Christmas Wishlists – Triple special!

We asked our authors for books they’d like to give – or get – this Christmas. Continuing the series, today we are featuring the gifting choices/ wishes of not one, not two, but three of our very special authors.

Paula Byrne

Paula Byrne was born in Birkenhead and has a PhD from the University of Liverpool. Her second book, Perdita, was a Richard and Judy bookclub pick. Her most recent book, Mad World, was published last year to critical acclaim.

On my Christmas list are the following books:

- The new biography of the Queen Mother by William Shawcross (especially after hearing all the hullaballoo on Woman’s Hour)
- Selina Hasting’s The Secret Life of Somerset Maugham
- Behind Closed Doors: at Home in Georgian England by Amanda Vickery

- The Twilight saga because my niece has told me to read it (and so did India Knight in last week’s Sunday Times and I always do what India recommends)
- James Lee Milne by Michael Bloch

Christopher Hirst

Christopher Hirst wrote the witty ‘Weasel’ column in the Independent for over a decade and was nominated for the Glenfiddich Best Food Writer Award in 2007.  His book, Love Bites: Marital Skirmishes in the Kitchen, is published by Fourth Estate in March.

To give:

- Leviathan by Philip Hoare
- Edible Seashore by John Wright

- The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

To be given:
- Larousse Gastronomique
- A Gambling Man: Charles II and the People of the Restoration by Jenny Uglow

Tash Aw

Tash Aw’s debut novel The Harmony Silk Factory was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award and a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Novel, as well as being longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent book, Map of the Invisible World, is published in paperback next year.

To get or to give…

Beijing Coma by Ma Jian
The Education of a Gardener by Russell Page

The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross
Shark’s Fin & Sichuan Pepper by Fuchsia Dunlop
Don Quixote (translated by John Rutherford).

We hope you’re enjoying our Christmas Wishlist feature. Click here to read other author’s wishlists.