Happy Christmas everybody. It is Will here and it is that time of year again when us Waterstones vloggers
like to get together and to tell you about two books.
One: the book that we would like to give to people this Christmas.
Two: the book that we would like to receive this Christmas.
So for me the book that I would like to give this Christmas
It's the book that I read on the first day of the year and it is still my favorite novel of the year it is
Lanny by Max Porter, now available in this quite frankly stunning special edition with this lovely new hardcover
It's got this lovely gold foiled leaf on it... just, you know, come on.
It's a beautiful gift. It is of course also a wonderful book. It's a book that manages to combine
wonderful inventive language and writing with a huge big beating heart in the centre.
It is just a fantastic novel
So I cannot recommend it highly enough. And as for the book that I would like to receive for Christmas...
Well, as you know, I'm a massive, massive graphic novel fan, a massive, massive Chris Ware fan, and so therefore
this baby: Rusty Brown by Chris Ware is the book that I would like to find underneath my Christmas tree.
If you know anybody who likes graphic novels, they will also appreciate finding this under the tree.
Go and have a look at the book on Waterstones.com
there's a few pictures there that show some of the amazing stuff that's inside this book
As ever it has a cover which kind of folds out into an amazing work of art and it tells several character's
stories on the same day, concurrently. It's just an incredible piece of graphic art.
And I cannot wait to get stuck in during my Christmas break. There you go. That's my two books
Here is somebody else!
Merry Christmas everybody! I can't believe it's so close to Christmas. I am very, very excited.
So the book that I'm giving to everyone this year is Becky Chambers To Be Taught If Fortunate.
This is the proof copy
I'm obviously giving the beautiful finished hardback.
If you haven't read Becky Chambers, you need to change that immediately.
She writes sci-fi that got me into reading sci-fi
I thought I didn't like sci-fi and then I read Becky Chambers and I was like, okay, maybe I do,
because she is an incredible writer. She effortlessly includes diversity
and she just explores what it means to be human.
Which is at its heart, what sci-fi should do.
It's a really gentle, lovely look at humanity and the kindness humans can show each other but also the
consequences of our actions and I think with, you know,
this increased awareness of climate change and the problems that are occurring because of it
Becky Chambers encourages you to think about the world
that you live in and how
you can affect it and
how a lot of change can come from just being kind. And at the very top of my Christmas list is
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, but the new illustrated edition by Elise Hurst.
It is absolutely incredible. Every time I walk past it in the shop I just kind of like pick it up and look at it longingly.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a really
lovely Neil Gaiman story about childhood and memory and magic and fairy tale.
It's a beautiful celebration of kind of childlike imagination and how we forget when we're grown-up
what matters to us when we're children. It also has a cow in it called Rhiannon
which made me very excited when I read that.
But it's just one of my favorite of his and one I reread all the time
so I would love to reread it with these gorgeous new illustrations. Thanks for watching and Merry Christmas!
Hi, it's Imie here. Happy Christmas. And so the book that I will be giving to people this year is
Everything I Know about Love by Dolly Alderton
which is a brilliant memoir which is written by a columnist who has explored this
in quite a lot of her articles.
It's a woman in her mid-20s
exploring love, relationships, heartbreak and how they go around with her experience of life.
And it's just brilliantly written.
It's hilarious. It's heart-wrenching. It's moving. It's just brilliant.
So if you know someone who likes memoirs or a woman in her twenties,
this is something to give to your friends, your family,
it's just absolutely brilliant. And then the book that I will want to receive this year
Lisa Taddeo's Three Women which
sounds like a brilliant look in a kind of like true crime feel, but it's not true crime
Looking at three woman's exploration of sexuality,
relationships, love; which seems to be a theme between the two books and
I would love to receive it because it's just had such good reviews and I've looked at it so many times
on our table we have at work.
And I keep wanting to buy it and I just don't and I don't know why and
so therefore I would love to receive it this Christmas.
And if I don't I'm sure I'll use my Christmas money to buy it
So, there we go
They're my two books for Christmas, and I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas and I'll see you soon.
Hey, it's Naomi and the book I'm gonna be giving the most this year is
The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
It's a book I read earlier this year. I did a little review on it so you can check that if you like
But it's a bit of a murder mystery a bit of a gothic novel
It's absolutely fantastic. It's just been nominated for the Costa First Novel Award.
And there are so many people in my personal life
I think that would enjoy and appreciate
receiving this book for Christmas and I've recommended it to so many customers as well.
So that's a great one to check out. And for the book I'd most like to receive this year
I'm going to slightly cheat and talk about a book that I have received
But I haven't read it yet: The Eighth Life.
It is a 900-page epic about a Georgian family living in revolutionary Russia.
It has been nominated for some awards before, however it's only just been translated into English.
What with moving house and then I was poorly, I haven't had the time to sit down and give this book the
attention it needs so I'm really looking forward to doing that in the new year.
And this might be an excellent wild-card book for that reader in your life that is really hard to buy for.
I think this might be a really good shout. So thank you and Merry Christmas!