Festive reads and seasonal books – Winter Trends with Caroline Sanderson
Including what's trending this Christmas and gift ideas for the book-lovers in your life from RLF Fellow Caroline Sanderson.
Trending this Christmas
It may still be early December, but in the book bestseller charts, the race for the coveted Christmas Number One spot is hotting up. The most recent Top 10 list from Nielsen BookScan includes novels by Lee & Andrew Child, Richard Osman and David Baldacci, as well as Jeremy Clarkson’s latest non-fiction offering – Diddly Squat: Home to Roost – and the most recent children’s books by Jeff Kinney and David Walliams.
And with the Christmas catering marathon ahead, it’s perhaps no surprise that Mary Berry’s Foolproof Dinners is also riding high in the charts.
What this tells us is that, when choosing books to give as a Christmas gifts, many buyers stick loyally to brand authors. At this time of year more than any other, we put our trust in tried and tested writers rather than take a risk on someone less familiar that the recipient might not enjoy.
If you know your Mum ripped through the previous Richard Osman, or that your brother is a Clarkson fan, then it’s a no-brainer to buy them the latest hardbacks. Job done.
Similarly, currently riding high at Number 3 in the Top Ten is the hardiest of all seasonal perennials, the Guinness World Records 2025 which, in its various iterations, has been solving Christmas gift-buying dilemmas for almost 70 years.
Cosy Christmas Reads
The Top 10 also currently includes two cosy Christmas themed novels: The Christmas Cottage by Sarah Morgan – a love story set in a picture-perfect Cotswolds village – and The Christmas Tree Farm by Laurie Gilmore (author of “viral TikTok sensation” The Pumpkin Spice Café).
For many authors of romantic fiction, producing a Christmas book is now an annual project, with festive tales being published from early October onwards. It might seem an over-simplistic proposition that people want to read about Christmas at Christmas (rather than say, sunny stories in which the days are long and the roses are in bloom), but the sales figures show that they clearly do.
Novelist Katie Fforde who has written many such stories tells me that she thinks readers particularly love to read about a Christmas “they don’t have to do anything about”. I’m not a romantic fiction reader but it’s a desire I can appreciate.
Murder by Word Game
Last year’s Christmas Number One was the remarkable Murdle: Solve 100 Devilishly Devious Murder Mystery Logic Puzzles by GT Karber, published by Souvenir. It was acquired for a very little money from the US in a three-book deal by editor Cindy Chan, who spotted its potential to appeal both to those who love cosy crime and those hooked on Wordle.
It invites readers to join sleuth Deductive Logico to decipher a collection of original murder mystery logic puzzles. In spite of an initially modest sales target and a modest marketing spend, it went on to sell well over 300,000 copies and was crowned Overall Book of the Year at the 2024 British Book Awards.
Some people in the book business were a trifle sniffy about that decision, but it’s hard to deny that Murdle was an extremely canny bit of publishing that slayed the competition.
What to give someone who reads all the time
I am often asked which books I would most like to receive for Christmas. It’s an interesting question. My fortunate freelance life as a books journalist and interviewer means that I not only read constantly and intensively all year round, but also benefit from free books more or less on tap.
As a result, family and friends almost never buy me books as gifts. They assume that in this respect I am the Woman Who Has Everything or that buying me yet more books will only result in a Busman’s Christmas Holiday.
Actually, I love unwrapping book parcels. And the secret to making me happy is to buy me ones that demand slightly less concentrated attention. I remember the Christmas someone gave me How to Eat by Nigella Lawson. Normally I’m not a big fan of cookery books, and by the time I unwrapped it, straight after producing Christmas lunch, the last thing I felt like doing was more cooking.
Nevertheless, Lawson’s food writing was so scrumptious that I curled up with it by the fire and thought very pleasant foodie thoughts, even while there was a Closed sign on the kitchen door.
Another Christmas I asked for Mrs Weber’s Omnibus, a bumper (there’s a word publishers love to attach to Christmas annuals) collection of her erstwhile weekly Guardian comic strips by uber-talented cartoonist, Posy Simmonds. Both her words and pictures, but mostly her pictures, kept me chortling for many hours. I still dip in when in need of light relief.
Ditto The Most of Nora Ephron, a present I received in 2014 which is still by my bedside. Even though there’s increasingly little to laugh at in the world at large, humour books and Christmas still go together like turkey and bread sauce. Plus books are by far the easiest items to gift-wrap.
This Christmas I am hoping someone might indulge me with Doggedly Onward: Collected Poems 1970s to 2020s by Pam Ayres. It contains a hymn to festive avoidance entitled Crabby Christmas which concludes with the lines:
“I might emerge on Boxing Day if common sense prevails And I’ll buy you all a present, they’ll be cheaper in the sales”.
Christmas Gifts for Children
Some understandable crabbiness notwithstanding, Christmas is a time of gifts, and books are the gifts that keep on giving. But sadly for some children, the gift of a book is not always available. So at this most wonderful time of year that is by no means wonderful for everyone, I urge you to support the annual Christmas appeal by children’s reading charity BookTrust.
Running from now until the end of December, this vital annual campaign aims to raise thousands of pounds in order to bring the magic of books to children across the UK, especially those from vulnerable backgrounds, living in care or whose families are on low incomes.
To find out more, go to the BookTrust Christmas Appeal.
Caroline Sanderson is a writer and books journalist. She is Associate Editor of The Bookseller for which she has compiled the monthly New Titles preview of forthcoming non-fiction since 2000.
Caroline is a Writing For Life Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund, and is currently Writer in Residence at South Tees NHS Foundation Trust and the Programme Director for Stroud Book Festival.
Caroline is the author of six non-fiction books, including biographies of Jane Austen and the singer, Adele. Her memoir – Listen With Father: How I Learned to Love Classical Music – will be published by Unbound in July 2025.