Elizabeth has “page-a-day calendar” on her Christmas wish list, and I need a new one for my desk. When I first started buying these for myself, it was mostly just for a fun little daily desk activity; but now I find them extremely useful—not just to tell me what day it is, but also I use the backs of the old pages as scrap paper (usually for Wordle and for to-do lists), and I also flip ahead to future pages to write reminders-I-need-to-see-while-at-my-computer (“renew library books,” “choose contest winner,” “happy birthday email to Melissa”).
Elizabeth specifies for her calendar: “something like art or poems, NOT quotes.” I too like art and prefer to avoid quotes, but also I don’t think I’d like poems. Well, there are at least a couple of art options to choose from!
Workman Art page-a-day Gallery calendar:
(image from Amazon.com)
The Met 365 Days of Masterpieces day-to-day calendar:
(image from Amazon.com)
A couple of times I’ve had an art-a-day calendar where the pages were double-sided, which is very nice for paper conservation and not as nice for scratch paper.
Thoughts of Dog day-to-day calendar. I like this Twitter account, but I don’t like it as much with that font and those drawings:
(image from Amazon.com)
We Rate Dogs day-to-day calendar. I follow this Twitter account, too, and I like the look of this calendar a lot more:
(image from Amazon.com)
Cartoons from The New Yorker day-to-day calendar. I have had this calendar before and I don’t remember it well but I remember being perfectly happy with it. Reliable mild humor, sometimes veering Boomerward.
(image from Amazon.com)
Workman 365 Cats page-a-day calendar or Cat Gallery page-a-day calendar. I’ve had quite a few cat calendars and this year I had the dog one, so I am feeling a little tired of this idea but on the other hand they’re always pleasing.
(image from Amazon.com)
(image from Amazon.com)
Audubon Birds page-a-day calendar. Oh BIRDS though! I haven’t had a birds one yet!
(image from Amazon.com)
1,000 Places To See Before You Die page-a-day calendar. The title makes me a little stressed, but I had another travel calendar before and it’s really just a bunch of pleasant pictures of someone else’s vacation, with little descriptions in case anything catches your eye and you want to know more. I find that while the title makes me feel pressured to go do a lot of traveling I don’t necessarily want to do, the calendar itself makes me feel as if I now HAVE IN FACT seen those places before dying, in that I have seen the pictures in the calendar.
(image from Amazon.com)
Atlas Obscura page-a-day calendar. Similar concept, less pressure.
(image from Amazon.com)
Wanderlust box calendar. Similar concept, less pressure AND less reading.
(image from Amazon.com)
Farmer’s Almanac everyday calendar. Maybe! Could be an interesting eclectic assortment! Could be a lot of boring stuff! Hard to say! The sample page about conditioning hair with mayonnaise gives me pause.
(image from Amazon.com)
Shoes Gallery page-a-day calendar. I got this calendar one year on a whim and it was surprisingly pleasing. You don’t have to be like that book I read where a male author wrote a female point of view and it was all “Shoes shoes hot guy shoes shoes hot guy!,” which, as if. You can just appreciate interesting pictures of interesting shoes.
(image from Amazon.com)
Paper Airplane fold-a-day calendar. This isn’t a candidate for Elizabeth or for me, but I got this one year for Paul and he liked it. Maybe I’ll buy it for him again this year.
(image from Amazon.com)
Living Language Spanish day-to-day calendar. Again not for Elizabeth or me, but Henry has “fun Spanish-learning things” on his wish list. (If you have other ideas DO TELL!)
(image from Amazon.com)
Pokémon day-to-day calendar. I don’t mind telling you that I have become re-obsessed with playing Pokémon Go on my phone, so this catches my eye.
(image from Amazon.com)
Oh, Simon’s Cat! I remember Simon’s cat!
(image from Amazon.com)
Animal Crossings New Horizons day-by-day calendar! We played so much of this in the early days of the pandemic!
(image from Amazon.com)
Hamilton day-to-day calendar. Perhaps this is relevant to your interests.
(image from Amazon.com)
Bob Ross: A Happy Little Day-to-Day calendar. It is perhaps indicative of my current-long-term frame of my mind that I saw this calendar and immediately got weepy.
(image from Amazon.com)
If you have anyone in your life that might enjoy origami, my kiddo always liked those and the pages for each day are the paper you fold into whatever it’s teaching you. (Though now that I think of it, how do you read the instructions if you’re folding it? Maybe you use the previous day’s paper or something . . . . ).
I’ve been using a Mensa Brain Puzzlers page-a-day calendar for a few years now and I highly recommend!
“Life Hacks” page a day is a fun one!
One of the people who works on my floor has the shoe one every year and it’s lovely to see a new shoe every day, even if you are the sort of person who isn’t personally interested in shoes, because most of them are more wearable art/sculpture than practical shoes.
I had one this year from the New Yorker (I think) and it was a page of love stories, every day. Some of the love stories were romantic, but not all. Some were familial or friendship-related. They were very inclusive in terms of romantic diversity (i.e., LGBTQIA). Some were breakup oriented. I have enjoyed my tiny little story every day!
I had this one too! It’s the NYT Tiny Love Stories calendar and it’s chosen by the same people who do the Modern Love column. I even kept some of the ones I thought were especially moving. Highly recommend if this might be your thing.
I got my Dad a Dad Joke-a-Day calendar. It looked funny. One of my nephews (age 7) loves Dad Jokes.
I have found that all of those marked “Gallery Calendar” are as you said in the post – “pages were double-sided, which is very nice for paper conservation and not as nice for scratch paper.”
I don’t know if B.Kliban has a page-a-day calendar, but I think his art style would be right up your alley.
My brother has gotten me one of these every year for ages. The best ones I’ve had have been from The Onion (“Breaking News: Saying ‘Smells fine’ Precedes 95% of Foodborne Illness”) and Liz Climo. Sadly, neither seems to be an option this year.
Spanish: Broward County FL library offers free Rosetta Stone app access to all account holders. Relatedly, they let anyone sign up for a library account online.
My youngest gets one of these every year as a Christmas present from the oldest. It’s usually the kind with some kind of fact on each page. We read them together at night before bed (usually several at a go, as we don’t do it every night).
I may have mentioned this on previous years’ calendar posts, but I’m too lazy to look… I have had the We Rate Dogs calendar on the counter in the middle school library for several years and the students LOVE it. (I love it, too, obviously). I even asked the creator for permission to post them in our online classrooms when school was closed/remote bc of Covid.
It can be fun to get comics in a language you’re learning and kind of parse things via immersion — likewise, television shows and movies in that language can help with flow and accent.