Winter and Christmas reading
Date Added: 07/12/2020
Books for the festive season
Looking forward to a celebration, or making contingency plans? Christmas seems to be in preparation early this year and we have books on all aspects of yuletide and winter. Get your orders in with Select and Collect or download ebooks and audiobooks, with your library card number and pin. We have some suggestions for you, with links to reserve titles, or you can request a Christmas bundle, which staff will pick for you, as part of our Select and Collect service – use the additional information box to request Christmas books.
Ghost stories
The tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas goes back before Dickens popularised it with A Christmas Carol. His is a moral tale, with a happy-ever-after ending. Others can be truly disturbing, such as Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, which begins with a family telling ghost stories on Christmas Eve, or Michelle Paver’s Dark Matter, set in the Arctic, with months of darkness in mid-winter. Others to try are John Boyne’s This House is Haunted; Jeanette Winterson’s collection of 12 Christmas Stories, Christmas Days, which includes the creepy Dark Christmas; and Helen Dunmore’s The Greatcoat, set in the winter of 1952.
Festive Food
More of us may be eating at home this Christmas. For inspiration in the culinary line, pick your favourite chef, or explore Nigel Slater’s Christmas Chronicles, which is a mix of observations on winter interspersed with recipes.
Winter
Nature writing has become more popular, especially with our growing understanding of the links between the natural world and our wellbeing. Wintering, by Katherine May is the story of a bereavement and its progress through the winter. A book with the same title, Wintering, by Stephen Rutt, tells the stories of five species of geese which migrate to Britain for the winter and illustrates how we can find peace in the rhythms of the natural world. Another ornithologically inspired book is Twelve birds of Christmas by Stephen Moss, which follows the structure of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to explore some of our native birds.
In fiction, Winter by Ali Smith tells the story of two elderly sisters, one an original Greenham Common protester, and their family, meeting at Christmas. Part of her seasonal quartet, a disguised identity gives it a Shakespearean feel. Grief and pain are reflected in the winter setting.
Feel-good fiction
A number of authors have become known for their Christmas feel-good and romantic fiction, including Sarah Morgan, Milly Johnson, Dilly Court, Karen Swan and Carole Matthews. Or try the Christmas love story Secrets in the snow, by Emma Heatherington.
For other Christmas entertainment, try the latest in the Sophie Kinsella Shopaholic series, called Christmas shopaholic. Or reserve the rom-com debut by Sophie Cousens, This Time Next Year, which just manages a Christmas link with a new year’s eve meeting.
Or For a comic satire on Christmas, read Hogfather, by Terry Pratchett, set in a festive feast of darkness with Death as the character trying to put an end to Hogwatch (aka Christmas).
The meaning of Christmas
For those who believe that Christmas has become too commercialized, take a look at Last Christmas: Memories of Christmases Past and Hopes for Future Ones, which is a collection of personal essays on the meaning of Christmas, by writers including Caitlin Moran and Richard Ayoade. Or try A Literary Christmas, which is a anthology, published by the British Library, and which includes extracts from George Eliot, Jane Austen, Henry James, Samuel Pepys and Oscar Wilde.
Less weighty, but full of Christmas spirit, is A Gift from Bob, by James Bowen, on which the new Christmas film “A Christmas Gift from Bob” is based, telling excerpts from the life of the Big Issue seller and his cat, Bob.
If you are looking for a sensitive book to share with young children to remind them that not everyone will have presents at Christmas, we recommend the picture book It's a No-Money Day.
Whatever your Christmas plans, do include some library books! We wish you season’s greetings from your library. Please share this email with local friends and family: join the library.