 It's Christmas! I'm not even racking out the ring light for this clip, we're just living with it. But how are we? Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. If you do celebrate it, I am currently filming this on Christmas Eve. It is like seven o'clock on Christmas Eve and I thought I would just bring you along with me throughout Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I don't know how much I'm actually gonna be able to film tomorrow because I'm seeing some family and I'm not sure if they want to be filmed so I think I'll be quite a lot of like gaps in footage tomorrow but I wanted to do just a little mini tiny vlog. But over the next couple of days I'm just gonna be reading some like Christmasy murder mystery books or not murder mysteries, mysteries. I'm gonna be reading Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie finally getting round to this. This is a collection of Christmasy and wintery short stories by Agatha. Not me thinking I'm on first name terms with Miss Christie. I'm gonna start this tonight and I'm hoping to read half of it tonight. There's 12 stories so I'm gonna read the first six and then I'll check in with you. And then my plan is to listen to the audiobook of Christmas at the Grange by T. E. Kinsey tomorrow morning whilst I'm getting ready for the day and getting ready for Christmas because that audiobook is only two hours long not even sped up. That is a novella like a really short Christmasy audiobook in the Lady Hardcastle Mysteries which many of you know is my favorite cozy mystery series. I absolutely adore them and this is actually the next book in the series anyway so it makes perfect sense to read it now and then I'll read the second half of this tomorrow as well hopefully. So that's the plan. So excited! Like I said it's currently Christmas Eve and me and my family about to start chilling out together. We're starting a new Christmas tradition where we're gonna play Die Hard the board game. Every Christmas Eve is like a board game. My family love board games if you don't know because there's like a special Die Hard board game so we're gonna play that and then we're gonna watch Die Hard and we're gonna do this every Christmas Eve. It's gonna be good and we're all gonna have fun. Die Hard is all of our favorite Christmas film basically and those of you who say it's not a Christmas film you're incorrect. It is all of our favorite Christmas film so that's what we're gonna do this evening and hopefully I'll get a chance to like read this in between. That's the plan. I'm gonna take you with us as we play this evening and this is gonna be super chill. I'm gonna not stress about this vlog too much because like I said it's like Christmas and I kind of just want to chill out so I probably won't film a lot if I'm honest but also get to hang out a little bit. Okay let's go play the game. I severely overestimated how much I'd be able to read yesterday. We finished the our film at like half 10 so I only read like 40 pages of this last night but I've read it more this morning and I've only got like six pages of book number six left to read. Book number six? Story number six left to read but we're gonna go start opening presents. I need to talk to you now but like we're almost at where I said I would be when I checked in with you. I am enjoying it. Some of the stories this is the thing with short story collections. Some I really enjoy some I'm not. We've had a few acupro short stories. We've had a Miss Marple one but my favorite has actually been a Tommy and Tuppence one right? So we all gag nation on this. So Tommy and Tuppence how many books are there? There's five Tommy and Tuppence like full published books and I'm like I need to read them. I'm really enjoying them. I think they're like this married couple who are like detectives but I think it's more comedic than other stuff. I get the right so like a bit more funny and I love them as characters. I love that short story that was the best one for me. So now I'm like holy shit I need to read Tommy and Tuppence. What the hell? What the hell? I thought Miss Marple would be what I read next but like oh my god I need to read Tommy and Tuppence. I'm gonna be honest though I have been struggling in these short stories to follow all the characters right? This is a problem I sometimes get in normal Agatha Christie books anyway but it's like you know magnified with short stories and that there's so many characters in each of these short stories they're introduced and I find it hard especially sometimes when I'm listening to the audiobook because I've had I've gone back and forth between the physical book and the audiobook to like follow who everyone is. I'm like who are you? Who is she? Who is she? Where did you find her? And that makes it hard to follow the mystery because it's all to do with like people's relationships with one another and how they all intersect and how this person knows this person yet together and for some of them I've just checked out I've been like I don't have the clue. That means I've really struggled to enjoy some of them because like I'm like what the fuck is going on? Like I'm just lost. But hopefully the second half of this that won't happen and maybe I'll get a bit more adept at it but like over a whole book it usually takes me a little while in Agatha Christie's books to like remember who everyone is and what their relationships are but in the short stories you don't have that. Also Agatha is like fucking always she's very precise. Each of these is like 20 pages like they're all the same length. I'm like what the hell? Like why? Why? She had a word count as she was sticking to it. She had a word count goal and she was like I'm not moving from that. So anyway I'm enjoying it but I'm not loving it but I'm gonna finish story number six in a bit once we've like unwrapped presents and then I'm gonna start Christmas at the Grange and read that. I just bought the ebook for it and it's only like 60 pages so I'm gonna read that after we have unwrapped presents um and like while we're waiting for like Christmas lunch and stuff and yeah I'll talk to you once um once I finish that. I'm very excited for that because I feel like that's more my speed it's gonna be a little bit like chiller a little bit easier to follow and I'm very excited to hang out with two of my favorite characters again in Lady Hard Castle and Flow but anyway let's go unwrapped presents oh my god I'm so excited! Merry Christmas baby! Just later now we had our Christmas dinner and then we popped around to my grandparents house to visit them and just before we had Christmas dinner I finished Christmas at the Grange and it was really sweet I'm gonna give it four stars I mean it's a hard thing to rate it's literally 59 pages like it's not long basically they're invited around to their friend's house for Christmas and when they get there they find that one of the women's their necklace has been stolen and they get asked to like basically solve it amongst all the rest of the Christmas cheer and it was just like a really sweet mystery I just love these characters like honestly Flow and Lady Hard Castle some of my favorite characters ever like it's just so sweet and wholesome and lovely and cozy and it honestly felt like the perfect read for Christmas like they're so funny they're so sweet um it's just got this like warmth about it so it's kind of just about them celebrating Christmas and that was interesting as well like reading about how these like rich people in the early 1900s were going to celebrate Christmas that was fun and it's like an easier read than Agatha Christie you know it's like written for like modern audiences not that Agatha Christie's a hard read but like it's an even easier read and I loved the audiobook for it the audiobook narrator is amazing for this series like you need to listen to the audiobooks if you're gonna read this series I just really really enjoyed it there's not much to say it was really good now I'm actually going around to Tom's for the evening I'm not gonna bring my camera because I'm literally gonna be around there for a couple hours so I'll film anything that happens on my phone but I don't think anything already happened but I'm gonna pop around there for the evening and I'm hopefully gonna finish the other half of this when I'm around there um this evening when everything kind of quiets down so I will check back in with you when I'm back here tomorrow but yeah oh my god Christmas I love Christmas I'm so happy okay so it's now a boxing day I'm back at my house we went out for a little walk by the sea last night when I got around Tom's and then we just played some games but I forgot to film any of it but I have finished Made When Tomato by Agatha Christie I'm gonna I'm gonna give it three stars okay here's the thing it was supposed to give but it did not give what needed to be gave I don't know how much I enjoy short story collections it's so hard because there's some I really enjoyed in this that were like high fours 4.5s and then there's some that were like twos so it's really hard to rate but I will say it was just it was an enjoyable read to read over Christmas I'm really glad I finally read it because I meant to read it last Christmas I would say my favorite story was still the Tommy and Tuppence one I need to fucking get on reading that straight away but I also I really enjoyed all the Urquiporo ones and I really enjoyed one of the Miss Marple ones that we've had um since I last spoke to you that one was really good what was that one called Sanctuary that one was really good so I'm excited to read Miss Marple I'm excited to read Tommy and Tuppence I'm excited to keep reading Urquiporo the ones that didn't work for me were the ones that didn't have one of those detectives in there was two that had this character called Mr Quinn in who could like know he like knew things I was like is this man a ghost like what the fuck is going on here what the fuck is going on in here on this day those ones did not work me I didn't lot I didn't like them I didn't like them I just didn't follow them at all so that is the thing with a short story collection it's very hit or miss you know but I would say on the whole I still really really enjoyed this even though I'm giving it three stars I enjoyed the essence of reading it over Christmas do you know what I mean but I would still recommend Christmas at the Grange above this that was like a fun 60 page short story I mean I would just always recommend Lady Hardcastle Mysteries like they just have me in a chokehold like I just fucking love them why am I out of breath what is wrong with me anyway I still enjoyed reading it but it's a three do you know what I mean it's not a new favorite it was fine it was enjoyable but also I felt like a lot of the stories like they weren't Christmasy you know they were wintery or vaguely happening around Christmas but like this is why I was saying when I read the holiday swap which is a Christmas romance if you're gonna base it around Christmas like fucking make it Christmasy that's what I want so do you think I deserve better than that yes there was one acupro one right at the end that was like Christmasy like that was Christmas and that's what I wanted but also like Agatha probably didn't write a lot of like Christmasy short stories so when they wanted to make this because money like they're like there probably wasn't a ton for them to pull from so I didn't blame the book or Agatha Christie for that because that wasn't like her intention so I guess it's a bit different in that regard to win like a whole book I'm like oh that wasn't Christmasy enough it's a little bit different but yeah I hope you enjoyed this vlog I'm just like chilling out with Downey today watching a football match and nothing really exciting so I'm gonna end the vlog here since I've read both of the books I was intending to and I'm not gonna have time to read anything else but I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas if you do celebrate it let me know in the comments some of the stuff you go up to for Christmas like what your traditions are because everyone has different traditions also this is a very important one let me know if you celebrate Christmas what you have for like breakfast before you have Christmas lunch we have mini sausage rolls because then you don't get too full but Tom has like smoked salmon and scrambled eggs I'm like that's too big a meal but let me know what you think I want to know what everyone has and what your little traditions are if you've gotten to the end comment a snowflake emoji because there's a lot of snowflakes um on the front of this and yeah I hope you had a wonderful Christmas oh oh also I forgot to say I forgot to say I forgot to say this week this coming week now there's gonna be a video every day apart from on Saturday I'm having Saturday off but every other day there is a video going up so I'm really excited it's like lots of end of year content I did want to try and like like keep all of my end of year content in 2021 but because I've missed two uploads there's two uploads that have made their way into 2022s at the start of 2022 but other than that all of my rest of end of year content will be in the next week which is really exciting I've also got another big secret tbr vlog project coming up in a couple days which I need to finish the next vlog but that is one of my like most exciting videos I've done so I'm really really excited for that and yeah anyway I'm gonna go now but I hope you have a wonderful rest of your festive period and I will see you very soon in another video bye