Terry Prone: Christmas is Hardback HQ - read the room

Just like the post-Christmas Day dinners, it's good to have leftover reads to sustain you while you work your way through the hardbacks people gave you as gifts

That’s the thing about being given books at this time of the year. It’s more flattering to the recipient because of the implication that they own a sensibility wider than getting plastered. 

The myth about Christmas leftovers is that we all hate them. We complain about our situation as we soldier through cold turkey, folding it with stuffing into sandwiches and enlivening it with tossed crisps. That consumed, we then sling a thick slice of plum pudding into the microwave and force ourselves to consume it with the custard that’s left in the packet and feel at once virtuous (using up all the food) and resentful (because it’s simultaneously so calorific and boring).

 The sheer scale of the refrigerated turkey and ham becomes a threat, speaking to the past, or what we wish was past, rather than to the future.