Welcome to Day 7 of #12booksofchristmas. During December I am sharing 12 festive reads. The idea came from the wonderful Icelandic tradition of Jolabokaflod where a book is given on Christmas Eve and read together. We are now over halfway through and time is flying!. This is my 5th year doing this and you can check out a whole host of books on my books for Christmas page at the bottom of this post. In case you’ve missed any titles below is a list of #12books so far this year….

• Day One - Countdown to Christmas by Jo Thomas
• Day Two - Who KIlled Father Christmas Edited by Martin Edwards
• Day Three - This Christmas in Paris by Sophie Claire
• Day Four - Tied up in Tinsel by Ngaio Marsh
• Day Five - Winter in New York by Josie Silver
• Day Six - A Shirley Hughes Christmas by Shirley Hughes

When I think back to bookselling at Christmas there were always a number of constants: These included copious copies of The People's Friend annual being stacked on the beautifully beeswaxed counter, the panic and gamble of purchasing 15 more copies from Bertram's Books as a Firm Sale (the words Firm Sale were dreaded words ain the bookselling industry). There were the people who rock up on Christmas Eve ready to purchase a copy of the obscure 'Dirt:a study of nitrogen in the soil' only available from a publisher in the Outer Hebrides and who were then appalled to discover that this was not stocked in copious quantities in the bookshop before asking for it to be ordered ‘in time for Christmas’ .

Other Christmas bestsellers included The Twelve Days of Christmas by John Julius Norwich and today's #12booksofchristmas choice How to Survive Christmas by Jilly Cooper

The Plot

Christmas is looming. Will your mother-in-law present you with yet another hideous jersey this year? How are you going to cope with Granny’s peke or the undesirable in-laws? Has the row started about where to spend the holiday already started, and it’s only August?

Jilly Cooper has the answer to everything. Whether you should seek refuge in the cooking sherry or suggest a wholesome family walk, Jilly offers, in her won irrepressible style, sound, but often hilarious advice about how to get through the roller-coaster ride we call Christmas

With the help of the perfect Christmas family - Scarlett O’Aga, the Xmasochistic housewife, her wayward husband Noel, his seductive mistress Ms Stress, their four delightful children, Holly, Robin, Carol and Nicholas, and their dog Difficult Patch, we learn how to survive this most demanding of occasions.

My Thoughts

In today’s world of the influencer telling us how to live our lives, how to clean, how to have the perfect guest room, make-up and heaven forbid recommending you books, this is the perfect antidote. Christmas will never be perfect. The idea of the healthy family walk on Christmas afternoon, with ruddy-cheeked children throwing a playful snowball and everyone smiling and laughing is a myth. And Jilly provides the perfect book describing Christmas in more realistic terms. But it is great fun and a hoot at the end of the day.

Christmas is messy, but great fun. Wonderful memories will be made and sometimes not for the right reasons. It’s a wonderful, difficult, complicated, messy and brilliant time of year. The world will not stop spinning because your crackers are not home-made, or because you bought your Christmas cake instead of making it on stir-up Sunday. And indeed Jilly is here to remind us of this with wonderful bonne mots such as ‘Christmas drink’ is a word like ‘duck’, ‘lion’ or ‘pheasant’, that implies the plural.

Jilly also gives us a glimpse into a seemingly well to do family and their actual Christmas, complete with Granny miming a caterpillar, a father in law asking for the best route to Petersfield at least 12 times, and a very stressed Scarlett O’Aga who is left to all the cooking by her family. The book has been updated in 2007, and some of the themes are slightly dated. But the book is written with the wonderful play on words used by Jilly Cooper in her novels. She also provides an insight into her own family Christmas.

Part story, part self-help guide, if you are panicking because you have not managed to source Christmas tea-towels this year (much like me last year) then chill out. It’s Ok. Instead have a glass of G&T, open the chocolates and sit down with this novel. You can thank me later.

And if it really is getting all too much, and you need a little more Jilly then do watch Rivals on Disney Plus. It's raunchy, great fun and laugh out loud funny. Much like this.