holiday gift guide 2014

Vulture’s 2014 Pop-Culture Gift Guide

Find something for every art and culture obsessive on your list with this selection of books, Blu-rays, albums, and a couple of big-ticket oddballs we couldn’t help but throw in. Click into the gallery ahead to find a toaster for a hard-core Star Wars fanatic, an affordable Raymond Pettibon, and more.

*This article appears in the November 24, 2014 issue of New York Magazine.

For the toast-loving sci-fi fan; Darth Vader’s head imprints the Star Wars logo into the side of each slice and browns the edges. $50, Hammacher.
Because: “You played a tomato for 30 seconds — they went a half a day over schedule because you wouldn’t sit down!” $32, Criterion.
Rewatching on your laptop, you’ll be able to pause and scrutinize Ethan Hawke’s signs of aging to your heart’s content. $26, Amazon.
The debut full-length from British R&B rookie FKA Twigs — a.k.a. Robert Pattinson’s new girlfriend. $24, Amazon.
Buy To Wit, a book chronicling the artist’s temporary studio in the David Zwirner Gallery last summer, so you can tear out the pages and frame them. $45, Artbook.
This oughta keep the kids quiet for a few weeks. $26, Barnes and Noble.
Download the Hola proxy server to stream otherwise-blocked-in-the-U.S. shows and BBC Sherlock episodes before they air on PBS. Free, hola.org.
As those of you who’ve recently lugged around The Power Broker know: For some reason, Robert Caro’s 1,280-page beloved biography of city planner Robert Moses is not available as an e-book. So we enlisted professional bookbinder Benjamin Reynaert to take a used paperback, split the spine, and rebind it into three subway-friendly volumes with homemade dust jackets. Here’s his method. (Also works for Moby-Dick, Infinite Jest, and Middlemarch.) Materials 1 used copy of The Power Broker ($15, amazon.com); 3 12” x 18’’ sheets of craft paper; 1 pair of scissors; 1 metal ruler; 1 roll of linen book tape ($6 at any craft store); 1 X-acto knife 1. The Power Broker divides equally into thirds at chapters 23 and 37. Open to those two chapters and bend them back and forth a few times to break in the spine. Then place your metal ruler along the seam at each chapter break, and drag the X-acto knife along it. “Not with much force, about four or five times, until you cut through the binding.” 2. Cut three strips of book tape, the same length as the spine, and place along your three new spines as reinforcement. 3. Now it’s time to make the dust jackets. For each section of the book, cut a piece of craft paper that’s twice the book’s height and the length of two pages, plus two inches on each end for the flaps. Place the first book section in the center of its craft-paper sheet, and fold the top half of the paper down to meet the book and the bottom half of the paper up to mirror it. 4. Lift the book section up onto its spine, and, pressing firmly down, pull up the craft paper on either side — almost as if you were wrapping a present — remembering to make deep creases on either side of the spine with your fingernail. 5. By folding the craft paper along its edges, you’ve created pockets on either end of the jacket. Take the first and last few pages of the section, and tuck them into the pocket — now your dust jacket will stay in place. Repeat twice more, for sections two and three, and you’ve got some anthologized Caro ready for the F train.
Danish designer Hans J. Wegner created the Y chair, the China chair, the Peacock chair, the Ox chair — even a chair called the Chair. $50, Amazon.
Since 2011, a group of Twitter-skeptical Brits have been producing a beautifully designed ode to long-form journalism that digests the news slowly, four times a year. $62/year, Slow Journalism. Update: Vulture readers can get a 20% discount with the code ‘NewYork20.’
Stevie Nicks’s eighth solo studio album includes new versions of demos she recorded between 1969 and 1987. The deluxe edition comes with a color-photo book from her personal collection. $50, Stereo Boutique.
Every episode of Twin Peaks in high-def Blu-ray, plus hours of never-seen material to watch 20 (more) times before the epic 2016 return. $85, Amazon.
Each copy comes with a Marc Newson–designed stand. $2,500 Taschen.
By photographer Edward Weston, featuring his longtime muse and wife, Charis Wilson. $103,000, Christie’s.
This first edition of Bridge to Terabithia, annotated by the author, is being auctioned to benefit the PEN America Center. $1,000, Pen America Center.
Ebay is filled with old Sassy magazines — send someone an issue for 12 consecutive months for a true ’90s flashback. $240, eBay.
Players fight to survive the zombie apocalypse with the latest from Stern, one of the last companies still making pinball machines. $5,995, Stern Pinball.
By R. Crumb, defining the era of psychedelic cartoonists. $500, Fantagraphics.
A framed print of Genieve Figgis’s The Swing After Fragonard, with signed certificate. $650, email info@exhibitiona.com.
Barbra Streisand, chronicling the first five years of her career, by Life’s Steve Schapiro and Lawrence Schiller. $750, Taschen.
The political unrest, the carcass-eating polar bears — it’s all in these National Geographic photo essays spanning all seven continents $499 at Amazon.
Vulture’s 2014 Pop-Culture Gift Guide