Here are 84 books that A Child's Christmas in Wales fans have personally recommended if you like
A Child's Christmas in Wales.
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I am a cultural historian, film critic, literary critic, editor, and essayist–and a closeted fiction writer–fascinated by ‘the fantastic’ in art or in life. And Christmas seems to me the perfect example of a time that unites realism and the strange–the time of ghost stories and nativities. I wrote a book on It’s a Wonderful Life (2023) because it triumphantly succeeds at bridging the connection between ordinary life and the marvelous. I have also edited anthologies of Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories, The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories: From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce (Penguin, 2010), and Victorian Fairy Tales (Oxford World’s Classics, 2015), both of which include many seasonal classics.
Dickens did not “invent” Christmas, of course, but our modern understanding of it undoubtedly derives from him.
For long a Londoner, because of Dickens, Christmas still seems to me at heart a matter of foggy London streets, enclosed city houses, and window-lights and passers-by at dusk. Christmas means rituals, and I, among others, go through the yearly rite of re-reading A Christmas Carol. And every year, it’s just as vivid, as funny, and as moving as the years before.
Dickens celebrates Christmas as a time of renewal, and Scrooge finds redemption by finding the person he used to be and the person he ought to be now. Robert Louis Stevenson said that reading it made him want to do good things, and what better recommendation could there be?
Tom Baker reads Charles Dickens' timeless seasonal story.
Charles Dickens' story of solitary miser Ebenezer Scrooge, who is taught the true meaning of Christmas by the three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, has become one of the timeless classics of English literature. First published in 1843, it introduces us not only to Scrooge himself, but also to the memorable characters of underpaid desk clerk Bob Cratchit and his poor family, the poorest amongst whom is the ailing and crippled Tiny Tim.
In this captivating recording, Tom Baker delivers a tour-de-force performance as he narrates the story. The listener…
Poetry is language at its most condensed and pure, potent and direct—the closest thing to thought. At its best, this mode and method is cinematic and penetrates like a powerful dream, and bringing it to narrative prose in a legend and key that can be woven together, like a tapestry, has been my lifework. Nothing in this list is ancient or even old, nor is any of it new—I've picked all books from the 20th century, because that was the world and writing that immediately influenced me, it's long enough past to be settled and safely buried, but still new enough to have some currency with the life and language of now.
This book is sort of an alternate take of On the Road. Cody Pomeroy here is Dean Moriarty, this book is his legend, and instead of unravelling it all in a chronological spiel it's the koans and page-long dreams of remembrance, some of the richest extended prose he ever made.
The writing is true to the soul and heart of the continent and it captures the electric twentieth century.
He wanted to roll up all his books together, standardize the names, and call it The Duluoz Legend. When I read him now I think of all those words as a part of it. There are so many pieces and places to dive into, but if you're ready for the deep stuff then get digging into this golden loam and be glad.
"What I'm beginning to discover now is something beyond the novel and beyond the arbitrary confines of the story. . . . I'm making myself seek to find the wild form, that can grow with my wild heart . . . because now I know MY HEART DOES GROW." -Jack Kerouac, in a letter to John Clellon Holmes
An underground legend by the time it was finally published in 1972, Visions of Cody captures the members of the Beat Generation in the years before any label had been affixed to them, with Kerouac's trademark appreciation for the ecstatic and ephemeral…
Poetry is language at its most condensed and pure, potent and direct—the closest thing to thought. At its best, this mode and method is cinematic and penetrates like a powerful dream, and bringing it to narrative prose in a legend and key that can be woven together, like a tapestry, has been my lifework. Nothing in this list is ancient or even old, nor is any of it new—I've picked all books from the 20th century, because that was the world and writing that immediately influenced me, it's long enough past to be settled and safely buried, but still new enough to have some currency with the life and language of now.
I was so overwhelmed by the perfection of this American masterwork that I sought out the founder of The Thomas Wolfe Society, the greatest Thomas Wolfe collector who ever lived and who will ever live, and became his very close friend.
This is a huge book, with the music of pitch-perfect prosody from beginning to end, and yet it's only part of a much greater whole—every one of Wolfe's books connect together in some way, forming a massive cadency of music in words. If you examine them, there's only two main branches (Eugene Gant as the protagonist in one, and Monk Webber as the protagonist in the other). But it's really all one big expanding fable. This volume has, in my opinion, the richest writing, from the opening proem to the tiny diamond-sharp moving-picture painting of the final line.
The sequel to Thomas Wolfe's remarkable first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, Of Time and the River is one of the great classics of American literature. The book chronicles the maturing of Wolfe's autobiographical character, Eugene Gant, in his desperate search for fulfillment, making his way from small-town North Carolina to the wider world of Harvard University, New York City, and Europe. In a massive, ambitious, and boldly passionate novel, Wolfe examines the passing of time and the nature of the creative process, as Gant slowly but ecstatically embraces the urban life, recognizing it as a necessary ordeal for the birth…
Poetry is language at its most condensed and pure, potent and direct—the closest thing to thought. At its best, this mode and method is cinematic and penetrates like a powerful dream, and bringing it to narrative prose in a legend and key that can be woven together, like a tapestry, has been my lifework. Nothing in this list is ancient or even old, nor is any of it new—I've picked all books from the 20th century, because that was the world and writing that immediately influenced me, it's long enough past to be settled and safely buried, but still new enough to have some currency with the life and language of now.
Everything F. Scott Fitzgerald ever touched with his pen glimmered and was gold. Just think of Tender Is the Night—the title comes from Keats, and Keats is the living lyre, and it's a fine, long book that haunts you. But the place where I first entered his world is the fat blue collected stories that came out in 1989, edited by my late friend Dr. Matthew J. Bruccoli.
This was the book that first made me see that gorgeous writing was everything, that it was the mode and method and the way. Every one of the stories in this gigantic book has something in it that is sensitive and evocative and lives beyond its page and time.
A collection of 43 short stories by the author of "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender is the Night". The text contains tales such as "May Day" and "The Diamond as Big as the Ritz".
Poetry is language at its most condensed and pure, potent and direct—the closest thing to thought. At its best, this mode and method is cinematic and penetrates like a powerful dream, and bringing it to narrative prose in a legend and key that can be woven together, like a tapestry, has been my lifework. Nothing in this list is ancient or even old, nor is any of it new—I've picked all books from the 20th century, because that was the world and writing that immediately influenced me, it's long enough past to be settled and safely buried, but still new enough to have some currency with the life and language of now.
This fine coming-of-age novel was originally published in two big red volumes. It's large and reads like an enormous European tapestry laid out in some cold castle museum, with vivid dyes and a thousand patterned intricacies to ponder. It was a literary sensation when it was published, a favorite of the young romantics of the WWI generation, and Mackenzie followed it up with several branching-off sequels. He writes with such vividry that the dusky London streets and country cottages in this book are fresh and living even now. This book affected a young F. Scott Fitzgerald so much that in the early drafts of Fitz's first novel, he actually copped the name of the protagonist of this book.
Sinister Street is a novel about growing up, and concerns two children, Michael Fane and his sister Stella have throught their young life. Both of them are born out of wedlock, something which was frowned upon at the time, but from rich parents. The novel had several sequels, which continue until Michael Fane's marriage.
Christmas, it’s often said, is a time for family, so I asked my son to answer this one for me: "He’s an all-right dad, but sometimes he’s really annoying. His most annoying habit is foraging for things in hedges. His books are actually quite good. He’s good about driving me to places. The dog loveshim.He really likes Christmas. His best Christmas habit is that he loves Christmas trees, but he never wants to put them up as early as everyone else, then he always makes us keep them up till Twelfth Night."
Can I make this list and notinclude a golden-age detective story set in a country house at Christmas? This one has all the ingredients required for an afternoon by the fire, looking out at the wintry weather—a locked room, an appealing detective, and a cast of people compelled, rather unwisely, to spend Christmas in each other’s company."If you ask me, there very likely wouldn’t have been a murder at all if it hadn’t been for him getting ideas about peace and goodwill, and assembling all these highly uncongenial people under the same roof at the same time.”
A holiday party takes on a sinister aspect when the colorful assortment of guests discovers there is a killer in their midst. The owner of the substantial estate, that old Scrooge Nathaniel Herriard, is found stabbed in the back. While the delicate matter of inheritance could be the key to this crime, the real conundrum is how any of the suspects could have entered a locked room to commit the foul deed.
For Inspector Hemingway of Scotland Yard, the investigation is complicated by the fact that every guest is hiding something—throwing all of their testimony…
As a child, I was captivated by Christmas's traditions, rituals, meaning, and magic, which always signaled a time for introspection and hope. These books capture all of that. For me, the holiday is a time to pause and reflect, and revisiting these works helps remind me of what is important in life and where we should be pointed, where our humanity lies.
I love this book because the characters are just as odd as the author and just as interesting. Also, Capote’s rural childhood environment reminds me of aspects of my own. And, as usual, his writing is top-notch. Moving and heartfelt stories that transported me to a lost era and the sweetness and anxieties of childhood.
A holiday classic from "one of the greatest writers and most fascinating society figures in American history" (Vanity Fair)!
First published in 1956, this much sought-after autobiographical recollection from Truman Capote (In Cold Blood; Breakfast at Tiffany's) about his rural Alabama boyhood is a perfect gift for Capote's fans young and old.
Seven-year-old Buddy inaugurates the Christmas season by crying out to his cousin, Miss Sook Falk: "It's fruitcake weather!" Thus begins an unforgettable portrait of an odd but enduring friendship and the memories the two friends share of beloved holiday rituals.
Christmas, it’s often said, is a time for family, so I asked my son to answer this one for me: "He’s an all-right dad, but sometimes he’s really annoying. His most annoying habit is foraging for things in hedges. His books are actually quite good. He’s good about driving me to places. The dog loveshim.He really likes Christmas. His best Christmas habit is that he loves Christmas trees, but he never wants to put them up as early as everyone else, then he always makes us keep them up till Twelfth Night."
Shaun Tan is an artist and writer, and an Oscar winner to boot, and I love the dazzling originality and quirkiness of his work. This one’s on my list because it includes the (very) short story "The Nameless Holiday". Which is not at all about Christmas. But sort of is, in an opposite-of-Christmas sort of way. (No spoilers - you really have to read it to see what I mean.) Anyway, late December always feels like a brilliant time to read it again. Another one I go back to every year.
Do you remember the water buffalo at the end of our street? Or the deep-sea diver we found near the underpass? Do you know why dogs bark in the middle of the night?Shaun Tan reveals the quiet mysteries of everyday life: homemade pets, dangerous weddings, stranded sea mammals, tiny exchange students, the unexpected edge of the world and secret rooms filled with darkness and delight.This very special book and jigsaw puzzle set includes the internationally acclaimed, multi-award winning Tales From Outer Suburbia and a jigsaw of the 'The Tuesday Afternoon Reading Group'. The 700 mm x 500 mm jigsaw comprises…
Christmas, it’s often said, is a time for family, so I asked my son to answer this one for me: "He’s an all-right dad, but sometimes he’s really annoying. His most annoying habit is foraging for things in hedges. His books are actually quite good. He’s good about driving me to places. The dog loveshim.He really likes Christmas. His best Christmas habit is that he loves Christmas trees, but he never wants to put them up as early as everyone else, then he always makes us keep them up till Twelfth Night."
I’ve had so much joy imagining events below stairs in Baker Street, it would be wrong not to include a tale from above stairs. This one finds the great detective grappling with a Christmas goose, a stranger’s hat, and the stolen jewel of the title. My father used to bring me the Conan Doyle books from the library when I was a child, and would often wonder aloud what tales Mr. Holmes’s housekeeper could have told. Many years later, as a birthday gift for him, I wrote my first Mrs. Hudson novel.
Found at the corner of Goodge Street, a goose and a black felt hat. Mr Henry Baker can have the same by applying at 6.30 this evening at 221B, Baker Street.
It’s the 27th of December and Sherlock Holmes has a new mystery to solve. Who is the unlucky owner of the festive goose dropped on Tottenham Court Road on Christmas morning – and just how much do they know about the priceless gem hidden inside it?
In this classic Christmas tale, Holmes and Watson take us on a riotous ride through London in search of the answer to a…
Christmas, it’s often said, is a time for family, so I asked my son to answer this one for me: "He’s an all-right dad, but sometimes he’s really annoying. His most annoying habit is foraging for things in hedges. His books are actually quite good. He’s good about driving me to places. The dog loveshim.He really likes Christmas. His best Christmas habit is that he loves Christmas trees, but he never wants to put them up as early as everyone else, then he always makes us keep them up till Twelfth Night."
Christmas is a time for nostalgia, and this one takes me back to my childhood. I remember sitting mesmerised by Margaret Tempest’s gorgeous festive illustrations while the story of these woodland creatures was read to me. Gentle, atmospheric Yuletide fare that makes me want to go tobogganing under the stars.
Since publication of the first Little Grey Rabbit book in 1929, the series has become a classic of children's literature, capturing the hearts of many. The popularity of Alison Uttley's magical stories and Margaret Tempest's lively illustrations meant that generations of children grew up with Grey Rabbit, Squirrel, Hare, Moldy Warp and little Fuzzypeg. These lovely versions of four favourite original titles will bring the world of Little Grey Rabbit to a new generation.
