The best of the holiday shopping mags
The turkey leftovers are gone and it’s ba🐟ck to work. Now comes the hard part — dreaming up gift ideas that will wow family and friends.
Consumer Reports’ ShopSmart is top of our list for the most inventive andꩵ unusual gift ideas that won’t bust your budget. Among the smart recommendations are using sites that serve up suggestions based on personalities. Gifts.com is one. ShopSmart also suggests trying Etsy.com and Uncommon.com for more unique gift ideas. But give the 25 gifts for under $25 a miss, we don’t know anyone who even uses USBs anymore, let alone wants a wearable one. There’s also a section on making your own gifts, with the inevitable suggestion to bake ♒your own cookies. The mag also conducted a survey about where the best deals are — unsurprisingly they’re all online, although ShopSmart reminds us to haggle with the brick and mortar folks.
In our imagination, Real Simple is staffed with the most efficient, organized, informed writers who spend their waking hours finding the perfec🐷t gifts. How else could they know to recommend so many tasteful presents in their well-known annual “50 under $50” section? Our favorite: “The Most of Nora Ephron.” Males of the family are typically a nightmare to buy for, but Real Simple delivers some spot-on suggestions. Hip flasks, grooming kits, pocket squares: Perhaps. But please no flash drive cufflinks. Yes, even Real Simple gets it wrong🤪 sometimes. The prize for most useful gift idea — the baseball cap with an LED light for shoveling snow at night or walking the dog.
InStyle editors clearly shopped themselves to the brink of death to come up with hundreds of suggestions in five different budget ranges. To give an idea of the swath of ideas: women’s PJs, must-have cookbooks and layer cakes, men’s slip-on sneakers, evening clutches, perfume sets and pea coats. What kind of bubbly were these editors drinking when they decided to conclude the gift guide with a host of wacky fashion designer-inspired gift wrap ideas? If you want to wrap your gifts in pastel colored paper rhinestones and feathers who are w♓e to laugh at your love affair with designer Dries Van Noten?
Thinking of giving a faux fur vest for Christmas? Then pick up the People StyleWatch gift guide. The exclusive discounts for The Gap, Henri Bend༒el and New York costume jeweler Sequin were a nice idea, and list likers will go for the best in gift sites and trendy gadgets. Then there are party tips on when to appear, how to pose when being photographed, and, of course, what to wear. No tips on going to the family dinner, thou♏gh.
New Yorker E⛄ditor David Remnick, who slapped a Google car on the cover a few weeks ago to go with a story on the vehicle, is definitely developing a taste for business. This issue, follow the path — if you can manage some of the dry-as-dust writing in the 13-page article — trudged by Merck scientists as they prepare to meet the FDA’s approval of a new blockbuster insomnia drug. It’s a good set-up, but it is easy to get lost before the unexpected payoff. For a political read, the lead Talk of the Town reveals how social activists are rewriting labor contracts and winning a fair number of referendums backing minimum-wage increases.
New York reads like the best of the old Village Voice with two solid street reporting features. In the cover story, the reporter goes to Miami, tracking down those tied to “anti-aging clinic” Biogenesis, where Yankees superstar A-Rod is alleged to have gone to get juiced. Then comes a feature on how a family makes a fortune by running an organization that distributes city shelter funds and then gives the money to associates w🌸ho barely maintain these shelters, which house 11 percent of the homeless population.
Rather than the too-familiar Time cover story on how towns are legalizing hunting as wild animals encroach on them, turn to the feature on Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and her fight to rid the military of sexual abuse, which might lead to higher office for the New York state pol. Elsew꧋here, Fareed Zakaria argues that Obama’s deal with Iran has to be better than President Bush’s 2003 decision to reject one. During those 10 intervening years, the columnist writes, the regime’s nuclear program increased its 160 centrifuges that enrich uranium to 19,000.