Christmas is coming and you know what that means – I go back over my wish list of books from the year and pick the ones I haven’t been able to justify buying but really want to read and ask for them for Christmas gifts. My family have already had the key books from the list sent to them, so I’m hoping some of them might already be wrapped up with a tag with my name on somewhere!
As usual, most of this list is hardback non-fiction. Because when you have as big a to-read pile as I do, you can’t justify £20 and up on a book. But these do also tend to be the sort of books that never go on kindle deal and will still be relatively expensive in paper back. So actually maybe it’s sensible to buy them in hardback. So let’s start with Astor by Anderson Cooper – his book on the Vanderbilts was a gift request a few years ago in one of those hazy Covid years when I didn’t do a Christmas request post and just sent the list directly to my family (thanks mum and dad for buying it) and now the CNN anchor and his collaborator have switched focus away from Cooper’s own family to another of the Gilded Age big names.
Also firmly in the Rich People Problems area of my wheel house, Jonathan Miles’s Once Upon a Time World looks at the growth and development of the French Riviera. I’ve already read Anne De Courcy’s book about Chanel and the Riviera (again thanks mum) and Mary S Lovell’s book The Riviera Set, but I had a nosy at this in Daunt this week and it looks very readable and like it might have some new and different stuff to those other two. Or at least not huge amounts of crossover.
Moving on to another of my areas of special interest – Hollywood. Michael Schulman’s Oscar Wars came out at the start of the year and I’m always interested in machinations – and this promises behind the scenes details from Oscar history and new dramas we haven’t heard about before. While we were on holiday in September, I read Nick de Semlyen’s Wild and Crazy Guys which is about the comedians who came out of sketch shows in the early 80s, so to even it out i would also like to read Shawn Levy’s In On the Joke about female stand ups in the 50s and 60s. I liked Levy’s The Castle on Sunset, and he seemed in that to have all the right connections to get some interesting stuff for this.
Laurence Leamer’s Hitchcock’s Blondes as the title suggests is about the blonde actresses who starred in Hitchcock movies. I’ve already read a bit about a few of them and Hitchcock has popped up in a bunch of my other reading and I’ve come to the conclusion that he was pretty toxic but I’d like to read the details! I’d also like to read Deliberate Cruelty by Roseanne Montillo which is about one of Truman Capote’s Swans who he accused of murder in the thinly disguised short story that brought about his social downfall.
And then the fiction. I loved Stephen Rowley’s The Guncle back when I read it, and the editor was also great. For some reason his books are really hard to get over here so his latest, The Celebrants is on this list because I can’t justify the imported paperback (and it took years for imported copies The Guncle to hit Foyles Charing Cross Road’s shelves) and it doesn’t come in kindle in the UK.
And as if I hadn’t already put enough Rich People books on this list already, I’m going there in the fiction too with Social Engagement by Avery Carpenter Forrey. The blurb for this has a heroine whose wedding had imploded just hours after the vows and promises to show you how she got there. The reviews veer between “this is brilliant and funny” and “I hate the heroine, she causes her own problems” so I’m optimistic it could be right up my street. In a similar vein, I’d love to find Becky Chalsen’s Kismet under the tree – this has a pair of twins and their childhood friend turned husband to one twin on holiday on Fire Ireland and trouble brewing around the other twin’s wedding and their thirtieth birthdays…
I mentioned Beatriz Williams’ latest back when it came out, but I still don’t own The Beach at Summerly and given all the spy stories in the news at the moment, the appeal of a novel about Cold War era-espionage has not decreased at all! I also still haven’t read the latest Veronica Speedwell, although as the next one comes out in the new year there’s a chance it will go on offer on kindle in the run up to that. And I don’t own any of them in actual physical copies yet, so getting one poses a risk that I will want them all!
I think thats probably enough, isn’t it? I should say i had to revise this a few times as I realised that some of the books that I was putting on the list were books that were on last year’s list – which you can find here if you want it. And mum, if you’re reading I know there is more here than I sent to you guys but I picked the ones I thought you would mostly likely like to borrow to suggest to you all!
Happy book buying everyone!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
Yes indeed, I have selfishly chosen the ones I’d like to read, to borrow from Biblioteque Verity in due course.
I reckon I could have a pretty good guess at which ones they’ll be, but I’m not going to spoil the fun. I bought your Christmas book this week and I’m quite pleased with myself with my choice. And I want to read it when you’re done with it too…