Book-lover’s Christmas

Some of my new books were really for my birthday, but one way and another I’ve got a good haul this year. Not many suuprises as most of the books were on my wish-list. They include a couple of books that have been highly praised this year: John Williams’s Stoner and James Salter’s Collected Stories, and I expect I’ll write about them in a future blog. I hardly ever buy hardbacks for myself, and it’s lovely to have these two very attractive volumes. I have almost finished Stoner, and, yes, it is very good. Of course there are always plenty of crime novels on my wish-list, and I’m looking forward to reading Snow White Must Die by German writer, Nele Neuhaus (her novels were originally self-published and this one has sold over three million) and Andrea Camilleri’s The Dance of the Seagull, so one writer new to me and one old favourite. I’ve also been given The Flaneur: A Stroll Through the Paradoxes of Paris by Edmund White, who lived in the City for sixteen years: I’ve have a little virtual holiday as I read it. And finally, a couple of surprise gifts. One of them is Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation. I’ve had a flick through and I’ve read the first few pages: I’m going to enjoy it. It’s always nice to get something you might not otherwise have read and that also applies to Kathleen Jamie’s Sightlines, a collection of essays on our relationship to the natural world. I’ve read good reviews of her work.
I love getting books as presents, and often give them too. The gift of an ebook just wouldn’t be the same.