Oh, what the hell: Scrolling Toward Bethlehem's #1 Holiday Gift Guide Spectacular
The long wait is over...
Dear reader,
It’s time for my first annual holiday gift guide. I’ve always wanted to make one of these since my big dumb gay brain watched Oprah give away diamond watches to a screaming mob many years ago, so I hope you like it. Some of my recs are practical but most of them are just ridiculous. I’ve always thought a gift should surprise and delight the person receiving it, and if you follow my lead, I think you might have a real shot at knocking it out of the park this year.
And hey! If I can help ensure that nobody receives the most devastating gift this year — the crushing loneliness that comes from the realization that your loved ones don’t know anything about you at all — then I’ll have done my job.
Obviously, this is a newsletter about books, so I am going to recommend some books at the top, before moving on to ART, MERCH, AND MORE!
Everything on this list comes with the Scrolling Towards Bethlehem 100% guarantee. Which means nothing but sounds pretty great, hey?
Anyways! I’m still hard at work on my book, which explains why I’ve been updating this newsletter so sporadically, but I had fun making this gift guide and I hope you have fun reading it too!
Love,
Andrew
PS: Links to new books come from Kings Co-op Bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia, while out-of-print and second-hand links mostly come from eBay. I’ve linked to small businesses wherever possible.
PPS: I’m also not getting paid for any of these links. That’s probably obvious, but I just wanted to make sure you (the reader) knows that I’m not shilling for anybody except Big Business, baby!
PPPS. OK true… but if you enjoyed this, you can buy me a coffee and/or pay off my debts.
A. Why not read a novel that makes Mad Men look like a blatant ripoff, written by the brilliant Rona Jaffe, and purchase this 1959 movie tie-in edition from eBay for good measure
“You could die in New York behind the locked door of your apartment and no one would ever know until some neighbour complained of the smell. Yes, your friends would say then, I remember I hadn’t heard from her for some time, but I thought she was just sulking. Or I thought she had a new job and was busy. Busy? Ha, Gregg thought, busy being unemployed!” - The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe
B. Do you have WORLD CUP FEVER? Go undercover with the hooligans in Bill Buford’s classic study of football menaces in AMONG THE THUGS. I’m partial to this cover, which is still available to order.
“It was one of the things you put up with: that every Saturday young males trashed your trains, broke the windows of your pubs, destroyed your cars, wreaked havoc on your town centres. I didn't buy it, but it seemed to be so."
C. Get some insight into the horrifying machinery of Hollywood and learn about a side of Joan Didion we don’t often get to see in Monster: Living off the Big Screen by John Gregory Dunne, which documents in great detail how the couple was forced to undergo endless rewrites on a terrible picture just so they could keep their WGA health insurance. Stars - they’re just like us!
I have always thought it rash to communicate with the author of any book we were adapting into a screenplay … We were not eager to tell Ms. Nash that Jessica Savitch, a middle-class Jewish girl from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, was fast becoming Sallyanne Atwater, trailer trash from Stateline, Nevada, but neither did we wish to incur her hostility by not replying. Our geographically indeterminate response, written on a postcard filched from the Beverly Hills Hotel, was as fastidiously correct as her note, and as evasive as the Hook had been: "Yes, we are doing a screenplay for Disney based on 'Golden Girl° which is so full of rich detail and images that our work has been more fun than work. We are sorry our paths didn't cross in New York." - Monster: Living off the Big Screen by John Gregory Dunne
D. How about picking up a Rollicking Good Read about a happily married woman who suddenly realizes that what she’s missing in her life is PASSION and starts having an affair with a sexy painter. If you liked Conversations with Friends but wanted even MORE moral ambiguity, oh boy are you gonna love this. Read it and then read everything else Laurie Colwin has ever written.
"I just want an interesting life," said Martha.
"No, you don't," Polly said. "I've just been having one and you wouldn't wish it on a dog." - Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin
E. A biography that explains why Newfoundland is such an insane place to live, for better and for worse: Smallwood: The Unlikely Revolutionary by Richard Gwyn.
The first three paragraphs or so should hook you:
“In life as in art, a clown is the most complex of characters: a buffoon who laughs to keep from crying, a political propagandist who cloaks his message with humour, a freak who has turned a physical defect into a livelihood.
Joseph Roberts Smallwood is a deadly serious clown. His natural talent for mimicry, his studied command of repartee, and his uninhibited zest for living have made him Joey, the Canadian folk hero, part rustic savant, part licensed national jester. Behind the wit, the quick passion, and the easy emotion is Joe Smallwood, the lonely visionary who has spent almost seventy years pursuing a dream: a revolution that would give his island the material and intellectual benefits the rest of North America takes for granted.
As a clown, Smallwood is in many ways typical of his race. Newfoundlanders have suffered more and for far longer than any other white people in North America. By turns sentimental and cynical, they have endured their lot by laughing at it. Their humour is antic and unself-conscious, and they have a Celtic gift for expressing it.”
F. A list of my fav books from 2022 off the top of my head.
Take the Long Way Home by Jon Claytor
Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me by Ada Calhoun
Immoral, Indecent, and Scurrilous by Gerald Hannon
Len and Cub by Meredith J Batt and Dusty Green
Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball by Thomas Beller
G. Books by people I am proud to know online and IRL!!
Sideways: The City Google Couldn't Buy by Josh O’Kane
Nowadays and Lonelier by Carmella Gray-Cosgrove
Be Scared of Everything by Peter Counter
Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation by Paris Marx
H. If you love the cinema why not bring a piece of it into your home? I trawl ebay all the time for vintage lobby cards or publicity photos - which are usually pretty cheap and easy to throw into a frame to class up the joint. Here’s a few I like, like this one of a shirtless Paul Newman smoking a dart in PARIS BLUES or this spooky promo of Julianne Moore in SAFE (perfect for the pandemic’s 18th wave). For others, just search your fave movie and the star’s name into eBay and watch as you reap the rewards! These are also one of a kind gifts - and will probably get here in time for XMAS if you order soon!!
I. I think coffee table books are a perfect gift because unlike novels, the gift recipient does not need to stress about actually reading them (lest they appear ungrateful!!!) because the books are 80% pictures. Phew! But think beyond what they’ve got at your local bookstore and play around with eBay and local rare book sellers. Often, the books are much cheaper and more interesting than what you’ll find at new stores. For used books, I like John W. Doull in Halifax and Sellers & Newell in Toronto.
J. A truly impressive (and possibly… impossible to give?) gift would be to gift someone would be the entire collection from the Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design - which published so many cool art books in the 70s and 80s, including ones by the GOATS Donald Judd, Jenny Holzer and Yvonne Rainer, plus, this total banger of Cape Breton mining photographs that deserves to be seen by everyone (Only $75 from JW. Doull, a steal!) The pictures are by photographer Leslie Shedden, who operated Shedden Studio in Glace Bay until his retirement in 1977. The book includes photographs he was commissioned to take by the mining company Dosco, which give them the air of official propaganda, and others he took around town over the years..
K. Gift your GAYEST friend these gorgeous portraits of some of the top writers in the queer canon by finding a copy of Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers by Robert Giard, which includes virtually all of your favs including heavy hitters like Audre Lorde, Andrew Holleran, Vito Russo, and Samuel R. Delaney. I own a copy of this one myself, and always flip through it when I want to find something new to read.
L. A photo book by Nan Goldin. She’s one of my favourite photographers alive and hands down one of the most inspiring people too. While you wait to see the new doc about her life and activism against Purdue Pharma and the Sackler Family, flip through some of her incredible photos.
I own a copy of The Other Side and that’s as good a place as any to start
I’m addicted to buying merch. It’s my fatal flaw, but one that I’m hoping to offload on you, dear reader, with suggestions for the merch fan in your life.
M. An America’s Next Top Model crew jacket by Dickies. Perfect workwear if you’re ready to work, bitch.
N. It’s always super hard to read the stock market, but my money's on official The Rosie O’Donnell Show merch only plummeting in value since she went on TikTok to defend Casey Anthony (ok, sure!) There’s lots of Rosie merch out there, as evidenced by the two hours I spent in an ebay-hole looking for the dumbest merch I could find a few months ago. Wear it and flourish. I’m partial to this “Everything’s Coming up Rosie” tee, but the world is your oyster…
O. Puffer season is here baby! And this debonair vest is just what the doctor ordered! Which doctor, you might be wondering? Dr. House MD baby! It’s 80 dollars, pretty steep, but far cheaper than the total cost of any medical degree these days…so YMMV.
P. It’s not TV, it’s HBO! Get this t-shirt for the boy in your life who eats, sleeps, and breathes prestige. Hopefully it will shut him up the next time he talks at you about The Sopranos, but no guarantees :(
Q. Sorry but this hat freakin’ rocks. My man Ray Romano has done it again!
R. For the girls, gays, and theys… consider: This corduroy jacket from Wanda Sykes’ iconic (?) sitcom Wanda at Large. Am I grasping at straws here? Maybe. But if you do buy this… you’ll be giving Wandavision in 2023 (sorry)
S. Lightning round! A Wheel of Fortune hat, a Gander International Airport enamel pin, lobby cards from Gordon Pinsent’s classic NL film The Rowdyman and Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice, brilliant bootleg merch from AndAfterThat or EnterTheNightGallery? A cool movie poster from Posterati. Fresh flowers!!!
T. Midori A5 notebooks. My fav!!! Neighbor has them in their online shop, but Bookmark has them in Halifax/Charlottetown, and you can prob find them at your fav stationary store. The best thing about these notebooks is that they always lie flat, no matter your page.
U. An impossible to override phone safe. If you lack willpower like me, use this to lock your phone away for up to 10 days at a time. Also works great for cookies and/or cannabis. H/T Molly Young, book critic at the NYT, for tipping me on to this one.
V. These cheap wifi lightbulbs that are only $10 and let you change your bulbs to warm and dim lighting. Worth at least double!!
W. I bought one of those Remarkable tablets this year. They’re def $$$ but if you have to read a lot of PDF’s or mark up e-books, I think it’s worth the cost. Build quality could be better though. I feel like a lawyer would love this????
X. This idea is stolen from my pals who gifted this to me for my birthday, but consider giving a friend/lover/family member a $100 giftcard to a perfumery so they can go there and find their ~very own~ signature scent. A perfect gift because this is something that most people would never do for themselves but will find absolutely delightful. If you’re in Halifax, go see Tim at BeGorgeous Beauty. He knows his stuff and will let you try a million samples to ensure you leave with the perfect scent. He also used to work in MANHATTAN and told me he previously served both Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall… so you can tell your friends you went to see the Perfumer To The Stars!
Y. An extremely good bougie candle. This one will burn for 80 hours and smells, frankly, like money. There’s worse ways to light your hard-earned cash on fire.
BONUS (for yourself!!!)
Z. Use your stacked up scene points at Swiss Chalet. A Shirley Temple has never tasted so good…
Thanks for reading,
Andrew