Has anyone read their Christmas books yet?

[Dappy777]

Someone bought me Richard Holmes' new biography of Tennyson – The Boundless Deep. Finished it today. Wonderful book. I know Tennyson seems dull compared to poets like Byron or Ted Hughes, but it isn't exactly a biography. It's more about the ideas swirling around him. It's fascinating to read about these Victorian figures struggling with dinosaurs and evolution and the age of the Earth and the vastness of space, etc.

I'd really recommend it. Holmes isn't a dry or heavy writer. He reminds me a bit of Bill Bryson.

I only got three books this year as I tend to read more on Kindle these days but had finished them all by New Year 😐

Just used an Audible credit on this-thank you! Sounds just my sort of thing.

I read on Kindle these days but I asked for three books for my birthday - some months ago - and I’m afraid they are still just sitting in a pile.

I got 12 novels plus the Faber&Faber poetry diary so no, I've not read everything yet, just Strange Weather in Tokyo by Hiromi Kawakami which is a literary romance.

Years ago I read The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes which I really enjoyed. It's a broad sweep across the start of modern science and has lots of interesting information about Caroline Herschel who was the first woman to receive a salary as a scientist and the first woman in England to hold a government position.

I got loads of paperbacks and even though I read on kindle have put them in my room now and am prioritising them and all the present books have got in the last few years because I realised people buy le the books I think I’ll love and I thank them and push them onto the depths of our too stuffed and not particularly pretty bookcase!!!

If you like it, try The Age of Wonder afterwards. That was his big hit. It’s about the Romantic poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, etc) and their interest in science. Holmes argues that it’s a myth people like Coleridge were anti-science. On the contrary, all the great writers of that period (Mary Shelley, Byron, even Jane Austen) were fascinated by geology and evolution and astronomy. There was even a craze for hot air balloons. Holmes writes a bit like Bill Bryson - kind of gossipy and funny and informal. Not at all dry and academic. And yet he’s clearly a brilliant man of vast learning.

Hope you enjoy The Boundless Deep anyway.😊

Got two paperbacks for Christmas (from my OH).
Two thirds of the way through the first - Mirrors Of Greatness by David Reynolds. It explains Churchills relationship with other leaders.
A really good, engrossing read.👍

I only got one this Christmas and am just about to start reading it. The Approaching Storm by Nora Waln, an American journalist living in Germany in the 30s, it is her eyewitness account of the rise of Nazism.