Robin’s 2024 gift guide

The 2025 gift guide is over here!

Wel­come to my 2024 gift guide!

The late­ness of Thanks­giving this year has thrown com­merce into delightful disarray. It’s been funny and revealing to see brands of all sizes decide, inevitably, that Black Friday is just a vibe, man. It can be Black Friday when­ever we say it’s Black Friday! Thanks­giving need not have occurred. It need not even be Friday.

And so these seem­ingly un-radical enter­prises find their way into agree­ment with the great David Graeber, who wrote:

The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is some­thing that we make, and could just as easily make differently.

I sup­pose they agree with FDR, too.

This gift guide has three sections, and you can skip straight to each:

• consumable gifts,
• durable goods, and
• BOOKS!

Inter­na­tional readers: thanks, as always, for your indul­gence as I sub­ject you to a litany of U.S.-centric rec­om­mendations.

Consumable gifts

Con­sum­able gifts are the best gifts, because they do the most graceful thing of all: they disappear, thus res­cuing gift-giving from its ter­minal kata­mari ball state.

But also because con­sum­able gifts are classic, and this is, yes, a season for nostalgia, even for sehnsucht: the feeling of missing some­thing you never had, some­thing that prob­ably never existed.

Basically, you ought to be gifting ele­ments from a still life.

In praise of freshness

Fat Gold has a new offering this year, and it’s a milestone.

Thanks to a bit of extra hustle, we’re able to offer the Cal­i­fornia extra virgin olive oil we JUST pro­duced over the past few weeks. This is our Super Fresh Gift Set: one tin of oil that’s bold and peppery, one tin of oil that’s fra­grant and fruity, plus a copy of our 32-page recipe zine … because, yes, I will find a way to turn every­thing into a pub­lishing project.

Olive oil is pro­duced only once a year (right now!) and fresher is always better. This is your chance to taste some truly fresh olive oil and notice the dif­fer­ence between varieties. The Super Fresh Gift Set is some­thing you could take as an offering to a hol­iday gathering; some­thing you could wrap up and send in the mail; some­thing you could keep for your­self.

I’m really happy and proud that we’re able to offer this. If you want to know how I’ve been spending my time for the past month — here you go! You can taste it.

In praise of intention

There are two familiar ways for a small busi­ness to wrap up. One is the flameout, the “unforseen circumstances”; the other is the sellout, the zombie fade to crap. Didn’t this used to be better … ?

What’s rare is the inten­tional conclusion, one that is crafted as thought­fully as a com­pany might craft its products. In the year ahead, my friends at INNA are enacting this rare thing. Dafna’s announcement is graceful and con­fi­dent — altogether remarkable.

I think we ought to send INNA off with enthusiasm, which is easy to do, because they make the best jam and shrub in the country. You might con­sider their:

• strawberry lemon jam, bright albion straw­ber­ries studded with pieces of lemon peel

• array of deli­cious shrubs, including bay laurel!!

• salty lemon, pre-chopped for your pantry

Why close up shop, when you’re making such won­derful things, when people love them so much? Easy: because life is long, if you know how to use it.

In praise of lineage

The tagline for Enzo’s Table is “Italian heritage, Cal­i­fornia soil”, and if I am guilty of focusing more, over the years, on the Cal­i­fornia side of the equation, it’s only because the com­pany is a beacon of quality and fecun­dity here in the San Joaquin Valley.

But the Italian con­nec­tion matters, too — it informs so much of what they do — and it’s that con­nec­tion that brings us their wine vinegars, imported from Emilia-Romagna. They offer a red wine vinegar made from lam­br­usco grapes and a white wine vinegar made from treb­biano grapes. Kathryn says these are the best she’s ever had — no small claim!

Some other standouts:

• I believe the Enzo’s Table almond butter is the best you can get anywhere.

• Their gra­nola is made with extra virgin olive oil, as all gra­nola should be.

• Finally, you know I love their biscotti!!

In praise of candor

There are a bunch of craft food com­pa­nies in my orbit, and of course I sub­scribe to all of their newsletters. The one that I most enjoy belongs to Boonville Barn Collective, because it reads not like marketing — not even modern marketing, chatty and casual — but instead like a reg­ular ol’ email from your farmer friends who are making it work every day, every season. In the newsletter, glitches and dis­ap­point­ments are reported along­side tri­umphs and breakthroughs. It’s refreshing and illuminating.

The crew at BBC do it make it work, and along the way, they make plenty of Piment d’Ville, the great essen­tial pantry item. One of their new offerings, which I will acquire in this season, is Sugar Rush Peach Chile Powder—what a name — which promises a “zippy, fast heat that quickly dis­si­pates into a trop­ical burn that does not build”. I’m in!

In praise of invention

Julia Street is the mad choco­late sci­en­tist of San Fran­cisco, relent­lessly and joy­fully pushing the craft into new territory. If I was writing Sour­dough today, I’d include a char­acter clearly iden­ti­fi­able as her.

Would that char­acter pro­duce a Sour­dough Crunch bar? Assuredly.

What about a Beer Snacks bar?? Sounds like some­thing out of fic­tion, yes!

Her most enticing new creation, the Cali Mole bar, includes pepitas, sesame seeds, and almonds, along with three kinds of chiles from Boonville Barn Collective, just above. And that’s only the begin­ning of the ingre­di­ents list! I can’t wait to try this one. As I’m writing this, it’s sold out on the J. Street web­site, but, psst, you can get it shipped from Boonville.

In praise of quality

If J. Street is the daring expedition, then Dan­de­lion is the starting point: home base. That’s an amazing achieve­ment for a choco­late pro­ducer not even twenty years old, yet Dan­de­lion already shines with time­less consistency. The com­pany was founded with the pro­ceeds of a 2000s tech windfall; if only all of them got plowed back into projects so excellent.

I believe Dan­de­lion’s choco­late bars are, overall, the best in the world. I mean that in terms of taste and quality, and also in terms of presentation. The layers of wrap­ping paper make each one into a minor event.

These feel like the choco­late bars the kids in the Chron­i­cles of Narnia would dig out of a satchel, you know what I mean?

In praise of danger

I like soy sauce just fine, but I’ll confess, no soy sauce really struck me — lowered a bell over my head and rang it — until Yu Ding Xing’s Vat Bottom. I now believe this is the one: the Dan­de­lion of soy sauce.

Here’s how the U.S. distributor, Yun Hai, explains what we are dealing with here:

Tai­wanese soy sauces are brewed in ter­ra­cotta barrels, relying on con­sis­tent sun­light to create the per­fect envi­ron­ment for fermentation. The sauces are left undis­turbed as they ferment, and nat­u­rally sep­a­rate into layers. The soy sauce at the very bottom of the earth­en­ware con­tainers is cher­ished as the best part of the brew. Only a small amount of this barrel-bottom soy sauce can be extracted from each ferment, due to the tapered shape of the earth­en­ware barrels. This soy sauce is the most fla­vorful and lightest in vis­cosity and color.

Yun Hai is one of those online emporia that’s exceed­ingly dangerous, espe­cially at this time of year. There’s just so much, and it all looks so good. Be careful! Get in, get the Vat Bottom, get out. Oh no, you paused to look at the beau­tiful fish knife … 

Durable goods

Over the past year, I’ve been more dili­gent about taking notes for this guide, mainly in moments when the feeling welled: I love this little thing.

I really love all these little things.

In praise of wonder

Here’s how the Sky Cal­endar works:

Every quarter, you receive a clutch of single-sheet calendars, one for each month, always printed on paper of a nice pastel shade, blue or pink or green. (And the design is … sort of next-next-level?) They arrive in the mail, in a reg­ular envelope. You stick them on your fridge. That’s it!

The Sky Cal­endar costs $12 for a year; “gift sub­scrip­tions are wel­come and recip­i­ents are sent a noti­fi­ca­tion card,” says the Abrams Plan­e­tarium at Michigan State University.

I really can’t rec­om­mend this any more strongly. The expe­ri­ence is pow­er­fully evoca­tive of a pre­vious age, one that was more tac­tile and analog … yet the con­tent con­nects us to every age: to the planets and stars on their relent­less course.

Really makes you think about … 

In praise of strangeness

The lid of my laptop proudly bears this sticker from Quinn Bowman, one of my favorite artists. Quinn also has some beau­tiful tote bags in stock; they make me think of the titanic moths of Moon­bound.

In praise of propaganda

This is a black­light poster, “Whole Earth tech utopia jux­ta­posed with the obser­va­tional humor of George Carlin”—fabulous. I appre­ciate all of Veronica Graham’s agitprop. Per­haps you’d like to extract your­self from the pri­mor­dial ooze?

In praise of whompitude

I’ve had a lot of Blue­tooth speakers over the years. One fussy Air­Play speaker, too. This is the best of them all. This is the Vat Bottom Soy Sauce of Blue­tooth speakers!

The Won­der­boom is compact, about the size of a grapefruit; it reli­ably con­nects to every device (and to more than one device at a time); its bat­tery lasts for days; and its whom­pi­tude is surprising. I’m sure there are audio­philes out there who need more from their speaker: I am not one of them. The Won­der­boom fully sat­u­rates my capacity for audio enjoyment.

I am satisfied. I am happy. I am free!

In praise of utility

Are you a “keys in a cara­biner clipped to a belt loop” kind of person? Do you know such a person? If you or they are not presently using a Nite Ize cara­biner: this is an error, and it must be corrected.

I went through many cheapo cara­biners, each of which failed in some uniquely annoying way, before arriving in the nir­vana of Nite Ize, whose gear is clever and reliable. Specifically, I think this cara­biner is the winner. Even more spe­cifically, I think it’s the shimmery, oil-slick Spec­trum variety, size #4.

In praise of lightness

Kathryn got one of these Lite Daypacks first, and she was so clearly delighted with hers — so pal­pably unburdened — that I had to get one, too.

This might not be the selec­tion for an everyday back­pack-wearer, but if instead a back­pack is needed only every so often — a trip, a hike — this is a ter­rific option. It’s sturdy, capacious, and barely there. 350 grams!

In praise of repair

I love the vibe of vis­ible mending, and these little patches make mends not just vis­ible but unmissable — hot siz­zles of light!

(They are, by far, the sim­plest and most afford­able offering of the empo­rium of inven­tion that is CW&T.)

In praise of warmth

I wish I’d known this sooner: the toaster oven is the most prac­tical appli­ance in the kitchen. In my head, I always cat­e­go­rized it as a “slightly more than a toaster” … but no, it’s actu­ally “slightly less than an oven”, which, turns out, is very often exactly what you need.

These days, when I’m roasting a single night’s serving of vegetables — broccolini slathered in olive oil, say — I’ll put it on a small sheet pan and slide it into the toaster oven rather than the “real” oven. Who’s got time to heat up all that air?

When I first acquired a toaster oven, I didn’t have much counter space, so I ended up with this strange Pana­sonic model. Now, I need to be ultra-clear: this is a grown-up Easy-Bake Oven. The source of heat is a pow­erful light bulb. The con­trols are wonky and strangely spe­cific, evoca­tive of an alter­nate elec­tronics timeline. Yet it really works! It works great.

After all these years, I feel great ten­der­ness toward my Pana­sonic toaster oven. It’s like a weird little friend.

In praise of doing it yourself

Another machine that sug­gests another timeline, another reality, is the new Work­shop System from Tom Whitwell, who is truly a great spirit: not only inge­nious and enter­prising but affable and ironic. I’ve built sev­eral of his DIY syn­the­sizer modules before, very hap­pily; as with Lego, the fun is as much in the building as the playing.

The Work­shop System is a com­plete concept, an inte­grated vision for how one might pro­duce cool new sounds. The setup is rich and opinionated; a human mind pulses beneath these shiny black panels.

If this is going to be a plau­sible pur­chase, you or your gift recip­ient (but prob­ably: you) will need some pre­ex­isting interest in mod­ular syn­thesis or, at the very least, music production. You’ll also need a sol­dering iron and the courage to use it. This is my most recherché suggestion, by far, but/and I think for the right person, the DIY expe­ri­ence could be truly delightful, even transformative.

Even if this isn’t your cup of Eng­lish break­fast tea, it’s worth watching the intro­duc­tory and exploratory videos (linked on the product page) for a glimpse of what Tom’s put together here. The little syn­thesis pro­grams stored on memory cards on a keyring are just too good — a new flavor of cozy cyberpunk.

Books

Here and now, in this context, I want to empha­size how good a choice Moon­bound is for young readers — as young as twelve, I’d say, depending on reading level and genre appetite. (In bookstores, you’ll find it on the adult shelves, but/and I’ve engi­neered it to cross over in this way, just as all my favorites do — Tolkien, Le Guin, Pullman, etc.)

I have a weirdly spe­cific vision for the way this book might be received as a gift. I imagine a young reader unwrap­ping it, thinking “ … huh?” (because Percy Jackson this ain’t), thanking the gift-giver politely, then set­ting it aside, puz­zled and mildly disappointed. Because I remember doing that with many books myself.

But then, one night, Moon­bound calls out: the glow-in-the-dark cover shining across the room. Irresistible. Our young reader has, perhaps, maxed out their screen time; they open the book. They see the map. And read the overture. And meet Ariel de la Sauvage … and we’re off to the races!

Top of Mason is one of the world’s first — only? — works of skate fic­tion. Written by pro skate­boarder Walker Ryan, it fits solidly on the shelf of San Fran­cisco love letters, which nat­u­rally endears it to me. Plus, it’s one of those novels dense with details that only someone deep in the milieu would know. You couldn’t merely research a novel of this kind; you could only live it.

This one would be great for the skater in your life, and/or maybe the young reader who needs a bit of entice­ment to get into a novel. Walker Ryan’s example is dazzling; how can you be someone who does this AND someone who writes novels? Impos­sibly cool.

All of the Marvels is the record of a truly gonzo project: Dou­glas Wolk sat down and read … every Marvel comic. In order. That’s TENS of THOU­SANDS of comics — the longest continuous, inter­con­nected work of fic­tion in his­tory.

I’ve read a small (very small) por­tion of that work myself. Fol­lowing along with Wolk’s reading odyssey, I was reminded of a few mem­o­rable moments, but mostly I learned things that were all-new, all-different: about both the “inside” of the Marvel saga — its char­acters and their con­tor­tions through time and space — and the “outside”, too — the col­lab­o­ra­tions and deci­sions that forged the super-work.

If you know a Marvel comics reader, even a lapsed one — that’s what I am, mostly — I’m con­fi­dent they’ll be cap­ti­vated by this project.

Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is a visual his­tory of the tabletop role-playing game: Dun­geons & Dragons, yes, but/and also every­thing that came before, and every­thing that came after.

This book caught me by sur­prise, engrossed me totally. It was evoca­tive of expe­ri­ences I remember from my youth — I truly couldn’t put it down! I sup­pose it’s because this is notion­ally a sub­ject, a genre, I appre­ciate … yet I knew so little about the games doc­u­mented in these pages. Rather than a comfy review of the familiar, it was a parade of revelations. It helps that so many of these games are weird and won­derful print artifacts, and that so many were pho­tographed for these pages.

As with All of the Marvels, above, if you know someone who is a player of D&D or any of its descendants, I am very con­fi­dent they will tumble into this book as easily and com­pletely as I did.

Ghosts, Monsters, and Demons of India is THE great random-access tome: you can flip to lit­er­ally any page and find your­self delighted.

If you’re an Anglo­phone reader, Western com­pi­la­tions of myth and fable res­onate with your foun­da­tional aes­thetic expectations; that’s a large part of their pleasure. This book is different. While there’s pow­erful resonance, there’s also the shock of the new — images and ideas that I guar­antee have never crossed your mind, not even in dreams. What pre­cious fuel, in an era of end­less reboots and AI imitations!

The book’s publisher, Blaft, is out there doing the essen­tial work of trans­la­tion and compilation, keeping these images and ideas cir­cu­lating through time and space. I want to say they are great torchbearers, but maybe it’s more like the haiku by Yosa Buson, my favorite:

Lighting one candle
with another candle — 
spring evening.

Ear­lier this year, MCD Books pub­lished a sur­prise fourth volume in Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series. If you know someone who read Anni­hi­la­tion back in the 2010s, your gift-giving path is clear.

If you know someone who didn’t read Anni­hi­la­tion — someone who likes sci-fi, the weird, the horror-adjacent; who appre­ciates prose that bleeds into a kind of fevered poetry — your path is even clearer! The whole series has just been updated with bril­liant new covers, replete with shim­mering foil. What’s better than the gift of a modern classic accom­pa­nied by the knowl­edge that, if they like it, there’s more to enjoy?

The Southern Reach series is fully transporting, and I feel like someone could have a great (weird) time reading these books in the lim­inal week after Christmas.

What else? Anything/every­thing from 50 Watts Books, of course. I always tell you to get the essen­tial, phan­tas­magor­ical Rainbow Goblins, but surely you need Logos of the Early Ufology Scene, too. Or con­sider a couple of selec­tions from the Masala Noir list—dense aes­thetic nutrition. Oh, and look: there are two copies of Moon­bound left in stock!

Paul Dry Books con­tinues to offer a wide-ranging list at attrac­tive prices. The Six-Cornered Snowflake, by Johannes Kepler (!), is a stir­ring artifact: a con­sideration by one of his­tory’s great minds of a decep­tively simple question: why ARE snowflakes that shape? And I loved Ill Met By Moonlight, the true story of a spy mis­sion on the island of Crete — get this one for the World War II enthu­siast in your life.

Regional recommendation

If you are a neighbor of mine here in the East Bay, I have an assign­ment for you. Before the end of the year, you will

• make your pilgrimage to Market Hall on College Avenue to buy gifts of the most classic varieties: fancy chocolate, fancier tea, the fanciest olive oil. For me, this place is straight out of a storybook: the archetypal emporium, with all that is good in the world brought together in one place.

Next, you’ll

• stop in for a glass of cider (optionally warm and spiced) at Redfield on College. Here is another archetype: the cozy redoubt, exactly the right size. Like the best bookstores, Redfield somehow always feels pleasantly full, whether there are three customers or thirty.

Finally, you will

• mosey up College to Claremont Avenue, where you’ll wait in the short line at Sfizio—no reservations after 5 p.m. — and enjoy a perfect plate of pasta along with a well-chosen glass of wine, all at a nice price.

Doesn’t that sound great? It is great! It will be great.

In praise of the mail

As time goes on, I seem to become only a bigger and bigger fan of the USPS. In a recent inter­view with Antistatic, I said:

Robin Sloan: I send a lot of stuff through the mail. Our olive oil com­pany would not run without it. I couldn’t pay so many of my bills if we couldn’t send things so reli­ably and eco­nom­i­cally through the United States Postal Service. And of course I send out all these zines to people, too. The internet gets a lot of credit as a sort of utopian network … and the internet is cool … but I think actu­ally maybe the USPS is the utopian network, and has been all along. I often think, when I put a stamp on some­thing, or even when I print out my postage and it’s like six bucks — which is not nothing — wow, they’ll take it anywhere. And it will get there. You’re like “how is that possible?”

Antistatic: We all live in cities, but if you live down a country road it’ll still get there.

Robin Sloan: Exactly. That’s why it’s important. That’s why the USPS is utopian. And the other [delivery com­pa­nies] are not, ‘cause they say “no, no, no, we don’t really mess with Sloan up there on old Skeleton Hill”. But USPS is like “I guess we gotta go there.”

Antistatic: “We’ll deliver to that ghost.”

Robin Sloan: Exactly.

Here are two USPS-related advisories:

• If you plan to mail any gifts in the weeks to come, sign up for Pirate Ship and pur­chase and print all your postage at home. The Ground Advan­tage rate gets parcels to their des­ti­na­tion in 2-4 days at a very low price.

• Con­sider a P.O. Box! Like many people these days, I was having prob­lems with parcels disappearing. In winter, mine also got rained on. My P.O. Box has solved all those prob­lems totally, and it turns out I enjoy the errand. Note that your P.O. Box does not have to be big enough to con­tain every con­ceiv­able thing you might receive; the post office staff will hap­pily hold any overflow, which you can retrieve at the front desk.
  
  I would say, get a P.O. Box only if a post office is within walking dis­tance of your home; and, by corollary, if a post office is within walking dis­tance, you really ought to get a P.O. Box. It will bring you out into the world. We are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let any­body tell you any different.

That’s it! Thanks for reading, and for con­sidering some of these items. I always hear from the com­pa­nies I fea­ture in this guide that they notice and appre­ciate your pur­chases — the little surge of support. That’s cer­tainly true for Fat Gold. As a dif­fuse community, your curiosity and gen­erosity are mea­sur­able and meaningful.

From up on old Skeleton Hill,

Sloan

P.S. If you’re new to my gift guides, last year’s con­tains many items that remain great.

P.P.S. You’ll receive my next newsletter in mid-December.

November 2024