Books you hope to receive for Christmas

[tobee]

Is it too early to ask?

I like to pose this question every year.

I probably shouldn't be asking for any books this Christmas actually. But I'm always happy to receive them.

But always like to hear what others would like to be unwrapping on Christmas Day!

Great topic. I love receiving books and they used to be such an important part of Christmas but no one really buys them anymore.

A biography of Virginia Woolf that I’ve had my eye on.

John Higgs’ book on William Blake

A deluxe edition of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray.

A book on Victorian painting

Clive James’ book on Philip Larkin

I'm hoping for the special edition of The Invisible Life of Addie la Ru by VE Schwab, Divine Rivals & Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross, special edition box sets of the Hunger Games and Red Rising. Also keeping my fingers crossed for a subscription to Evernight, a horror book quarterly subscription.

I have heavily hinted that I would like Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Billy Summers by Stephen King (as haven't read anything by him for years) and Landlines by Raynor Winn.

DH went to Persephone in Bath last week to get me a book.

I asked him for The Two Mrs Abbotts by D E Stevenson, the third in the Barbara Buncle trilogy. I loved the previous two (hence my new NN).

Excellent; really enjoyed D E Stevenson.

Great to see these answers. Always interesting to see people's different interests and get a few ideas!

Best Christmas gift I ever got was A Man in Full, by Tom Wolfe. I dreaded two weeks at home as a teenager and boom - seven hundred-odd pages of somewhere else to be.

Nobody ever gets me the right stuff (boom boom) any more, so to fend off festive disappointment, many weeks ago I ordered an academic text about The Shining. Apparently it’s still trying to make its way across the Atlantic. Suspect it’s not coming.

If anyone has any immersive door-stop recommendations do let rip.

I’d also quite like the Larkin book - and the Viz annual 😜

I'm getting the following:

Warriors, witches and damn rebel bitches by Mairi Kidd
The Holly King by Mark Stay
Enchanted life by Sharon Blackie
Murdle by G.T Karber
Live like a Goddess by Jean Menzies
All the Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell
The Coffin Roads by Ian Bradley
A Jodi Taylor short story collection

(All currently under the tree ordered by me on dh's behalf)

He has bought me a winter/christmas murder mystery too which will be my Christmas Eve "tree" present.

My mother has apparently ordered me a large chunk of Bibliophile's catalogue.

I can't wait

And just in case that's not enough I currently have 17 books out of the library!

I ordered Atlas: the Story of Pa Salt which has just arrived. Am keeping it for after Christmas when dp goes away, so I know I'll have uninterrupted evening to read it. I had asked him to get it for me but he didn't.

I would like (but can’t really justify because I have a perfectly serviceable paperback) the Folio Society edition of Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones because it is beautiful and my favourite children’s book.

I would also like Masha by Mara Kay, which is about life in a Russian boarding school in the time of the Tsars. It’s supposed to be very well-researched but it is out of print and the only secondhand copies I’ve seen are in three figures so that isn’t likely anytime soon.

I’d also like The Name on the Glass and Snow in the Maze both by Barbara C Freeman. I read a few of her haunting and imaginative, if uneven, books from my school library and later spent years trying to track them down despite having forgotten the titles and the author’s full name! Finally Googling “Barbara”, “lacemaker” and “ghost” produced A Pocket of Silence by Barbara C Freeman and then all I had to worry about was that all her novels were out of print. But I’ve been picking them up the odd one here and there.

I’d like a nice pile of Dean Street Press Furrowed Middlebrow titles. I had a lovely haul of them from Much Ado Books (which is heaven in a bookshop, do visit if you are anywhere near Alfriston in Sussex, make an excuse to go if you’re not) at half term and enjoyed them all. My haul included titles by Margery Sharp, E Nesbit, Elizabeth Fair, Stella Gibbons and Frances Faviell. All very readable and in the same sort of vein as Greyladies and Persephone Books.

I'm so glad I started this thread!

Weirdly Dh and I were talking about Alfriston last night @CatChant. Not about book shops though.

The latest Thursday Murder Club and the Rivers of London series. I can't wait to sit down and get some reading done.

@tobee Alfriston looked lovely from what we saw of it, which wasn’t very much because we spent so long in Much Ado Books. But we can say Badgers’ Tea House has delicious food and a charming courtyard garden too.

I have never, never hoped to receive books for Christmas, and I'm correct with this, because the few times I've received books in the last many years, they've been let-downs.
The last time I received a book that really delighted me was ages ago when I was barely out of school, and a friend gave me a cinema reference book. I hadn't even known such things existed, and it started me on a new path.

For thy great pain, have mercy on my little pain by Victoria Mckenzie

North Woods by Daniel Mason

The Revels by Stacey Thomas

Herc by Phoenicia Rogers on

I'm trying to get back into fiction and hoping a nice Christmas stack will help!

On the non-fiction front:

On Savage Shores: how indigenous Americans discovered Europe

Mountains of Fire: the Secret Lives of Volcanoes

Planta Sapiens: unmasking plant intelligence

The Treasuries: Poetry anthologies and the making of British culture

Magisteria: the entangled histories of science and religion