I'm only on page 98 but already I love this book. The author finished as the youngest ever semi-finalist in the Great British Baking Show in 2015; my husband has had a love affair with her hands since then. Aran is a Scottish Gaelic word from the old Irish meaning bread, loaf; the author now owns a bakery by the same name in Scotland. Listen to this: "A quince takes some fighting in order to make full use of its potential". Fabulous line! Read!

A wonderful collection of essays by women connected by their passion for swimming in the Ladies' Pond of Hampstead Heath. I bought this book for myself for Christmas (as a woman in a house full of men, you do what you have to). I waited three days to open it: we open books last, a standing family rule of 50 years because everyone would start reading and the flow of opening gifts would be disrupted. Worth the wait, I devoured it and felt loved.

I have a love affair with books written month by month, covering a calendar year. My copy of this is dog-eared and water stained, and has traveled with a dear friend across the Atlantic, back to the south of France and its place of inception. Despite terrible intrinsically racist lines ("sallow gypsy girls... hissing at one another in competition" and "A lanky blue-black Senegalese loped...") that should be expunged, the descriptions of food win.

One of my very favorite books about food and cooking. Who could resist an opening line such as this: "Unlike some people, who love to go out, I love to stay home"? When I read this book, I felt I'd made a friend who would have come to dinner, gladly, with me. I was so saddened when I read the small comment that "Laurie Colwin died in 1992." But what a wonderful thing that we have her words forever, to accompany our forays into the kitchen.