Christmas is coming.

My favourite occupation at Christmas before marriage and family-raising took priority was reading.   In those earlier festive times my list was made up of fiction, it was only later biography caught hold. One memorable Christmas I read about the Bronte sisters and was soon enjoyably lost in 'The Path to the Silent Country'. Gripping stuff, impossible to put it down. All that talent, passion and frail health.

Undoubtedly, books written about people, especially about authors, can be fascinating. Maybe that's why so many works of literature are dramatized and adapt so well to radio or television. This Christmas will be the first without the usual popular two hour drama featuring Downton Abbey. It will be missed but there is sure to be something else historical offered in its stead.

But to my mind books are better by far than television. I have my list already compiled and although committed to cooking Christmas dinner this year with all the trimmings I'm hoping to get the chance to indulge a bit with the memoirs of Alexander Fuller who grew up in Rhodesia before it was renamed Zimbabwe and writes so evocatively of that troubled time  Maybe make some progress on Wing CommanderThomas Francis 'ginger' Neill's The Silver Spitfire. I am about half way through this RAF pilot's exciting and often humorous account of his assignment to assist and advise American fliers in England  during WW11 and the Spitfire he somehow came to acquire for his own personal use.

For a little light relief I can take up again where I left off in 'French Women Don't get Facelifts' by Mireille Guiliano...and keeping my commitment to updating in Goodreads

And dare I hope that other readers might be reading some of my books curled up by the fire and getting lost in 'Like One of the Family' or 'The Straw Hat' short story collection with what-do-you know - four Christmas stories on offer. Check it out.

amazon.com/author/nestatuomey