For the Bibliophile Who Has Everything

The Most Bizarre Mail-Order Item of the Year Award goes to Hammacher Schlemmer’s travel alarm clock that also reads out your weight when you balance on it on the ball of your foot. (If you can pull off that trick first thing in the morning in a foreign city--trust us, you’re in shape.) These heights of yuppie excess are not quite equaled in the “Levenger: Tools for Serious Readers” catalogue, but the urge for the ultra-specialized doodad is definitely in evidence. Under the motto “everything but the books,” Levenger offers an array of objects to make reading more comfortable. There are molded lap desks, organizers of many descriptions, chairs, tables, shelves, footrests, baskets, boxes, holders, folders and other things to “Increase Your Productivity--Guaranteed!” While some objects may make you cringe (who uses these gimmicky bookholders that look like torture devices?), the number of lamps alone indicates that the people who put this collection together really do read. Those wooden chairs you see only in your favorite library reading rooms, the armrests worn smooth by corduroy jackets (or was it the leather patches?), sell here for $249 ($199 without arms) and a genuine library ladder/footstool in oak is probably marginally cheaper than the one you’ve been eyeing in the local antique store ($149; $179 with handle-back). There are several pages for children--mercifully short on T-shirts--and one wacky kitchen item: a cutting board in the shape of a book ($14.95 or $19.95, depending on size). And as a gift for that friend who tends to read too much meaning into everything, try the indispensable Gargoyle Bookends: three pounds of molded cement with a splendidly baroque leer (at $39.95, “so ugly, they’re cute,” quoth the catalogue). The Levenger catalogue is available by calling (800) 544-0880.

A Readers Survey: Books as Gifts

More than half of all adults say they would like to receive a book as a gift this holiday season, according to a national telephone survey of 1,015 people, conducted by the Gallup Organization for The American Booksellers Assn. From the last three years of this survey, here are the percentages of people who say they would “like to receive a book/very much like to receive a book” by selected demographics:

REGION 1992 1991 1990 West 66% 62% 56% Northeast 53% 63% 61% South Central 55% 60% 52% North Central 52% 57% 50% AGE 18-34 60% 67% 54% 34-54 64% 64% 62% 55+ 40% 48% 49% GENDER Female 60% 62% 62% Male 52% 58% 46%