Best Gift Guides?

December 2, 2020 6:50 AM

What are your favorite gift guides? Most of the sites I see these days have everything broken down into about 20 different versions of "The Best Gift for the ____ in Your Life," but I prefer lists that are more general and all-emcompassing. Spy has THIS GUIDE, which is the closest thing I've been able to find, but I'd love your suggestions.
posted by richmondparker to Shopping (6 answers total)

For kids and teens, there's the excellent The Kids Should See This (TKSST) Gift Guide.
posted by neushoorn at 7:09 AM on December 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

Strategist has some interesting ones by price point. I think I’ve only bought one gift from their guides, though it was a great rec (Vietnamese coffee from Brooklyn!)
posted by inevitability at 8:08 AM on December 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Helen Rosner's gift guide (billed as "for foodies" but really for anyone who eats or cooks) in the New Yorker last year is a favorite of the genre and I'm eagerly awaiting this year's installment.
posted by babelfish at 9:30 AM on December 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Jason Kottke rounds up gift guides every year. He hasn't posted this years yet. Last year's had screenfuls of really well curated ideas. There are individual gift ideas and lists tailored to particular interests, but there are also some general lists. Of course, some of those general lists are broken down into sections, like the New York Times guide. Wirecutter has lots of categorized lists, but they did just post a 200 item, most popular of 2020 list.
posted by stuart_s at 6:28 PM on December 2, 2020

Here's a nice one, via Medium, from the Bittman family (aka Mark Bittman from the NYT): https://heated.medium.com/the-bittman-team-holiday-gift-guide-736ad39cadc0

(Mad props to neushoorn because that TKSST guide is awesome and I didn't know about it)
posted by nkknkk at 8:25 AM on December 3, 2020

Kottke has said that he won't be doing a 2020 list, unfortunately. :7(

I usually enjoy putting the list together every year, but I sat down last week to start compiling links and just couldn’t muster the desire or energy. I don’t know about you, but my attention span over the past several months has not been conducive to doing projects that take more than an hour or two to complete, and the gift list usually takes me many hours spread over several days.

https://kottke.org/20/12/the-case-of-the-missing-2020-gift-guide
posted by wenestvedt at 10:39 AM on December 16, 2020