Editorial Picks: Christmas Special
The Hinterland editorial team share some of their seasonal reading recommendations.
‘Tis the season… for closing the door on the outside world and snuggling up under a cosy blanket with a good book, a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine (or a mug of hot chocolate). With that in mind, we asked some of our editorial team what they’re looking forward to reading over the Christmas period.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers! Thank you for your support this year, and see you next year for Issue 16 — our Journeys special.
Susan K Burton
As an oral historian I'm always on the lookout for social histories that are told 'in their own words', and I have just started reading Sweet Dreams: Club Culture to Style Culture, the story of the New Romantics by Dylan Jones. It's a hefty tome and it'll take me all Christmas to finish but it's pure pleasure!
Susan K Burton is an oral historian with an interest in creative non-fiction and is a regular contributor to Hinterland. She won the New Welsh Writing Awards 2020 Rheidol Prize for Prose with a Welsh Theme or Setting for an early chapter from her first book, The Transplantable Roots of Catharine Huws Nagashima: Encounters with the Welsh in Japan, which is out on 1st March.
Freya Dean
I always seem to end up reading a Tessa Hadley novel over the Christmas break. This year it's going to be her new novella The Party. I think Hadley is too often dismissed as a light read; I think it's simply that she makes writing look easy! She builds such rich worlds around her characters that I particularly enjoy sinking into her fiction on a cold and rainy afternoon.
Come winter-time I also love picking up those gorgeous 'coffee table' art books in charity shops and poring over the images. My last good finds (in the Cambridge Amnesty International Bookshop) was a catalogue of LIFE photography and a copy of The Sartorialist by Scott Schuman.
Finally, I've asked for Stranger Than Fiction by Edwin Frank after reading a review in The New Yorker that made me want to drop everything and read it. It's Frank's attempt to define the C20th novel by offering up his thoughts on the texts that he regards as game-changers in the world of fiction. One of my favourite novelists W.G. Sebald makes the cut, so I'm already predisposed to his thesis!
Freya Dean is a founding editor of Hinterland. She is a graduate of UEA’s Creative Writing MA where she received the Lorna Sage award. She is also an Elizabeth Kostova Foundation Finalist. Her work has featured in The Real Story, Visual Verse and UEA's Anthology series.
Clea Licht
Over Christmas I'm going to read Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth, which I've been waiting to come out for the past three years. It’s part of one of those humongous fantasy series where each book is over 1,000 pages. I think it will be fun to read inside while it's cold outside, and will definitely last me the whole holiday!
Clea loves reading, and her favorite genres are sci-fi and fantasy. She studied English and Creative Writing at UEA, and now works for the UEA Publishing Project. She is a proofreader for Hinterland.
Andrew Kenrick
While I was looking forward to reading one of the many historical books I’ve recently acquired — Tom Holland’s Pax, Mary Beard’s Emperor of Rome or Gareth Harney’s Moneta — having just finished writing my own book about the Romans I’m actually going to leave Rome to one side… at least till the new year. I’m going to stick with the ancient world though, as ever since I revisited the second part of Mary Renault’s Alexander trilogy, The Persian Boy, for a recent review I’ve been desperately keen to read the final part: Funeral Games, set after Alexander’s death. For me, that’s one of the best bits about historical fiction — sure, you know the broad brushstrokes of what happens, but it’s fun seeing how it plays out on the page.
Andrew Kenrick is co-founder and co-editor of Hinterland. He holds a PhD in Life Writing from UEA. His first full-length book, a biography of the first-century North African king Juba II is forthcoming.
Finally, just a quick note to say that there’s still (just about enough) time to buy a copy of Hinterland as a gift (for you or a loved one!) and have it delivered before Christmas. You can also purchase a gift subscription — we’ll send out a copy of the current issue (to you to wrap, or direct to the recipient) in time for Christmas along with a gift tag and welcome message. You can read more about last posting dates in the UK here.