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Sad to hear that Chris Rea (Driving home for Christmas) has passed away.

The Curse of La Fontaine by M L Longworth - this is the 6th in the Verlaque and Bonnet series - he's a judge (though it has a different job spec in France) and she's a University professor and they live in Aix-en-Provence - and starts with the couple marrying, then back to work in Aix and soon they are confronted with a local mystery, when a skeleton is unearthed in the grounds of a local restaurant, whose owner had been planning to put some outside seating in the garden of the restaurant, much to the horror of neighbours, for apart from the inevitable noise from al fresco diners, they are convinced it would stop the fountain (hence the title) flowing - and indeed the fountain does stop when the body is discovered. It's soon identified as a local resident, the son of a wealthy family who have since moved, but the parents and brothers are all still alive, and Verlaque is soon questioning them, and opening the usual can of worms. This took a while to get going, but at least in this one there weren't endless pages about Verlaque's cigar club, and there are some lovely descriptions of food too, though sometimes these also slowed down the plot. But once the back story of various residents started to unfold it became more interesting, I wouldn't exactly say gripping but it was an easy read and quite enjoyable. 7/10

I agree with both of you. A beautiful song. Christmas music in general is great to listen to. There are so many wonderful songs that endure and endure, you never get tired of hearing them.

What I love so much, apart from the beautiful melding of their voices (Malakai is perfect!), is the obvious bond these two share. They're an absolute joy together. This is another beautiful one of them together. Of course, Aled Jones is the more famous of the two, but he lets Malakai shine and doesn't try to overpower him with his voice. ( Madeleine, on reflection, I agree with you that O Holy Night is my favourite 😊)

Shake Hands with Santa Claus - Louis Prima

Amazing! Beautiful song.

Swahili or even !Xóõ,

I'm sure you're familiar with Aled Jones and Malakai Bayoh's beautiful rendition of Walking in the Air, but in case anyone hasn't heard it 💕

I liked some things about the book. I liked the Quilp, Swiveller and the Marchioness characters. I think Dickens was still refining his trade, because his later books were better. The humour was good. With the exception of Dick Swiveller, the fun characters were evil and the good characters were boring.

So do I

I also really like "The Power of Love" by Frankie goes to Hollywood.

I agree with you about the choir. We have a lovely boy in our choir, the son of one of the members, who guest sings occasionally and he sang O Holy Night this year - we were his backing singers - and also did Walking in the Air. He has a beautiful voice but he's 12 now and we can hear his voice is breaking, thankfully it lasted until our Xmas concert this week! Hopefully his new voice will be just as good.

Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton “Civilization was a blessing you never truly appreciated until it threatened to collapse around you.” This one weighs in at a mere 1100 pages: there is a second volume, equally long. Hamilton therefore has plenty of space for worldbuilding, characters and description. He makes the aliens suitably alien. I’m not going to detail the plot: that would take a while! Hamilton does play with some ideas about society, capitalism and socialism. As there are many different planets in the Commonwealth there is room for a variety of societies. Hamilton also plays with styles of governance and the cumbersomeness of bureaucracy. He also injects a certain cynical humour: “Wherever you find human misery, you find lawyers, either causing it or making a profit from it.” “That was the trouble with freethinkers, they had overactive imaginations that made them uncertain.” I can anticipate some difficult moral questions coming up in the next one. This is a proper space opera. If you like your sci-fi hefty and complex this may be for you! 9 out of 10 Starting Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky

or Greek, Serbo Croat,

if French is preferred

I love 'O Holy Night' too, Madeleine. It's s beautiful song. Boys's choirs singing are my favourite, particularly as you say, the sopranos. Nothing matches their clear soaring voices.

I will put it on my list.

I like Prokofiev’s Troika, which Greg Lake’s tune is based on and not played anywhere nearly enough this time of year, in my opinion. I also like Merry Merry Christmas by Keb Mo (Kevin Moore) And Elvis Presley’s Merry Christmas Baby. Of the Carols, I prefer Silent Night sung by a boy soprano. And it would not be Christmas without King’s College Choir (with much in the way of boy sopranos).

If it's "pop" songs then it would be "I Believe in Father Christmas" by Greg Lake, of the more traditional/classical songs I would choose "O Holy Night", we've been singing it at my choir and it always brings me out in goosebumps!

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I also cannot decide on an absolute favorite but the song that I really, really, like is" Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as sung by Judy Garland. Absolutely a nice song.

About three more chapters to go. Poor Nell is going to join the angels. Looks like she has consumption. Tuberculosis is an odd diesease. Would she have succumbed to it if she had not been forced to leave home and roam around the country? TB is an infectious diesease, but nobody seems to worry about being in her company. Mayve it is one of those dieseases that everyone is exposed to. I don't think much of the ending. I am not convinced Sampson Brass would have broken down like that. The first reason is that there is no real evidence against him, just the word of a servant girl. The second reason is whether he refeives immunity from prosecution he would be a ruined man if he confessed. I doubt those lawyer friends of Kit could have offered immunity from prosecution. I also doubt they could have got Kit's guilty verdict overturned. The other thing I did not like was the massive coincidende of one of the lawyers' brothers living in the quiet country village the other side of Birmingham where Nell and her grandfather fetched up. I wondered how they would track her down. If the single gentleman had hired some sort of detective I might have believed it.

The Bear, William Faulkner A totally biased review. I’m never quite sure what the difference is between a short story and a novella and don’t want to ponder it just now. This story is part of the novel Go Down Moses, which I’ve never read. It’s in The Portable Faulkner, which is where I read it and it’s 112 pages long. It’s in five parts and the fourth part is usually left out - according to the editor’s notes at the beginning - because not having read the rest of the book it’s held to be confusing, so the editor put in the fourth part and left it up to the reader to decide whether to read it or not. Naturally I decided to read it and it was suitably confusing, but utterly wonderful. As the title suggests, it’s the story of the hunt of a bear but being Faulkner it’s much more than that and, as usual, I got the overall gist of the story and took my time to luxuriate in the sublime prose. Highly recommended

yeah, i'd be hesitant to recommend it but i totally see why its as beloved as it is. i'll have to check out the curious readers tho i have soooo much podcast time at work lol.