, why isn’t it everywhere?

Well, it used to be. Interop is how Microsoft became the dominant operating system:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

[Image ID: Nobody gets the internet-both the nuts and bolts that make it hum and the laws that shaped it into the mess it is-quite like Cory, and no one’s better qualified to deliver us a user manual for fixing it. That’s The Internet Con: a rousing, imaginative, and accessible treatise for correcting our curdled online world. If you care about the internet, get ready to dedicate yourself to making interoperability a reality. -Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine]

It’s how Apple saved itself from Microsoft’s vicious campaign to destroy it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

Every tech giant used interop to grow, and then every tech giant promptly turned around and attacked interoperators. Every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Big Tech did it, that was progress; when you do it back to Big Tech, that’s piracy. The tech giants used their monopoly power to make interop without permission illegal, creating a kind of “felony contempt of business model” (h/t Jay Freeman).

The Internet Con describes how this came to pass, but, more importantly, it tells us how to fix it. It lays out how we can combine different kinds of interop requirements (like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Massachusetts’s Right to Repair law) with protections for reverse-engineering and other guerrilla tactics to create a system that is strong without being brittle, hard to cheat on and easy to enforce.

What’s more, this book explains how to get these policies: what existing legislative, regulatory and judicial powers can be invoked to make them a reality. Because we are living through the Great Enshittification, and crises erupt every ten seconds, and when those crises occur, the “good ideas lying around” can move from the fringes to the center in an eyeblink:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/12/only-a-crisis/#lets-gooooo

[Image ID: Thoughtfully written and patiently presented, The Internet Con explains how the promise of a free and open internet was lost to predatory business practices and the rush to commodify every aspect of our lives. An essential read for anyone that wants to understand how we lost control of our digital spaces and infrastructure to Silicon Valley’s tech giants, and how we can start fighting to get it back. -Tim Maughan, author of INFINITE DETAIL]

After all, we’ve known Big Tech was rotten for years, but we had no idea what to do about it. Every time a Big Tech colossus did something ghastly to millions or billions of people, we tried to fix the tech company. There’s no fixing the tech companies. They need to burn. The way to make users safe from Big Tech predators isn’t to make those predators behave better — it’s to evacuate those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

I’ve been campaigning for human rights in the digital world for more than 20 years; I’ve been EFF’s European Director, representing the public interest at the EU, the UN, Westminster, Ottawa and DC. This is the subject I’ve devoted my life to, and I live my principles. I won’t let my books be sold with DRM, which means that Audible won’t carry my audiobooks. My agent tells me that this decision has cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through college. That’s a price I’m willing to pay if it means that my books aren’t enshittification bait.

But not selling on Audible has another cost, one that’s more important to me: a lot of readers prefer audiobooks and 9 out of 10 of those readers start and end their searches on Audible. When they don’t find an author there, they assume no audiobook exists, period. It got so bad I put up an audiobook on Amazon — me, reading an essay, explaining how Audible rips off writers and readers. It’s called “Why None of My Audiobooks Are For Sale on Audible”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

[Image ID: Doctorow has been thinking longer and smarter than anyone else I know about how we create and exchange value in a digital age. -Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock]

To get my audiobooks into readers’ ears, I pre-sell them on Kickstarter. This has been wildly successful, both financially and as a means of getting other prominent authors to break up with Amazon and use crowdfunding to fill the gap. Writers like Brandon Sanderson are doing heroic work, smashing Amazon’s monopoly:

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/guest-editorial-cory-doctorow-is-a-bestselling-author-but-audible-wont-carry-his-audiobooks/

And to be frank, I love audiobooks, too. I swim every day as physio for a chronic pain condition, and I listen to 2–3 books/month on my underwater MP3 player, disappearing into an imaginary world as I scull back and forth in my public pool. I’m able to get those audiobooks on my MP3 player thanks to Libro.fm, a DRM-free store that supports indie booksellers all over the world:

https://blog.libro.fm/a-qa-with-mark-pearson-libro-fm-ceo-and-co-founder/

Producing my own audiobooks has been a dream. Working with Skyboat Media, I’ve gotten narrators like @wilwheaton​, Amber Benson, @neil-gaiman​ and Stefan Rudnicki for my work:

https://craphound.com/shop/

[Image ID: “This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn’t want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We’ll Miss It When Its Gone”]

But for this title, I decided that I would read it myself. After all, I’ve been podcasting since 2006, reading my own work aloud every week or so, even as I traveled the world and gave thousands of speeches about the subject of this book. I was excited (and a little trepedatious) at the prospect, but how could I pass up a chance to work with director Gabrielle de Cuir, who has directed everyone from Anne Hathaway to LeVar Burton to Eric Idle?

Reader, I fucking nailed it. I went back to those daily recordings fully prepared to hate them, but they were good — even great (especially after my engineer John Taylor Williams mastered them). Listen for yourself!

https://archive.org/details/cory_doctorow_internet_con_chapter_01

I hope you’ll consider backing this Kickstarter. If you’ve ever read my free, open access, CC-licensed blog posts and novels, or listened to my podcasts, or come to one of my talks and wished there was a way to say thank you, this is it. These crowdfunders make my DRM-free publishing program viable, even as audiobooks grow more central to a writer’s income and even as a single company takes over nearly the entire audiobook market.

Backers can choose from the DRM-free audiobook, DRM-free ebook (EPUB and MOBI) and a hardcover — including a signed, personalized option, fulfilled through the great LA indie bookstore Book Soup:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/the-internet-con-how-to-seize-the-means-of-computation

What’s more, these ebooks and audiobooks are unlike any you’ll get anywhere else because they are sold without any terms of service or license agreements. As has been the case since time immemorial, when you buy these books, they’re yours, and you are allowed to do anything with them that copyright law permits — give them away, lend them to friends, or simply read them with any technology you choose.

As with my previous Kickstarters, backers can get their audiobooks delivered with an app (from libro.fm) or as a folder of MP3s. That helps people who struggle with “sideloading,” a process that Apple and Google have made progressively harder, even as they force audiobook and ebook sellers to hand over a 30% app tax on every dollar they make:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-another-audiobook-that-amazon-wont-sell/posts/3788112

Enshittification is rotting every layer of the tech stack: mobile, payments, hosting, social, delivery, playback. Every tech company is pulling the rug out from under us, using the chokepoints they built between audiences and speakers, artists and fans, to pick all of our pockets.

The Internet Con isn’t just a lament for the internet we lost — it’s a plan to get it back. I hope you’ll get a copy and share it with the people you love, even as the tech platforms choke off your communities to pad their quarterly numbers.

Next weekend (Aug 4-6), I'll be in Austin for Armadillocon, a science fiction convention, where I'm the Guest of Honor:

https://armadillocon.org/d45/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

[Image ID: My forthcoming book 'The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation' in various editions: Verso hardcover, audiobook displayed on a phone, and ebook displayed on an e-ink reader.]

[torpublishinggroup]

Tor Publishing Group is BACK (again) with a guide of books to gift the people in your life…and yourself!

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

Cozy books to curl up with in the winter...

Legends & Lattes / Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

Dazzling new worlds to explore...

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark

Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim; translated by Anton Hur

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

High stakes, high thrills...

Extinction by Douglas Preston

The Lies We Conjure by Sarah Henning

Exordia by Seth Dickinson

━ ˖°˖ ☾☆☽ ˖°˖ ━

Story collections that pack a punch...

Januaries by Olivie Blake

The White Guy Dies First: 13 Scary Stories of Fear and Power edited by Terry J. Benton-Walker

Not enough books? Don’t worry, we have another GET BOOKT: THE BOOKENING guide to help you out!

[the-huntington]

𝚂𝚑𝚘𝚙 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙶𝚒𝚏𝚝´𝚜

𝟏.𝑨𝑵𝑨™ 𝑪𝑶𝑴𝑩𝑶 𝑺𝒆𝒕 𝑾𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝑮𝒚𝒎 𝑬𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒑𝒎𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝟐. 𝑻𝒐𝒎 𝑭𝒐𝒓𝒅 𝑫𝒐𝒈 𝒍𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒉 𝟑.𝑨𝒓𝒉𝒂𝒖𝒔 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝑪𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒔 𝑺𝒆𝒕 𝟒.𝑳𝒖𝒊𝒔 𝑽𝒖𝒊𝒕𝒕𝒐𝒏 𝑻𝒓𝒖𝒏𝒌 𝑻𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑪𝒍𝒐𝒄𝒌 𝟓.𝑫𝒊𝒐𝒓 𝑪𝒍𝒖𝒃 𝑴𝟏 𝑺𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒔𝒆𝒔 𝟔.𝑻𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑭𝒂𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑩𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒔 𝟕.��𝒂𝒏𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒂𝒏 𝑽𝒂𝒔𝒆 𝟖. 𝑴𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒃𝒖 𝑷𝒐𝒓𝒕𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝑷𝒊𝒛𝒛𝒂 𝑶𝒗𝒆𝒏

𝙵𝚊𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛'𝚜 𝙳𝚊𝚢 𝙶𝚒𝚏𝚝𝚜 𝙱𝚢

@cowbuild @bergdorfverse @leosims4cc @bambi ✿

[toyastales]

If you love hard and are loyal and a bit off kilter this is the perfect gift for you to receive and give.  This candle smells amazing, like those sweet and spicy caramelized apples.

https://toyastales.blogspot.com/2025/02/if-you-dont-love-me-like-this.html

[cbbyzac]

Currently counting down the days until Christmas, but for now…here are our favorite under $20 gifts that would make the perfect stocking stuffers💗

[expatesque]

At the demand of no one, please allow me to present...

S's 2024 Gift Guide

A gift guide with no coherent theme, just vibes, under the cut.

Starting out with anything from Bully. Do you have an extravagant person in your life? A brother that needs a touch of sophistication? Or a difficult aunt? Please allow me to recommend: anything from Bully. Luxe versions of normal things in the most spectacular packaging, truly the pick for anyone hard to shop for. I'm particularly drawn to the personalized combs, or the metal room diffuser, or any of their garden scents.

A cute calendar from a local artist. For the UK, I personally love this one that shows you what's in season each month.

A stupidly gorgeous candle (had to be done).

Take something off their plate - know someone who's overwhelmed, has so much going on, and could use a breather? Get them the gift of taking something off their plate. Whether that's babysitting the kids for an evening so they can have the night to themselves, building that new bookshelf they've had in a box for six months, helping organize their 30th, or buying them a deep clean with a local cleaning service, sometimes the nicest thing you can give someone is capacity.

For your local aesthete who's also a bit of a clutz (🙋‍♂️), metal champagne coups or martini glasses.

Know someone chic who has to take medicine throughout the day (or just really loves an ibuprofen)? A steel pillbox (and anything else from Rebecca's consistently stunning collections).

Know someone really into ruffles? Gorgeous pillow cases (pro tip: while initials are always chic, consider 'sweet' on the left pillow case and 'dreams' on the right for a fun alternative).

An (affectionately) insane swan juicer.

The person in your life that cares about fashion but is feeling a little lost in their style or wants to dress more intentionally: The Creative Pragmatist.

Your local espresso aficionado: this steel cup set and a bag of really good local beans.

Pope socks. I don't know who exactly to recommend this for, but if there's anyone who pops into your head when I tell you that the Pope's tailor sells online and you can buy the exact socks that all cardinals and bishops have to wear, get them Pope socks.

If you have a cook on your list who lives in a small space, get them a minichop (trust me, we all want one).

A lipstick lover who's open to trying new shades? Try the Dries Van Noten refillable lipsticks.

Books are always good. In addition to just a book you think they'll like, consider a lovely edition of their favourite (folio or any cloth bound classics). If you're really stuck, a coffee table book from Phaidon or Gestalten is a good bet.

For your dad, or grandma, or pretty much anyone: gorgeous, 100% cotton Italian pajamas at quite reasonable prices.

Really beautiful jewelry for your edgy, hard to impress cousin.

For the elegant person that has everything, the insanely beautiful kettle.

And lastly, a double gift, for you and the recipient: get a kid impacted by foster care exactly what they want this year via One Simple Wish. While I totally support the kind of gift drive where you buy a generic present for a 7yr old boy, I was a kid with niche interests and so the idea of getting someone exactly what they've asked for really appeals. There's usually gifts as low as $20, so you can support whatever your budget.