Today I'm back to Christmas Traditions, this time about books I read in the few weeks before Yule. I find just the title of some books to be very evocative, such as A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I remember my Father reading it to my brother and I on the run up to Christmas every year when we were children. We would usually be sitting by the inglenook fireside, warming our toes before bedtime, with the fragrant Christmas tree decorated and sparkling with tinsel and baubles in the bay window.
Now I have added several more books to the list I like to try and read on the run up to Yule, some are classics, some not so well known. My favourites are not all reading books in the usual sense - The Snowman by Raymond Briggs is actually a picture book - however, it loses nothing by not having words on the pages. In many ways I prefer it that way, as when I read it with December and June the lack of written words frees them to make up their own story about what is happening in the pictures.
The Twelve Days of Christmas as rewritten by John Julius Norwich and illustrated by Quentin Blake has also been on my list for sometime as a wonderful dose of light relief and which directly led me to finding Frank Kelly's hilarious version on YouTube :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQkF7fpw-wI
The Box of Delights by John Masefield is fairly new to the list, a book I had meant to read for years after having seen the wonderful BBC adaptation on TV many years ago (which I also watch on the run up to Christmas every year!).
My most recent additions to the list are The Return of the Light by Carolyn McVicker Edwards, a collection of twelve stories from around the world for the Winter Solstice and Do Nothing Christmas is Coming by Stephen Cottrell.
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