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With just a week left before Christmas, it’s tempting to start flailing, reaching for anything that seems remotely gift-like. Of course grandma would love the fourth season of The Wire on DVD! Of course your husband/boyfriend would adore that electric razor! (Does any guy continue using it a week after receiving one?)
There’s probably nothing worse, though, than giving somebody a box of metal slivers.
The folks at Levenger usually do OK when it comes to gifts—Esquire hasn’t yet sold me on the idea of spending more than, say, $75 on a watch, but I believe there’s no shame in dropping three figures on a decent pen. That said, you’d have to be quite the pompous dip to think yourself above a simple bookmark and instead use these tiny clips. I suppose the notion here is that you can save spots in lots of pages in a precious, precious book without dog-earing them. But if you’re saving spots in lots of pages it’s probably in a book you intend to wear out anyway—a textbook, a cookbook, or something you’re teaching from. In which case Post-it notes do the job just as well.
Handing this out as a gift tells the giftee, “I find you pretentious and anal-retentive enough to turn finding your place in a book into a complicated process. Also, I only spent $10 on you.”
Ten dollars, for the record, gets you a lot of Post-its.