Festive Fun: My Fantasy Christmas Dinner Party

Tonight I'm kicking off what I'm hoping will be a fun feature that I will be hosting every night in the run up to Christmas.

The idea for this My Fantasy Christmas Dinner feature came about as over the last couple of years our company decided to have site based Christmas parties, with just a couple of free drinks and a buffet on offer, rather than the sit-down team meals that they used to pay for.  As I haven't had a traditional family Christmas for quite some time, I always love the chance to have a good catch up with friends over a meal and drinks especially if it's the chance for someone else to cook for me, so decided to host a virtual dinner party instead.

For this feature which I hope everyone will enjoy reading, I invited bloggers and authors to take part in hosting their own Fantasy Christmas Dinner party. My initial thoughts were for them to come up with 5 authors, dead or alive, who they would invite to the party and why they chose them. Then for an added challenge I suggested that maybe this could be expanded to include fictional characters and maybe plan the perfect menu or after dinner entertainment! So here's my feeble attempt as I'm definitely a reader and not a writer...

My first guest won't be a surprise for some of my friends as she wrote one of my all-time favourite books Little Women, Louisa May Alcott. I've lost count how many times I've read this book since my teens and my lovely blogger friend Linda Hill gifted me this gorgeous Macmillan Collector's Library edition for my birthday a couple of years ago.

The second guest is an author I would have loved to have met in person, but sadly I never got the chance to meet her although she was always so lovely to interact with on social media and had been a guest on the blog many times, Emma Hannigan. Emma was an inspirational women who sadly died last year after a long battle with cancer. Her final book The Gift of Friends is still sat in my TBR as I know that once I've read there will be no more new books coming from her but think I might bite the bullet and read it during my time off over Christmas.

My Favourite Book is... by Emma Crowley

When Sharon first mentioned  she was planning a feature called ‘My Favourite book’ to coincide with her four year blogiversary I thought how on earth can I pick one????  I have read so many brilliant books over the years and have around four or five favourite authors that I would definitely buy their books every year. But as for a favourite book how on earth could I choose just one?  So I cast my mind back to when I fell in love with reading and of course that was in my early childhood. My Dad used to take me to the library every Saturday to get new books and my love for reading just spiralled  from there. In the end I decided to pick two books from my childhood that have stuck with me to this day.I even have my original copies nestled on my bookshelves.

The first book is Matilda by Roald Dahl. Who didn’t love all his books but for me Matilda stood out from the rest.That cover image alone of that small little girl sat on a box surrounded by book just did it for me. I wanted to be Matilda judging by the cover .Of course when I got into the story and read of her parents  I didn’t think her life was as enviable. The story is just magical and the scenes where she is in the library soaking up all the books and reading well beyond her age are forever in my head. Miss.Honey is such a fabulous character who helps Matilda exercise and energise her mind. Maybe Miss.Honey was one of my inspirations to become a teacher. What also made the book so memorable and special was Matilda’s  magical powers that develop and enable her to get her revenge on her self absorbed parents.

The happy ending was just right too. I’m currently reading Roald Dahl to my class at the moment and I can see they are getting hooked by his phenomenal storytelling ability. Matilda is next on the list to be read and I hope I can in years to come the girls in my class will remember Matilda as fondly as I do.

Today is my 4th Blogiversay so let's celebrate

When I set up this blog 4 years ago I honestly never expected it to grow to the extent that it has as thought I'd probably only get a few views each week, if I was lucky, from family or friends.  I certainly never expected the blog to have had almost 460,000 page views to date, receive some of the fabulous books I've received over the years nor get the chance to meet or interact with so many lovely authors, fellow bloggers and bookworms.

As I have done with previous years I will be running a series of giveaways, starting today until the end of the month, but I've also decided to do a guest feature where readers, bloggers and authors talk about their favourite book which came about as a result of today's giveaway package inspired by my favourite book Little Women.  

It's a book I first discovered as a teenager after receiving a copy for my birthday, and was the first classic book that I had ever read as like many other teenagers of my generation I loved nothing more than getting stuck into the likes of books from Jilly Cooper or Jackie Collins, so the idea of reading a book about life in the olden days didn't really appeal.  But how wrong was I as I soon found myself immersed into the lives of the March women especially Jo. It made me appreciate how far life had changed for women and the opportunities that we had compared to the days when Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women.