Marcus Berkmann

Quirky books for Christmas

After the Christmas ‘funny’ books, here’s an even larger pile of Christmas ‘quirky’ books.

issue 12 December 2009

After the Christmas ‘funny’ books, here’s an even larger pile of Christmas ‘quirky’ books.

After the Christmas ‘funny’ books, here’s an even larger pile of Christmas ‘quirky’ books. In practice, quirky books aren’t just for Christmas, they’re for the whole year round. But try telling a publisher that. Thousands of them have been pouring out this autumn, and in the pre-Christmas jungle good books will surely be lost, consumed by larger and nastier predators in a single contemptuous gulp.

In Ghoul Britannia (Short Books, £12.99), Andrew Martin muses on ‘a nation primed for ghostliness’. Our weather is just right, our landscape could have been designed for the purpose, and we have loads of rickety old houses that creak ominously in the middle of the night, even when they are not being burgled. I wouldn’t be surprised if more of us believe in ghosts than believe in God.

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