Welcome to our 2nd ever Holiday Gift Guide! We did one our first year, then skipped a year, but it’s back this year.  This one is a consolidated list.  It’s smaller and only one post, as opposed to breaking it up into a few like the last one. The goal of this list is to provide you some ideas of what to get your friends and family as recommended by the Media Decay family.  I will say up front that most of these links will give us a little bit of money if you buy through them so also consider it helping out a small website.  This however is not an ad of any type.  All of these are genuine recommendations and we’ve searched the web to find good deals on all the items listed.  If you follow us on Twitter we’ll also be posting hot deals we find throughout the season to keep you up to date.  So let’s begin.

Books

We can’t start a book section in good conscience without talking about our recommended book reader.  You might notice in most of our book reviews that we link to the Kindle version as well as the regular version (and usually the iPad version as well since that’s such a popular device).  This is because I’ve been using a Kindle since it first came out and absolutely love mine.  Amazon’s just come out with the Kindle Fire which is full color and allows for video and select apps, but if I want all that I’ll get an iPad. For the true reading experience I suggest checking out the Kindle Touch, which is the greyscale glare-free style of the old kindle but with a much needed touch screen. Or you can get a great deal on just the most basic model Kindle which allows you to buy books and sync them with all your devices (PC, Mac, Phone), is glare free, small and portable, has incredible battery life, won’t hurt your eyes, allows you to borrow books from your local library, and if you’re a Prime member you can borrow books from Amazon’s library (like Netflix for books).  So check out those.

As far as the books themselves go, I’ve read a lot of great ones over the past year so I’m really going to stick with some of the highlights of those I’ve read in the past year.

Morning Glories is a great comic series about a group of kids taken to a mysterious prep school where things get dangerous pretty fast.  It’s fast paced, surprising, and really fun.  Get this for the comic lover in your life.   2 bound volumes are available.

Drink Deep is the latest book in author Chloe Neill’s Chicagoland Vampire series.  We gave it a rave review and although maybe you might want to start out earlier in the series, or at the beginning with Some Girls Bite, if you have a vampire fan in your family this is what they need.

God, No! by Penn Jillette was another favorite of the year.  If you have a friend or family who has an interest in religion or philosophy or even magic then this is a wonderful gift.  It’s a sort of practical guide to atheism and an argument for it.  Agree or not it’s certainly a compelling read.

I’ll Be Dead By The Time You Read This is a book that has not been reviewed on the site.  Mostly because of it’s stocking stuffer nature.  It’s got very little to actually review.  The book by Romeo Alaeff is made up of simple drawings of animals with little thoughts written above their heads such as a deer with “I Think I’m Pregnant” written over it.  It’s super funny and cute and would make a great little stocking stuffer.

Of course we had other books we loved this year but for brevity sake let’s stop with this handful here.  You can always click the “Books” tab at the top of every page to see what else we enjoyed or not.

DVDs

DVDs are always great gifts.  Usually they’re cheap and they can provide hours of entertainment. Here’s a few we think should be on your gift list this year.

Harry Potter - We’re gonna start off with the franchise that it seems everyone loves.  Warner Brothers official store, which you can access via that link above has literally anything a Harry Potter fan would love to find in their stocking.  But this is the DVD section.  If you don’t know already, at the end of the year WB is going to stop selling the Harry Potter DVDs/Blu-Rays for an unknown amount of time (sort of like how Disney puts movies back in it’s “vault”).  The good news is you can stock up right now on all of the pretty much anywhere for next to nothing.  Over at Amazon, you’ve got DVDs running from $3.99 and Blu-Rays running about $10.  So you can clearly get your fill of all 8 movies.  Or buy the master box set.

Bridesmaids – One of the funniest movies of the year.

Portlandia is a great comedy starring Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen.  You might have missed it on TV, but now with the second season coming in January, you can get the first season on DVD.  This is perfect for fans of offbeat comedy, musicians, and original television.

 Friday Night Lights – This show ended it’s amazing 5 season run earlier this year.  If you know anyone who likes sports, movies about sports, human dramas, or just loves a good cry then you need to get this for them.

Torchwood: Miracle Day was a great season of television that did a brilliant job of bringing the british show to American shores.  Some great performances and a large amount of Buffy alumni among the producers (and the always great Jane Espenson on writing duties) make this a must buy for the sci-fi fans you know.

Community – Sticking with TV, why not pick up the absolute best comedy on television?  Community Season 2 is out on DVD now, but why just get that one?  Get both seasons and get hours of cutting edge off-kilter comedy that is brilliantly pulled off.  The DVD sets are exquisite as well.  They’ve got commentary tracks on every single episode, blooper reels for each disc (and these are good bloopers not just people missing a line), cast reviews by creator Dan Harmon, and much more.  They’re priced really cheap and I promise you are worth every cent.

This list is getting pretty long isn’t it?  Let’s head over to page 2 ->