Around this time last year, I worked a list of book recommendations that turned into a small gift guide, with accompanying meditation on the shifting role of gifting in my life. I was a little surprised to find I enjoyed writing it. Turns out I enjoy nice and beautiful things and believe that everyone should have nice and beautiful things.
In recent weeks, I have been underwater on a lot of Serious Projects and I also, frankly, have Suffered the slings and arrows of life. Then I tired of both, especially of the working on Serious Things, and decided to assemble this 2024 version of the STM winter gift guide. This is probably best viewed in a browser, because of length and pictures and links, but your mileage may vary.
Below you’ll find a lot: books, jewelry, art, artisan-made objects, delicious things, funny things, fragrance, gestures, gifts that can be DIY-ed or cost very little, gifts that would lighten a wallet notably. It’s full of recs from me, but also from my friends and loved ones with Great Taste.
The gift guides I like have a certain confidence and elan, a sense of the person writing—what they value, what they don’t. Here’s the general structure of this one, much longer and juicier and more roving than its predecessor:
SWEET SMALL OR DIY THINGS THAT COST NOT VERY MUCH
SOME PERFECT BOOKS
SPLURGES: LUXURIOUS AND SPENDY THINGS FOR BIG OCCASIONS AND DEEP POCKETS
ART HOE ALCOVE (FILM, MUSIC, PAINTINGS, PRINTS, WEARABLES)
EDIBLE ARRANGEMENTS (THINGS TO EAT AND COOK WITH)
SOME MORE PERFECT BOOKS
WHAT TO GET A WEIRD AND BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
MORE SPLURGES
WHAT TO GET A MAN???? OF ANY GENDER
WHAT TO GET SOMEONE GOING THROUGH IT
NICE THINGS FOR LITERALLY ANYONE
This has been a year where I ended up buying and consuming a good amount less, and finding myself desirous of making what I do buy count. I think that shows up, in good ways, here.
housekeeping note
A majority of this is paywalled as a thank-you to Friends of the Pudding; my sweeties, tysm for helping me devote more time to this newsletter, which allowed me to write things that took time and tho(ugh)t: building the cathedral, mother tongue, every day is all there is, year’s end, and and and. <3
Any of the rest of you who may want to see Mx. Gift Guide in entirety but do not wish an ongoing subscription are so welcome to a) sign up for $5 for a month and then cancel or b) check out last year’s WGG.
NOW ENTERING thot pudding winter gift guide 2024
Wrote this last year and it stands up for me still: The kinds of gifting I value: tender, only rarely extravagant, as far as possible unobligated, oriented towards comfort or beauty or encouragement, and most of all, attentive. Good gift-giving is, more often than not, predicated on good listening.
SWEET, SMALL, OR DIY THINGS THAT COST NOT VERY MUCH
This perfect June Jordan sticker from writer and artist Fabliha Anbar ($5)
Make1: these candied jalapenos with someone you’re fond of, jar them up, give them away ($5-10 in ingredient costs, depending on what you already have on hand). Keep a jar for yourself. They improve soups, stews, breakfast tacos, sandwiches, scrambled eggs, really, most any food they’re added to.
Okay no uncle, but if you go to Apna Bazaar in Jackson Heights, or your local equivalent desi grocery store (some of which do online delivery, like P*t*l Br*th*rs), I think that any of these are delightful little presents: Anand spicy murruku, soan papdi, Mahabringaraj hair oil, and Mysore sandal soap.
Did you know: living in cities like New York, many of us develop chronically dry skin over time because of some mixture of city water chlorination patterns and how allergenic the city is?? You could get your loved one with burgeoning eczema a shower filter or mast cell inhibitors, I guess, but lest that feel Overly Intimate, I am here to recommend AmLactin, which smells like cold yogurt and coffee grounds but in a kind of nice way. Slather it on your bod when damp from the shower and you and yours will have buttery limbs once more. ($20-30, depending on your retailer)
I’m so serious: go to your local stationery shop (I’m partial to Goods for the Study and Yoseka Stationery in NYC) try out and buy three (3) decent pens, and give them to someone you enjoy. There is a silent crisis of only-bad-pens-in-the-house sweeping the land. Many such cases!
I love and swear by a Midori notebook ($13).
Print out and fold any of the delightful zines from Quarantine Public Library, brainchild of Katie Garth and Tracy Honn. ($0-3)
This Nablus soap with Dead Sea mud ($8).
THE PERFECT BOOK DOESN’T EXIS— (PART 1)
Say Say Say by Lila Savage: should have taken the world by storm when it came out, it’s so good and graceful. A light-filled portrait of a young Midwestern caregiver and the older married couple she ends up entangled with as she works and cares for the ailing wife.
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. From the Witch’s death on the first page all the way to the end, this is an extraordinary, violence-soaked, crystalline portrait of a Mexican village. I’ll simply never forget it.
Space Crone by Ursula Le Guin. Simply great. Mast Books, where I linked this one, is always A+ for an in-person browse.
A tip from Yasmin Adele Majeed with the caption “perfect novel”: the novella Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Meghan McDowell. Also “for writers”: Opacities by Sofia Samatar (I want to read this!)
From Sarah Esocoff (whose excellent podcast is one of the small handful I’ve ever recommended, check it out) “A book I’ve been meaning to lend you bc I think you would love but maybe also good for this: The Little Virtues” by Natalia Ginsburg. I will be copping!
Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women by living legend Silvia Federici.
We Both Laughed In Pleasure by Lou Sullivan. It’s been years, but I really loved these diaries of gay and trans life, their voice and their verve.
Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur. This is simply one of the great short novels of the entire century.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Big, sloshing, funny, dramatic, unvirtuously political, so entertaining, seeped in love and darkness.
The Golden State or Mobility by Lydia Kiesling…both simply so good, novels that deliver on their own promises, which few contemporary novels do.
Image Control by Patrick Nathan…lowkey Sontag’s heir. Nonfiction on image-making, fascism, social media, and the erosion of what we have called democracy.
Thieving Sun by Monica Datta: a striking and original portrait of a woman mourning a loss by suicide, felt like a small musical instrument placed into my palm: hard, intricate, elegant, capable of much.
My sister recommends They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib, How To Write An Autobiographical Novel by Alexander Chee, and The Sorrows of Others by Ada Zhang, and she’s right on all counts.
SPLURGE ZONE 1
My friend Raven Leilani loves these cotton and silk scarves and bandanas from LAR studio, designed by Laris Alara Kilimci ($80-$110). “I first saw them in a boutique here in Brooklyn called Ayoon. The curator of the shop, Afredh, is a lovely person who fills the store with mainly Turkish goods I think. I have a few now that I use as head scarves.”
Morgan Levine, also a friend, makes these luxe ceramic plates in Bed-Stuy and is also doing a big in-person seconds sale this coming weekend (12/7-8).
This kinda swaggy money clip from Hommegirls. ($150)
Hanna just made and gave me a PERFECT woolen hat and it has left me pondering the great gift that is stylish knitwear for one’s dome…here is a mohair handkerchief, a hot pink cashmere balaclava, and this Sandy Liang bonnet situation. ($86-$195)
So charmed by this lovely jewelry from writer Joseph Lee’s mother, which might in turn be a good gift for your own mother. Hatmarcha Gifts is a longstanding Native-owned family company on Martha’s Vineyard. I also recommend hitting the preorder button for Joseph’s forthcoming sure-to-be-excellent book, Nothing More of This Land: Community, Power, and the Search for Indigenous Identity.
ART HOE ALCOVE: FILM, MUSIC, PAINTINGS, PRINTS
Woman of sterling taste Grace Byron (and author of the soon-forthcoming novel HERCULINE) recs TRANSA, a “beautiful record with some of my all time favorites. MIZU, Sade, Lucy Liyou, Rachika Nayar, Claire Rousay, Ceyenne Doroshow, L’Rain…a gift, a treasure, for a good cause.”