rom what I hear, about half the population of the planet suffers from Christmas stocking syndrome ? a mind that goes completely blank every time the word present is mentioned.

I?m in the other half, the one that has more ideas than dollars, so out of a sense of solidarity, I thought I would offer up half a dozen little gems from the world of the arts that have caught my eye during the course of the last few months. (It goes almost without saying that you should try to get as many of these in Bermuda as you can. You?ll save money that way.)

The first you won?t get here. It is something a little unusual ? university-level courses in philosophy, music, history, literature, science, business and economics, psychology, religion and more, offered in a variety of formats for listening or watching by The Teaching Company (http://www.teach12.com/teach12.asp). They just happen to be having a sale at this very moment.

I came by this by way of a favourite blog site, 2Blowhards, in which, to borrow their description, ?two greying eternal amateurs discuss their passions, interests and obsessions, among them: movies, art, politics, evolutionary biology, taxes, writing, computers, these kids these days, and lousy Ivy educations.?

I haven?t yet tried any of the courses on offer, but 2Blowhards recommend:

l Patrick Allitt for his series, which they say is fantastic.

l Alan Charles Kors, who lectures about the intellectual history of 17th and 18th Century Europe. They liked both and .

l Timothy Taylor in Economics. They recommend starting with a short series called , then moving on to .

l And Robert Greenberg, who is the Teaching Company?s resident expert on music history, and who they say is sensationally good. They recommend , and a series on Bach which is not in the current sale.

Prices range from less than $20 for an audio tape of one short course to $300 for a DVD of a longer one. The courses do not count as credit towards a degree, but with the cynicism of advancing age, I can say that if your interest in this kind of stuff is simply in order to be able to put a framed piece of paper on your wall, I have a hot tip for you. Save yourself some aggravation and visit one of the many sites which offer to send you a degree in the mail in return for nothing more onerous than writing them a cheque.

Second suggestion is a book, which is the first in what is to be a three-volume set of memoirs by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the 1982 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who could well be the best novelist alive.

If you don?t know him, he?s from Colombia?born in a town on Colombia?s Caribbean coast. He?s written a slew of books. Start with which will surely hit you with the force of a divine revelation, as it did me.

The Guardian carried three excerpts from the first volume of these memoirs in October which led me to believe that while it may not be the best thing he?s ever written, it could be as much fun as a Marx Brothers movie. This is a little sample:

?Oscar de la Espriella, who was a sterling carouser, agreed with William Faulkner that a brothel is the best residence for a writer, because the mornings are quiet, there is a party every night, and you are on good terms with the police. Our friend Carlos Aleman, an attorney, who had been elected deputy to the departmental assembly, took this in a literal way and made himself our full-time host. One night, however, an old boyfriend of Mary Reyes, the madam of the house, knocked down the door to take away their son, a child of five, who lived with her. Her current boyfriend, who had been a police officer, came out of the bedroom in his shorts to defend the honour and goods of the house with his regulation revolver, and the other man greeted him with a burst of gunfire that resounded in the dance hall like a shot from a cannon. The frightened sergeant hid in his room. When I came out of mine, half-dressed, the transient tenants were contemplating the boy from their rooms as he urinated at the end of the hallway, while his papa smoothed his hair with his left hand and held the still smoking revolver in his right. All you could hear in the house were Mary?s insults as she reproached the sergeant for not having any balls.

?That night I repented of having believed in Faulkner?s illusions.?

Irresistible.

Next, I suggest two boxed music CD sets. They are both by jazz artists, but I?m not making any apology for that.

The first is a collection of records long out of print ? being the five Concert Jazz Band albums that were recorded for Verve between 1960 and 1962.

They have been collected, not by Verve, but by Mosaic (35 Melrose Place, Stamford, CT 06902, 203-327-7111, www.mosaicrecords.com). Amazon doesn?t carry this, so you?ll have to go to Mosaic direct. I can testify that their web site is pleasantly easy to deal with.

If you know Mulligan, you?ll know that he was a great innovator. He loved the richness of big band instrumentation, but not the heaviness of it.

His famous ?piano-less quartet? with Chet Baker (and later, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer) was his first step towards creating a lighter big band sound. He kept adding things until, in 1957, he got to a band made up of seven brass, five saxes, and rhythm. That, he concluded, was too much ? it pushed the sound back to being heavy.

So, from a re-constituted quartet in New York in 1960, Mulligan built the Concert Jazz Band ? six brass, four reeds and himself on baritone sax, drums and bass.

Jazz writer Gary Giddins calls these albums ?enchanted ground?, which does it for me.

The second boxed set is a new Sony Legacy release of Miles Davis?s - five discs covering four months of continuous recording, and containing over three hours of new music.

This is controversial stuff. The 1970 sessions resulted in the release of a single album, called , which was one of Davis?s personal favourites. It was the soundtrack to a documentary film about the life of Jack Johnson, a heavyweight boxer with whose flamboyance Davis identified.

This Sony release contains all the raw material from which that album was taken. That?s really interesting to someone who?s interested in listening to the music develop?but Teo Macero, who put the original album together, thinks it does Davis no favours, because it contains material discarded as mistaken.

?It has destroyed Miles and made him sound like an idiot,? he?s been quoted as saying. ?It?s a terrible thing to do to an artist when he?s dead. Those records were gems, and you should leave them as gems.?

On the other hand, this is Miles Davis at the height of his ability and creativity, jamming with some of the best musicians alive. Who cares if there are six takes of one song and five of another? I?m all ears.

And to round this list of suggestions off, a couple of films on DVD. is, to me, a Bogart movie that is so good, it edges even out. It has everything has (including a plot that doesn?t quite seem to know how to resolve itself), it is Lauren Bacall?s movie debut. Talk about the blush of youth! No woman has ever looked as good in a film, before or since. Watch closely and you?ll see Bogie falling in love with her before your very eyes. Watch too closely, and so will you.

It?s a Howard Hawks film, loosely based on a Hemingway short story. Hoagy Carmichael plays the piano and sings in it. Walter Brennan?s in it. Everybody acts well. Everybody lives happily ever after. The ending could be improved a little, maybe, but this is as close to movie perfection as you?re going to get from Hollywood in the 1940s.

Why it hasn?t been on DVD before, I can?t imagine. But now it is, and it?s really worth having a copy. If you get it in the boxed set with , , and , you?ve got yourself a great collection of Bogie?s very best.

Finally, the , a four-DVD set that gathers together 56 of the very finest Warner Bros cartoons. What a collection! It misses a couple of the best - for example, , which has to be the best cartoon ever made (starring Bugs Bunny as Brunnhilde? How could it miss?). But this is a very minor quibble, and anyway, there?s bound to be a Volume II.

Stick this thing under the tree, and when you get up on Christmas morning, chances are you?re going to find Santa, a couple of his elves and all the reindeer, covered in soot, still glued to your TV, ho-ho-ho-ing their tails off. The reindeer, I mean.