Check it out! My best friend Rachel's beau just wrote a novel - my copy's on its way... I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but this one looks really cool.

Quoted: A film director has a nervous breakdown, checks himself into a mental institution, and meets the inspiration for his next film.

I'm doing a story on barista/coffee culture in Seattle and one of my interviewees (a coffee consultant) recommended this book - looking forward to reading it! I love books that tell history through the lens of a specific food or item.

Quoted: Stewart Lee Allen is the Hunter S. Thompson of coffee, offering a wild, caffeinated, gonzo tour of the World of the Magic Bean. His wry, adventurous prose delights, astonishes, amuses, and informs.

Weird! Man, kids' toys keep getting stranger and stranger...

Quoted: Products like Webkinz are not my thing. At first glance, they seem to be a cunning and more commercial version of old-fashioned stuffed animals. Each bear or tiger comes with its own code, which its kid caretaker enters into the Web site. Next, the kid decorates his pet's house by earning points in inane game-playing followed by even more inane shopping. And voilà, there you are, fighting with your 8-year-old about screen time.

Maybe it's because I'm not really a coffee drinker, but I just can't understand the hype around this coffee maker...

Quoted: The New York Times used words like "cult object," "majestic," and "titillating"; the Economist called it "ingenious" and "sleek." The subject of these encomiums is, incongruously, a commercial coffee machine—the Clover 1s, an $11,000 device that brews regular coffee (not espresso) one cup at a time.

These DIY cleaners are so easy (and cheap). I'm curious, think I'll try some of them out.

Quoted: We love all the new non-toxic cleaning products on the market. But did you know that baking soda, vinegar, borax, salt, citrus and even ketchup can be effective, non-toxic cleaners? Your grandparents did. They are cheap, readily available, and you don't have to worry about potentially harmful fumes.

Damn, rookie Santas can earn up to $10,000 a season!

Quoted: The malls are filled again this year with white-bearded and red-robed men ho-ho-ho-ing away to the some 8,000 kids who come to sit in their laps. But how do you join the ranks of the shopping-mall Santa Clauses?

Nice little Slate essay on why you can (and should) go beyond the gift card.

Quoted: Christmas is coming, so what do you buy the loved one who has everything? One possibility is the gift card, an electronic version of the traditional gift certificate that has taken the world by storm over the past decade.

Interesting Slate analysis of 'Enchanted' that criticizes the film for being an ode to consumerism... Haven't seen it yet myself.

Quoted: My intermittent sense of yuckiness sprang from the movie's solemn celebration of a ritual even more sacred than holy matrimony: shopping.

Recommended by a friend (thanks, Phelps). Mom, you can also send sugar-free sweets to people in India through this site... I really want a tiffin carrier!

Quoted: Gobazzar.com: Send Gifts to India, Send Flowers to India, Buy Gifts in an Indian Bazaar