Wordcandy-friendly Gift Shopping Advice for the Organizationally Impaired!

Still not finished with your holiday shopping? Running low on time and inspiration? We here at Wordcandy have assembled a list of ten book-related gift options, any one of which any book lover will be delighted to receive. Think of it as our gift to you!

For gadget geeks:
Playawaydigital.com only offers a few Wordcandy-friendly titles (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy among them), but these self-playing digital e-books (cost: $34.99 and up) look like fun options for the book-loving gadget-ophile on your list.



For emergency stocking stuffers:
Bookcloseouts.com is having a half-price sale on hundreds of fiction titles between now and December 24th. It’s a lot to hunt through, but we saw mega-cheap versions of books from Wordcandy authors like Diana Wynne Jones and Lloyd Alexander.



For those who like to eat (and drink):
Try assembling a book-and-food (or booze) combination. Give a copy of Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate along with the ingredients to make one of the recipes in the book. Or stick a copy of P.G. Wodehouse’s Prohibition-era novel The Small Bachelor inside a juice pitcher, accompanied by a bottle of your moonshine of choice.



For book-loving girls:
A $14.95 ‘Reading Is Sexy’ shirt from buyolympia.com! (They have these for guys, too, but we would only recommend giving them to a man who is very secure in his masculinity.)



For book-loving guys:
For a mere $39.95, Kung-fu bookends from wrapables.com are the ideal way to add a little testosterone to your bookshelf.



For those who get a little sick of The Night Before Christmas:
There are some mighty fine non-nauseating kids’ Christmas stories out there- our favorite is Berkeley Breathed's The Red Ranger Came Calling.



For those who journal:
Behold! The ideal Wordcandy reader’s journal- $11, also from buyolympia.com:



For those anal about book lending:
An old-fashioned library-style lending kit ($24.95, from www.knockknock.biz) so you can track exactly WHO has your books, WHEN they borrowed them, and your thoughts as to WHY THE HELL they haven’t given them back yet.



For those who do not sneer at movie adaptations:
1. Try a copy of Emma and the movie Clueless for the Austen fan on your list (or Sense and Sensibility and Kandukondain Kandukondain, its little-seen-in-the-Western World Bollywood film adaptation, if the Austen fan in question is the kind of person who would turn their nose up at Clueless).

2. The book and the movie version of Roald Dahl's The Witches for any obnoxious kids you know.

3. A copy of The Blue Fairy Book and Jim Henson’s The Storyteller DVD for fairytale readers.

4. A book/film package of The Thin Man for mystery readers.

5. A book/film package of The Mouse That Roared for… people who laugh at that kind of thing.



And for the impossible-to-shop-for person who has everything:
DonorsChoose.org, a not-for-profit organization that distributes school supplies to needy American classrooms, is the perfect place to donate money in any booklover’s name. The site features hundreds of donation requests, many of which come from classrooms where 100% of the students are on free or reduced lunch programs. Everyone who contributes will get a thank-you note when the project is fully funded. This is an excellent way to cross some names off of your list and spread the Wordcandy love to kids in need.