I was invited to talk on BBC radio Bristol about the fact that 7 million Britons have on average £3,300 of shopping credit card debt. Ouch! And at 17% APR minimum, they’re spending at least £510 a year on that debt.

Now, as we know, Annie Valentine has had huge credit card problems in the past but she is still determined to get on top of them. She never can quite stick to her boring old budget, but her debt has come down from five figures (eek!) to a low four figures.

Here are her five best tips BTW!

1. My loves, if you’ve got to the stage of stashing your credit card bills under the bed in the hope that they will just go away, pay attention! You do not want bailiffs at your door so you have got to take action! Stop shopping. Cut those cards up if you have to and start thinking of how you are going to repay just a little bit more of that debt every month. What about an evening or weekend job? Could you sell things you don’t need on ebay? Car boot sale? Hold a wardrobe sale with friends and family? Please get help. Get online, get on the phone. There is loads of help for people in debt.

2. If you are broke, don’t go shopping! Everything is laid out so temptingly that it will be impossible to resist. Window shopping does not exist. Instead stay home, organise your wardrobe beautifully, mend things, sew on buttons, polish your old shoes up. Try and be grateful for the lovely things you already have.

3. You can’t have everything! You may be able to afford a pair of new shoes, but don’t be buying the bag, the dress, the lipstick and the state-of-the-art hair tongs to go with them. Buy new shoes that will look gorgeous with the things you already have in your cupboard. Never underestimate the power of a beautiful £5 necklace from Accesorize – suddenly even boring old black t-shirts look glamorous.

4. First day of the month, have a direct debit set up to go towards your credit card bill or (once that’s paid off) your savings account. Lots of people shop because they’re insecure. A lovely fat savings account will make you feel much more secure than designer labels you can’t afford (well, apparently. I still haven’t got any savings yet, but one day I will have that virtuous, saintly glow).

5. One lovely, well made thing that you can wear over and over is sometimes better and cheaper than bagfuls of tat. Just ten pairs of £30 shoes a year equals one pair of gorgeous, treasure for a lifetime, Jimmy Choo pumps.

I had a lovely holiday. Now that rain is lashing down from a leaden sky, it’s feeling like summer was months and months ago. Sniff! I have stuck a few holiday snaps up on the fridge, but it’s not the same!

We went to the Limousin in France which is gorgeously luscious, unspoiled and green. Because I am a sort of bug magnet, maybe even a bug buffet, I got bitten by everything going: one tick, many, many horseflies (ouch!) and then finally a hornet. Now that was one big sting. The beast got me on the side of the knee and I kid you not – a football-sized swelling followed and took days to clear up!

I spent lots of time at my computer writing about New York, which was weird because we really couldn’t have been further from the hustle, bustle and general adrenaline rush that is NYC. But somehow it worked quite well for me.

When we were in New York last year, I didn’t write one single word, because there was too much to do, too much to see and experience.

Now… book news:  The Celebrity Shopper paperback is out next month in a glittery, purple, gorgeous new cover.

New York Valentine comes in January next year. So not tooooo long to wait.

There is now a Carmen Reid page on Facebook, so you can join it and get regular updates. Also, coming very soon, I promise… Annie Valentine’s very own fashion blog. Exciting!

Holidays

If you’re emailing, don’t expect a reply for a few weeks because I’m going on a long holiday to France. I’m taking the laptop and plan to get loads of writing done in the peaceful and (hopefully) very sunny countryside.

But before we get there, there is the holiday countdown to endure. The last two weeks of term are tricky enough with all number of things for parents to remember: Sports Day, Speech Day (times two, as one child at primary, one at secondary), school closing early day, school starting late day. Aaaargh. Meltdown.

Now I am in to phase two: locate passports, EU health cards, organise fish babysitters, plant waterers, buy son new swimming trunks, shorts and sandals, buy daughter everything she demands in shop… and so on!! Laundry, laundry, laundry, holiday, laundry, laundry. No?

I think this is why I only go on holiday once a year. (Thinks enviously of childless couples and their constant swanning off to exotic islands and glitzy capital cities for glamorous mini-breaks.) Not Going To Happen for at least another Ten YEARS!

Tense and nervous?

Don’t you find the first few weeks of the summer holidays always feel slightly delicate for a family? Everyone is getting in everyone’s way a bit. Children and parents are getting used to spending all this time with each other again! Both my husband and I work from home and suddenly we are getting up at 5am or staying up will 2am just to try and find some quiet time. Chores! If you want to make your parent happy just keep on doing those chores!

I got a lovely email from a St Jude’s reader who’d written to me about all the problems and tensions in her family. I told her I wasn’t really the best person to ask, but I gave her my best thoughts anyway and she was nice enough to say they helped.

(This is an extract so as not to give anything about the writer away.)

My experience of being a wife and a Mum is that you do have to keep talking about problems. The more you talk about them and get all those difficult angry feelings out in the open, the worse it gets at first (yikes!) but then you can start working together to try and solve things. And then it does get much, much better!

It definitely sounds like you need to spend some time with your family at the weekend doing those fun things you remember. Even silly things like a game of Monopoly or watching a funny film together will make you feel happy in each other’s company.

I know that when I was upset about things when I was your age, I used to write a diary. Just writing everything down helped me to make more sense of it and find some good solutions.

Think of some fun things you can do with your sisters. Even for 15 minutes every day, so you can all start to feel more connected again. Sometimes, I feel a bit out of touch with my son and we solve that by sitting on the sofa and reading out a book together. Taking turns to do pages with lots of different voices for the characters.

My children love to go on the trampoline in the garden together. They make up lots of silly games out there.

Maybe a little walk now that it’s not so dark at night? Sometimes talking is easier when you’re walking. Sometimes, it’s even easier to talk when you’re doing the washing-up together than when you’re facing each other on the sofa!

Start the tricky conversations when you’re all in as good a mood as possible. Also try to say things like ‘I feel’ or ‘I would like’ rather than ‘you never’, ‘you always…’

Dads can be hard to talk to! Just try moving the conversation on a little at a time. Don’t expect to have one big chat which solves everything (like on the TV!) Just try to improve things a little at a time.

Feeling angry is probably very normal. Thumping pillows, going for a quick walk or run, taking up a really violent sport (karate maybe!) might all help a little bit.

Try to keep cheerful, sometimes things aren’t nearly as bad as they might seem.

Let me know how you get on, loads of love Carmen xx

Congratulations

Many, many congratulations to my Spanish fan Laura Bertolin. She’s translated part of The Personal Shopper into Spanish for her degree project! How fantastic is that? We have had some interesting correspondence about what exactly did I mean when I wrote… ‘gold standard shop assistant’ and so on.  Very tricky.

Pic of Laura coming soon!

Names

My Ilford friend Zarah Ahmed, devoted St Jude’s fan, still cannot believe that her name was used for a character in Rebel Girl. But I am always on the lookout for good names! If you’d like me to consider your name or maybe a friend’s, please just post below or drop me a line at carmen@carmenreid.com

Please come and join me and author Jo Carnegie for our Girls Night Out events at:

Hillhead Library, Glasgow, June 15^th (from 6pm) and Waterstone’s Bookshop, Sutton, June 17^th (from 7.30pm, I think!)

We are planning to be an antidote to all this World Cup boysie-dramarama. Though personally, I don’t mind watching a bit of international footie especially if teams from Italy or Sweden are involved (they have all the best men, trust me here).

This is Jo’s latest book by the way. Does it not look delicious?

As a seasoned Sex And The City fan, I had to go to the latest film despite the ominous sand dunes in the poster. (I had to laugh hard at the reading glasses on a stick in said poster… soooo my demographic!)

Well, as a friend of mine who saw the film first put it: ‘You’ll enjoy it, but it’s terrible.’ There were a few redeeming moments: Miranda and Charlotte confessing Mummy truths in the private bar and some of the Carrie/Big angst about whither married life.

But the rest is just very disappointing. The hotel karaoke is a particular low and I’d never even heard the song before.  As for the nanny boobs and the Danish architect: ooooh, cringe-worthy.

There are so many interesting things to say about being in your 40s… and beyond. I wanted to know how ‘the girls’ were coping with husband-sex, career plateaus, older children, menopause, fighting the sag, all sorts of interesting things. The TV series gave us much fluff and froth but also so many thought-provoking truths. SATC2  was pretty much all fluff. And no plot! Who decided it was a good idea to make a 2 hours and 20 minutes long movie without a plot!

Still, went with my girlfriends and we had a hilarious dinner afterwards repeating all the cheesiest lines.

Summer means sandals. Well, sometimes… on the days when the sun finally breaks through the cloud and raises the temperature from 12 degrees (as on June 1!) to 17-ish.

But I do not know if my feet are sandal worthy. There’s all that buffing and filing and trimming and painting. How am I supposed to fit this into the schedule?!

I have a new book out this month – the fourth Secrets At St Jude’s which is called Rebel Girl. I am loving the sparkly kiss kiss lips on the cover. Gorgeous! 

I can tell you that the Gina and Dermot romance comes under severe strain when deliciously handsome Callum appears on the scene. Callum is in hot pursuit of our fav Californian girl. Meanwhile, Amy is trying to cope with the fact that her Dad may no longer be rich. She may actually have to shop on the High Street (eeek!). Niffy is about to take drastic transformation action to make herself glamorous – think bad haircut. We’ve all been there. Min needs to be dragged out of the study to have some fun, she is swotting far too hard.

Rush to the bookshop and get a copy, I hope you’ll love it.

Now, what else… I’ve got an article in She magazine about turning 40. If you’d like to know more, you’ll have to get your hands on the June 2010 issue with Dervla Kirwan on the cover. But I’ll also post up a link ASAP. The piece was inspired by one of my birthday cards. On the front it read: ‘You’re only young once…’ then inside, it said: ‘How was it?’ Ouch!!! But it’s true, 40 is not young and I’m still adjusting!

Anyway, it has been a frantically busy month as I finish off the NEW Annie Valentine. The planned new title is: New York Valentine. Genius, no? But I’m not saying any more! I’ve also been inundated with birthdays lately.

Cake creating is hitting new highs. For the girl party, there was a chocolate delight studded with pink Smarties, for the hungry big boy party – a giant Victoria sponge with cream, jam and Star Trek action figures. To boldly go where no cake has gone before.

Sun… there is finally sun! So happy!

Up very far north and more snow!

Mid-April I was back in the very north of Scotland for two Girls’ Nights: one in Inverness and one in Culloden. Brilliant to meet so many enthusiastic readers. There is nothing like Highland hospitality, I tell you.

When in the Highlands, I stayed for a few days at a cottage on the Cawdor estate. It was in the middle of the most fantastic kind of nowhere. Miles and miles down a single track road, then a gorgeous cottage in a luscious valley. The children were ecstatic and demanded to know why we couldn’t move here straightaway and have ponies… and go fishing… and get air rifles!!

Just as I packed away my duvet coat, the snow returned for one (final? Please!) flutter. I did find the missing purple gloves though, so very happy!

And final picture, despite the snow and gloom and general freezing chill, I’ve managed to grow a lemon. I know, a lemon in Glasgow. Obviously it’s green and may stay green for lack of sunshine -  but for my brown fingers, this is a miracle.

I got the lemon tree as a birthday present two years ago and haven’t killed it yet. I do feel a bit sorry for it though, sitting at the window looking out and wondering what it can do to get back to Italy where it belongs!

Yes, that really is me in the photo with the world famous Sophie Kinsella, Joanne Harris, Nicholas Parsons and the other fabulous authors at my publisher’s 60^th birthday party. Is the lovely Ms Kinsella not rocking her 8-month bump in the leopard skin dress? Go girl!

Now, I’ve had lots of email about the reading order of the books. First of all, don’t panic! The books are written so you can pick any one of them up, dive in and get to know the characters without missing anything vital.

But, if you’d like to read them in order, the Annie Valentine series goes: The Personal Shopper, Late Night Shopping, How Not To Shop and Celebrity Shopper (so far!)

Secrets at St Jude’s reading order is: New Girl, Jealous Girl, Drama Girl. Book four, Rebel Girl comes out in June.

My first four books are ‘stand alone’ titles, so no special order required.

I’ve done some fantastic visits and events during March. I’ve been talking about books, reading and writing in schools in and around London. I was talking at Waterstone’s in Guildford, then Stockton-upon-Tees library, I did a books festival and a Unicef event in Glasgow. Oh and a lovely primary school in Glasgow too. It’s been fantastic to meet so many readers and hopefully inspire lots of future writers.

This is some of the feedback from the lovely ladies I met in Stockton:

‘Carmen was an enlightenment – inspirational’

‘Really enjoyed listening to Carmen read extracts from her books. I’ve wondered how an author wants her books to ‘sound’ when read – now I know’

‘Carmen was such an interesting and charming person’

‘I really enjoyed the evening, Carmen was inspirational and funny’

Awwwww! Thank you so much, incredibly kind.

This is a picture of me and the lovely Jill Mansell (author of more than 20 bestselling books – wow!). As you can see, we are ‘relaxing’ in the bar after our Girls Night Out event.

I have some events coming up soon. Here’s hoping I will see you there!

There’s the main, big ticket event: Aye Write Festival in Glasgow. On March 6th 6.30pm at the Mitchell Library, you can meet me and the lovely Jill Mansell on our Girls Night Out.

Dress up (I know I’m going to… well I don’t get out much!), bring your friends (I will too) and we’ll all swap favourite books, worst ever changing room/ outfit disaster stories and have a laugh. Book the tickets and the babysitter now! Here’s the link www.ticketweb.co.uk/INFO/AYEWRITE/ or www.ayewrite.com for information (although they had the time wrong, last I looked. It’s definitely 6.30pm).

I’m also going to be in:

Hemel Hempsted at the Astley Cooper School on March 1st at 12.30pm. (With a book signing open to the public from 1.30pm.)

Burntwood School in London SW17 on March 2nd

Guildford, St Catherine’s School on March 3rd

Waterstone’s evening event, Guildford High Street, Guildford, also on March 3rd.

Come along if you can! It is always fantastic to meet readers.

Spring

The first hit of bright Spring sunshine has arrived and suddenly the windows look filthy, the house seems covered in clutter and dust, plus everything in my wardrobe is now hideously drab, black and grey.

I am craving fresh air and colour. I even tidied up a bit of the garden and I pretty much hate gardening and kill everything I plant, so clearly I must have Spring Fever. (Plant pretty flowery thing, watch it die, weed it out, plant new pretty flowery thing… that’s how it is in my garden. Yes, plus slash and burn undergrowth control). Ivy seems to grow brilliantly in my garden. Ivy and snails.

I’ve put out a pink bedspread in the room with yellow walls. I have a total thing for yellow and pink at the moment. I’m not convinced I’m going to wear it. In fact, much as I love pink, I’ve not yet discovered a shade that really suits me. But it must be out there somewhere.

Following a good old clear through the wardrobe, I can honestly say that there is very little Spring/ summer wear in there – an incredible amount of tights and hold-ups though. Unbelievable. I could open my own little concession. Winter clothes, I have piles of: jumpers, dark jeans, cardigans, a wide selection of Uniqlo thermal tops, woolly everything, scarves, tick. (Oh GOD! I lost my purple gloves. For Christmas I got these fabulous purple leather driving gloves with a knitted stripy lining; Noa Noa, I think, from my Mum. I was so in love with them, so ultra careful with them… I hardly even dared to wear them anywhere. Now they are gone. Disappeared. Completely lost. I am only just coming to terms with this. There is no way I can tell her. No way. She will never give me anything as nice again.)

Anyway, I’m definitely going Spring shopping. I am going to buy pale green and bright blue and heck, even white, maybe even a hit of yellow and orange. Then I will just have to trust that the weather improves and I get a chance to wear it all.

For my St Jude’s fans.

There is an eating problem in the new book and I wanted talk about that a little.

Just like lots of my school friends, I under-ate when I was a teenager. I remember lasting a whole day on a handful of strawberries. Yes, the result was I was thin, but I didn’t have much energy to do anything and I often fainted. I gave up doing any kind of sport at about 15. So then I was unfit as well as unenergetic.

It probably took a full 10 years before I saw the light and got really healthy. At 25-ish, I joined a gym, started eating really well and finally gave up the dreaded cigarettes. Eating well and exercising are the only way to go. Please put all the faddy diet books down right now.

Nowadays, I’m pretty Californian about my health! It’s 3 square meals with lots of fruit and vegetables, hardly any junk and some vigorous exercise every day: tennis, the gym, the treadmill, long dog walks, even running up and down the stairs. Usually I’m full of energy and although I’m not underweight like I was, I’m not overweight either.

It’s a good guideline to know your recommended BMI: body mass index (you can look up tables on-line) and try to keep well within in. Don’t get too underweight, don’t get too over weight.

If sport is uninspiring at school, I really urge you to join something with your friends: a gym, a dance class, a netball or athletics club. It’s always much more fun and motivating to go together with pals and the people running sports and athletics clubs are usually great. They always want to help more people into the sport. Yes, even if you are a beginner or rubbish!

My favourite eating tip: if you are craving something unhealthy, eat a good thing first. So before you tackle that packet of biscuits, have a big banana first. Or a crunchy apple before the crisps. It will concentrate your mind on what you are putting into your precious body.

Drink loads of water every day. Loads…. glasses and glasses of the stuff. Tea, coffee and fizzy drinks do nothing for you or your skin. Water is the thing. I drink it from the tap, I’m not fussy.

If you think you have an under- or over- weight problem, you need to speak to your doctor and get really good advice. The only diet book I’d ever recommend is French Women Don’t Get Fat which is packed with truly sensible advice from a woman you will think of as your surrogate French Maman. Plus Mirelle is so cool. She’s a champagne ambassador and splits her life between New York and Provence. Just how jealous-making is that?

The Good…

NEW BOOKS!!

The third Secrets at St Jude’s : Drama Girl hits the shelves this month! The official publication date is Feb 4, but you will be able to get your hands on a copy from the last weekend in January. You can order direct from the publishers here and if you’d like signed book-plates to stick in the front, then just drop me an email – carmen@carmenreid.com.

Just a little bit longer to wait for the new Annie – Celebrity Shopper is out on March 4th!

This is Jimmy’s new winter scarf, knitted specially for him by the totally lovely, top St Jude’s fan, Zarah Ahmed. Is it not soooooo cute?! Jimmy has been enjoying the snow. But when the temperature goes below minus 5, his feet freeze, he stars limping and has to be carried home – which he hates as he may be tiny, but he is definitely no lapdog.

There has been so much snow for weeks that we have almost got bored of sledging! In the Botanical Gardens there is this steep hill peppered with trees. Claudie has no control over her sledge and it is terrifying to watch, but how can I not let her go without being a huge spoilsport?

When I was about 10, my Dad built this mile long downhill ‘cresta run’ which he used his tractor armed with a leaking water butt to ice over. We used to hurtle down it on an antique sledge which had metal runners rubbed with candle wax! I remember shooting clean through the wires of a fence. Now I hear myself suggesting to my children that they wear bicycle helmets…

The Bad…

Bleeeeeuuuuurrrrrrghhhhh!

I always have a lovely time over Christmas and New Year and tell myself that this year, I’m going to be positive and surely January won’t be that bad? Then it comes round and slaps me in the face all over again.

Jan 2nd, it is freeeeeeezing despite all the heating roaring at full blast and wearing three layers at all times. Jan 3rd horrible icky sticky sinusitis sets in, despite the fact that I have been saintly over the holidays, eating well and hardly drinking at all. My New Year’s resolution btw is to change from being a ‘regular’ drinker into a ‘very occasional’ drinker. Jan 4th my pipes burst and suddenly we have an indoor water feature. More like waterfall.

For an hour, it is a hideous drama. Water gushing from kitchen ceiling, light sockets (yikes!) door arches, children holding buckets and crying, parents rushing about trying to find more buckets, the plumber’s number and shrieking about where is the stopcock? And how does it work? And why the bloody hell don’t we know this?

(Just take a moment now my darlings to locate the stopcock, that’s the large tap that turns off all the water in your house, and work out how to turn it off. If your pipes burst, you will thank me. One friend already has!)

However, once the water has been mopped up and everything moved about and dried off. Things don’t look quite so bad. In fact, apart from some repainting and a new kitchen ceiling, we may not have to get anything else replaced. Obviously a lot more insulation will have to go up into the draughty attic space, where the pipes froze in the first place. But we have had days and days at minus 5 and nights of minus 10.

I am a terrible person to have around in a crisis. I did a lot of running about, panic sweating and shouting. ‘Just be calm, stay calm’ I shouted a lot, in a voice which didn’t sound calm at all. Generally I ran about like a great flapping chicken. But I did hug the children a lot afterwards and tell them how well they’d done. They stood under a doorway with buckets, catching water. I remember Claudie rushing down from her bedroom with a tiny sand bucket and her towel.

We couldn’t cook in the soaking kitchen that night, so we went to Macdonalds. See how I am cleverly linking images of family disaster with fast food in their impressionable minds.

The Ugly…

I was back at my desk (box of tissues on one side, used crumpled pile of tissues on the other, red, flaky nose doused in Nivea, sheepskin slippers, thermal vest, two jumpers) feeling totally depressed about the ceiling leak and the frozen pipes. The pipes re-froze twice after the burst! Cue much panic, heaters in attic, hairdryers, kettles etc. Me convinced everyone was going to be electrocuted.

But as my dear friend Annie Valentine would tell me: no good comes of huddling about in 15 layers of wool and nose cream. The January spiral will set in. Before I know it I’ll be too cold to leave the house. Too cold to leave the bedroom. Too cold to move from the electric blanket! Then that big grey, snotty blanket of bleakness will move in on me.

I know Annie’s advice would be to dress up a bit and face the world. So… I washed my face, applied lipgloss, put on my leopard skin hat instead of my woolly one and dug my black fake fur coat out of the back of the wardrobe. Yes, definitely more glamorous than the duvet coat.

Then I walked the school run, even though it’s nearly a five mile round trip. When I got to the playground, it’s funny, but other Mums I know approached to stroke the coat!! Then we were all swapping winter tales of woe. Someone’s child’s front teeth got knocked out sledging. People are buying bottled water at the supermarket because even their cold water has frozen solid. Someone else went up into the attic to inspect their insulation and found dust!

It was good to get out there, get some perspective and realise I’m not the only one with some minor problems!

The children and I walked home from school in minus 8. It was freezing yes, but magically cold. We saw someone skating on a pond. This winter will be a very special childhood memory for them.

Christmas shopping, mince pies, advent calendars… what’s not to love about December?

Mainly I am very into Christmas, except when it turns into one of those working-parent frenzies. I think you know what I mean: sprinting to get to the Nativity play in time (only to get the last seat behind the Dad with flu wearing a huge furry collar and blocking out entire view of stage), realising on December 23rd that there are no cranberries to be had in the entire western hemisphere, weeping because it’s 2.30am on Xmas Eve, you’ve still got 27 presents left to wrap and the Sellotape has just run out.

I blame the Sunday supplements.

Really, did anyone think it was necessary to have colour-coded ‘charger’ plates, napkin rings, centre-pieces and candleholders before the explosion of interior design spreads in the Sunday supplements? Now it is possible to blow your entire Xmas budget just on wreaths, banister garlands, card-display holders, Christmas-scented candles and all related attic fodder that retailers are arm-wrestling us to buy.

Try to have a calm, relaxing and fun Christmas. Life may in fact be too short to stuff a turkey, never mind a mushroom. It is not possible to get or to give everything on everybody’s wish list. So there.

The only must-haves under our Xmas tree this year are (apparently) one microscope and one Sylvanian family. It will be a toy microscope and a recessionista Sylvanian family – they’re coming with a caravan, not a house: does that make the little bunnies trailer trash?!

Now that my buddies are 11 and 7, one is a confirmed Santa cynic (but is keeping it quiet) the other seems to have figured out that Santa is a story but is also keeping quiet in case this leads to less presents.

I think I may go the route of a friend with grown-up children who confided: ‘What do you mean when did I tell them? Santa still brings their present every year. That way they can’t complain to me!’

Meanwhile, I am averting my eyes from the clothes-shop window displays. No, I do not need a new Christmas outfit! Even though I find a sequin very hard to resist. I already have one sequinned skirt and a sequinned dress from previous Christmases and two sequin-studded outfits is probably enough!

Please, please, please go into a bookshop and buy some gorgeous books as Christmas presents. I always love getting and giving books for Christmas. Getting a book means someone has really taken time to think about you and what you would enjoy.

These titles are already hidden in my wardrobe for this Christmas:

For the serious readers

Margaret Atwood – The Year of the Flood

John Banville – Infinities

For the comedy seeker

PG Wodehouse – The Inimitable Jeeves (lovely hardback edition)

For the babies

Helen Cooper – Pumpkin Soup

John and Janet Ahldberg – Each Peach Pear Plum

Lauren Child’s latest!

For the older boys

John Connolley – The Gates

Robert Muchamore – Eagle Day

For the glamour puss

Axel Madsen – Chanel (this is a great biog, loved it!)

And one title I really have to recommend when the whole Christmas spendathon gets way too much: Love Is Not Enough – A Smart Woman’s Guide To Money by Merryn Somerset Webb. This girl is genius. She will explain all that complicated financial jargon and change the way you budget forever. (I may have to staple Annie to a chair and make her read it!)

A very, very happy Christmas when you finally get there!