By Emma Louise Backe and Marie-Pierre Renaud

Click on the following link to read the first list, Ethnographies, Academic Works, etc.

Arkham Horror

Ever since Emma discovered the work of H.P. Lovecraft, she’s been dying to play Arkham Horror. An adventure board game set in Lovecraft’s early 1900’s Massachusetts town, the game is an opportunity to engage with the Cthulhu mythos in a tangible way. One of several Lovecraft-based games, Arkham Horror won Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Boardgame of 1987 and has been a staple in tabletop gaming ever since. It can’t be a coincidence that the travelers in “Call of the Cthulhu” took sail in a boat christened Emma!

Don’t Starve Together

The game Don’t Starve is one of Marie-Pierre’s coup de coeur of 2014. Although the game was released in 2013, she played it abusively last summer and absolutely love it. The principle is simple: as the title indicates, you mustn’t starve. As you explore a strange world populated with aggressive plants, sentient pigs and giant eyes on two legs, you must find ways to feed and defend yourself, make light and crafts things all while maintaining a good level of physical and mental health.

And now, Klei Entertainment has released the early access version of Don’t Starve Together, a multiplayer expansion! After all, the only thing better than running a world setting everything everything on fire, is to do that with friends and family!

Solaris

One of Marie-Pierre’s new year’s resolution is to read more science-fiction. Solaris is a science-fiction publication written in french and distributed in Canada and France. Numbers 183 and 185 (winter 2013) contain articles by Martin Hébert, a professor from the anthropology department of Laval University (Quebec), titled ‘‘La science-fiction et l’anthropologie : des récits entrecroisés – Partie 1 : Des origines aux livres-univers’’ and ‘’ La science-fiction et l’anthropologie: des récits entrecroisés – Partie 2 : Du post-colonial au posthumain’’, two essais about science-fiction and anthropology. These are also available on academia.edu, in the original french version (Part 1 and 2)

Sailor Moon Luna Hat

After binge-watching all of Sailor Moon: Crystal, Emma has been feeling a heavy dose of Moon Pride. As winter settles in and hours were lost perusing Etsy for Christmas gifts, she got drawn into the welter of cosmic girl power paraphernalia. This hat seems like the perfect combination of street cred and geek chic.

Lightspeed

Lightspeed magazine also makes the list. It features interesting short stories such as Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology by Theodora Goss which is particularly interesting and relevant in relation to the series Anthropology in Outerspace which Emma, Rayna Elizabeth and Marie-Pierre published on TGA this year. The magazine also published the special number Women Destroy Science-Fiction, which celebrates the contributions of women to sci-fi.

N7 Tech Hoodie

As geeks go, Marie-Pierre is not much of a collector. But we all need our geek apparel: She’d love to get her hands on this N7 tech hoodie. (Not much of a collector, get it?) We may not have biotic powers, but at least we can look stylish.

Star Wars Tauntaun Sleeping Bag

While pretending to sleep in the steaming guts of a reptomammal may not be very useful during fieldwork, it would feel pretty badass. You have not died in vain, my noble steed!

Khajiit Cowl Pattern

A Khajiit Cowl would also make a great addition to Marie-Pierre’s winter wardrobe. As she explained in a Weekly Geekout, she loves knitting, and this pattern by Lili Aghabeik is quite extraordinary. She already has the perfect wool to make this cowl: she’ll only be missing the whiskers and the cat ears to look like her Skyrim character.

My Neighbor Totoro Cushion Bed

It’s no secret that Emma is obsessed with Hayao Miyazaki. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) was her first exposure to the masterful director, and ever since she’s wanted to wander into a glade full of magic acorns and slumbering Totoros. The Totoro cushion bed would be perfect for long days of research, cat naps, blogging sessions and rainy days snuggled up with a good book or two.

Emma’s Book List

• Darklore Volume 8, Ed. Greg Taylor
• Gris Grimly’s Frankenstein, Mary Shelley and Gris Grimly
• Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections and Other Obsessions, Guillermo del Toro
• Hellboy: The First 20 Years, Mike Mignola
• Necronomicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft (Commemorative Edition), H.P. Lovecraft
• The Book of Imaginary Beings, Jorge Luis Borges
• The Bone Clocks: A Novel, David Mitchell
• The Graphic Canon of Children’s Literature: The World’s Greatest Kids’ Lit as Comics and Visuals, Russ Kick
• The Stone Mattress, Margaret Atwood
• The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black, E.B. Hudspeth
• The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination, Ursula K. LeGuin
• Through the Woods, Emily Carroll
• Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, James VanderMeer

What is on your anthrogeek Christmas Wishlist? Leave us a comment below!

Header image created using photo christmas by YoungDoo Moon on Flickr.