My annual Chrismukkah Gift Guide (and a little reading list too.)

Tis here! My second annual Chrismukkah Gift Guide, plus a little reading list at the end for your book tooken.

FOR TEENS (SULKY AND OTHERWISE)

A compilation of all the best bits from Rookiemag.com’s (founded by the eye-wateringly awesome Tavi Gevinson) first year, Rookie Yearbook One will change your life, if you let it.

Yeah, it has Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning in it but that’s no reason to buy The Runaways DVD. The reason to buy it is because it’s a biopic of this amazing all girl 70′s rock band, The Runaways, who rocked hard, harder, hardest even as they were completely exploited by The Man, man. Without The Runaways, we’d have no Joan Jett and Joan Jett rules!

After your teen has become completely inspired by watching The Runaways (see above) you can then buy them this What Would Joan Jett Do? t-shirt

I always think that teenage girls are like Marmite. You either love or hate them depending on what mood they’re in when you last encountered them. I think this adorable, limited edition gold jar of the stuff would make a great stocking filler for a teenage girl if she actually likes the stuff. It even changes the yeasty paste to a gold colour because Jubilee, Olympics, innit?

Diane Von Fursternberg earphones – who wouldn’t want a pair of these? A fool, that’s who.

I’m a firm believer that a good skincare habit should be started at an early age and I wish I’d known about Dr Hauschka back when I was suffering spots, oiliness and blackheads that could be see from space. This little skincare starter kit for dry and sensitive skin is not ruinously expensive but is also sleek and aspirational and they also do one for oily skin too.

FOR LADIES WHO LOVE LAZY SUNDAY AFTERNOONS

Do you need a new TV show to love and binge watch while you eat turkey sandwiches, mince pies and root around the Quality Street tin for the green triangles? You do? Then let it be the Gilmore Girls – Complete Season 1-7. Endlessly repeated on TV but entirely deserving to be watched in its entirety as you thrill to the really fast-talking Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, mother and daughter, and residents of Star’s Hollow, the kind of perfect, sleepy East Coast town full of strange eccentrics, that you only find in really good TV shows.

Drink Champagne And Dance On The Table cushion

Words to live by, am I right?

A vital ingredient for a lazy Sunday afternoon is a hot drink in a lovely mug like this one from Little Walton Bank. Just the right size for a decent hit of caffeine.

You have to keep your energy levels up when you’re reading and like books, it’s sometimes best to go with a classic. I recently discovered Tunnocks Dark Chocolate Teacakes and I knew right away that I was living in extraordinary times.

FOR BIBLIOPHILES

I’m a big fan of novels set or written between the wars and I’m also a big fan of independent publishers, which is why I adore Persephone Books. Their The Persephone Book Of The Month club would make a lovely present for a friend or even you if you like novels written mostly between the wars by ladies of a certain age, then published with sleek grey covers, and bookmarks and endpapers (endpapers!) that feature a pattern from a textile created the year the novel was written. I mean, who wouldn’t?

It’s going to be all about The Great Gatsby next year when Baz Luhrman’s film of F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic tale of the nihilism that underpinned the roaring Twenties. Of course, you’ve read The Great Gatsby but you probably don’t have this stylish Great Gatsby Mug, which is so pleasing to the eye. Tea drinking was never so literary.

If, like me, you know someone who still kicks it old skool and doesn’t have one of those new fangled e book readers (I don’t because the sheer number of my real world, treeware to-be-reads are overwhelming and if I started adding to them electronically, then I would drown under a weight on unread wordage) then they probably use a bookmark. If they don’t use a bookmark, then they probably fold the corners over to keep their place, which is a crime and why they need this You Are Here Bookmark Pad.

This I love books top is just the right kind of thing to wear when you’re curled up with your favourite novel.

FOR ART BOYS AND GIRLS

I don’t even know why Pelikan Bottled Highlighter Ink Yellow exists in a world full of fluorescent highlighter pens but I’m glad it does.

Le Audio Cassette Notebook by Moleskine“>Who doesn’t love a Moleskine notebook especially when they come disguised as an old fashioned cassette tape?

I may not be an art girl but I want this comedians’ catchphrases print from Rockett St George so badly it’s starting to hurt.

OK, it’s not published until the end of January but anyone with a love for art and design has to love the beautiful typography, graphics and images that London Undreground has given us over the years. London Underground By Design by Mark Ovenden gathers them all together.

Talking of which, The Great Bear by Simon Patterson is the London Underground map, but with a difference. All the lines and stations have had their names changed. The Circle Line stations are now philosophers. Italian artists have become Victoria Line stations and the Docklands Light Railway are Sinologues. I have a framed print of this hanging above my desk, it was my leaving present from J17, and it inspires me every day.

FOR FOODIES

If I could be anyone I would be Rachel Khoo because she is adorable but the kind of girl you could imagine going down the pub with and I yearn to run away to Paris, study at the Cordon Bleu Institute and then cook up amusing amuse bouche at the witty salons I’d host in my tiny Parisian Hausmann apartment. The closest I’ll ever get to being Rachel Khoo though is rocking a bold lip and making shepherds pie in Little Paris Kitchen-inspired enamel ware

I also yearn to bake, but never do because it requires precision and lots of ingredients that means you always end up lacking some vital component when you’re up to your elbows in a mixing bowl. I still have lots of wannabe baker kit including these Measuring Cup Matroyshkas So, if I did decide to knock up some rock cakes, at least me weighing skillz would be mad.

(I also have the Matroyshka Measuring Spoons because they are adorable, even if I have never used them.

Yotam Ottolenghi salt caramel and chocolate brittle – no brainer.

A perfect present for someone who watches too much Masterchef and longs to make those funny little spheres from bits of rhubard or do something involving liquid nitrogen. The Molecular Gastronomy Kit is the grown-up foodie equivalent of a chemistry set.

AND BOOKS, GOT TO HAVE SOME BOOKS, THERE MUST ALWAYS BE BOOKS

I did a lot of comfort reading this year and some of that was devouring the four books in Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles. A series that none of my friends who’d read and loved it told me about because they all assumed that I’d already read and loved it. Well, I hadn’t and this sweeping family saga of posh folk falling in love, being unfaithful and pursuing artistic endeavours and doomed relationships set against the destructive backdrop of World War 2 is the kind of book I would eat up with a spoon if I was able to liquidise it. (I’ve linked to a set with the first three books in it; Light Years, Confusion and Marking Time. You can buy the last book, Casting Off,

separately )

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of Georgette Heyer’s Regency novels, which fill that gap once you realise that Jane Austen really didn’t write that many books. I was lucky enough to inherit an almost full set from my mother, but lots of people on the Twitter ask me where’s a good place to start if you’re new to Heyer. Well, the first one I read was Regency Buck and I think it’s a great introduction to Heyer. Maybe it doesn’t have the depth of her later books but you have an impetuous, flighty heiress and a sardonic, titled guardian who’s known as a rakehell thrown together very unwillingly and, quite frankly, that pushes all of my Regency romance buttons.

The Diary Of A Provincial Lady by E M Delafield is my go-to-get happy book. I have read the four Provincial Lady novels again and again and they always give me cheer. I think sometimes people believe that books written long ago (in the 1930′s as is the case here) say nothing about our modern lives; are impossible to relate to. It’s simply not the case. I mean: “November 22nd.–Cissie Crabbe leaves. Begs me in the kindest way to stay with her in Norwich (where she has already told me that she lives in a bed-sitting-room with two cats, and cooks her own lentils on a gas-ring). I say Yes, I should love to. We part effusively.”

The other books I’ve really gorged on this year are Noel Streatfeild’s adult romance novels written under the name Susan Scarlett. They’re not as dark as her ‘proper’ adult novels, like but I’ve loved books like Peter and Paul with its fashion company setting and two twins, one beautiful and one good, in competition for the attentions of the dashing man who owns the fashion company. Sometimes the Susan Scarlett novels make my third wave feminist self bristle but mostly I love them for the 1930′s YA novels that they kind of are.

I also read a lot of non-fiction. Again, mostly concerning the between the wars years and World War 2. I also love a good juicy biography, especially a literary biography and when you add all those elements together than you get The Mitford Girls by Mary S Lovell. I love Nancy Mitford’s novels, adore the fact that Jessica Mitford eloped with her cousin to fights fascists in Spain and I absolutely do NOT love Unity Mitford and Diana Mitford, who were unapologetic fascists. But the six sisters (there was also Debo, the only surviving Mitford, now the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and Pam, always overshadowed by her siblings) lived through extraordinary times and contributed to those times and the headlines of the day. Everything you could ever want in a biography.