Advent photo 23 - Christmas books

Almost at the end of the Advent photos and in the absence of lovely snowy scenes I'm dredging the barrel to find something Christmassy to photograph.

So, here we have my pile of Christmas books. They live from one year to another on top of the bookshelves,

but will be moving with us, although the shelves are fixed and staying here.
The books have been gathered from charity shops and second-hand book sales over the years. Some are children's books and many are books with snippets of information about various aspects of Christmas - they came in handy when I compiled quizzes for the Suffolk Smallholders Newsletter. Lots of ideas for making food gifts or decorating cakes in some. If you've never read Jilly Cooper - How to survive Christmas, I can recommend it to make you smile. A Suffolk Christmas is one of a series produced to cover many of the counties of England. Unplug The Christmas Machine comes from the States from Amazon many years ago.
After taking the photo The Oxford Book of Christmas Poems stayed off the shelves to be looked at last night and I came across a poem by John Betjeman that I hadn't seen before.

Here are just 4 lines from the poem Advent 1955
..........................We raise the price of things in shops
                          We give plain boxes fancy tops
                           And lines which traders cannot sell
                           Thus parcell'd go extremely well.........................
So nothing changes! 

The jigsaw puzzle is finished just in time to be cleared away, all 1000 pieces present and correct - you can never be 100% sure when buying secondhand.

If my friend doesn't want it, we will probably put it back on Ebay.

I have been BAD - I bought myself some books from The Book People as my Christmas present from Col and have read one already! Well I had(!) to because I also bought the same set of 3 for a friend for Christmas and I needed to check they were OK. They were an author I'd not come across before  (from Canada- though born in England- writing books set in this country) but as they are crime fiction set in WWII I knew they were just right for my friend. The set of 3 were £4.99 and the author is Maureen Jennings. The first in the series is Season of Darkness. I can't say it was the best written book I've ever read -a few American-isms -  but saying that I did enjoy it and it's quite fat so took me several evenings to read. The 4th is due out next August and she has also written another historical mystery series set in Canada. My friend doesn't read this blog - she says- so I've not given the game away!

Back with the last of the advent photos tomorrow
Sue