The Christmas Book Flood

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 274 Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2023

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Iceland, the night of December 24 is traditionally spent curled up with a book. Why? Because you're very likely to have been gifted one, given the huge array of literary offerings that get published in Iceland in the run-up for Christmas. In this festive last episode of the year, we're speaking to the writer Hildur Knútsdóttir about the Christmas Book Flood and why Iceland is such a nation of bookworms. We're also talking about Christmas tree diplomacy, a new twist on an old tradition, and an Italian tyre-slashing mystery. You can find Hildur here on Instagram and here on Twitter. You can find details of her new book, 'The Night Guest', here on her website. This week's Inspiration Station offerings: 'Small Things Like These' by Claire Keegan, 'My Father's House' by Joseph O'Connor, and 'La Ride' by Simon Boileau and Florent Pierre. Hildur's recommendations are 'Shadows of the Short Days' and 'The Shadows of a Midnight Sun' by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson. Thanks so much to everyone who's supported us this year. If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it in 2024, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at ⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠ (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by ⁠⁠⁠leaving us a review⁠⁠⁠ or giving us five stars on Spotify. Producer: Katy Lee Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina ⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠ |⁠ Bluesky⁠ |⁠ ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠[email protected]⁠

Transcript

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0:00.0	That sweet sound you here is the Christmas version of our trademark jingle, which can
0:27.3	only mean one thing. It's the last episode of the year. Yes, and in what is becoming a bit of a
0:32.7	tradition, we are recording this festive episode in front of a live audience of our lovely Patreon supporters
0:39.3	tuning in from all over the world using the magic of Zoom.
0:43.4	Hi everyone, so nice to see everyone.
0:45.3	Oh, they're waving.
0:46.1	It's very nice to see you all here.
0:47.9	And we will hopefully hear from some of you later on in the show.
0:50.3	But for now, we're keeping you all on mute to avoid that video call chaos
0:55.4	that we also loved during the pandemic.
0:57.7	Yeah, fun times.
0:58.7	Producers Katz and Vojchec are also here.
1:00.7	Hello, you two.
1:01.5	Hello.
1:02.1	Hi.
1:03.1	Boi Shek, I don't think it's actually snowing over there in Warsaw, but I guess you're
1:07.0	feeling pretty festive today.
1:09.7	Yeah, just right before we connected on this call, the new
1:13.3	prime minister received the vote of confidence. And yeah, that was such a, I must confess, I was pretty
1:19.5	moved. And I think it's a big thing to say because I'm not a great fan of this particular
1:25.5	person, nor of any of the parties that are part of the coalition,
1:28.6	but I think that this coalition, which is very, like, varied internally.
	...

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