I’ve still to do my year in books for 2021, so for now (and slightly late as I entirely forgot about it*) I will look at what I got up to in December.

*It would have been slightly late when I wrote that, it then became really quite late after I caught one of those 48 hour bugs before I could finish the post.

What I have read

I didn’t read a lot in December as there was a lot of other things going on. I had already reached my target of 100 books in October, so in total I read 121 books which is not bad at all.

• Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas – Adam Kay
• The Switch – Beth O’Leary
• Love and Lies at the Village Christmas Shop – Portia MacIntosh
•  The Book Lovers’ Miscellany – Claire Cock-Starkey
• The Land Girls at Christmas (Land Girls #1) – Jenny Holmes
• The Toast of Time (The Chronicles of St Mary’s #12.5) – Jodi Taylor
• Crash Test Girl – Kari Byron
• Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #2) – Ransom Riggs

As you can see I managed to squeeze in a few Christmas-themed books.

I didn’t quite finish:

• Last Scene Alive (Aurora Teagarden #7) – Charlaine Harris

After someone else told me a year or two back, they didn’t like to end the year with any unfinished books I have tried to finish all my books by December 31st. I had two others unfinished this year as well, but I’ve been reading them on and off for a while.

What I have watched

• Hollyoaks
• Only Connect, Taskmaster and House of Games, the first two of which had some Christmas special episodes.
• On Tuesday nights we watched some Christmas films – Godmothered, The Family Stone and The Holiday.
• By myself I watched the third Christmas Prince film – A Royal Baby, which was just as silly as the others, but good festive fun.
• We’ve finished Hawkeye, and I’m now on series five of Charmed
• Episodes three and four of Malory Towers series two, which I have of course reviewed.
• The Last Duel, which turned out to be rather different than I expected. I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to the first 1/3 but then got interested in the last 2/3.

What I have done

• Finished my Christmas shopping, and got it all wrapped – even slightly before the last minute.
• We met Santa at the Transport Museum
• I finally started and then finished a jigsaw of a bookshop (it was harder than it looks!)
• Collected more sea glass and pottery from a few different beaches
• Drank a lot of hot chocolate in cafes and even on the beach
• Had daily visits from the Elf on the Shelf
• I had a quiet birthday, as we just took a walk on the beach and had a chilly picnic, then had tea at my parents’ at the weekend.
• We also had fairly quiet Christmas and Hogmanay celebrations, just seeing our immediate families but that’s not too different from usual, and it was a whole lot better than in 2020. We ate a lot of food and played some games so it was all good.

What did your December look like?