My Family Christmas Traditions

Christmas is different for me now.

It’s smaller and quieter and bring an impossible sadness with it now my mum’s not around - it’s just me and my sister (and the cat) in the house now. This will be the third Christmas without her and we’re slowly refining our own Christmas traditions and finally having enough surety to not be swayed by the duty my dad now feels to have us with him for Christmas.

We’ve carried on a lot of mum’s Christmas traditions, but we’ve also introduced a few of our own.

Seeing a pantomime on Christmas Eve is something my mum took us to every single year and a tradition we’ve loved keeping up ourselves. Sadly, we’re not going this year as my sister is a pastry chef and she’s not allowed to book time off, but Christmas Eve would usually be spent booing and cheering and singing and cringing.

Chocolate coins are a guarantee under the Christmas tree. My mum bought us a bag of chocolate coins every year without fail for as long as I can remember. When she died it was close to Christmas and it was already going to be impossible so I decided that I would try and keep the holiday as close to mum’s as possible; I’ve made sure that Amy gets a bag of chocolate coins in her stocking for the last three years.

As kids, we were never allowed to open our presents until after we were bathed and dressed. The logic behind this was sound and reasonable, but it’s a tradition we left behind and now we open our presents like everyone else – in our pyjamas and dressing gown!

We never had stockings as kids, we had Santa sacks instead, but since I became the one giving my sister most of her presents I wanted to find a way to make it seem like more. We decided we'd get each other a stocking worth of silly, funny presents that only adds up to £10 every year. We’ve had princess chapsticks, a slinky, bubbles, glow sticks and tiaras – it’s a lot of fun to start the day.

We watch all three Santa Clause films in the run up to Christmas. They’re fun, sweet and funny – they really put us in the Christmas mood and officially start the countdown for us. Though with my sister’s awkward chef hours this year, I have no idea how we’ll fit them all in!

What are your Christmas traditions?

Sophie 

Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham

Pages: 224

Publisher: Virago

Release Date: 6th December 2016
Edition: UK hardcover, review copy/audiobook

Other Titles by this Author: Someday, Someday, Maybe

In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood-along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, "Did you, um, make it?" She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood ("Strangers were worried about me; that's how long I was single!"), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway ("It's like I had a fashion-induced blackout").

In "What It Was Like, Part One," Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay "What It Was Like, Part Two" reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she's aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls ("If you're meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you've already set the bar too high"), and she's a card-carrying REI shopper ("My bungee cords now earn points!").

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and-of course-talking as fast as you can.

I got asked to be a part of the blog tour for Talking as Fast as I Can and share my favourite Lorelai moment and as I’m a huge Gilmore Girls fan, I jumped at the chance to hear from Lorelai herself.

This book was on embargo in the UK so I couldn’t get a copy in time for the blog tour, but I was so excited for it that I nabbed the audiobook which came out a few weeks early. It was the perfect way to read this. Hearing Lauren read her story, talking very fast of course, was completely perfect. It felt like sitting down with Lorelai and having a chat - I completely loved it. Once the book arrived, I did switch between to make sure I got to see all of the photos included. You don’t want to miss out on those!

Lauren talks about her road to acting, her experiences in Hollywood and New York, filming the original Gilmore Girls, finally falling in love, Parenthood and all the way back to Gilmore Girls again. She’s honest and funny and 100% authentic - I just liked her more and more with every page. I especially loved getting an insider’s glimpse into one of my very favourite shows. I’m also now really keen to watch Parenthood! It really sounds great.

I’m sure it’s the same with lots of readers of this book that my favourite parts were about Gilmore Girls, but “What It Was Like: Part Two” was what really got me. Reading from her diary, sharing the process and stories from set was lovely and the excitement I felt for the Revival hit all over again. But it was Lauren’s repeated mentions of the cliffhanger at the end of A Year in the Life that had me eagerly listening while working (whoops) hoping for some news. And though she obviously didn’t say anything concrete, the last words of this book have filled me with hope - maybe we still haven’t seen the last of the Gilmores.

Talking as Fast as I Can has left me eager to re-watch Gilmore Girls from scratch, buzzing with the meaning behind that cliffhanger and a determination to get my hands on Lauren’s novel.

Thanks to Virago for the review copy.

Sophie

The Girl Who Saved Christmas, Matt Haig

Illustrated by Chris Mould

Pages: 336

Publisher: Canongate

Release Date: 3rd November 2016
Edition: UK e-proof, NetGalley review copy

Other Titles by this Author: The Runaway Troll, Echo Boy, How to Be a Cat, The Radleys, The Humans, Reasons to Stay Alive, A Boy Called Christmas

If magic has a beginning, can it also have an end?

When Amelia wants a wish to come true she knows just the man to ask - Father Christmas.

But the magic she wants to believe in is starting to fade, and Father Christmas has more than impossible wishes to worry about. Upset elves, reindeer dropping out of the sky, angry trolls and the chance that Christmas might be cancelled. 

But Amelia isn't just an ordinary girl. And - as Father Christmas is going to find out - if Christmas is going to be saved, he might not be able to do it alone...   

I didn’t love the first installment in this middle grade series nearly as much as I had hoped, so I was hoping for more from The Girl Who Saved Christmas - I ended up enjoying it a lot more. 

On Christmas Eve, Father Christmas travels to London in 1841 to visit Amelia, the girl who gave the world enough hope for Christmas to begin, and he needs her help again. I loved the journey through Victorian London; meeting Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria and exploring the poverty, illness and workhouses of the period really made the whole book twice as Christmassy for some way.

The messages of hope, magic and finding light in the dark were all wonderful and gave me the serious warm fuzzies, but I did find the final quarter of the book a little too much. There was such a lot going on what with Noosh, Father Christmas and Amelia in London and an unexpected (and, I think, unnecessary) romance coming out of nowhere. It all made the end a little rushed and a little forced.

The Girl Who Saved Christmas is a lovely Christmas story all about hope and magic that I can see being the perfect bedtime story in the few nights running up to Christmas.

Thanks to NetGalley and Canongate for the review copy.

Sophie

The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily, David Levithan & Rachel Cohn

Pages: 242

Publisher: Electric Monkey

Release Date: 6th October 2016

Edition: UK proof, review copy

Other Titles by these Author: Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Naomi and Ely’s No-Kiss List, Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares

Dash and Lily have been dating for nearly a year, but when Lily’s beloved grandfather falls ill, the repercussions take their toll on everyone. Even though they are still together, somehow the magic has gone out of their relationship and it’s clear that Lily has fallen out of love with life.

Action must be taken! Dash teams up with Lily’s brother and a host of their friends, who have just twelve days to get Lily’s groove back in time for Christmas.

I adored the first instalment in Dash and Lily’s adventures a few years back so I was both excited and nervous to get back to them.

I can’t tell you how or why, but I can tell you that we get to go on another scavenger hunt with Dash and Lily and it made my heart all warm and bubbly. It was so cool that I’d been to some of the places in NYC that were mentioned this time around and it just seemed on a whole other level from book one. It was just SO CUTE.

As with anything David Levithan touches, there’s whimsy and intellect, words that teenagers definitely don’t use and whole load of book and literature love. There’s nothing like being in his world. And his writing works so perfectly with Rachel Cohn’s it’s crazy. There’s never a moment when you remember this book is written by two different people, instead I just continued to fall more and more in love with Lily, her family, Dash and NYC.

The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily is a love letter to Christmas, to New York City and to love and I completely adored it. Can we catch up with these two in another year, please?

Thanks to Electric Monkey for the review copy.

Sophie

Books I Couldn't Finish (11): The Diabolic, Villette & Evelina

I used to finish every book I started, whether I was enjoying it or not. But life is short. I’ve realised that I don’t have time for books I’m not full involved in any longer so if I don’t like something or don’t connect with it as much as I want to, I’ll put it aside. It still makes me feel guilty though, especially if I received them for review so I still want to talk about them, explain why I didn’t like them. Here are the most recent books I DNF-ed.

The Diabolic, SJ Kincaid

This has been everywhere for months with two beautiful covers, a boatload of pre-pub buzz and rave reviews from early reviewers so I had high expectations. I was seriously disappointed - i didn’t even last 50 pages. The idea behind the Diabolics and this sci-fi world is wonderful and I was expecting it to be completely on point, but it was dull. The ideas were there but the execution and writing was missing for me.

Villette, Charlotte Bronte

When I didn’t fully click with Jane Eyre I thought it was just me. Then I hated The Professor and figured it was a fluke. But now I’ve DNFed Villette I’ve realised that while I love her sisters (especially Anne), me and Charlotte just aren’t meant to be. This one started off okay. I was engaged and curious about the very enigmatic start, but it didn’t take long for me to get bored and start to wish for it to be done.

Evelina, Frances Burney

I was beyond excited to get stuck into this. I’d seen people say that it was light-hearted and funny, that it was a favourite of Jane Austen’s and an inspiration to her - it sounded perfect. I just found it incredibly annoying. Evelina is a bit of a wet blanket and the stupid situations she gets herself into and the horrible characters in her society made me cringe. I loved the idea of it all, I just hate anything that makes me cringe. This could definitely be one to go back to when I’m in a different frame of mind, however.

Sophie