The August baby is reading a murder mystery.

“Did you see how a PR agency launched a smear campaign against Blake Lively?” she said yesterday, referring to the sensational scandal of a male co-star paying a crisis PR firm to malign actor Blake Lively, best known for playing Serena in Gossip Girls. Hearing her interest in the story, I hand her Everybody Knows, a racy murder mystery set in L.A, telling of the dark deeds of a celebrity crisis management PR firm — this is how incredible fiction is at capturing the stories of our times.

My husband is reading The Secret Lives of Numbers: A Hidden History of Math’s Unsung Trailblazers.

“Read this chapter”, he says, “it’s about a famous woman mathematician called Hypatia, who lived in the fourth century in Alexandria, and even then her story got written out of history.” I am too deep in the disputes between Elon Musk and the AI firm DeepMind to deviate but intrigued enough to mark his book as my next read.

Later in the day, it starts to snow: light flakes that swirl and twirl, landing on the apple orchards around us. The August baby’s Delhi friends squeal with delight, running out to make snow reels. Our dog dashes out into the garden with them, she loves snow too, and suddenly it feels like a birthday party as snowflakes swirl all around us.

Friends tramp in, wearing boots and raincoats, shaking off snowflakes and clustering around the woodstove. The August Baby and her friends bring us warm mulled wine with star anise and wedges of orange, hot toddy, Christmas cake and steamed momos.

After lunch, we do a book launch. A friend who lives next door has her second book of poems out; With Earth as My Witness has just been published by Red River Press. She reads Slow Road to Manali out to all of us who seek higher ground.

“to better imbibe

pine sap

honeysuckle

hectares of hillside

and secret shrines"

We recite our favourite poems:

The Village Schoolmaster by Oliver Goldsmith

Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way

With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay,

There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule,

The village master taught his little school;

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Someone had blundered.

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

Into the Valley of Death

Rode the six hundred”

And The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes and The Golden Gate Bridge by Vikram Seth.

We drink ginger tea and exchange bookish presents. As the snow outside blankets the trees and the sloping red and green roofs, it feels like we are in a cocoon of warmth, that we are connected by the cadences of our favourite poems and stories.

Darkness falls, the friends go home, and I am reminded again of the power of literature to bring us together, to spark conversations that linger long after the last page is turned and the last word is spoken.

What books have brought you joy this year, dear Reader? What words will you carry into the next year? Do write in with your 2024 favourites. And here’s to more books, poems and bookish gatherings in the year to come. Happy holidays and happy reading.

Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com

The views expressed are personal