Christmas is ace.
Some people love Christmas because it’s a holiday and an opportunity to spend precious time with rarely seen family members. Some people love it because it’s an occasion during which it is totally socially acceptable to eat your own body weight – twice – as long as you’re eating roast dinner and chocolate treats. Some people enjoy the good feelings created by the giving and receiving of (hopefully) carefully selected and lovingly presented gifts. All the above are Good Things – obviously – but really Christmas is about books. Specifically, this year, these books:
This is possibly the book I am most excited about receiving because I have wanted to read it for absolutely ages:
‘The Shock of the Fall’ by Nathan Filer
I nearly downloaded it onto my Kobo but I read somewhere that the author makes use of different fonts and I wasn’t sure that an e-reader would incorporate those successfully. (I’m not saying it definitely wouldn’t, it’s just that technology and I have some trust issues.) I think this will have to be top of the list.
Although, it obviously wasn’t Top Top of the list as I have already read this:
‘Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops’ by Jen Campbell
It’s definitely a snack rather than a meal and I nearly devoured it in one sitting! A proper review is in progress, but meanwhile this is a great stocking filler if you’re looking for a little treat for the book-lover in your life – or even just anyone who’s ever had to deal with that dreaded beast, The Customer.
I am also quite excited about this:
‘The Bookshop Book’ by Jen Campbell
It’s a slightly weightier book by the same author, and seems to be a kind of miscellany of bookshops featuring old / quirky / famous / downright strange bookshops around the world. I have a suspicion this will make me want to go travelling!
Next I was given two – two! – books by the excellent Val McDermid. Here’s the first:
‘Northanger Abbey’ by Val McDermid
This is one of the Austen Project books: modern re-workings of Jane Austen’s six main novels. (You can read my initial thoughts on the project’s concept here and here.) I started reading Joanna Trollope’s take on ‘Sense and Sensibility’ earlier in the year and stalled about half-way through but I’m more hopeful about this one. McDermid is the Queen of crime so it’ll be interesting to see what she does with a novel that’s actually a parody of nineteenth century crime writing.
‘Forensics’ by Val McDermid
This is two of my favourite things together: a great crime author and a discussion of forensics. I’m a big CSI fan, though I fully recognise that no real crime lab has that kind of budget and that most criminalists don’t also get to arrest people. I have previously read and enjoyed other non-fiction works on this subject (most notably ‘Time of Death: The Story of Forensic Science and the search for Death’s Stopwatch’, which was fascinating despite being overly detailed in places,) so I’m hoping this will have quite a different focus.
Finally, for something a bit more relaxing I have these:
‘What Alice Forgot’ by Liane Moriarty
Having read and (mostly) really enjoyed Lianne Moriarty’s ‘The Husband’s Secret’ (reviewed here), I’m pleased to have received one book from her back catalogue (‘What Alice Forgot’) and her most recent offering (‘Little Lies’). I’m expecting chick-lit with a psychological bent and hoping that all the characters will be given space to have fully developed story lines this time around.
So that’s my reading for the next few weeks sorted! Have you read any of these books? Did you enjoy them? What are you excited about reading as we move into 2015?