Some Christmas reading

[callmemadam]

Last week, (or was it the week before? Something has happened to time), I went shopping. Not just a quick trip to the village shop but actually going into town and in and out of shops, looking for books. As it turned out, I absolutely hated it and won’t be doing it again in a hurry. I did, however, come home with two bags full of books, mostly from charity shops. One (so heavy!) was this Norman Rockwell book, which I later found was a great bargain.

(Pic on LJ, where you can also see my completed jigsaw, an achievement for me.)

American artists are particularly good at Christmas (Susan Branch, Tasha Tudor), so the Rockwell looked promising. The pictures are lavishly produced but the rest of the contents are strange. There are Christmas stories (quite dull, the ones I’ve read), carols printed out with the music and so on; quite a hotchpotch. I was surprised by how many pictures included black people, which seemed a good thing until I saw that a story mentioned ‘the coloured maid, Alice’. Eew! It reminded me of The Help and put me right off. This book should have been revised before it was reprinted.

I also got: a book by Monty Don, Christmas novels by Jenny Colgan and Trisha Ashley (both now read), Sissinghurst by Adam Nicolson and Great Britain’s Great War by Jeremy Paxman, all in very good condition. I’m hoping these will last until at least after Christmas. I shall, of course, be reading A Christmas Carol as usual, even though everything feels so un-Christmassy.

Comments

[gwendraith]

I still haven't been right into Manchester city centre (less than half a mile walk) and I'd love to but it's not worth the risk for me.

You did well with the books. The Norman Rockwell book looks nice, a shame it's a disappointment. I got my Good Housekeeping Christmas Book out this morning. I love it.

[callmemadam]

I found the walking difficult and some of the people in the charity shops were grumpy and rude. I don't blame them, really; they're taking a risk and not getting paid. In regular shops, people are surprisingly cheerful. I don't know how much longer people can keep up their spirits, though.

There is some good stuff in the Rockwell book e.g. poems I didn't know.