Forget quiz books and quirky almanacs, this year treat your loved ones to A Guinea Pig Pride and Prejudice or the Jeremy Corbyn colouring book
Having dutifully ground through improving literature with your book group, it’s time to kick back, relax, and read something you wouldn’t usually sample but might actually enjoy, such as the Bible or the Radio Times Christmas double issue. Given that this has been a year of unprecedented global misery, the best place to start is, of course, with a lightweight celebrity autobiography. ’Slebmoirs that won’t plunge you further into despair about the plight of humankind include Danny Baker’s Going Off Alarming (Phoenix) and Guy Martin’s When You Dead, You Dead (Virgin). But Patti Smith’s M Train (Bloomsbury) is better than all of them put together. Honestly, just read that.
As for the other staple Christmas fare, as bland and predictable as turkey and about as welcome as a plate of brussels sprouts, there are the usual quiz books, Bluffer’s Guides and quirky books of facts to choose from – among which one might select, for stocking-filler purposes only, The A-Z of Pointless (Coronet) by Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman, Thomas W Hodgkinson and Hubert van den Bergh’s How to Sound Cultured (Icon) and Ray Hamilton’s M25: A Circular Tour of the London Orbital (Summersdale). Watch their eyes light up when they receive their inscribed copy of Ross McCammon’s The Impostor’s Handbook: The Rules of Success for Those of Us Who Have No Idea How to Play the Game (Elliott & Thompson)! How they laughed when they received A Guinea Pig Pride and Prejudice (Bloomsbury) with their tangerine!
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