Yuletide Reads :
A few Faber authors - and a couple of our editors - name some of their favourite books to read over the Christmas period.
'What better yuletide read than the book which shaped, if not invented, our 'traditional Christmas': Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. I recommend putting all thoughts of the ghastly 3D Jim Carrey spectacular aside and revisiting the novella. I come back to it again and again.
Christmas has also come to be associated with three particular genres: detective fiction, the ghost story, and humour. Any collection of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories is a real treat, but a particular Christmas Sherlock Holmes favourite of mine is The Blue Carbuncle with its Christmas goose club setting. As for ghosts stories, you can't beat an M.R.R. James anthology ... which makes short stories quite a feature of an Ardagh Christmas too.
As for a humorous read at Christmas, the funniest book ever written has to be the fictional autobiography 'August Carp by Himself' (actually by Sir Henry Howarth Bashford). Since its publication in 1927, Carp has gone in and out of print with such alarming irregularity that it leads one to question whether there is, in fact, a God... but, despite this, season's greetings and - er - God bless us, every one.'
-- Philip Ardagh, author of the 'Grubtown' books (www.philipardagh.co.uk)
'There’s nothing better at Christmas than reading an absolutely terrifying ghost story, and Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black remains the most frightening ghost story I have ever read. It’s hard to identify quite why. There’s not much of a plot other than a luckless young attorney’s visit to a remote house in Norfolk, which for the most part is cut off by water, and the nature of the threat remains brilliantly intangible throughout.
The triumph of the book is the relentlessly oppressive, bleak, doom-laden atmosphere which Hill sustains faultlessly throughout, interrupted only by a couple of deliciously blood-curdling moments of pure terror.
How she didn’t drive herself mad while writing this I’ll never know, the idea of The Woman in Black herself has haunted me ever since I first read it over Christmas when I was a teenager, and I still like to scare myself every few years by re-reading this as the nights draw in. It’s also worth mentioning her short Christmas novella Lanterns Across the Snow which is charming and not scary at all and which I must dig out again this December for a read.'
-- John Grindrod, author of Shouting at the Telly
'My father wrote two Christmas books for children: London Snow and A Christmas Card. London Snow is such a great title. And the book is set in the South London of my childhood; mainly in an old sweetshop in Battersea that now probably sells architectural mouldings or scented candles. But A Christmas Card probably edges it for me. You'd have to read it to understand why.'
-- Marcel Theroux, author of Far North, The Paperchase and A Blow to the Heart
'Where Do Comedians Go When They Die: Journeys of a Stand-Up by Milton Jones. Very funny and the most accurate portrayal of what it's like being a working comic.'
-- Harry Hill
'Between lots of Topsy and Tim, I'll read my next book group book - The Road - which I've been kind of longing for and dreading in equal measure. Revolution in the Head by Ian McDonald, in which he anatomises every Beatles song, would be my perfect Christmas book: great to escape into these little bursts of music documentary between the mince pies and family tensions.'
-- Hannah Griffiths at Faber
'I hate the Scottish winters and always look for something that reminds me of the high skies of home. Peter Carey’s Illywhacker got me through last Christmas. It’s set where I grew up - Victoria, Australia - and made me feel warm and happy. The narrator is fabulously unreliable and Peter Carey’s writing is delicious and hilarious.'
-- Helen Fitzgerald, author of My Last Confession and Dead Lovely
'At Christmas I love reading long books. I'm saving the last book in the Stieg Larsson trilogy - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest - to read this Christmas, though I don't know if I'll be able to hold out for that long: I found the first two incredibly addictive, brilliant and fun. And on a more literary note, I'm also planning to read Hermione Lee's biography of Edith Wharton: one of my favourite biographers on one of my favourite novelists.'
-- Sarah Savitt at Faber