I do it every year.
Sort out a stack of books I think I might like to read over Christmas and it always includes Bleak House which I must have re-started six times and still not finished, so this year I have taken the drastic step of leaving it off the pile.
Meanwhile the 'pile' includes quite a few Kindle reads as well as some 'real' books, here are a few of my choices...
Like many of you I have had an itch to reacquaint myself with Elizabeth Jane Howard's Cazalet family since All Change arrived. Unfortunately I sent them all to the charity shop in that purge, but I did pick up The Light Years on a Kindle Daily Deal so I may well see if the Cazalets hold the same magic they did back in 1991 when I started reading them. Interestingly, and here is the joy of that reading journal, I see I was reading a lot of Susan Howatch at that time too... Glittering Images, Glamorous Powers, Ultimate Prizes and a few years previously Penmarric, Cashelmara and Wheel of Fortune, yet I hear little of her these days. I wonder if a renaissance might be due.
I have been hearing good and promising things about a book due out in January. Amazingly the buzz for The Silversmith's Wife by Sophia Tobin ( a librarian by day) started for me right here in the Tamar Valley via a friend who has her finger firmly on the pulse of up-coming historical fiction. A copy has arrived ( just look at that cover) and I am going to dive in...
The year is 1792 and it's winter in Berkeley Square. As the city sleeps, the night-watchman keeps a cautious eye over the streets, and another eye in the back doors of the great and the good. Then one fateful night he comes across the body of Pierre Renard, the eponymous silversmith, lying dead, his throat cut and his valuables missing. It could be common theft, committed by one of the many villains who stalk the square, but as news of the murder spreads, it soon becomes clear that Renard had more than a few enemies, all with their own secrets to hide. At the centre of this web is Mary, the silversmith's wife. Ostensibly theirs was an excellent pairing, but behind closed doors their relationship was a dark and at times sadistic one and when we meet her, Mary is withdrawn and weak, haunted by her past and near-mad with guilt. Will she attain the redemption she seeks and what, exactly, does she need redemption for…? Rich, intricate and beautifully told, this is a story of murder, love and buried secrets.
I have also been saving my entire Lucy M Boston collection for a mid-winter festival reading feast, and though I read The Children of Green Knowe yet again earlier this year I am going to read it once more and then move onto the others...
I have also found a copy of Lucy Boston's very first novel Yew Hall (£1 in another of those National Trust bookshops...good spot Bookhound) published when she was in her sixties...'so polished, so effortless, so mature. As an author she appears to have sprung out of the ground fully armed,' said the critics at the time, and having read the first few pages I couldn't agree more.
Offspringette will be here over Christmas, and on Boxing day, while Bookhound is out helping the Gamekeeper on his shoot, we will be curled up on our Green Knowe sofa...
with our fire lit and our Green Knowe curtain pulled...
and we will just wait for Toby, Alexander and Linnet to make their presence known.
So how about your Christmas reading...sorted??
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