Month: December 2025

Books for taking on Holidays

I don’t know why people say they want ‘trashy’ books to read on holidays. Who wants to read trash any time? It’s like getting stuck with a boring companion on holiday when you should toss them aside and pick up someone vibrant and exciting. With that in mind, here are ten of my favourite books, hammock tested, good company assured.

But before I hit the list, a quick plug! ‘Tis the season for long haul flights, wandering across walking trails, or hammocks. Kindle-time. I have it on good authority that my historical fiction novels have kept many travellers entertained on their journeys. So why not?
Type Cristina Sanders into kindle you’ll find them all:

Books by Cristina Sanders

Jerningham,
Mrs Jewell and the Wreck of the General Grant,
Ōkiwi Brown,
Displaced.

Four award listed, best-selling, kiwi historical novels to put in your pocket.

Here are ten other great holiday reads from Christmases past, ones that shouldn’t be missed but may now be out of stock in your local bookshop, so perfect to put onto your kindle and into your travel bag. In no particular order, and with links to reviews:

The Axeman’s Carnival, by Catherine Chidgey. The narrator is a magpie. This farming family story works on every level. A must read.
Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, by Josie Shapiro. In case you’re thinking of taking up running.
Poor People With Money, by Dominic Hoey. Just because its cool.
In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes. You think you’re far from home? This will take you further.
Wonderland, by Tracy Farr. An amusement park in 1912 Miramar and the Loverock family. Plus Marie Curie. Mixed up wonderful.
Foster, by Clarie Keegan. Or anything by Claire Keegan. Quick Novellas. Brilliant.
The Smuggler’s Wife, etc, by Deborah Challinor. If you want a bit of fun, lots of swashbuckling New Zealand history with a feisty heroine.
A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles. War & Peace lite, the descendants, sort of.
This Thing of Darkness, by Harry Thompson. A very long read that takes you all around the world on the Beagle with Darwin and Fitzroy and makes sense of so much. Can be re-read many times.
The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley. Let’s bring back arctic explorer Graham Gore and set him loose in modern London. Provocative, funny, sexy. Goes a bit James Bondy at the end.
Pretty Ugly, by Kirsty Gunn, well crafted, morally complex short stories.

Whoops, that’s eleven. Bonus!

I hope your holiday finds you in a hammock with a bowl of cherries and a good book.
xxx





Foster – book review

Foster, by Clarie Keegan

‘I’d better hit the road,’ Da says. ‘What hurry is on you?’ Kinsella says. ‘The daylight is burning, and I’ve yet the spuds to spray.’ We’re in Ireland again, back with the wonderful Claire Keegan and her intimate descriptions of all the small things that make up a life. Another top class novella from a writer fast becoming my favourite. Here a girl is sent from a struggling household to stay with an older couple, her mother’s people, on a Wexford farm. Her mother is pregnant again and unable to cope, her siblings run wild. Her dad drops her off and hits the road.

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So Late in the Day – book review

So Late in the Day, by Claire Keegan

Cathal is one of those blokes a friend might go out with and say, you know, he’s OK. He’s got a job, not bad looking. We meet Cathal looking out of his office window where the day is good: sunshine; birds; the smell of cut grass; “so much of life carrying smoothly on, despite the tangle of human upsets and the knowledge of how everything must end.” Cathal is writing rejection letters for bursary applicants. And there we have it, Keegan gives us the heads up that this is not a happily-ever-after. In this poignant novella, the fact that Cathal is not one of life’s winners is revealed through the world around him.

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Trust – book review

Trust, By Hernan Diaz

‘I am a financier in a city ruled by financiers. My father was a financier in a city ruled by industrialists. His father was a financier in a city ruled by merchants. His father was a financier in a city ruled by a tight-knit society, indolent and priggish, like most provincial aristocracies. These four cities are one and the same, New York.’ And here’s me trying to boycott all American culture until they get themselves a decent president! It was a book club choice, inescapable. Interesting book, though and a topic that’s resonating, so it gets a review.

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Seascraper – book review

Seascraper, by Benjamin Wood

Thomas Flett lives in a fictional seaside town of Longferry with his mother. He is a ‘shanker’ and takes his horse and cart out on the mudflats when the tide goes way out, trawling for shrimp. Coasts like Morcombe Bay immediately come to mind, with its treacherous history of drowning as the tide races for miles on the ebb and flow, faster than you can run, leaving quick sands and strandings. In this beautiful, hugely atmospheric book, Thomas, a thinker and observer, takes us with him out on the shifting sand.

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