Dear Santa Booklist by Tracy Darnton

I love receiving new books for Christmas but I'm usually too busy with house guests to sit down and read them. But this year is panning out rather differently. One of the few upsides is that this is going to be a cosy Christmas with only my household and so, for the first time ever, I will be sitting on the sofa with a tin of Quality Street and a stack of books. I may or may not change out of my pyjamas.

 

So here’s my list to Santa of most wanted books to find in my sack on Christmas morning:

 

I follow Joanne Harris on Twitter and find her threads on writing and being an author very helpful. These have been collated into a just published book: Ten Things About Writing. I’m particularly looking forward to the chapter – Why am I doing this, again?

 

I am guilty of stacking up writing guides on the shelf which I dust but never open. One of the few I really like for its relatable simplicity is the screenwriting guide Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, famed for its beat sheet. Sadly it hasn’t made me a planner rather than a pantser, but I do like its sections on how to give your main character more oomph, and the Pope in the Pool trick to hide exposition and many other quirky revelations that will help your writing or at the very least change how you watch movies. So I’d like to see how this is applied to novel writing by author Jessica Brody in Save the Cat! Writes a Novel.

 

My concentration for reading has suffered this year, what with one thing and another. So I need a must read which everyone has loved. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell seems to fit the bill and if it’s OK with you, Santa, I’d like the Waterstones special edition. It’s their book of the year, so that’s good enough for me.

 

I’d like to look at pictures. Preferably beautiful, unusual ones. So the Accidentally Wes Anderson book, please, which I’ve already bought for two other people and had a sneaky peak. Made for me, as it combines my interests in photography, Wes Andersen movies, travel and idiosyncratic places and architecture. Perfect.

 

In lockdown one I reread one of my all-time favourites – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. There was something very comforting in dark times in revisiting a book which I knew inside out from pre-Covid times. I have several copies already but as I’m a bit geeky about covers of my favourite books, I see there’s a new illustrated edition out in January which I’d love to coo over. Thank you.

 

So that’s my list. Which books are on your Christmas wish list?

Tracy Darnton is the author of YA thrillers The Rules and The Truth About Lies. Please feel free to mention them to Santa.