Bath Life - Issue 433

BOOKS NIC BOTTOMLEY

Writings of comfort and joy The books that have stolen our Christmas hearts

“There are books that each year I simply have to read with the children, in order for Christmas Eve to be Christmas Eve” 20 I BATH LIFE I www.mediaclash.co.uk

T

he other day my colleague sent a message around asking us all what our ‘Christmas comfort reads’ are?

He wanted to make a list of the books that we turn to year after year to read when there’s a sliver of downtime between stuffing our faces with food and binging on whatever Christmas screen-time floats our boats.

The answers came streaming in from my fellow booksellers. Not all were Christmassy, but there was a preponderance of cosy and often wintry crime, and plenty of classics dropped in. We had everything from The House at Pooh Corner (Egmont, £8.99) to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (Macmillan, £8.99) mixed in with some Terry Pratchett and Alan Bennett.

Calmer more bucolic fare was also well represented with books like Laurie Lee’s homage to the Slad Valley villages and countryside of his childhood, Down in the Valley (Penguin, £7.99), and Kathleen Jamie’s Findings (Sort Of, £9.99), her wonderful book describing wanderings amongst the landscapes and wildlife of Scotland.

And my answer? Well, I didn’t have one.

For some reason it’s just not something I do – going back to the same book each year and finding comfort in the same holiday season reads. I think maybe I should, mind you. Goodness knows, if there’s ever been a time for comfort reads it’s at the end of this arduous year.

So what would the candidates be, if I were reaching for something on my existing shelves for respite from the world and its exhausting problems? For me, comfort would be unlikely to be specifically festive. I’m more likely to reach for a book by one of my favourite writers that would whisk me well away from chilly Britain.

I might find comfort in watching wildlife and having indulgent family parties and outlandish encounters with eccentric Cypriots, with Gerald Durrell’s My Family and other Animals or its perhaps even funnier sequel “Birds, Beasts and Relatives” (both Penguin, £8.99). Or perhaps comfort (and a bit of entertaining discomfort) in imagining myself hiking across Europe in the 1930s alongside Patrick Leigh Fermor by revisiting A Time of Gifts and

Beyond the Woods and the Water (each John Murray, £9.99).

These are books I re-read, or aspire to find time to re-read more often than I do, but not specifically in the festive season. I realise though that it’s not true to say I never re-read for comfort at Christmas time. There are books that each year I simply have to read with the children, in order for Christmas Eve to be Christmas Eve. Our reading list each year, before the big man slides down the ‘chimbley’, is set in stone.

There’s Christmas in Exeter Street by Diana Hendry (Walker, £7.99), a book about welcoming everyone into your home (even if some have to sleep in the sink) that is so at odds with social distancing rules that it’s bound to prove even more hilarious this year than ever before. Then there’s The Empty Stocking by Richard Curtis (Penguin, £7.99), a pithy tale of two sisters preparing for Santa with very different expectations – as one is angelic and the other irrepressibly naughty – with a magnificent twist.

But it all builds up to two classics for us.

First we go for The Grinch that Stole Christmas by Dr.Seuss (Harper Collins, £6.99), mainly so I can read the lines “He turned around fast, and he saw a small Who! Little Cindy-Lou Who, who was not more than two”. But beyond that, we read it for the final message – a message that might again resonate more this year than ever – that whatever was thrown at it, Christmas “somehow or other…came just the same”.

The finale for us is always A Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore (Templar, £7.99), a poem that has been published and illustrated in so many different ways, but which for us has to take the form of the foggy rosy-cheek overload of Robert Ingpen’s illustrations. Never mind that nowadays reading this poem sends the kids to bed wondering what “visions of sugar-plums” means rather than having actual visions of sugar plums.

It’s still such a calming and heart-warming way to prepare the family for sleeping through hooves on the rooftop.

Nic Bottomley is the general manager of Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, 14/15 John Street, Bath; tel: 01225 331155; www.mrbsemporium.com