Understanding comics - scott mccloud. This may have been a random present for someone else, but having read it twice now it's definately filed under 'fortuitous coincedence'. In this comics classic McCloud attempts to define 'comics', what they are (and what they aren't), their history and analyse the various mechanisms used to communicate a story. His insights are great and drawn in comic form themselves - my favorite concept is that people related more closely to comics as there is an almost blank template of a person/hero that is very easy to project yourself into, wonder if this accounts for some of the global success of Gorillaz (other than awesome tunes of course)?

The hogfather - terry pratchett. For those of you who've read Terry Pratchett's discworld novels you already know the rough plot, style and characters. For those of you who haven't read any this isn't the one to start on - I'd recommend Reaper Man or Pyramids which require less pre-understanding to really enjoy. In this, the twentieth Discworld novel (blimey), Discworld is suffering an attack of belief as the Hogfather is destroyed and Death's grand-daughter is required to go and save the day. Death is one of Pratchett's strongest and most entertaining characters, so this is definately in the top 25% of his books, but a lot of the plot falls under standard Discworld machinations and slightly sub-witty humour.