Lead up to the festive season

OK, full disclosure. I am a Christmas addict and I don’t care who knows it! I have huge numbers of Music, Films and Books to see me through November and December – although the music always waits until December 1! During the next few weeks I will introduce you to my favourites from each area and also introduce you to some of the many articles I have written about the most wonderful time of the year.

In this first section I will introduce you to 5 books which, although related to December and the Christmas Season, can be read in November without ruining your festive appetite!

We will go clockwise from bottom right so we start with

A Merry Little Christmas by Julia Williams

This is actually the second book in a three book series featuring the idyllic village of Hope Christmas. The first in the trio was Last Christmas and the follow up to this book is Coming Home for Christmas. I picked this book up at my local charity shop because I was amused by the idea of a Christmas book featuring Cat Tinsall, Pippa Holliday and Marianne North! It seemed like a Hallmark movie in book form and, yes, I even love those! However, you know the old saying you can’t judge a book by its cover? Well that is definitely true for this book.

In fact, this is a book that tells the stories of these three central characters, their families, their friends and the villagers of Hope Christmas throughout the course of a year, finishing with Christmas Day itself. All three characters have real challenges as they navigate the problems of life with teenagers, young children, exes and aged parents. I expected to laugh, which I did, but I never expected to find myself with tears in my eyes. I think that the familiarity of the situations makes the sad parts even more hard hitting. This is not a Hallmark movie, but neither is it an EastEnders style misery fest. It is perfectly balanced as it navigates the tricky line between the two. As soon as I was halfway through I ordered Book 3 off of the internet and I will be doing the same with Book 1 in the near future. It is a warm, comforting book with a real sweetness – the reading equivalent of a cup of Hot Chocolate!

Silent Night by Stanley Weintraub

This is an exhaustively researched and brilliantly told history of the Christmas Truce of 1914. The event has gained near mythical status and has been the subject of a brilliant song by The Farm, the video for a Paul McCartney chart topper and, less happily, a Christmas advert by Sainsbury’s. However, as with so many events, the truth is far stranger and more interesting than the fiction.

Weintraub skillfully blends together official records, newspaper accounts and, most effectively, the letters from the soldiers themselves. It paints the picture of an entirely spontaneous resurgence of human nature when they find a common experience of worship and celebration. The British soldiers and the German soldiers find out that the people they have been trained to hate and to kill are actually very similar to themselves. They are not butchers, they are fellow human beings who have been plunged into hell by politicians, not for the first or the last time. It is a superb book that will make you consider your own humanity.

Murder in Midwinter Edited by Cecily Gayford

I have been a huge fan of Cecily Gayford’s crime short stories since reading my first Christmas themed set a few years back. Each book contains 10 short stories, mainly from the golden age of crime fiction. In this one we have stories featuring Campion, Lord Peter Wimsey, Sherlock Holmes and Horace Rumpole in a set of well chosen stories that are sometimes humorous, sometimes chilling but always entertaining.

You may not find every story to your taste, but I guarantee you that you will find more hits than misses as you settle back and let some of the greatest characters in crime fiction wash over you. This is pretty much the perfect bedtime book as you can easily devour one story a night without being concerned about a sleepless interlude. The stories may occasionally be scary, but they are never horrific. Just perfect for a winter evening!

A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks

Quite simply, A Week in December is one of the finest state of the nation novels of the last 20 years. Although it was written in 2009, the stories of seven disparate characters, whose lives intertwine at various points, is just marvellous in highlighting issues that seem to become more relevant and timely as each year passes.

The characters are, a hedge fund manager, a book reviewer, a solicitor, a student being led down a dangerous path, a schoolboy with a fascination for drugs, reality TV and fantasy football, a professional footballer and a tube train driver. What sets this novel apart for me is the superb combination of humour, polemic, humanity, anger and a fascination with what drives us all. I have read this book every year since 2010 and I never tire of it. It is quite simply a masterpiece. The interesting aspect of A Week in December is the fact that Christmas is only mentioned a handful of times! This alone makes it quite unusual and gives the book a year-round quality.

The Gift by Cecelia Ahern

This will no doubt be the most familiar of the five books for most of you reading this, but it is one that seems to have been somewhat sidelined at Christmas. Like A Week in December, Christmas is not its focus, although it is mentioned. It also shares a love for the human condition with Sebastian Faulks’ book, but where Faulks deals with reality, Ahern deals with fantasy.

The Gift features a very unsympathetic protagonist, the selfish, amoral and uncaring Lou Suffern. We learn very early on that he is a very successful executive who has fallen out of love with his entire family, who he sees as an obstacle to him earning even more money. At the beginning of the story he acts out of character by buying a homeless man called Gabe (or Gabriel?!) a cup of coffee. Gabe somehow worms his way into Lou’s head and becomes a kind of conscience, but most intriguingly he offers Lou the chance to be in two places at once! The Gift is a brilliant lead in to Christmas because it speaks directly to the reader about what really matters in life. Just let the story take you away, park any cynicism and simply enjoy it on its own terms.

Well, there you have it. 5 books for the lead up to Christmas. I hope I have inspired you to pick up at least one of them. Do you have a favourite book for November? If so, let me know in the comments below. I’ll see you for more Christmas themed entertainment next time!