I promised myself that I wouldn’t buy any books whilst in the extremely restricted living space of the caravan. I promised myself. But it seems that I have an addiction that is very difficult to shake.
Books have always been a big part of my life.
One of my earliest happy memories of Christmas is opening a gift-wrapped book. The smell of the paper and printing ink. The tactile pleasure of handling it, feeling the slight roughness of a linen book cover. The crisp turning of its new pages. The pleasure of curling up quietly on a sofa and losing myself deeply in its world. These are things I’ve always loved.
I couldn’t resist buying a few books to read over this festive break. It seemed sort of traditional.
Besides. Alan Garner has just published a new book at the age of 87. It would seem rude not to support such a momentous undertaking. I first read his novel The Owl Service at the age of eight, and I found it deeply disturbing, and very powerful. So much so that the memory of the book stayed with me, and when forty years later I came across a copy of it in a secondhand book store, I had to buy it to read again as an adult. It was still a strongly evocative, disturbing book.
His new book, Treacle Walker, is apparently based on the legends around Alderney Edge in Cheshire, where the author still lives.
I shall wrap it in festive paper and gift it to myself for Christmas. I shall find some quiet moments to absorb it.
It’s over fifty years now since I first read his work and I feel that Mr Garner and I are overdue a revisit.
Ravencroft Skye 
I too read Owl Service as a child – I think I was about 10, and also found it a little disturbing. I don’t remember the plot anymore but I do remember the slightly haunted feel of it still. How impressive that he’s written another book at the other end of his life. Enjoy your Christmas present when the time comes!
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Thank you! My recollections of the Owl Service were exactly the same. Some cracked china, owls and a deep feeling of unease…but nothing much else remembered. I hope the new book lives up to its reviews 😊
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The Owl Service is a new one for me – never heard of it before but I will see what the library can find. I too love books. My grandchildren, when small, named our sitting room The Library because that was the only other place they had seen with booksheleves on every wall! A couple of years ago I decided that there were many which I would never read again, boxed them and stored them in the loft for 6 months to a year to ensure I didn’t change my mind. Covid intervened and they are still there but soon they will go to the free book shop in Carmarthen to be appreciated by someone else. Now I keep my book buying habit under strict control but like you succumb to a really special volume occasionally.
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He’s classified as a children author, but as with so many of these books it can be read by adults on a different level. Well done on the book pruning- we will have to do the same when ours come out of storage boxes next year
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