Merry Happy Jollyberry

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

There's some good seasonal fiction to enjoy on the newspaper websites : Cinderella in Autumn by Hilary Mantel appears in The Guardian, while The Telegraph has The Dancing Master's Music by William Trevor.

The New Yorker, as always, has a good selection including Helen Simpson's Diary of an Interesting Year, including David Foster Wallace's All That .

Postscript :

Try a Christmas mystery from John Walsh who has a new Sherlock Holmes story up at The Independent.

(Picture by Loquacia Loon.)

More Christmas Fiction

Here are some very nice Christmas related reads for you to enjoy.

You all know the story of Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but did you know that he had a wife? Poet Carol Ann Duffy tells the story of Mrs Scrooge, and Posy Simmonds adds the charming illustrations.

The Times has a couple of very nice Christmas short stories, Arvind Adiga's Last Christmas in Bandra, while Rachel Johnson writes about a Notting Hill yummy mummy who unwraps the truth in Severely Gifted.

In the Telegraph Justine Picardie tells the tale of The Little Cigarette Girl, and Jane Gardam the story of The Virgins of Bruges.

But any thoughts of fiction at Christmas lead back to Dickens, the man who invented the holiday in the form in which we know it (with turkeys and trees and all that marvellous good will and merriment floating around). Michel Kenny in the Boston Globe looks at the circumstances which lead Dickens to create his Christmas classic (and in just six weeks!). You can read the full thing here and listen to it here. (Another nice piece about Dickens and Christmas by John Walsh appears in the Independent.)

Meanwhile Edward Champion at the Guardian has some great online reading suggestions to save you from an overdose on Christmas kitsch.

A very happy Christmas to you all!

Postscript (26/12/08) :

Let me add one more story : A House by the Sea by Helen Dumore appears in the Independent.

Our Authors Sparkle on the Christmas Tree

I have decided to completely rewrite this post to foreground the happy news that came in since my first attempt at it!

You know that Christmas is near when the Best of Year lists start to appear, and a selection of writers and politicians recommend the best reads of the year at the Guardian here, here and here.

Preeta Samarasan's Evening is the Whole Day is nominated as one of the best books of the year in the Guardian list by novelist Ann Tyler! Then on the Times Literary Supplement's Books of the Year List, no other than Ali Smith chooses it, saying of the novel :

Preeta Samarasan’s debut novel, Evening Is the Whole Day (Fourth Estate), was largely ignored this year both by the press and the longlist/shortlist makers. I found it a good, strong, spirit-spiked story about caste and unfairness, as furious, controlled, cool and urgent as Aravind Adiga’s White Tiger, and an introduction to a writer whose talent with narrative structure combines elegance and potency.

Another end of year list of best books of 2008, this time from Bookmarks Magazine via Amazon's Kindle site, and there is Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain!!!

Congrats to both!!

Cats Need Christmas Too

One of my favourite yuletide books of all time has to be Christmas Carols for Cats by Julie and John Hope and beautifully illustrated by Sue Hellard.(Now sadly out of print.)

And yes, I do sing to my moggies though they never seem very impressed (though when was the last time anything impressed them?).

You might like to try it too!

Good Clean Whiskers
(sung to the tune of Good King Wenceslas)

Good clean whiskers wash them out
Comb them straight and even
Face is next now turn about
Back paw, forepaw and then
Lightly on the bit that's white
Shining like a jew-el
Looking good now do it right
Beauty and renew-ew-al.

Away From All Danger
(sung to the tune of Away in a Manger)

Away from all danger, not covered at all
There's sitting a turkey I'm hoping to maul
There's nobody looking, my fate I will seal
And don't you be thinking that guilt I will feel.

O Let Us Clown and Cause Mayhem
(to the tune of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen)

O let us clown and cause mayhem
Upon you we will prey
To overcome the tedium
We shred your new duvet
Let's rummage in the nice clean clothes
So much to do today.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas!

Little Book of Delight

Read a book in just twenty minutes yesterday over a cup of tea.

It was Auggie Wren's Christmas, another of Paul Auster's, and it came free with a copy of his new novel Travels in the Scriptorium, but can be bought separately.

Auster was asked by the New York Times to write a Christmas short story for the Op-Ed page.

He went on to write a story about a writer who is asked to write a short story for the New York Times to appear on Christmas morning. Stumped for what to write about, he receives some unexpected help from the tobacconist whose shop he frequents, a colourful character called Auggie Wren.

Wren offers to tell the author the best Christmas story he has ever heard in exchange for lunch. And in the diner he weaves a tale ... which is unsentimental, has no santas or angels, or trees or snow, but even as it overturns all expectations and blurs moral lines, still touches the heart.

Now if you don't feel like running out and buying the book, and would still love this taste of vintage Auster, you can read the whole thing online, here.

But then, you'd be missing a dimension, because this limited edition print version has funky illustrations by Isol throughout, and is a bit like a kids' book for grown-ups! (Isol's Auggie Wren, right.)

The little story inspired Wayne Wang's 1995 film, Smoke, for which Auster wrote the screenplay and created one of my favourite movie characters . (Blue in the Face features the same cast of characters and was entirely improvised, and filmed on the back of Smoke in just five days.)

Here's Auggie Wren's monologue from the film script and left, a picture of Harvey Keital in the film role.

And am much tickled reading the cast list, to discover that the book thief was played by Auster's twenty-year old son Daniel! As if it isn't bad enough that Auster keeps wandering inside the frame of his own stories, he wants his family in there too!

Is it too early to start your Christmas shopping for 2007?

Christmas Fiction

In the mood for some good online reading? The book pages of the British newspapers have some great yuletide short stories, so put your feet up and enjoy:

The Blue Carbuncle, a Sherlock Holmes mystery by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on the Sunday Times site (and in a companion piece, Alexander McCall Smith examines the appeal of Conan Doyles' work).

The Times also has Jeanette Winterson's Christmas Carol.

An exclusive new short story by Helen Simpson, The Festival of the Immortals, appears on The Guardian site.

And Salley Vickers has written a short story called Mrs Radinsky especially for The Observer.

Enjoy!

Vegetarian Christmas Card

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos turkeys jus wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, an turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don't eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate an not on yu plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I'm on your side.

Read the rest of Benjamin's Zephaniah's poem Talking Turkey on the BBC website and enjoy the video.

And if your Christmas wish is to see the poet perform live ... well it might just come true in 2007!

Wish you all the best for a very happy Christmas!

New Year Greetings

Happy New Year all of you! Staying with my sister and her family in the outer reaches of London. Have been buried under a deluge of Christmasness for the past week which has passed in a glorius haze of overindulgence - these are folks who believe in doing the whole thing properly. My chef brother-in-law, Michael and sister Tess, cooked above and beyond the call of duty - so I've just been drifting from one gormet meal to the next. (Goose, turkey, roast lamb, fresh salmon, game soup, Christmas pudding, Christmas cake, mince pies, sticky toffee pudding, caramelised orange trifle ... )
I got the snow you wished me, thanks - little flurries of it just after Christmas. Enough of it to turn a walk in the woods surrounding the former home of librettist W.S. Gilbert into a Narnian dreamworld. Enough to create magic when we took the kids iceskating in front of historical Somerset House. But it didn't settle for long and the rest of the week has been the usual December mix of wet miserable days and days so bitingly cold that the thoughts seem to get stuck to the inside of your brain. On the coldest day so far we bundled up and went off to the Tower of London with its hundreds of years of grissly history. Today we are off to Tate Modern to have lunch in one of Michael's restaurants and to take in the exhibitions.

Wishing you all the best for agreat 2006!

Tata for Now ...

Ah well. I take my leave of you for the moment. Tomorrow morning I fly off and then I guess I'll be caught up in the whole hectic Christmas thing. It may be a few days before I can get my itchy fingers on a computer keyboard again to report on how the world looks from Britain ....






Hope you all have a very special Christmas!

What Booklovers Look Like

Muntaj sent me some photos from our book club's Christmas party way back in December(as these things tend to be!):

You can see my poxy Christmas tree - a sad remnant of its former self - topiaried into lollipop roundness by my husband. And I'm the loony standing directly behind it.

This is what mad keen booklovers look like. Scary isn't it?

Incidentally, a very nice article from the Guardian about book clubs.

This was my Christmas Day.

One tatty old fir tree, rescued from the garden and pressed into service at the last moment looked not too bad when covered in lights and tinsel.

One piece of music on the stereo played over and over as I sing along - Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols which brings back memories of school carol concerts I sang - which to me were the essence of Christmas when I was growing up.

This little babe just few days old is come to rifle satan's hold ...

(A special Christmas memory from a few years ago - stuck in a horrendous traffic jam along Jalan Damansara - found that my friend and colleague Becky had also sung in choirs and knew several of the same pieces. We gave an inpromtu concert performance of Ceremony of Carols and excerts from Britten's St. Nicholas Canata as we inched slowly forward. Other passengers a little bemused to say the least.)

One present under the tree - mine to him. A couple of CDs -soundtrack to City of Ghosts and another by Cambodian/American band Dengue Fever. "Thanks very much," he says, "but I suppose you bought it with MY money anyway".

One gift for me from my sister. She knows I'm a sucker for earrings.

Several SMS messages on my phone wishing me Happy Christmas. One I don't want to delete ... "To my dear friend."

One visitor. "It's a good thing we have open houses in Malaysia" he said as he bounded up the steps. "Not like in Britain," he added implying that we are a tight, cold lot who haven't a clue about hospitality and interpersonal relationships. I'd said to him on the phone "Sure, drop by for some mince pies. Anytime." He stayed for seven hours, laughing and joking with the Old Man on the verandah as I provided a stream of food and booze. But I like to hear the two of them teasing and being pretty damn rude to each other across the stupid racial divide that keeps so many folks here apart.

One visitor who didn't turn up at the very last moment. Too tired, she said. Too sad, I know. Could weep for her.

One over-ambitious Christmas Meal which took hours to prepare. Mango prawn salad. Roast beef (not as nice as it should have been because my oven is playing up and I couldn't get the temperature right), roast and mash potatoes, brussels sprouts in an orange honey sauce, carrots with garlic and lemon, gravy. Christmas pud (bought, I confess - wish I'd made my own.)

One hour late - our dinner guests arrived. Two people soon to be three. My much loved nephew and heavily pregnant niece-in-law. "Next year our daughter is going to be fascinated by your tree ... ."

A not-too-bad-in-the-end Christmas. Which is much better than I'd expected.