Isn’t the run up to Christmas is bonkers busy?  From finishing up that last piece of work, attending school more often than your child for an abundance of assemblies and Christmas plays, the shopping, the cleaning, the decorating of the tree, the wrapping and the cooking….absolute bonkers. No wonder you want to take a bottle of baileys and a box of after eight mints to bed with you (just me?) So why not this Christmas find a cosy spot and if you can switch off your phone (or turn off as many notifications as you can) and pick up a book and have a read. Here are 24 suggestions – some are from the good people of Facebook land (who mostly suggest grisly Christmas who dunnits – worrying!) and some are my own. Enjoy.
1. The Christmas Reader – ed Godfrey Smith.
A family favourite – my Grandmas reads to us from this each year, old poems and notes.
2. A Boy called Christmas – Matt Haig
The origin of Father Christmas – pure joy
3. A Christmas Carol – original and the best and who doesn’t love a story that begins with “Marley was dead, to begin with”
4. Box of Delights – John Masefield – who remembers watching this as a child? The book is better.
5. The Twelve Days of Christmas – a correspondence – by John Julius Norwich – a comic look at a response to the 12 days of Christmas gifts. Brilliant
6. Holidays on Ice – David Sedaris – A Christmas Store Elf and a holiday newsletter – so good
7. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
8. The Polar Express
9. Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
10. A Visit from St Nicholas “Twas the night before Christmas” you know the one
11. The Christmas Promise – Sue Moorcroft
12. The Father Christmas Letters – JRR Tolkien – written for his children
13. Christmas Under the Stars – Karen Swan
14. Merry Christmas Splat & Aliens love Panta Claus – for your little ones
15. The Nutcracker
16. The Snowman – Raymond Briggs
17. Greenbanks – Dorothy Whipple – begins at Christmas – a unique look at life in the 30s
18. Mystery in White – J. Jefferson Farjeon – an abandoned train, an empty house all set for tea… the snow falling…
19. Hercule Poirot’s Christmas – Agatha Christie
20. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding – Agatha Christie
21. The Mistletoe Murder – P D James
22. The Nightmare before Christmas – a graphic novel
23. A child’s Christmas in Wales – Dylan Thomas
24. Frost at Christmas RD Wingfield