BOOKS, MUSIC, AND TV

Although streaming services make it easier than ever to binge on TV, you can’t really giftwrap a Netflix stream. So this year, we're trying something different. Along with some wonderful books and albums, we're suggesting some of the best TV shows of the year and telling you where to find them. Want to give the gift of David Simon? Buy your loved one an HBO Now subscription. It's a brave new world out there — gift generously, gift digitally.

The Rap Yearbook

Just because you memorized the hook from "Trap Queen" doesn't mean you know jack about rap. Do yourself a favor and pick up this expansive, definitive history of the genre, which breaks down the last 36 years one song at a time.

Crossroads: Extraordinary Recipes from the Restaurant That Is Reinventing Vegan Cuisine

Jay-Z put it best: "Chefs Tal Ronnen and Scot Jones are artists of the highest order. The details that separate us. Whether a dish is vegan or not, disappears in the hands of a true artist. "

In Colour

Jamie xx's long-awaited, five-years-in the making debut album was worth the wait, offering a vibrant blend of everything the producer's become famous for — from ballads to dance floor bangers.

Ratchet

Shamir is from Las Vegas, land of few sidewalks and many casinos. Apparently, not having sidewalks to walk on is very creatively stimulating, because Ratchet sounds like an oddball disco sex circus. The lesson here? Ban sidewalks.

Bitch Planet, Volume 1

Described as Margaret Atwood meets Inglourious Basterds, Bitch Planet #1 is sci-fi satire at its best: In a dystopian future, "noncompliant" women are sequestered on a prison planet. But one inmate scheduled for execution tries to defy her fate. Sign us up.

Love and Other Ways of Dying

A stellar collection of nonfiction essays, Love and Other Ways of Dying brings together Paterniti's work from GQ, New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere on subjects ranging from a refugee who spent 15 years in the Charles de Gaulle Airport to traveling across the country with Einstein's brain.

Depression Cherry

Beach House: for when you're craving sad Wes Anderson soundtrack music, but your Phil Collins CD is at the dry cleaners.

Me

Empress Of is Lorely Rodriguez, a New York-based musician who has the unique ability to turn songs that would be classic pop standards into strange little ecosystems of synths and dreams.

Transparent

There are a million reasons to watch Transparent — not least of which is that at 71, Jeffrey Tambor has never been more on his game.

Show Me a Hero

Show Me a Hero, David Simon's HBO miniseries about the politics of public housing and segregation, didn't have the hype of The Wire, but the payoff here is just as rich, and the conflict just as infuriating. And Oscar Isaac? Be still my heart.

Elaenia

Indecisive, nice, weird, instrumental. These are words I would use to describe Elaenia, the first LP from Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points. Shepherd has a PhD in Neuroscience, so he might use more multi-syllabic words, but we'd probably end up saying the same thing.

Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo

In 2015, Schumer starred in a Judd Apatow-produced romcom, released the third season of Inside Amy Schumer and even won an Emmy. What better way to cap off the year than a Chris Rock-directed show live at the Apollo?

Thunder & Lightning: Weather Past, Present, Future

With Thunder & Lightning, Pulitzer Prize-nominated artist Lauren Redniss takes talking about the weather to new heights. Blending her unique style of dreamy prose, gorgeous illustrations, and original reporting, Redniss investigates the elements — from fog and wind to rain and heat.

EMOTION

Carly Rae Jepsen is Canadian which is a fun fact if you're not really sure what a fun fact is. Emotion is, I guess, Canadian by proxy, but it sounds more like the Sunset Strip in 1987.

Divers

Divers is an album about New York City, full of harsh angles and mangled hospitality, endearing pockmarks and perfect imperfections. To her credit, Newsom was somehow able to make an album about a much-discussed metropolis that's intimate without being reverent.

The Complete Stories

This stunning collection marks the first time Clarice Lispector's short stories have appeared in a single volume in any language, and includes some previously unpublished work. Lispector has a singular voice — imagine Kafka writing about Brazilian housewives.

The Heart Goes Last

Atwood is a living legend and The Heart Goes Last is a potent reminder of just how good she is. In a post-financial apocalypse landscape, a couple joins a cult where they split their time between being goody-two-shoes suburban residents and sitting in jail. Totally normal.

Death Magic

HEALTH IS A LOUD BAND. THIS DOES NOT MEAN, HOWEVER, THAT THEY DON'T HAVE A LIGHT TOUCH.

McGlue

McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh is some crazy short fiction inspired by a short newspaper article about a sailor who was acquitted for murder in New York in the 1850s. It's written in 1850s-ese and is strange and sometimes impenetrable, but it's also short and hip.

Payola

Conor Oberst, indie rock's most prolific despondent thesaurus, is back with the first album in 13 years from his scruffy side project Desaparecidos. Payola is not only a cutting protest album, it's also likely the final Desaparecidos missive — a white whale for Oberst fans.

At. Long. Last.

A$AP Rocky is a pretty motherfucker and a party guy. You can't listen to At.Long.Last.A$AP when you're moisturizing in the bathtub or when you're buying churros at the drive-in. You listen to it when you're partying, and only when you're partying.

The First Bad Man

Only in a Miranda July novel would two women slowly fall in love by beating the crap out of each other following the choreography of a self-defense training video. The First Bad Man is a strange, stressful, and altogether sweet read that finds July paying as close attention as ever to the peculiar thoughts that get us through the world day by day.

Pageant Material

Texas songwriter Kacey Musgraves makes country music for the "everything but country" crowd. Pageant Material is full of pleasant, twang-tinged missives about loneliness, self-discovery, and the snug fit of a blue collar. Incidentally, but not surprisingly, the country crowd likes her, too.

Selfish

Selfish is a book of Kim Kardashian selfies. Whoever you give this to will either love you or never speak to you again.

Islands #3 and #4 anthologies

Big, beautiful, and wildly creative, the Island comics anthologies bring together some of the brightest artists and writers to put together 100 pages of comic book gold.

The Three-Body Problem

Chinese sci-fi author Cixin Liu may not be a household name in America, but he's won China's most prestigious sci-fi literary prize nine times over. In the Three-Body Problem trilogy, an alien race is set on invading Earth. Do we welcome them with open arms, or greet them with weapons drawn?

Between the World and Me

Easily one of the most important books of 2015, in Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates (a recent Genius Award winner) writes a wrenching letter to his son about the brutal dangers and burdens of growing up black in America.

Dead Wake

For anyone even mildly interested in history, Erik Larson's books are manna from heaven. Dead Wake, a gripping account of the sinking of the Lusitania that led to the United States' entry into WWI, doesn't disappoint.

LEGO Star Wars: Small Scenes from a Big Galaxy

Legos, Star Wars, gorgeous photography. What else could the nerd in your family possibly want?