Saturday Gift Post--The Boswell Ornament and Card Matching Game

When a bookseller develops the seasonal crazies, it's important to come up with  clever ways to not just pass the time, but test the brain. Why not try the ornament and boxed card matching game? I don't think it's a Sudoku level idea, but it could reach the popularity of Ken Ken. I show a penguin sample at right. This was easy, as we have a lot of penguin stuff in the store, as you could see form yesterday's post.

Here's how you play. Head to either your boxed cards or your ornaments. Pick out several iconic images. Now go to the other area and see if you can match them up. For bonus points, find a book to go with the pair.

It started when a customer came in last week and asked if we had a whale ornament. Now that would have been a good idea, what with all the Moby Dick mania going on. Think about it:

--Moby Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page, illustrated by Matt Kish

--Why Read Moby Dick, by Nathaniel Philbrick
and of course

--The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, which has a Moby Dick thing going on.

No ornament, but we had boxed cards. And that got me playing. First I looked for cats. Easy. Dogs? Yes. Horses? On cards, but no ornament.

Now lets's try Santa Claus. Bonus points for finding the red bird. Is it a cardinal? I can't tell.

Polar bear? Yes. Fox? Yes. (not pictured). Dove? Absolutely. On the other hand, I didn't check the rest of our beautiful brush ornaments against our card selection.

Owl? Oh, way too trendy to not be represented. On the other hand, after selling out quickly of our partridge ornaments, I realized we did not have cards with partridges on them. And while we have many cards with angels, there was only one angel ornament.

Reindeer? Yes. Pinecones, sure. Bells? Ornament, yes, but the card I purchased in 2009 and 2010 moved too slowly last year and I switched it out, so no.

The biggest surprise, however, had to be the snowman. Whereas I seem to like snowman ornaments (and even snowman mugs and matryoshkas), we didn't have a single box of cards with that icon. Admittedly, they may have already sold out, as a number of our designs are already gone. As consolation, I did have a number of individual snowman cards.

Needless to say, I must be a bit loopy to have obsessed over this. It's been a busy day for sure. But perhaps one of these items caught your eye. Now you know where to find them.