The Salon Gift Guide

Gifts for the book lover

Conversational collections
The insightful interviews with authors both famous and unknown in the Paris Review provide a revealing look at each writer's process and ideas. Last year, the Review published "The Paris Review Interviews" ($10.88), an anthology of some of the magazine's most intriguing conversations, with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Rebecca West, Kurt Vonnegut and Joan Didion. The new Vol. II (also $10.88) boasts William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, among others. For a more contemporary slant, pick up "The World Within" ($13.22), a collection of interviews from literary journal Tin House featuring some inspired pairings: Rick Moody and Lydia Davis, Charles D'Ambrosio and Denis Johnson, and Todd Haynes with Gus Van Sant.

Help others write
Consider giving the gift of mentorship by supporting Girls Write Now, or helping a child in Nepal and Cambodia learn to read and write via Room to Read. PEN America defends writers in danger of being imprisoned for their work. Who knows? Someone helped by one of these organizations may go on to write the book you've been waiting your whole life to read.

-- Eryn Loeb

The scent of a book
As any true bibliophile will tell you, reading isn't just a hobby; it's a lifestyle. If, like Borges, your favorite bookworms imagine heaven to be a library, In the Library ($11-$55), from CB I Hate Perfume, will provide them an anticipatory whiff of Paradise. Blended to evoke old English novels, Russian and Moroccan leather bindings, and a soupçon of wood polish, this scent should appeal to those (male or female) fond of the smell of old books.

Literary napkins
Indulge the more sociable members of your circle with literary napkins ($20) from the New York Public Library. These sophisticated serviettes feature quotations from Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. (Highly recommended: "Work is the curse of the drinking classes.")

Book journals
And for the reader who is also a writer, why not give the gift of autobiography? These blank retro journals ($13) from Ex Libris Anonymous are covered in recycled vintage book covers.

-- Megan Doll

Gifts for the culture vulture

Peter Bjorn and John's "Writer's Block"
For lovers of wistful pop, the quintessential song of the year was "Young Folks" by Swedish trio Peter Bjorn and John -- indelibly melodic, subtly clever, this "It" tune sounded as fresh as morning mist bouncing off the fjords. PB and J's "Writer's Block," $12.98, released earlier this year, sounds both charmingly retro and totally contemporary, perfect for both forward-looking and musically nostalgic figures in your life.

Rocking box sets
Not everyone wants to bother with the young folks or catch up with the new Swedish wave. Indulge that classic rock freak with "Oh By the Way," $257.49, the limited edition 16-CD (yes, I said 16-CD) Pink Floyd box set. Or try Led Zeppelin, which has gone all digital, literally -- "The Complete Led Zeppelin," a digital collection of their whole discography, goes on sale this month for $99. Not ready to make that full-on commitment to Zep? "Mothership" offers a more selective best-of with tracks chosen by the band members.

Mini books for music lovers
Everybody has their own little best-of lists in their heads -- sometimes a jarring mix of records beloved for the most intimate and inexplicable reasons. Each miniature book in the 33 1/3 series devotes itself to unraveling the allure of an album, from Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland" to Belle & Sebastian's "If You're Feeling Sinister" to Celine Dion's "Let's Talk About Love." The excerpts crammed into 33 1/3 Greatest Hits Vol. 2, $15.95 (which follows 33 1/3 Greatest Hits Vol. 1, $14.95), present a dizzying array of passions that should send music lovers poring through their own music collections.

-- Joy Press

Film noir classics
If the one you love can't get enough of hard-bitten men who drink their whiskey neat, beautiful molls with hearts of ice, and a general sense that something sinister lurks in the shadows beneath postwar American prosperity -- and, really, who can? -- I've got just the thing. Warner Home Video's "Film Noir Classic Collection" series, already a must-have for any connoisseur of American movies, has now reached its fourth volume ($42.99). I know that sounds like they must be scraping the dregs out of the vaults, but it just ain't so. None of the 10 films in this set, all released between 1948 and 1955, is anything like a recognized classic, which just makes the thrill of discovery more intense (and proves how deep and rich the classic noir period really was). I think my favorites here are "They Live by Night" and its sequel "Side Street," in which Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play a young married couple swept up into criminal misadventures. But there's a lot more to choose from: Sterling Hayden spearheading an L.A. manhunt in "Crime Wave"; Edward G. Robinson as an ex-D.A. defending scumbags in "Illegal"; two different Robert Mitchum on-the-run flicks ("The Big Steal" and "Where Danger Lives") and much more.

Essential art house
Does your list include a jaded cinema lover who's seen everything? Or an aspiring young filmmaker who thinks history started with Tarantino? In both cases, you can blow their minds wide open with the spectacular box set "Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films" ($764.99). If this doesn't literally contain every important art film released between the 1920s and the 1970s in one package, it comes damn close. Janus released almost all the major touchstone films of Renoir, Bergman, Kurosawa, Fellini and Truffaut, and you'll find them here: "Grand Illusion," "The Seventh Seal," "Rashomon," "La Strada" and "The 400 Blows," to name a few. Those filmmakers only account for 11 of the 50 (that's right, 50!) pictures in this box, and the balance includes any number of less-celebrated delights, from Hitchcock's first take on "The 39 Steps" to Anthony Asquith's 1938 film "Pygmalion" to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's 1943 "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" to Alf Sjöberg's 1951 version of "Miss Julie" to Sergei Eisenstein's rarely seen "Ivan the Terrible: Part II" to "Knife in the Water," made in 1962 by a young Polish director named Roman Polanski. Mind you, at 800 clams or so, this set isn't exactly an impulse purchase on your way out of the Virgin Megastore. Compared to a film-school education or a life-changing love affair on three continents -- and it resembles those things more than it does a box o'discs -- it's a bargain.

-- Andrew O'Hehir

Next page: For the kid with taste, the pet lover