And … we're back! Hope you had joyful festive seasons, one and all, and that gifts were plentiful and apposite. No one here seems particularly inclined as yet to reposition their noses over the grindstone, so how about we extend the holiday for another couple of hours and tell each other which books we got for Christmas?

Heartbreakingly, I received but one volume this year, and it wasn't even really for me - my Dad bought me a copy of The Lord of the Rings to read to my son (budding family tradition, this one; he read it to me when I was small). Seems my family had collectively nixed the book-as-present option, on busman's holiday grounds - fatally misguided of them. Words were had, but the fact remains that Christmas was a barren, featureless desert for me, bookswise (though at least I wasn't reduced to tears by an ill-chosen volume, in the manner of this gracious young lady). So lift my spirits vicariously, pray: what did you all unwrap? @GuardianBooks asked the question on Twitter last week and it seems The Sense of an Ending and Claire Tomalin's Dickens biography were in the ascendant - any exceptions? And were you pleased with what you got?