It’s been a chilly week here in D.C., where a near complete lack of snow made us an anomaly on the East Coast. (We did get a measly inch, so it wasn’t a total loss.)

Before we head into a long weekend, though, let’s look back at three beautiful things from the past week:

1. Karen (my best friend) and Michael’s baby girl was born during Wednesday morning’s snowstorm (as totally predicted by Karen on Tuesday). Mother and daughter, a delightful looking baby from the tiny picture Michael was so kind as to send to my phone, are doing fine and should be home by the weekend.

2. Although the snow didn’t end up staying, while it was coming down it looked very pretty. I left work at the height of the evening’s storm and so was able to appreciate the mini snowballs that caught on all the branches and in all the bushes and the coating of white along all the railings.

3. Sarah, Rudi, and I met up tonight for a last-minute dinner excursion to H Street N.E.’s Dangerously Delicious Pies where we ate … pie. We each stuffed ourselves with a savory slice for dinner and a sweet slice for dessert and sodas in glass bottles (we only consumed the drinks and not the containers) and then, when the total for the evening came to less than the gift certificate I had, Rudi and I added a slice of blueberry pie to bring home (for tomorrow’s breakfast, perhaps?) to bring our non-tip grand total to $3.

What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

I’m a GoodReads user and periodically enter to win free books. Last month, I learned I’d won an advance reader copy of Matthew Gallaway’s debut novel, The Metropolis Case, which was released Dec. 28. Crown Publishing sent me a review copy at the end of December. And then they sent me a second copy last week. Their confusion is your benefit because I’m hoping to share the redundant book with one of you.

Leave me a comment telling me either what your favorite book of 2010 was or what you’re most looking forward to reading in 2011 by Monday evening, Jan. 17, at 9 p.m. EST. I’ll randomly select one commenter and send The Metropolis Case off to you next week.

Crown’s summary of the book:

From the smoky music halls of 1860s Paris to the tumbling skyscrapers of twenty-first-century New York, a sweeping tale of passion, music, and the human heart’s yearning for connection

This unlikely quartet is bound together across centuries and continents by the strange and spectacular history of Richard Wagner’s masterpiece opera Tristan and Isolde. Grandly operatic in scale, their story is one of music and magic, love and death, betrayal and fate. Matthew Gallaway’s riveting debut will have readers spellbound from the opening page to its breathtaking conclusion.

I’ve spent the past six weeks reading pretty much only Christmas stories. At the end of 2010, I read Janet Evanovich’s holiday mystery, Visions of Sugar Plums (which Rudi and I had listened to a couple years ago); Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor, a passable romance novel that focused on who comprises a family; Miracle on 34th Street, which I reviewed here; and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which Rudi and I listened to via CraftLit on our drive home from Connecticut.

But I still had a couple Christmas books in progress, all of which I finished in the last week:

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas (illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman)

From the jacket: “A lost but not forgotten childhood is evoked in this nostalgic recollection that endures as one of the most beloved Christmas stories of all time.”

My take: This charmingly illustrated edition of Dylan Thomas’ classic piece reminiscing about a young boy’s Christmas day was a delight to read. Although my reading of it was accomplished in a single day’s commute, it was a moving and transporting tale and one which I’d like to track down for my own collection.

Pages: 47

From the jacket: “Heartwarming stories that recall Christmas past.”

My take: Another small book that included four short stories. The first is O. Henry’s ubiquitous “Gift of the Magi,” a well-known, bittersweet story of a couple who sacrifice their most valuable personal possessions in the name of love. The second was Tolstoy’s “Where Love Is, There God Is Also,” a folk tale of a man who, while he awaits the arrival of God, offers up acts of kindness to those around him. Rounding out the book were two Dickens stories: “The Seven Poor Travellers” focuses on a narrator who provides Christmas Eve dinner to seven travellers staying at a hostel for the night and who regales them with a story afterwards. “What Christmas Is as We Grow Older” is more of a reflective essay that shares how as we age Christmas comes to be more of a tying of the living and the dead and of the past, present, and future than it is when we were young.

The O. Henry piece was its usual sweet self, and it’s good to revisit the source material since it is so often adapted by others. I was surprised by how much I liked the Tolstoy story and am inspired to read something by him in the coming year. And while the Dickens pieces were my least favorite, it was interesting to read writings of his so unlike his other material.

Pages: 100

An Irish Country Christmas by Patrick Taylor

From the jacket: “Barry Laverty, M.B., is looking forward to his first Christmas in the cozy village of Ballybucklebo, at least until he learns that his sweetheart, Patricia, might not be coming home for the holidays. That unhappy prospect dampens his spirits somewhat, but Barry has little time to dwell on his romantic disappointments. Christmas may be drawing nigh, but there is little peace to be found on earth, especially for a young doctor plying his trade in the emerald hills and glens of rural Ireland.”

My take: Recommended to me by Nan, this is the third in a series of books set in a fictional village in Northern Ireland in the mid-1960s. If you’re a fan of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small or any of his other veterinary works, you will find this a comfortable read. Like those works, this one features a young man fresh from school joining the practice of an older curmudgeonly master (in this case named Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly) and moving into the home/office, which is kept by a dear housekeeper (Mrs. Kincaid, or Kinky, here). Instead of pets and livestock, we are treated to patients of a human kind, but they are just as quirky as Herriot’s creations.

The Christmas setting is a nice one, and you soon find yourself immersed in the village’s preparations for the holidays, a time when the Catholics and the Presbyterians join together to celebrate the birth of Jesus. I found my mouth watering every time the story entered Kinky’s kitchen and I was relieved to find an afterword from her with some Christmas recipes. There’s also a glossary which gives insight into the many Irish phrases sprinkled throughout the book.

The one thing I did find distracting was the author’s obvious struggle to explain certain aspects of his story — medical problems/procedures and various cultural references from Ulster 50 years ago. You learned a lot as the book went on, but it felt like it bogged the story down from time to time. There was definitely “more telling than showing” going on in those instances and the jamming in of facts had the unfortunate side effect of making Fingal sometimes come across as a lecturing bore.

That aside, I did like the story and the characters and plan to read the first two books in the series at some point in the future.

Pages: 495

Just before leaving Connecticut after Christmas, I finished two pairs of socks that had been lingering on the needles.

The final pair of the year was my own, begun last March as part of Sock Madness and was ultimately my dismissal from the competition:

These are Simple Side to Side Socks by Deborah Swift knit in Koigu Painter’s Palette Premium Merino (colorway cleverly titled P141), which I won several years ago in a blog contest. They had a unique construction, wherein the body was knit flat and seamed, then ribbing, toe, and heel were added afterwards. At the time, I did not enjoy knitting them, although that probably had more to do with a lack of sleep and trying to finish them as a deadline ran out than with the pattern itself. I panicked about being able to feel the seams on the first sock as the clock ran out on me and threw the second sock into a bag for nine months until a knitting buddy and I were commiserating about how much grafting had been necessary to construct these. So I pulled them out of isolation and began working on them in my spare time. Ultimately, you don’t notice those seams at all and they’re quite comfortable to wear.

The penultimate pair of the year was Mum’s Christmas present this year. I started them back in September, put them aside to work on a couple other things in October, and pulled them back out in November. I was able to present Mum with only a single completed sock under the tree on Christmas, but powered through to finish the second sock the next night, making them practically done on time.

The pattern is Belvedere by Kirsten Kapur and the yarn is Yarn Hollow Summer Love, an elasticky bamboo-cotton-nylon blend (colorway 113), which I bought at Sock Summit. The knitting buddy mentioned above and I had our own little knitalong online for these and together managed to create some lovely socks, if I do say so myself. The key to our success turned out to be lots of stitch markers placed throughout the pattern to help keep track of where you were.

It was nice to finish my knitting year with two such different sock projects.

And it was fun to model them before parting ways with Mum.

When you have four cats living with you, they like to help with even the most mundane things.

Corey (he’s grown a bit since you last saw him) frequently hops up to help me with the dishes. This particular night he refrained from jumping into the sink and standing under the water and stuck instead with a view from front and center:

Della and Jeremiah laid down with me the other evening to look through a knitting catalog. It wasn’t long, though, before we all agreed our time would be better served with other pursuits:

Posey begs forgiveness for not appearing in any of these shots. She is a cat who likes to do things her own way, which means we spend most of our time together after Rudi has either left for work or gone to bed. She promises to appear in a future post.

After a night out at the local British-style pub for dinner with friends, Rudi and I returned home to hang with the cats.

At the end of SNL, Rudi headed to bed with Jeremiah and Della, and I got to curl up on the couch with a cuppa and finish my novel with periodic visits from Corey and Posey.

Now, to bed, so I can find out why Sunday mornings were made!

I told no one that I hoped to read 50 books this year. I don’t think I ever even said the words aloud, but they were there, all year long, inside my head. I hadn’t counted until today.

Books read in 2010 (in roughly the order I read them):

(more…)

Today was the twelfth day of Christmas. Did you celebrate with drums, swans, and milk? No, me neither. But I will mark the occasion by noting three beautiful, holiday-related things from the week past:

1. Our Christmas tree had shed nearly all its needles and was starting in on the ornaments when we took it down on Monday night. I stayed up late to box up and inventory the ornaments and noticed that a soldier was missing his rapier. The next morning I asked Rudi to keep an eye out for it and a few minutes after leaving for work he was back with a tiny, pink, plastic sword, having sifted through the heap of dead needles out in the tree box. I know the soldier will be grateful that he was not removed from duty permanently.

2. Rudi and I have spent much of the last week catching up on our Christmas movie watching, which was a bit sparse before the holidays. We’ve seen It’s a Wonderful Life and Christmas in Connecticut and The Shop around the Corner (which neither of us had seen before) and Cosmic Christmas (a CBC production I hadn’t seen for 30 years), all of which fill my heart with joy. But I wanted Rudi to get to see something he wanted, too, so I suggested he put on A Christmas Story, which I only had seen once and which I hadn’t liked at all. I’m happy to report that, as with last year’s viewing of Nightmare before Christmas, my opinion has been revised and I now can appreciate the sentiment of the story.

3. We begin the year as we mean to go on — at midnight, we were out on a movie date that we followed by a walk home as fireworks went off (yes, literally!). And then our first dinner of 2011 was with friends: Susan and Phillip invited John, Kathie, Rudi, and me to join the two of them and their new baby Holden for a delicious supper.

How about you? What has been beautiful in your world during these last seven days of Christmas?

I know I need to wind up the 2010 reading season, but it’s time to start some new reading challenges. Here’s the first one, which runs from now until the end of June:

Back to the Classics Challenge 2011

The goals to complete:

1. A Banned Book
2. A Book with a Wartime Setting (can be any war)
3. A Pulitzer Prize (Fiction) Winner or Runner Up
4. A Children’s/Young Adult Classic
5. 19th Century Classic
6. 20th Century Classic
7. A Book you think should be considered a 21st Century Classic
8. Re-Read a book from your High School/College Classes

Now to choose the books: I’ve been contemplating Wilkie Collins’ A Woman in White for a while, which would work for #5. For #3, I could go for Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead (which I own) or perhaps The Shipping News (since I liked the movie). Maybe The Westing Game for #4?

Got any suggestions?

I was looking through some old posts I’d saved and came across this meme that Nan did way back in May:

Do you snack while reading?
Yes.

What is your favourite drink while reading?
Tea, of course.

Do you tend to mark your books while you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?
My college books are all marked up, but I don’t tend to write in books these days. That may be a side effect of not having a pen in hand while reading. And I love to read other people’s notes in used/borrowed books.

How do you keep your place? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book open flat?
Yes to all of those, although I do try to keep dog-earing to a minimum. Bookmarks are rarely proper bookmarks and are usually receipts from wherever I’ve been recently. (This means I always leaf through books before returning to the library.) Usually I just remember the page number, though.

Fiction, non-fiction or both?
Both, although fiction is definitely a higher percentage than non.

Do you tend to read to the end of a chapter or can you stop anywhere?
Although I like to get to the end of a chapter (in the same way I like to get to the end of a needle when putting down my knitting), I can stop pretty much anywhere.

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?
Yes, if they piss me off enough, although usually I stop long before I reach that point.

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?
Not usually, because I’m not usually reading next to a dictionary. I do try to recall it for the next time I am, however.

What are you currently reading?
Patrick Taylor’s An Irish Country Christmas, which was a recommendation from Nan.
And I just finished O Christmas Three: O. Henry, Tolstoy, and Dickens and A Child’s Christmas in Wales in the last 30 hours.

What is the last book you bought?
While I bought nearly everyone I know books for Christmas, I assume this question means for myself. That would be the copy of The Odyssey I picked up for myself back in the fall.

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?
All the time? I read at home, at cafes, on my commute, and while walking (which can really freak people out, by the way). My least favorite time to read is when I’m asleep.

Do you prefer series books or stand-alones?
Both are perfectly great in my opinion.

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?
No. I usually try to cater my suggestions to the person.

How do you organise your books?
By leaving them strewn about everywhere? Okay, that’s not entirely true. There are certain special books that have places of prominence on the top two shelves of the bookshelf by the couch: my collections of Louisa May Alcott, the Anne series, the Narnia books, Harry Potter, the Little House books; Horton Hears a Who; The Secret Garden; a (terrible, melodramatic) book that belonged to my dad’s mother; the Bible; the dictionary… Essentially those are my the house is on fire and you can only save a box of books books.

Lower on that bookshelf are my writing books.

A few other favorites (including The Bean Trees, A Wrinkle in Time, Ballet Shoes, and To Kill a Mockingbird) sit atop the bookshelf in my reading corner. That’s also the bookshelf where my knitting books live. And my anthologies from college. And many of my college books.

Language books live on the bookshelf by the door. There are also a number of other nonfiction books there.

Cookbooks are on the shelf of the butcher block, except for the ones that live on the bureau. And the two that are on the one by the door.

Rudi has a bookshelf next to his chair.

And otherwise books are piled everywhere, although if you give me a minute, I often have a pretty good idea which title can be found where.

Background noise or silence?
Background noise. If it’s a good enough story, I won’t hear it anyway.

And, yes, I did just resort to a meme on the fourth day of the year.