A book or two...

Those of us addicted to books always look forward to Christmas, harbouring hopes of solid rectangular packages under the tree. That didn't happen so much this year, at this point my family have given up hope of knowing what books I do or don't own, so don't buy me books. But fortunately vouchers take the risk out of it for the darlings and some were kind enough to bless me with book shop gift cards. Books that were under the tree were the wonderful Al Brown cook book Stoked. We've test driven a number of the recipes, and salivated over the other pages. I was also delighted to receive a special surprise of Nothing that Meets the Eye by Patricia Highsmith.

I did do a bit of purchasing over the holidays (it would have been rude not to contribute to the local economies of the towns we were visiting), I fell in love with Bruce McKenzie Booksellers in Palmerston North where I found an interesting little number called The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy by Ruth Richardson, an account of the making of Gray's Anatomy that covers everyone from the Mr Henry Gray and Mr Henry Vandyke Carter, to the publishers, wood engravers, the printers and even the women who folded and stitched the pages together.

I also felt the need to buy a little Christopher Hitchens so have Arguably to work my way through.

The books I'm reading at the moment are The Hungry Heart: Journeys with William Colenso, by Peter Wells and The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories, edited by Michael Sims. These are both rather large books, so I may be a while!