This week I have been spending the Christmas money that I hope I will be getting.  As if Christmas shopping for everyone wasn’t enough to sate my shopping needs! After my disappointment with my Funko in my fairyloot box I needed to put things right.  As my daughter now has that one I have funko loss so treated myself to one that had been idling in my amazon cart for weeks.  I adore Labyrinth and one of my favourite parts is when Sarah has the conversation with worm as she’s trying to get into the Labyrinth itself, Funko have issued a Sarah pop with the worm included, so I’m so happy that this is going to be with me in the new year.  I know it’s not a bookish pop but hey, that didn’t work out quite so well last time….

Have any of you heard of Ink and Wonder designs?  They are based in Australia but they do the most amazing bookish items, they are most famous of for their Woodmark bookmarks, one of my favourite designs involves a quote from ACOMAF “To the stars who listen and the dreams that are answered” This has been out of stock for so long and it eventually went up for pre-order again earlier in the week, she also does gorgeous maps of Prythian which I am hoping to get when they come back into stock next year.

Finally, I was gutted to have missed out on the Christmas at Hogwarts December box from Book and Nook, this contained a number of Harry Potter themed candles but it sold out so quickly, which given the theme was kind of to be expected.  This week they released their January Winter Wonderland box for pre-order and when I saw that it contained items around Six of Crows, Narnia and His Dark Materials I knew I had to go for it, again I’m hoping that this will arrive in January and in some ways it’s probably a better box to get as it spans a few books rather than one series which can only spell good things for my bookstagram in the new year!

Now that I have spent my way into a black hole I am going to sit back and await my goodies, after all January is usually a little dismal when all the excitement of Christmas and New year has died down, it will almost feel like Christmas has kept going!

One of my main tasks for next week is to get all the Christmas presents wrapped and I have a few quiet hours to myself to do this before I go and watch the new Star Wars with Mr Playground.  Now usually a few spare hours to myself involves reading but I have a task to do, so I have been considering being able to do two things at once and trying Audible.  Amazon have an offer for prime members at the moment for an extended free trial and I’m wondering if it’s worth giving a go?  I enjoyed the abridged version of The Book of Dust that was on BBC Radio 4 a couple of months ago so but that was only a couple of hours of listening.  Do any of you listen to Audiobooks, do you think they are worth it?

I’ll be back soon with some special posts looking back at my favourite books of the year and also those that I am most excited for coming in 2018!