I usually share my Christmas book haul at the very end of the year, however I have high hopes that a) we will actually have our new boiler fitted tomorrow, b) while I have a day off for that I finish and review one more book. So here it is today. This is a combo of actual books I was given for Christmas and a lovely parcel from a fellow book-blogger as a sort of Christmas / ooh I have a birthday coming up / end of year package of joy. I’d love to know if you have read any of these and loved them, AND I am going to try to have read these by this time next year (I am ashamed to say I have some from last Christmas still to read).

So here are my Christmas books. From the top, my BookCrossing Not So Secret Santa (which we exchanged via the post and opened on a Zoom this year rather than bringing to a venue and swapping and opening) from the lovely Sue included two from my wishlist, Sally Magnusson’s “The Sealwoman’s Gift” (Icelanders are captured and taken to Algiers to try to make a life) and Ursula Le Guin’s “The Other Wind” (the ‘new’ Earthsea novel). There was also chocolate and a BookCrossing pencil.

Lovely Verity sent me Raynor Winn’s “The Salt Path”, having cleverly noticed that I kept yearning for a copy (once I knew there was a sequel, ahem) and I can’t wait to read this narrative of a couple made homeless by circumstance treading the South-West Coast Path.

I seem to have a tradition of presenting my best friend, Emma, with a list of Dean Street Press’s Furrowed Middlebrow imprint at Christmastime, and she came up with D.E. Stevenson’s “Music in the Hills” and “Winter and Rough Weather” which are the sequels to “Vittoria Cottage” which I read (in e-book form, so need to buy myself a copy) last January.

Then we have my LibraryThing Virago Group not-so-secret santa, which was from friend first, fellow book blogger later Heaven-Ali. What a lovely selection. I knew it would be from her as I was one of the organisers and I predicted there would be a Daphne du Maurier (“My Cousin Rachel”) as she will be keen for me to take part in her DdM reading week in May! I was also thrilled to receive “The Half-Crown House” and “Yeoman’s Hospital”, two Helen Ashtons she has also enjoyed (in lovely pre-loved editions, “Half Crown House” a Boots Circulating Library copy!) and Stella Gibbons’ “The Bachelor”. What joys those all hold! And there was some Christmas tea, too!

And my friend Gill, always a reliable wish-list burrower, provided me with wildflower seeds, hand-made honey and beeswax products and Jeffrey Boake’s “Black, Listed” about Black masculinities in the UK, and James Ward’s fascinating looking “Adventures in Stationery” which is, well, just that.

My super parcel from Bookish Beck included a set of books I’d expressed interest in as she read and reviewed them through the year. How lovely and thoughtful! Oh, there’s an Iris Murdoch in there, too, “The Italian Girl”, which I’ve obviously read, but she pops me paperback editions I might not have when she happens upon them. So the novel “Three Women and a Boat” by Anne Youngson includes scenes travelling through Birmingham on our canals, and lots of people have read Eley Williams’ “The Liar’s Dictionary” which is a dual-time narrative about someone inserting fictional words in a dictionary and a modern lexicographer searching them out. “The Group” by Laura Feigel riffs off and updates the seminal 1960s Mary McCarthy novel and “Silver Sparrow” by Tayari Jones is another wonderful-looking novel of Atlanta. Ruth Pavey’s “A Wood of One’s Own” is the story of four acres in the Somerset Levels. Lucky me!

Have I seen your Christmas book pile yet? How’s it looking? Of course I also received a good number of book and bookshop vouchers, which I will be saving for after my birthday, when I can have a lovely splurge to mop up, well, a tiny slice of the rest of my wishlist …