Yes you can relax it's my gift guide!!!
Whether you like gifts or guides, this email is for you.
From Me to You
Dear Readers,
Let’s hope it’s a December to remember (COMPLIMENTARY). What a year (DEROGATORY)! I am grateful for every single one of you, so thank you for letting me into your inboxes (and your hearts and minds, maybe).
I want to say that capitalism is a bad system but also I love to shop. I love buying things. I LOVE gift-giving. I contain multitudes! Women* be shopping!
xoxoAmy
Consumption - Gift Guide Edition!
I stress out a lot about gifts and I do not always nail it HOWEVER I do work very hard at it and so if the thought counts I am the fucking best because I overthink everything.
Some of these are repeats from last year, and that’s because they are so freaking good that I want to remind you!
Basics // Stuff Lots of People Want
Fancy Candles
I have seen with thine own eyes that people love a gifted fancy candle! I love Diptyque but for some reason despite the money I drop on other things I tend not to buy them—but they are truly lovely if they fit your budget! My favorite candles are all from Boy Smells—Slow Burn, Cameo, and Broken Rosary are some of my faves. I also have been burning the Big Dyke Energy candle from Sapphic Dreams while working on Out in Hollywood #4 so it might be good for your creative dreams too (though probably a more limited gifting option, depending on your loved ones).
The Greatest Lotion
Yes, I never shut up about Aesop’s Resurrection Aromatique hand lotion. It’s not cheap but it lasts forever, it smells like a goddamn dream, and it absorbs right away. It could not be better in my opinion!!!!!
Nice Socks
Gosh I love new socks! I love NICE socks! This year I’ve super been into Le Bon Shoppe’s Boyfriend Socks, but I am also a huge sucker for Bombas (bonus charitable giving)!
A Cookbook
People love cookbooks! I’ve seen it! As always I love the Smitten Kitchen cookbooks, anything by Julia Turshen, and this year I have been digging Caroline Chambers’ new cookbook inspired by her Substack (SEE BELOW)!
Personalized Stuff I Love
I am obsessed with personalized things! Usually when people say this they follow it up with “my name has an unusual spelling so I could never get keychains with my name on it as a kid” but I am an Amy born in the late 1970s. I could get my name on anything. And I want more!
Nameplate Necklaces
I have been searching for a good nameplate necklace for what feels like my entire adult life, and I FINALLY FOUND IT when I got a sponsored Instagram post for Nadirah & Co., whose quality is great and sales are fantastic. A reminder YOU DO NOT HAVE TO PUT YOUR NAME ON A NAMEPLATE NECKLACE, for anyone who’s asked me where I got my killjoy necklace.
Custom Pet Portraits
I am genuinely obsessed with custom pet portraits and have a number of them hanging in my home or saved to my phone. I love mine from Bunny Dee, Pinkgabberkat (this is the one pictured above, of Katsu and Cap as Greg and Tom//The Disgusting Brothers) they don’t have commissions listed on their Insta at the moment but tend to post them fairly regularly so they’re worth messaging!), and Janet fucking Weiss.
Monogram Stickers
I got one for my suitcase (because to be honest the very exciting shade I picked out online was actually not that exciting in person and I never spotted it on the rare occasions I checked my bag and it came around the carousel (Judy Kuhn** voice: just around the carousel!) but I will stick cute monogram stickers on anything to be honest and I do not believe I am alone there.
Personalized Pencils
I got these for a coworker last year as they were the best medium to convey a dumb private joke, and they were honestly so freaking cute that I wished I’d gotten them for more people! There are a bunch on Etsy but I got mine from this seller.
Paid Substacks I Think Are Worth It!
What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking
I never shut up about Caroline Chambers’ Substack and that is because her recipes fucking rock. It’s not just that I love her food, but I LOVE HOW SHE WRITES RECIPES, up to and including how she doesn’t just list the amounts of everything in the ingredient list, she includes them in the instructions, so you’re not constantly scrolling back and forth. Her substitutions section is also always SO informative and helpful. And the comments are often super helpful too! Just lots of wins here.
Drinks with Broads
I don’t know how Heather and Jessica continue to create some of the sharpest, funniest, most interesting pop culture/ephemera content for DECADES now (I still remember reading Go Fug Yourself back in my studio assistant days), but I am grateful for them!!
Hung Up
I literally put a Tree Paine joke in my next book because of Hunter Harris. I can’t get enough of her pop culture commentary and analysis and am legit excited every time Hung Up pops up in my inbox.
Entering the Lung
I have been a fan of Neko Case for a very long time, and I adore her newsletter and the wisdom and vulnerability she brings to each post.
Books!
Look, I love books. Here are four I loved this year, in no order, that maybe aren’t on the top ten lists you’ve already seen. (For the record, I also loved Margo’s Got Money Troubles a phenomenal amount, and of course I sent a lot of texts and had plenty of in-person convos about All Fours as was the case in 2024. In romances I also loved Alicia Thompson’s The Art of Catching Feelings and Kate Stayman-London’s Fang Fiction, and shoutout to Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell for making me very weepy and think a lot about high school (complimentary).)
One-Star Romance by Laura Hankin
I loved so many things about this gorgeous and smart and occasionally heartbreaking romance, especially that long-ass period of time it stretched over (rare for a romance) and nuanced characters I was forced to CHANGE MY MIND ABOUT.
Yours for the Taking by Gabrielle Korn
There are, to put it lightly, a lot of climate dystopian novels out right now, but one of my favorites this year was Korn’s which smartly examines how we take of each other (and don’t) and was also super queer. The standalone companion novel The Shutouts came out this week and I am reading it next!
Lush Lives by J. Vanessa Lyon
Lush is right, I think, typing this out, because, pfew, the beauty in the language and the sensuality of this book, geeeeeez. I did a panel with J. Vanessa Lyon this year and loved everything she said so much that the book was on my Kindle app before I was on the plane back home. A beautifully told queer romance set in the art world that grapples with race, disability, history, and I just loved it!
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
Gosh I fell in love so fast with this book about someone figuratively and literally from another planet and I still think about the beauty of this prose, of the way this book captures what it’s like to be other, and how much kindness and empathy saturates the text.
An Amy Spalding Book
It’s me, hi, I’m the author, it’s me.
At Her Service
Hot bartender love interest, Hollywood assistant life, finding chosen family but not being great at forming it yet!!, being in your twenties and not knowing how to feel like an actual adult, new friendships and hobbies, late nights out, saving a queer bar, coming into your own for the very first time.
For Her Consideration
Celebrity/normie romance, leaning on your chosen family, an invisible cat, toxic exes, letting go of the stories you tell yourself ABOUT YOURSELF, long weekends in Palm Springs, best friends who will call you out on your shit, the vulnerability to go after the things you really want!!!
No Boy Summer (YA Novel)
Sister drama, bisexual disastrousness, coffeeshop job//latte art, new friendships, confronting fatphobia, dreaming big about theatre and film, teenage girls creating shit for and by themselves!!!, learning to love the hell out of yourself.
We Used to Be Friends (YA Novel)
Friendship breakup!!!, a structure stolen from The Last 5 Years, first queer love, college application stress, volunteer work, prom court drama, family stress, cute college boy, two POVs.
*Me, I am women.
**A reminder that I have met many people I admire in person but I have never acted a fool as much as when I met Judy Kuhn.