'Old Lady' Christmas Book

[PiratePenguin]

On the 1st December we all have a Christmas book. This year it's my turn to buy them. My mum is 84 and I have no idea what book to get her. She's not that in to mysteries so can anyone recommend a book that she'd like? She watches Call the Midwife and read lots of Catherine Cookson 'way back when'. Village / gentle style books is kind of her style. Any suggestions welcome - along with many thanks!

Those are the books she likes according to her own daughter! Saying 'why can't she be like me' is bloody weird,

Wasn't there a TV series of 'The Swish of the Curtain' in the 80s, I remember loving that, Sarah Greene was one of the children.

Maybe she likes cosy, safe books.

She’s 84, lives in a tiny village on the foot of the South Downs, is a member of the WI and Trefoil Guild. She doesn’t drink, smoke or swear and goes to the village church in Sundays. She genuinely likes quaint, quiet and gentle books. I don’t, I read crimes, murders and thrillers - hence I’ve no idea about books she’ll like and I’m asking for suggestions. I’m delighted she knows her genre and what she likes - I’m not about to try to convert her!

TBF (and with no disrespect to your mother, OP,) it does seem a slight waste of one's reading life to read only those books that reflect your own experience.

I could, for instance, understand someone living on the Mongolian plains escaping into Georgette Heyer. Or an Australian sheep farmer devouring P G Wodehouse. But living a quaint, quiet and gentle life and demanding the same in one's reading matter seems a very determined withdrawal from the world. And yes, I'm saying this as one stranger to another - I obviously wouldn't question your mother's choices to her face. But then, I worry that she might feel no empathy towards me as I don't occur in her chosen literature ...

Nancy Mitford - Christmas Pudding? Comedy of errors set in the Shires.

Maybe historical books by Kerry Barrett? They are good page turners - they do have a slightly undertone about real issues women face, abuse, abortion, etc, but that's not the dominating theme.

Bloody hell Persephone, that is quite a judgment to make on someone based on very little information. How unfair of you.

Prefacing with "no disrespect", doesn't mean what you say isn't disrespectful.

Elizabeth Goudge would definitely be her kind of thing, I am not sure I can recall any specifically set at Christmas though.

I love Dorothy Whipple books - published between the wars/1950s.

They are all republished by Persephone books in a nice quality book, with larger (imv) print than some of todays paperbacks, on quality paper which easily sits open. I'm not her age but often read during the night and not having to squash up to the bedside light because the paper quality is dull or the print is v small is pleasanter to read.

Persephone have republished many good books which aren't so much the present style of murder/mystery/thriller but about ordinary lives.
Which imv is more interesting if well written.

@eddiemairswife

Why can't she be like me and enjoy Ian Rankin, Hilary Mantel, Margaret Attwood? Not all older people like cosy 'safe' books.

Why should she be like you?

Not all older people are so nauseatingly self-centred.

Another vote for Rosamund Pike her - Winter Solstice. Warm, cosy and Christmassy.

I opened this thread thinking, oh what a lovely idea, I might do that.
So thank you for some suggestions.

Do the bitch-ploppers go onto politics/cooking/baby name/music threads to say "why can't you be like meeeeeeee because I'm so much better than youuuu"

What a very unpleasant attitude to have.

Lillian Beckwith’s tales of Scottish crofting life might fit the bill, gentle but amusing (although not without some controversy attached, as apparently the local people that she wrote about took exception to her portrayals). Not sure if they are still in print, though.

Some horrible, self-centred and disrespectful posters on this thread. Utterly uncalled for.

OP, I’d go along with most of the previous suggestions but, if she liked Catherine Cookson and Call The Midwife, how about looking at some of the Dilly Court books? They have a similar feel and there are Christmas specials. That’s what I used to get for my lovely late Gran.

@eddiemairswife

I used to read Elizabeth Goudge as a teenager. Are they still in print? I remember Green Dolphin Street and one set in Oxford with a girl called Joyance.

Yes they are, I have all of them - and there is a Christmas one, too, which is "The Herb Of Grace" (it's the second Eliots Of Damerosehay book) "Towers In The Mist" is the Oxford one.

Have a look at Lillian Harry's books. Very Catherine Cookson amily sagas but set on Dartmoor in the mid-20th century.

I love reading this sort of gentle fiction when I was a youngster, oddly enough. My grandmother shared her books with me, and then I found some more on the bookshelves of an old psychiatric hospital I worked in when I was 18, and in charity shops. They are very comforting and often well-written.

It's not fiction, but Nigel Slater's Christmas Chronicles is an absolute delight. Part diary, part reminiscences, part history, plus a few
recipes thrown in, perfect winter reading. Also Christmas at the Vicarage by Rebecca Boxall is nice.

As for 14 yo DDs, mine had to read The Dark is Rising for school last year and absolutely hated it. She enjoys mythology, fantasy etc and has just devoured the latest Rick Riordan which came out on kindle this week, but that's because it's part of a series she's been reading for years.

All the sweet promises by Elizabeth Elgin, a really beautiful book

A woman of substance by Barbara Taylor Bradford

Neither Christmas-focussed but both include Christmas in them. Wonderful books

@PersephonePromotesEquanimity

TBF (and with no disrespect to your mother, OP,) it does seem a slight waste of one's reading life to read only those books that reflect your own experience.

I could, for instance, understand someone living on the Mongolian plains escaping into Georgette Heyer. Or an Australian sheep farmer devouring P G Wodehouse. But living a quaint, quiet and gentle life and demanding the same in one's reading matter seems a very determined withdrawal from the world. And yes, I'm saying this as one stranger to another - I obviously wouldn't question your mother's choices to her face. But then, I worry that she might feel no empathy towards me as I don't occur in her chosen literature ...

What exactly is the point if your post @PersephonePromotesEquanimity ? Just to be unpleasant? Well done, you succeeded

Highly recommend “Rumpole at Christmas” which collects all the Christmas set short stories:
www.waterstones.com/book/rumpole-at-christmas/john-mortimer/9780141039770
It may sound like it’s a crime book (Rumpole being a criminal barrister) but they are the most gentle, funny, and very English stories and fill me with a warm fuzzy Christmas feeling every time.

For a 13 year old, depending on whether she’s a young 13 or older, either The Thirteen Days of Christmas or The Hogfather?

@PiratePenguin have looked at the Nightingale Nurses series? Very call the midwife in terms of drama / community spirit. Set in a similar era, Donna Douglas is the author and I think she has published about 10 or so with a few of the titles including christmas. My mum likes these and is an avid Catherine Cookson fan :)

She might enjoy Twopence to Cross the Mersey by Helen Forester.
,

@PersephonePromotesEquanimity please share your reading statistics. What percent of the books you read are written by women or by men? What percentage of books do you read are books in translation? What percentage of the books you read were written by asian, african, or hispanic writers?

We all could read more widely but that is a choice for the individual reader to make themselves. And a book with an apparently small focus can still be universal, Jane Austen wrote about 3 or 4 middle class families in small rural communities and yet 200 years later her books still speak to millions.

No, Veterinari, my point was that one of the purposes of literature - as a thing in civilisation - is to broaden horizons and create/enable empathy between widely distant and un-alike human beings.

We can be fairly sure that many of the greatest atrocities we know of from history or current affairs might have been at least mitigated if the peoples involved had had the benefit of some intellectual / spiritual familiarity with "the other". The sort of familiarity gained through reading.

Literature - the ability to tell stories - is what separates us from other animals. It seems a waste to use it purely to look into a mirror.

I obviously have no actual feelings about the OP's mother's choices. This is an anonymous forum - I'm using an anonymous example to explore a wider point. This is what human beings do ...