The Read Max Gift Guide 2025 (and SALE!)

28 or so things we want for the holidays this year

Greetings from Read Max HQ! Today’s edition, for paying subscribers only, is our annual GIFT GUIDE, featuring picks from Max, Ari, gadget correspondent Dan Nosowitz and eBay demonic-artifact editor Sam Biddle. Among the selections, priced between $15 and $2,000:

• Really good Christmas ornaments

• Situation-room maps--but funky with it

• Two different, excellent stamps

• An actually good-looking Bluetooth speaker

• Gorgeous blankets and perfect socks

• Fermented tea?? (It’s good)

• A whole section of kids’ gifts!

All of that and more--for paying subscribers only!

Not a paying subscriber? On that front, there’s good news: This weekend only, from Wednesday 11/26 through Sunday 11/30, Read Max is 20 percent off! If you act now, you can get your fix of Read Max’s more-or-less twice-weekly writing about tech, culture, media, politics, action movies, forgotten books, objets d’art, and whatever else is on our minds at any given moment. Click below to get access to the gift guide--and to the entire archive of Read Max book, movie, and music recommendations, collected here in convenient lists!

Even better: This offer applies to gift subscriptions! While the two-dozen-odd books and objects offered up below would all make for astonishingly good presents, none of them would compare, generosity-wise, to a gift subscription to Read Max--the perfect present for a wayward cousin, nephew, aunt, in-law, etc. Click below to sew up your holiday season immediately!

And once you’ve subscribed--on with the gift guide.

HOST GIFTS