After quite a bit of nagging from @shewgirl who seems to have her blogging mojo back here I am on the third day of Christmas trying to start the #blog12daysxmas challenge! Part of the reason for my delay was that I simply had missed the call to the challenge and only realized it was happening when I started seeing all the tweets and blogposts labeled thus. And, of course, as my hash tags don't even show up in searches you all will be very lucky to read this. Another third world problem that I have had for ages.
The good thing about this challenge is that it sent me back to my Hecuba Reads blog that I set up after Christmas last year with the aim of documenting all my reading. I didn't succeed very well in that aim - on the blog at any rate - but more of that anon. What I want to talk about here is one of my greatest joys at Christmas. Yes! Yes! Getting books for presents.
If I think back to childhood Christmases, my favourite presents were almost always books. I, of course, except the fabulous Christmas when I was nine and my very, very favourite present was a black kitten whom I creatively called Kitty! The photo above is from that Christmas but I must have been enticed to the table and willing to leave my kitten as I can't see her anywhere. Mother nursing Mairin, Peter and Aunty surround me while Father was taking the photo with the Kodak box brownie I also got for Christmas that year.
Every year I used to fall on my book presents: new installments of Famous Five to add to my set shared alas with Mairin who to this day has the other half of the set, Elsie Oxenham, and then over the years moving on to Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer. There were always new books to read on Christmas afternoon. As I have grown older and perhaps more significantly moved to working in libraries people are less likely to give me books. They think I have read them all or maybe even have too many! Last week when I opened the first book I got this Christmas and said I hadn't read the book and didn't even know it, there was a huge sigh of relief from the giver who almost always gives me books but with an anxiety that I may have read them or already own them. In fact, I don't think I ever have. Well chosen always, Mark!
So yes, I got books for Christmas. Yay! They were mostly non-fiction interestingly when I think of the childhood joys at getting latest fiction titles, but that is not to complain. And I hadn't read ANY of them. Sue, Brian, Calum and Tom gave me Lynn Santa Lucia's First and only women which is a fascinating compendium of female trailblazers from ancient times i.e Pharaoh Hatshepsut and Hypatia of Alexandria through to contemporaries like Dawn Fraser and Auung San Suu Kyi.
Penny and Mark gave me the only novel: David Grossman's To the end of the land. I haven't read anything by this Israeli writer whom I have now discovered to be a prolific author. This novel is set in Galilee and depicts daily life in Israel and the effects that constant war and its ambivalence have on one household.
And my interest in cooking emerged with the other three books. Karen gave me the CWA's Preserves, filled with absolutely luscious jams, pickles and preserves in a lovely new presentation that doesn't look anything like the traditional CWA books.
Marcus Wareing's How to cook the perfect... was Sebastian's contribution to introduce me to his favourite TV cook. The Earl Grey tea cream was particularly pointed out to me as something good to try. And it sounds delicious. I need to buy some Earl Grey teabags as I can't quite come to the challenge of using loose tea. Though now that I think about it I could use tea infusers, I suppose. And my final book? It was from Peter and Tim and is the Australian Women's weekly's World table with recipes from all over. I love the photos of the places that transport me there when I am reading of the food.
So Christmas is come and gone but, as it does every year, it lives on for me in the Christmas books I have received. Now I wonder will I read them during the 12 days of Christmas?
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