All I need/want cannot really be bought; nor do I imagine any of you are in any position to secure it for me (true, your individual and several love, concern and esteem are within that category, but I'm as confident - barring unthinkable mishap or malfeasance - that I have and will continue receiving those as that the rivers will continue to flow).
Among corporeal objects, as you know, I value little but artifacts containing record of or capable of producing music, and books. At this time, I have access to all I can consume of both at infinitesimal cost.
Which reminds me:
I have access to an immense amount of a quite eclectic range of music.
What do you like?
Recently I've almost completed Bach, and significantly expanded Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin (and bears, oh my!). I have been working on amassing all string quartets ever, and have more or less completed Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann and Bartok in that regard.
I'm deep in classical (inclusive of baroque, classical, and romantic eras; not too sure I like the celebrated moderns in that field much), jazz (especially Ellington, Monk, Holiday, Davis, Nina Simone, A.C. Jobim, and Scot Joplin), world/ethnic music (emph. on "aftobeat," bossa nova, several varieties of "latin", traditional and modern Indian music, reggae/ska/dub, and some poorly-indexed eastern european folk), hip hop (emphasis: Jay Dilla, The Roots, the Wu Tang Clan), "electronica" (emphasis: DJ Shadow, Trans Am), R&B (emphasis: Gil Scott Heron) and several generations worth of variously described "metal" ("heavy--," "thrash--," "speed--," "death--," and "satanic black--" [don't worry, most of the latter appear, on inspection, to actually be crypto-christians; only a few a truly scary.]) and a good deal of several eras worth of pop. I believe I have a nigh-complete collection of each of my two favorite living contemporary songwriters to date (Tom Waits and Nick Cave). And there's probably a lot I'm failing to think of at the moment, such as lots of old 30's-50's pop (digitized from various parties 78 rpm records and posted to the Internet), a good deal of classic country western (Hank Williams [sr.], Johnny Cash), some bluegrass, and contemporary "alt-country" (e.g., Steve Earle, Tex Perkins, Townes Van Zandt, etc.) aren't.
Basically, too much of too many kinds of music for me to have an easy time imagining what other people might like, besides which, I don't feel I've ever done particularly well giving books and music as gifts, without the recipient specifying what they might like/want.
Also, I have 20 or 30 different audiobook lecture courses - real university lectures by apparently esteemed professors. Mostly history, but also literature, physics, philosophy, music appreciation/history, psychology and so on. There are some prolific and credible publishers in this field.
I don't say that all to brag, but to give you a sense of the resources at your disposal. So, among those, from what do you suppose the family would most benefit? Or, which would they most enjoy?
Tell me.
(Come to think of it, I suppose I could use a spindle of blank CDs, and, as always, coffee, tee hee).