Christmas Reading with the ‘B’ sides, the ‘deep cuts’.

Christmas is such a fabulous time for reading especially a ‘Christmas’ novel. A few readers were enthused by my recent Sherlock Holmes suggestion. Here are some further ‘deep cuts’:

The Box of Delights by John Masefield (1935) A magical, mysterious Christmas adventure. Kay Harker receives a box from an old Punch and Judy man that can shrink him, take him through time, and more. Wolves in England, ancient magic, kidnapped clergy; it’s wonderfully atmospheric and strange.

Greenmantle by John Buchan (1916) A Richard Hannay thriller set during WWI at Christmastime. Adventure, espionage, and a race across Europe. Not “about” Christmas but beautifully uses the season’s atmosphere.

Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie (1938) A proper country house murder mystery set on Christmas Eve. Dysfunctional family, tyrannical patriarch, locked room murder. Christie at her devious best. (US title: “A Holiday for Murder”)

(The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892) A Sherlock Holmes Christmas story. A stolen jewel, a goose, and Holmes in magnanimous mood. Short story, perfect length, genuinely Christmassy in spirit. Previously mentioned.)

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas. Thomas’s prose is musical, nostalgic, funny. “Years and years ago, when I was a boy…” Absolutely beautiful language.

The Dead by James Joyce (from Dubliners, 1914) Set during the Feast of the Epiphany (Twelfth Night). A Christmas party in Dublin becomes a meditation on memory, love, mortality. Joyce’s prose is stunning. The final pages are some of the most beautiful in English literature.

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris (1997) Modern but already a classic. Darkly comic essays about Christmas, including “SantaLand Diaries” about working as a Macy’s elf. Hilarious and cynical; a perfect antidote to sentimentality.

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain by Charles Dickens This is his other Christmas ghost story. Much darker and stranger than Carol, largely forgotten. A man is offered the chance to forget all painful memories…

The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen (1845) Heartbreaking Danish Christmas tale. A poor girl tries to stay warm by lighting matches on Christmas Eve. Beautiful, devastating, classic.

Go read!