So, what do we have here then? Starting at the top, you see Simon’s Cat, the book based on the tremendously popular YouTube videos. I’ve been rather a fan of them over the last few months, so I was delighted with this. Also at the top there is a copy of The Bride’s Instruction Manual. Yes, the big event of 2010 (or early 2011, depending on what we can book!) will be my wedding to Boyfriend, who shall henceforth be known here at Future Husband, or FH. This very useful book was a present was from Academic Friend, who will be serving as one of my Maids of Awesome, along with Scottish Friend.

The four paperbacks below were all books I bought with some Christmas money in Blackwell’s Boxing Day sale. Legend of a Suicide by David Vann has been receiving a great deal of hype in the blogosphere and beyond over the last few months and I have to say that that much hype tends to make me rather suspicious. However, Dovegrey Reader wrote a wonderful post that convinced me that I would like to give it a bash after all. Lo and behold, there was a signed copy in the 3 for 2, so home it came with me.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, and I’ve heard some really wonderful things about it. Since there was a 3 for 2 going, it seemed like a good opportunity to give it a shot. Similarly, Pompeii by Mary Beard will be my first foray into ancient Roman history. I’m a regular reader of Mary Beard’s blog, so I’m hoping to tap a new seam of reading starting with this. Next down is Telling Tales by Melissa Katsoulis, a history of literary hoaxes, starting with Dionysus the Renegade faking a Sophocles text in 400 BC and tracing the history right up until James Frey and his embellished autobiography meaning an embarrassing appearance on the Oprah show where he had to apologise.

Then we hit the hardbacks, and there is my current reading matter, Bluestockings: The Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education by Jane Robinson. This was a present from FH, and a very welcome one too. It’s full of wonderful anecdotes about ordinary girls and women getting to university despite huge opposition. Some had families who couldn’t – or wouldn’t – support them, emotionally or financially; some were held back by societal pressure. And it wasn’t always plain sailing if and when they got to university either. Female science students in Balliol College, Oxford, were consigned to a basement laboratory that lacked adequate ventilation, with one girl reporting that she was physically pushed by her tutor up to the tiny window because she was making Carbon Monoxide, and the tube didn’t have adequate sealant. There are also some real tear-jerking stories about girls who were given incredible charity by those around them, such as the girl who was accepted to Girton, Cambridge, but who didn’t win funding. She was about the turn down the place since her family couldn’t afford to send her without subsidy, but a teacher brought news at the last minute that funding had been found, and she could go after all. It was only many years later that the graduate discovered that the “funding” had come from her teacher’s own pocket.

Next down is Zadie Smith’s collection of essays, Changing My Mind, which is an absolutely stunning object as well as something I’ve been very keen to read. She covers all sorts of topics – not just books – and it was a half-price bargain in the bookshop. Lovely. The last two books were also presents from FH. Tristram Hunt’s acclaimed biography of Friedrich Engels, The Frock-Coated Communist, and Stefan Bollman’s illustrated book Women Who Write. Lovely stuff.

So, now I’m buckling down for a week of unadulterated reading pleasure, as well as seeing if I can get through a pile of chocolate and leftover turkey (not at the same time).

My first pick is a book I actually said I was going to read last Christmas but didn’t. The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams.

From her lookout on the first floor, Ginny watches and waits for her adored younger sister to return to the crumbling mansion that was once their idyllic childhood home. Vivien has not stepped foot in the house since she left, forty seven years ago; Ginny, the reclusive lepidopterist, has rarely ventured outside it. The remembrance of their youth, of loss, and of old rivalries plays across Ginny’s mind. Why is Vivi coming home? Ginny has been selling off the family furniture over the years, gradually shutting off each wing of the house and retreating into the precise routines and isolation that define her days. Only the attic remains untouched. There, collected over several generations, are walls lined with pinned and preserved Bordered Beauties and Rusty Waves, Feathered Footmen and Great Brocades, Purple Cloud, Angle Shades, the Gothic and the Stranger…

I seem to have read quite a lot this year focused around crumbling old mansions (The Little Stranger; Charlotte Riddell’s Weird Tales) so this is fitting. That and the fact I’ve been meaning to read it since I bought it 18 months ago.

I’ve also chosen a classic: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. I’ve seen the series, I’m planning to watch the Christmas special, I have enjoyed what I’ve already read by Gaskell, and it’s really quite short. Why on earth haven’t I read it before? Anyway, what’s Christmas without a bit of Victorian literature?

The next one is a review copy that Canongate kindly sent me months ago. The Earth Hums in B Flat, by Mari Strachan concerns a young girl who can fly in her sleep. Told from the child’s perspective, it is the story of how she sees a dead body during one of her night flights. However, the murdered man only goes missing a day or so later. Can she see the future as well as fly in her sleep? Elaine at Random Jottings did a lovely post on this book a while ago that reminded me I am still to read this book.

Last but not least, I’ve chosen another review copy, this time a recent one from Faber. Publishing in March next year, The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Men and Women Today is written by Kat Banyard of The Fawcett Society. The blurb:

Today it is widely believed that women and men have achieved equality. This, quite simply, is an illusion.

Women working in the UK earn on average 23% less than men.
Two-thirds of the world’s illiterate people are women.
The conviction rate for rape is only 6.5% in the UK.
1.5 million people in the UK have an eating disorder, 90% of them women.
During the 1990s the number of men paying for sex acts in the UK doubled.
One in four women living in the UK will experience violence at the hands of a current or former partner.

In The Equality Illusion campaigner Kat Banyard argues passionately that women still face inequality in almost every aspect of their lives, and that feminism is still one of the most urgent and relevant social justice campaigns of today.

Banyard sets out the major issues for twenty-first-century feminism, from the growing power of the sex industry to the pay gap to the myths and taboos which still surround rape and domestic violence.

At the heart of the book are more than a hundred interviews Banyard conducted with a diverse range of women who have been affected by gender inequality. Their stories show how sexism is intimately woven into people s everyday lives and how it hurts both women and men. Banyard also draws on her own campaign experience as well as academic research.

I suspect this will be preaching to the converted but I’m really looking forward to reading what Banyard has to say. If it is as good as I’m hoping it will be, then chances are you’ll be hearing an awful lot about this one!

How about a bag made out of a book?

I really, really want this banned books bracelet.

The perfect accompianment to being curled up in a chair with a book. A mug bearing the legend “She is too fond of books & it has turned her brain.”

Everyone has room for a literary poster.

Then there’s the Bookchase board game.

There’s also a Penguin Bookchase board game. I have this at home (thanks EJ!).

“Movies: Ruining the Book since 1920″

You could always tell people that you would rather be reading Jane Austen.

This baby’s bib is adorable.

Who wouldn’t want an alphabet ice cube tray?

Dear Boyfriend bought me three pieces of booky joy: The Victorians (Illustrated Edition) by A.N. Wilson, Bedlam: London and its Mad by Catharine Arnold, and the graphic novel version of A Christmas Carol. From others I received Charlotte Bronte: A Passionate Life by Lyndall Gordon, The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum by Sarah Wise, Thou Art the Man by M.E. Braddon (thank you Catherine!), and The Pillars of the Earth and A World Without End by Ken Follet.

Last but not least, from one of my brothers I received The Seance: A Novel by John Harwood. The next best thing to a Victorian ghost story is surely a ghost story set in Victorian London.

Now, between all of these and the DVDs of the second series of The Wire, and No Country for Old Men, just when exactly am I going to write that essay?

Right, I’m off home to Glasgow. I will have very little interweb access, so you shall all just have to pine for me.

Merry Christmas!

[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1BHLEjxjj2c]

I’ll be away from the interweb for a few days now. See you all after Christmas, and may you all eat, drink, and be merry.

Kirsty x

• I asked my fellow OUPers for their favourite books of 2008
• Batgirl demands equal pay (via Feministe)
• Also from Feministe: Sorry ladies, but your vagina conflicts with my morals
• Yes, I am entering the Times/Waterstone’s Christmas quiz. The prize is £500 of book vouchers. OF COURSE I’m going to enter!
• Les Miserables sequel novels are allowed to go ahead
• Carol Ann Duffy writes a Christmas poem for The Guardian
• There’s a new book about Charles Dickens and his attempts to help destitute women, and I really want to read it. Perhaps I could buy it with all those Waterstone’s vouchers which I shall so surely win

Once upon a time, it matters little when, and in stalwart England, it matters little where, a fierce battle was fought. It was fought upon a long summer day when the waving grass was green. Many a wild flower formed by the Almighty Hand to be a perfumed goblet for the dew, felt its enamelled cup filled high with blood that day, and shrinking dropped. Many an insect deriving its delicate colour from harmless leaves and herbs, was stained anew that day by dying men, and marked its frightened way with an unnatural track. The painted butterfly took blood into the air upon the edges of its wings. The stream ran red. The trodden ground became a quagmire, whence, from sullen pools collected in the prints of human feet and horses’ hoofs, the one prevailing hue still lowered and glimmered at the sun.

continued…