While I try not to buy books from my wishlist during Christmas and birthday season, with friends like mine and an indie bookshop on the high street it’s inevitable that books will happen. As I came home with a BookCrossing Secret Santa parcel to open in the week that has some suspiciously oblong packages, and knowing I have at least two books under the no-tree-because-we-can’t-get-at-the-bit-where-it’s-stored, I thought I should do a quick round-up of what’s come in so far this month.

I was in The Heath Bookshop buying book and Bookshop tokens for Christmas presents and spotted a tempting half-price sale, where I picked up Michael Cashman’s (of Eastenders and MEP fame) memoir, “One of Them”. Rude not to, right? I got home and John Preston’s bestseller “Watford Forever” had arrived, kindly sent by the author (my name’s in the acknowledgements for a small role I had in the book). I went to Brian Bilston’s The Heath Bookshop event for his new poetry book “And So This Christmas” (review here).

In The Works to look for paper washi tape (failed: only found it with glitter on which defeats the green purpose; it is a small branch, though), I found three novels, Bolu Babalola’s “Honey & Spice” (enemies have to pull together to make a radio show work; can’t remember where I heard about this one, tell me if it was you!) and Taj McCoy’s “Savvy Sheldon Feels Good as Hell” and “Zora Books her Happy Ever After” (plus size Black women winning hearts as chefs and bookshop owners respectively; the later I spotted on Life of a Female Bibliophile’s blog), These three look fun and hopefully buying them helps The Works to keep up the representation of Black writers.

Then the customary winter parcel of ARCs arrived from Bookish Beck: four books I’ve raved about wanting to read when I’ve read her reviews. Daniel Schreiber’s “Alone” is a reflection on solitary living and the importance of friendship; Florence Hazrat’s “An Admirable Point” is a history of the exclamation mark; Sarah Thomas’ “The Raven’s Nest” looks at life in the West of Iceland and has had praise from Cal Flyn and Robert Macfarlane; and Lev Parikian’s “Taking Flight” looks at the story of life on the wing. Finally, I went to a brilliant The Heath Bookshop event with Kit de Waal in conversation with Cold War Steve and far from the edgy and sarcastic commentator I thought he was, he was such a lovely man that I bought his 2024 Annual, full of his amazing collages and with essays by de Waal, Stewart Lee and more.

I could hardly have not got any of those: do tell me about any first-part-of-December book confessions you might need to share!