Christmas = mango-covered fingers

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Ahh, Christmas. Mangoes. Cards in the post. Presents. Family. A new straw hat. Surprisingly cool weather. And then back to work.

I was reduced to re-reading books off the shelves at Christmas, a terrible state of affairs, so I was happily surprised to find that the public library was open - I had thought they were closed between Christmas and New Years Eve. I walked up there in my lunch hour to stock up, while Dad, who is staying with us over Christmas before heading to China for a year, sat at one of the study desks listening to his Mandarin discs.

I was browsing for James Patterson, after reading about his Women’s Murder Club series, which I thought sounded rather good. I eventually found a few of his books, but every single one of them was co-written with someone else. Very odd. I’ve seen extremely prolific fantasy authors co-write with other extremely prolific fantasy authors, but never a mystery/thriller author. I picked one up anyway - Honeymoon, by James Patterson (with Howard Roughan!).

Also, Jaclyn Moriarty has a new book out - I thought it was a sort of vague sequel to her book for adults, I Have a Bed of Buttermilk Pancakes, but according to her blog, “It’s a revised version… In many ways, it’s the same book, but there’s a lot of new material about a girl named Listen Taylor.” Wah. I wonder if I will enjoy it? I must admit, my memories of Buttermilk Pancakes are a little vague, so I probably will. I love seeing new books by Moriarty - she writes wonderfully funny books, and used to be a lawyer, which makes me wonder if perhaps I could write wonderfully funny books one day. [Ed: Not if you don't spend any time writing books, m'dear.]

I always used to have a great big pile of new books at Christmas, but now that I’m an adult and read ridiculous amounts, people don’t tend to buy them for me anymore, as they never know what I’ve read. Which is quite reasonable really, but I loved having fresh books at Christmas time, and smelling their brand new pages, and forcing myself to read slowly so that they’d last. Now that I keep track of what I’m reading at Goodreads, perhaps I could start keeping “to buy” list - for my own reference, really, as I often forget what books I’ve been wanting to acquire. And then I could take the money I got given for Christmas and head off to the bookstore by myself - no unwrapping, but less chance of disappointment as well.

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