Salon's 2011 gift guide

We shop for the year's most memorable fictional characters, so you can please all the crazy characters on your list

By Erin Keane

Editor in Chief

Published November 25, 2011 5:00PM (EST)

     (iStockphoto/fotosipsak/Salon)
(iStockphoto/fotosipsak/Salon)

Gift guides are weird. The basic premise: collect a random assortment of new gadgets, bloated box sets and hipster novelties and present them as the must-buys of the season.

But a solid gift is all about the recipient's needs and tastes. For whom are we fake-shopping? If we're appeasing archetypes, we thought it would be fun to select gifts for the most intriguing fictional characters of 2011's most interesting films, television shows and books, like "Breaking Bad," "Bridesmaids" and "The Art of Fielding." A dad's a dad, even if, like Walter, he created a killer new strain of meth, right? They'll stand in for everyone you have to shop for this holiday.

You'll find gifts for the metalhead nanny and the irritable intern; your friends and significant others; moms, dads, little siblings and collegiate nephews. And when you pick your squirrel-hunting cousin Daryl in the family gift draw, you won't even break a sweat.


By Erin Keane

Erin Keane is Salon's Chief Content Officer. She is also on faculty at the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University and her memoir in essays, "Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me," was named one of NPR's Books We Loved In 2022.

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Salon's 2011 Gift Guide