It is true to say that ever since I was very little one of the real joys for me at Christmas was the books that I got for presents. For years they were Enid Blytons or Agatha Christies or Georgette Heyers. Fortunately the prolific outputs of these writers allowed Father Christmas and other gift-givers ample scope. In more recent years, whilst the thrill of getting new books for Christmas has never waned, it is fair to say that the number of books I have received has waxed and waned considerably.
So what was Christmas 2012 like? Well, I can report that it was a good year! Despite the fact that many of us have moved from giving each other physical presents and choose instead to donate to Oxfam or the like, this year I got six shiny new books! And while I was buying presents for others, I just happened to buy myself another two. So that makes eight new books for Christmas to my way of thinking.
So what are the shiny new books that I have waiting for my summer reading? My friend Pat gave me Victoria Hislop's The thread. The main character in this novel is Thessaloniki and the book appears to marry my loves of Greece and family history. The foodies' guide to Melbourne and Maureen McCarthy's The convent were gifts from Penny and Mark. The former focuses on my interests in food and cooking and eating and the latter explores the past of the Abbotsford Convent in a fictional setting but based on true stories. This taps into my interests in the local history of Collingwood and the history of the Catholic church and its institutions in Victoria.
"This book is all about women" proclaims the back cover of Sunscreen and lipstick, a collection of short stories by Australian women that Marg and TK sent me, drawing on their knowledge of my interest in Australian women's writing. And the other two goes back to the theme of food. Clarissa Dickson Wright's A History of English food takes me right back to the Two Fat Ladies series. I imagine that I will never want to experiment with any of the food she talks about but I will enjoy her inimitable style. And the other one? A new Stephanie! It's the Stephanie Alexander book in the Lantern Cookery Classics. I am not sure how many of the recipes are new and how many have appeared in her other tomes but I will enjoy reading it.
The other two books that I just happened to buy during Christmas shopping? My interest in Robert Gibson's Gallipoli eyewitness is probably self-evident to anyone who knows my interest in family history and in my grandfather who was at Gallipoli. I actually bought this for a couple of presents and felt I needed one myself. And the final book just leapt out at me from the Readings Carlton window. Artemis Cooper's biography Patrick Leigh Fermor: an adventure is Greece and Paddy Leigh Fermor.
So plenty of reading pleasure awaits me during the 12 days of Xmas!
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