Book Nook: holiday reads

By Marian Hermez, Third Year, International Business Management

Are you already feeling festive this Christmas season? Are your days filled with going Christmas shopping, listening to Michael Bublé and Mariah Carey on repeat, and lighting the most perfect Christmas candle? Or maybe you’re like me, and ever since the start of December, you’ve been wanting to enjoy the festive season but that dreadful feeling of your deadlines approaching has taken over.

Well, I have a solution for you! Here are four festive books to get you back into the Christmas spirit once you’ve hit that ‘submit’ button.

Let’s start with Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, a classic that most of you probably have on your bookshelves. If you haven’t read a Christmas Carol then I recommend you do! The story centers around an elderly lawyer called Ebenezer Scrooge, who is a Grinch in every sense of the word. He dislikes celebrating the holidays because they’re all about love, family and charity, while Scrooge himself values wealth and money. One Christmas Eve, he gets a visit from his old friend and business partner Jacob Marley, who – according to Scrooge – is “as dead as a doornail”. So yes, Marley’s ghost visits him in the aim of warning him that if he doesn’t change his attitude, then he might end up like Marley after death, roaming the earth being punished for his greed. Marley also warns Scrooge that more ghosts will visit him that night: the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Future, and there for Scrooge, starts a tale of adventure and reminiscing.

However, if you’re more of a movie person, you might want to read The Holiday Swap by Maggie Knox because it has all the vibes of a Hallmark movie and Nancy Meyer’s The Holiday. Twin sisters, Charlie and Cass, live very different lives. Charlie is a chef in L.A who is the star of a reality baking show and Cass is a baker who runs the family business back in their hometown. When Cassie gets hit on the head on set, she loses her sense of smell and taste, both integral to her job as the show judge. Cass, on the other hand, is trying to avoid a persistent ex while struggling to run the family business. Looking for an escape, the sister agree to switch places for the Christmas season, and of course, it can never be that simple!

Lastly, my final recommendation is a book trilogy. Rachel Cohn and David Levithan’s Dash & Lily trilogy includes Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily and Mind the Gap, Dash & Lily. The trilogy spans from how Dash and Lily first meet, to navigating the first year of their relationship, and then to dealing with a long-distance relationship when they must go their separate ways for university. The first book shows how they meet in an unconventional way when Christmas-loving Lily leaves a red journal in The Strand in New York filled with clues and dares in the hopes of finding a boyfriend who likes the same things she does. Instead, the journal ends up with Dash, very much a Christmas-hater, and so their story starts.

This trilogy is one of my favourites to read around Christmas, especially because it is set in December and in New York; name a better combination! I also love it because in the third book we get to see the familiar scenes of London and Oxford and see Dash’s experience as a university student in the UK.

Though very different, all these books are certainly going to put you in a festive mood. So pick one, make yourself a cup of hot chocolate and start reading!

Featured Images- courtesy of Marian Hermez

What are you reading this festive season?