The Book Nerd’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays

The most wonderful time of the year has, in reality, more potential pitfalls than a White Elephant party hosted by the Grinch. How does a reader survive all the family squabbling, high-stress travel, and cabin fever? The same way we survive everything: by staying calm and putting our noses in a book. Here’s what to read when you’re up against all the worst the holidays have to offer.
Your house is stuffed. To the gills. With people. Never mind that they’re your loved ones, sometimes you just want to be alone. When that’s just not possible, try entering the fictional mind of a cool-headed, gimlet-eyed narrator who walks alone: Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s hardboiled private investigator with a heart of…well, not gold, exactly, but some kind of tenacious metal. While he slugs down whiskey in his cold-water flat, you can hold the bathroom door shut with one foot and keep the shower running to hide the sound of turning pages. Start with a classic: The Big Sleep or Farewell, My Lovely.
Christmas Eve. 5 p.m. The mall. Even Jolly Old Saint Nick would become a misanthrope if he had to deal with the line at Nordstrom’s on December 24 (not to mention the parking lot). Embrace and then exorcise your very un-Christmassy emotions with a masterwork of misanthropy: Hermann Koch’s The Dinner. Contains: family strife that’ll make your family’s last Battle Royale look like a trip to Disneyland, and a couple sequences straight out of a revenge fantasy.
You just got dumped, right smack in the middle of holiday season. And that cashmere scarf you got her is not returnable. The timing alone gives you a perfect excuse to do exactly what you want to do: declare yourself unfit for love, and love itself a joke creation of the greeting-card industry that no self-respecting human would let themselves fall for. The perfect companion for your journey into the land of the happily single? Adelle Waldman’s The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., which examines a callow young man’s romantic entanglements through a magnifying mirror, blasting away all romance and mystery to reveal the boredom, entitlement, and lust below. He’s both reprehensible and scarily recognizable, and he’ll make you glad you’re sitting this inning out.
You’ve been cornered at a family dinner by your most insufferable relative, who wants to know if you’ve considered how unlikely it is that a woman who dresses like you do will ever find a boyfriend. The best antidote? The works of Jane Austen. Her supporting gallery of ridiculous, self-important fools will remind you that if you can’t beat them, you can at least laugh at them (politely and behind your hand, as Aunt Jane would recommend). Mansfield Park, with its absolutely monstrous Aunt Norris (and a lesser evil, the criminally indolent Aunt Bertram) is a good place to start.
In line to see Santa. As the air fills with the festive scent of parental flop sweat and diapers nobody wants to risk leaving the line to change, your mind might turn lightly to thoughts of the less fortunate: the elves who have to stand around in front of Santa’s house all day, and the man in a big red suit who has to tough out a probably astonishing ratio of crying to not crying children. Guess what, unhappy camper? You’re primed to love David Sedaris’s hilarious Holidays on Ice, which includes star-making essay “The SantaLand Diaries,” about his soul-sucking tenure as a Christmas mall elf. It will inspire gratitude that you have only your own kids to wrangle.
Office party, three hours in, and your boss has a “nobody leaves till I do” policy. Chex Mix? Check. Embarrassingly drunk intern? Check. Roomful of people itching to get out of there in time to beat traffic? Double check. If you’re suffering small talk-related anxiety and a mustache photo booth–induced hangover, it’s time to read a book filled with workplaces even more dysfunctional than yours: John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces. If you’ve never talked yourself out of a job at a hot-dog stand, you’re doing better than Ignatius Reilly.
That egg nog wasn’t going to drink itself, so you helped out, one time too many. Chase your festive cocktails with Kingsley Amis’s Everyday Drinking. Amis is an absolute authority on the care and feeding of your drinking problem, covering such topics as the hangover, booze pairings, and the ideal night out. And when you’re ready for it, cocktail recipes are included—including the Lucky Jim, comprised primarily of “British vodka, the cheapest you can find.”
Christmas morning, when the presents have been opened and the living room is still littered with paper. Christmas Day, as distinct from Christmas morning, tends to have a downbeat, after-the-party feeling, exacerbated by the fact that, by the time you’re getting around to eating lunch, the sun’s halfway to set. So why not embrace the melancholy? Put on some Peggy Lee and read a tawdry tale of glitz gone ragged at the edges. We recommend a classic of the genre: The Great Gatsby or Breakfast at Tiffany’s should do the trick.
What’s your favorite pick for holiday reading?