BOOKISH FINDS: Christmas Gifts

So my To Be Read pile has gotten bigger again… but it’s not my fault if people buy me books. Although, I did ask for some of them. It’s hard to be a bibliophile and not ask for at least on book related item for Christmas. What else are you supposed to ask for? You just can’t go wrong with a book (in my eyes anyway). This year, I got a super-exciting bookish gift from my long-suffering family: my mother is taking me to Hay-on-Wye festival in May! She might not survive two nights with me dribbling over all the bookshops and poor, unsuspecting authors. It will be a full time job trying to rein me in. The scent of a thousand books might push me over the edge. I can’t wait for the event programme to be released in April. As if that wasn’t enough, I got more literary delights in the form of books:

BOOKISH BITES: Snowflake Shortbread

Christmas is just four days away. Is anyone else getting really excited for it? I’ve eaten so many mince pies and Christmas tree chocolates in the last few weeks. I’ve drunk every mulled beverage you can think of. Carols and Christmas songs have become the soundtrack to my life. I have gone Christmas crazy. I haven’t watched any Christmas films though, which seems a bit ridiculous. I’ll need to remedy that soon! To spread the Christmas cheer I decided to make some wintery shortbread. If you read the blog you’ll know I make shortbread more often than I should. I followed a simple shortbread recipe but I snuck in cinnamon, lots of cinnamon. I even went the extra mile and decorated my snowflakes, admittedly messily, with white chocolate.

They are the perfect accompaniment to mulled wine but also a great festive nibble to eat when snuggled up with Jane Eyre.

MISC: Winter Reads

Okay, it’s halfway through December and Christmas is only ten days away. How did that happen? I feel like I went to sleep in October and November snuck off while I was in bed. So some people might say it’s a little late to be posting about my winter reads but I live in the North of England and winter seems to linger here into March. Actually winter would eat its way into spring if it could. Some years you have to beat it away with sticks. Anyway, my point is the nights will be long, dark and cold for the next few months and I have the perfect books planned to snuggle up with.

REVIEW: Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell and We Don’t Know What We’re Doing by Thomas Morris

In an attempt to keep to my word, I’ve started to pick my way through the towering to be read pile that’s taken over the space beneath my bed. We’re not going to mention the two books that accidentally fell into my bag at a charity shop last week- that didn’t happen. The first books I’ve chosen are short story collections I bought at Waterstones during a university trip. Yes, my Masters course took a trip to Waterstones as a lecture and it was magical. The reason I chose them was because they felt like they had something in common with my own writing and as they are the first collection by each writer, I thought I might pick up a few things.

Both collections are routed in place. Lucy Caldwell’s stories take place on the streets of Belfast while Thomas Morris depicts small town life in Caerphilly but both these places have well established identities and the characters in the collections face difficulties when they don’t fit the mould.