Books To Find Under The Tree-Part 1

Every day last week, The Reader Online presented our must-reads of 2012 to help you all with ideas for festive reading and potential Christmas presents for friends and loved ones! Now, we have come to the week before Christmas in which last minute food and present shopping will be done and all will be slightly chaotic but also very exciting.

Why not take a time-out and read what the staff at The Reader Organisation have prepared for you this week: the books they would most like to find under the Christmas Tree. Maybe it is time to do some last minute hinting for books you would like this Christmas?

Read the first two below:

Poems on the Underground: A New Edition – Judith Chernaik (ed.)
(Penguin Hardback Classics; 2012)

“A book that I’ve already bought for myself is the new edition of Poems on the Underground. I have a copy inscribed to our family at Christmas 1995, from a boyfriend of my older sister. This was probably the first poetry book I ever chose to open up and flick through myself, finding poems that were short (!) and accessible to me as a teenager. Maybe some of them I had seen on the Tube before, or maybe it was just the vast range that drew me in.

I always read the poems whenever I spot them between the adverts on the tube, craning my neck around the heads of other passengers, hoping they realise that I’m reading the poem, not the advert for hair loss or mobile phones. Since being involved with The Reader Organisation I have muttered the poems under my breath when I see them, as I know they are better read aloud. Subsequent poems on the underground books have included a small pamphlet available for free in London libraries, world poems on the underground, a really interesting selection which I’ve used in groups.

This latest edition is a collection of all the different anthologies, arranged by theme (love, the seasons, dreams, music etc) – it’s hardback, beautifully bound, covered and printed – and all the poems are laid out as they are on the tube on horizontal pages. A lovely ‘thing’ in itself, and with a few poems marked out specially for the recipient it could be a really personal gift too!”

(Rosie Trustram, Get Into Reading London Project Worker)

Dickens at Christmas – Charles Dickens
(Vintage Classics; 2012)

“A book I shall be giving this year is Dickens at Christmas.  As the Dickens bicentenary year draws to a close, Vintage Classics have brought out an inspired collection of all Dickens’ Christmas stories and essays.  Naturally, the well known books are included:  A Christmas Carol, The Chimes and The Cricket on the Hearth, but also lots of little known, Christmassy pieces he wrote for his periodicals. It is timely, beautifully produced and makes a great present."

(Angela Macmillan, Co Editor of The Reader/Editor of A Little, Aloud & A Little, Aloud for Children)