Time is running out. The big box stores have been looted. Shopping malls lie in ashes. But a little shop on the corner is still open. Warm light pours from the windows. It’s your friendly neighborhood bookstore! The holidays are saved!

#1

Where You Are: A Collection of Maps That Will Leave You Feeling Completely Lost

Easily our favorite gift of 2013, this boxed set of 16 original works by the likes of Geoff Dyer, Sheila Heti, and Tao Lin is like a towering stack of beautifully wrapped presents flattened into one. Each piece folds out to become a sprawling map, or flips open to reveal artwork and essays. Dyer’s piece, for instance, is a huge Google map of his hometown in England, annotated with an elaborate legend that explains the autobiographical significance of specific places. Where You Are amounts to an elegant theory of mapping. The world is daunting, so we organize it on the page, and the result is… not a solution, exactly, but a better place to get lost in.

#2

The Book of Jezebel: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Lady Things

The writers at Jezebel have one of the most bawdy, intelligent, and entertaining voices on the Internet. Here they assemble their favorite jabs and profoundest wisdom in a fully illustrated encyclopedia. Entries like Page, Bettie (1923-2008) are incisive mini-essays that flaunt their coolness while updating feminism for the millennial set. The entry for nachos simply reads “Yes, please.”

#3

The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz

If you don’t like Wes Anderson, we can still be friends. But you’re wrong and you should go away now. For those of us who can’t get enough of the sumptuous worlds that Wes Anderson creates, Matt Zoller Seitz has put together a big, glossy tribute, replete with stills, behind-the-scenes photos, a touching introduction by Michael Chabon, and interviews with Wes himself. Anderson is an elusive dude. While Seitz is gushing over the films, Anderson seems to escape out a back door.

#4

Jess: O! Tricky Cad and Other Jessoterica by Jess

Born in 1923, Jess was a pioneer of collage art. His visual mash-ups of old magazine ads, Dick Tracy cartoons, and obscure diagrams are as subtle, bizarre, and funny as anything that’s come since. This book includes several unpublished works, an extra 20-page facsimile booklet, and a fold-out dust jacket.

#5

S. by J. J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

We don’t know if it’s pleasurable—or even possible—to actually read this book, but it sure is a dandy object to flip through. J. J. Abrams seems to think he invented the idea of constructing a novel out of notes and marginalia (evidently nobody told him about Pale Fire, House of Leaves, Griffin and Sabine, etc.) but he does a fine job of marshalling Little, Brown’s designers to carry out his vision. S. is the story of two young scholars who fall in love by trading notes in the margins of a novel within the… whatever. The postcards and handwritten scraps are fun to explore, and it’ll look great on your shelf.

– Brian Hurley