Books at Christmas - 2016

Books for Christmas - 2016

Ideally, there should be snow.  Not enough to make the way treacherous, for again, ideally, we’ll be walking, but enough to sugar dust the holly bushes and dance in the street light’s glow.  The windows of our destination should be atmospherically lit and, not unlike those of a sweet shop, designed and arranged with an artist’s eye to colour and shape.  We should linger there in the falling snow before we reach for the door.

  

There should be a bell on the door.  It should announce our arrival, not with the harsh clank of a cow’s pendant, but with a sound more akin to a fairy’s laugh.  There should be wooden floors, old and weathered wooden floors on which decades of shoppers have wandered through the aisles lost in contented concentration.  We should come up on a sleeping dog in a niche behind non-fiction and a large Persian cat should brush against our leg in cookery. 

The proprietor should be older, slightly mussed, with half-moon glasses perched on his nose and his knitted waistcoat haphazardly buttoned.  He should greet us warmly, though a tad absentmindedly.  He should also, like a soothsayer, know instinctively if we are in need of the perfect suggestion.

  

There should not be a cafe, nor should music be played over some tinny central speaker.  There should be a small radio underneath the counter, softly playing Bach, so softly the music seems to come from our own heads, unheard by others, the soundtrack to our own serenity.

And the books we find should be perfect.  So many that we start a small stack on the counter, the bespectacled owner nodding to himself each time we add another.   There should be books to teach and remind.  Books to lose oneself inside.  Books to take us on journeys impossible without the written word, with power to spirit us back in time, witnesses to history.  Their words should help us stand like a tree in the troubled present.  Through them, we should dream, we should remember, we should escape.

  

Each book should be wrapped in brown paper, tied with a red and white string, and placed in two large paper sacks.  The proprietor should give us a peppermint as we leave.   We should wish each other the compliments of the season.  The sound of fairy’s laughter should ring in our ears as we close the door behind us and head through the falling snow to the cafe on the corner where we would meet someone handsome and bearded for a hot chocolate and a bit of holiday cheer. 

Ideally, this should be Christmas shopping.

Right?

Here’s a list of recommendations for 2016. 
Some of these I’ve read, some I’ve yet to read. 
Some are older, some just published. 
Some are perfect for gifts, some are to keep for yourself. 
 And one I wrote myself. 
 The first line of each is included and, as always, 
click on the book to find out more.

Happy shopping! 

xo

1.  Commonwealth

by Ann Patchett

“The christening party took a turn when Albert Cousins arrived with gin.”

2.  Being a Dog:

Following the Dog Into a World of Smell

by Alexandra Horowitz

“Finnegan’s is ebony black, moist and dappled, two cavernous bass clefs at its front.”

3.  Edward Speaks at Midnight

by Pamela Terry

“It was Christmas Eve and Edward, the big white dog, was underneath the piano, his head resting atop his furry paws.”

4.  English Houses

by Ben Pentreath

“Charlie and I live above the trees in an ancient, leafy London square.”

5.  The Handmaid’s Tale

by Margaret Atwood

“We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.”

6.  Upstream

by Mary Oliver

“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed.”

7.   Cecil Beaton At Home

by Andrew Ginger

“Taste breaks out of all rules; as soon as it is pigeon-holed it is dead.”

8.  The Moon Before Morning

by W. S. Merwin

“The sky said I am watching

to see what you 

can make out of nothing.”

9.  The Road to Character

by David Brooks

“On Sunday evenings my local NPR stations rebroadcasts old radio programs.”

10.  Nutshell

by Ian McEwan

“So here I am, upside down in a woman.”

11.  Hitler: Volume I: Ascent 1889-1939

by Volker Ullrich

“The fellow is a catastrophe, but that’s no reason not to find him interesting as a personality and destiny” wrote Thomas Mann in his essay, Brother Hitler, adding that no none should feel ‘above dealing with this murky figure.”

12.  Faithful

by Alice Hoffman

“In February, when the snow comes down hard,  little globes of light are left along Route 110, on the side of the road that slopes off when a driver least expects it.”

13.  The Underground Railroad

by Colson Whitehead

“Jockey’s birthday only came once or twice a year.”

14.  H is for Hawk

by Helen MacDonald

“Forty-five minutes northeast of Cambridge is a landscape I’ve come to love very much.”

15.  Mad Enchantment

Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies

by Ross King
"Where is Clemenceau?"

16.  Wanderlust

by Michelle Nussbaumer and Hutton Wilkinson 

“When my husband asked my father for my hand in marriage, my father said yes, but with a caveat, ‘as long as you don’t ever take my daughter away.”

17.  The Outrun

by Amy Liptrot

“On my first day back I shelter beside an old freezer, down by some stinging nettles, and watch the weather approach over the sea.”

 18.  Literary Wonderlands: 

A Journey Through the Greatest Fictional Worlds Ever Created

by Laura Miller, Lev Grossman,  John Sutherland and Tom Shippey

19.  Bedtime Stories

from Everyman's Pocket Classics

“There were once two little girls who saw, or believed they saw, a thing in a forest.”

20.  A Christmas Memory

by Truman Capote

“Imagine a morning in late November.”