Welcome back to the second day of the 2021 Virtual Advent Tour. Today’s host is Bridget at The Ravell’d Sleave. Head over to her blog sometime today to check out her post!
And do consider signing up to write a post or two this month. We’d love to have you join our merry band of elf bloggers.
Thanks for joining us once again for 2021’s version of the Virtual Advent Tour, a tradition that dates back nearly fifteen years.
Today I want to start us off with a Christmas movie review.
Like many people, my family has a long, well-established love affair with Christmas films. We watch the classics every year, as well as movies that are classics to us, digging out VHS tapes recorded in the 1980s of children saving Santa or his reindeer or PIs searching out long-missing grandchildren to reunite with their feisty millionaire grandma.
Last weekend, while up in Connecticut, we streamed a couple films that I could see making future years’ rotations. The first is A Castle for Christmas, which you can find on Netflix.
Starring Brooke Shields and Carey Elwes, the rom-com focuses on best-selling American novelist Sophie Brown (played by Shields). In the wake of her divorce, Sophie has killed off her protagonist’s love interest in an unpopular move with her fans and followed it up with a meltdown on a talk show. To escape the bad publicity and the loneliness of the holidays, she does what any of us would do and books herself a holiday to the tiny Scottish town where her father grew up, hoping to get started on her next book in peace.
We are immediately introduced to a roguish handyman, played by Elwes, who, it turns out is Miles Dunbar, a duke and the nearly broke owner of the local castle. In addition to the tours they’ve been doing and a dusty gift shop, they’ve been forced to start booking events in the hopes of making ends meet, but he’s struggling to keep the bank at bay.
Sophie immediately falls in love with the castle and puts in an offer to buy it. It’s not fully clear how she knows to do this, but perhaps this is the sort of gossip you pick up in the local pub. Miles is resistant, but eventually agrees, with the caveat that she has to move into the castle for 30 days and will forfeit her deposit if she decides to leave. He tells his valet and BFF that once he chases her off (with the coldest, most dilapidated bedroom and a chilly demeanor), they’ll be able to use that money to stay afloat.
But what if his plans don’t work out quite as expected?
Shields and Elwes have good chemistry on screen and seem to enjoy each other’s company. The cast of mostly Scottish actors in the secondary roles are charismatic and endearing and help to draw attention away from Elwes’ over-the-top accent.
The script is a little light, being too eager to jump past the enemies stage and into the romance. So what could have been legitimate impediments to Sophie’s impetuous decision (how does a New Yorker keep a castle from continuing to crumble into disrepair or care for an entire village, particularly if the current duke/handyman has departed?) are easily brushed aside in favor of roaring fires and horse rides in the snow in pursuit of the perfect Christmas tree. But the characters are all so good-hearted and earnest and there are enough moments of humor sprinkled in that you’re eager to overlook that and get back to enjoying it.
The Scottish scenery cements the deal, with sweeping views of a wooded countryside, a quaint village with a cozy pub, and the titular castle. If you had millions of dollars, you’d relocate there too.
If you’ve got access to Netflix, I’d suggest checking it out.
Stop back tomorrow for Day 2 of the Virtual Advent Tour. If you’d like to join our merry band of posters, please sign up here.
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Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl is bookish memories. I don’t know if these are my top ten or just the first ten that came to me, but either way…
My grandmother took The Secret Garden out of the library to see if it was the sort of book I might like if she gave it to me. The only problem is that I discovered it at her house, started reading, and then took it out of the library to finish. Luckily, it was a great gift, and I have reread it a number of times.
My first grade teacher gave each of us a book for Christmas that year. Mine was The Littlest Angel.
When I was very small, my dad left me in the basement of the library to run upstairs and pick out some items for himself. By the time he’d returned, I’d pulled about 100 picture books from the shelves for us to take home, including some that we owned.
When the new town library was ready to reopen, a children’s librarian came to our school and read the first chapter of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to us to tempt us into getting our own cards.
In high school, I got the opportunity to be part of a group interview of Beverly Donofrio about her book Riding in Cars with Boys at our local library.
Nearly a decade ago, I was a Cybils Award judge. It remains one of the coolest things I’ve done, but was such hard work.
My parents used to periodically drag us to Whitlock’s Book Barn, a used bookshop, when we were kids. Rudi and I would return willingly many times as young adults.
Eliot Schrefer recognized me when I attended his book signing a few years ago. I loved his first y.a. book, Endangered, and had talked it up on the blog. I was carrying a knitting bag with my blog name on it and he noticed it.
We attended midnight release parties for the final three Harry Potter novels. The first was at Kramerbooks, which was really less of a party and more of a line since they used to be open pretty much 24 hours a day on weekends back then. We walked home and immediately started reading. The second was at Olsen’s in Bethesda, and we read on the train home. The final was at Politics and Prose, and I dressed up as Professor McGonagall. There were hundreds of attendees, and eventually they had us line up out in the parking lot for our copies.
At the very first ALA Convention that I worked, my table was in the very last aisle. It soon became very clear to those of us shunted out to this territory that this was a ridiculously low-traffic area. The guy across the aisle from me was selling the first collection of his web comic set in a public library (Unshelved), and I was trying to give away health books, but we were both working every person who came down the row. After a couple hours, we could give each other’s spiel and were sending anyone we managed to snag across the way to the other’s booth. I don’t remember if we went out after that meeting or if we just caught up at future meetings, but Bill (and his co-author, “Gene”) was often kind enough to invite me to join in the cool graphic novels group at the library conventions. (Writers and editors of health books do not travel in cool packs.)
Hey, bookish readers, would you be interested in taking part in the Virtual Advent Tour that I run? Holiday book reviews are welcome, as are other topics! Details and signups are here.
It’s been a lovely weekend, and I still have about 12 hours until I head back south. While I’m hoping to cram in a few hours of sleep and some last activities, like getting lights on the bottom quarter of my parents’ tree (we had to sort out why the tree was shorting out before I kept going) and helping them bring ornament boxes downstairs, we’re definitely in the home stretch of my time off.
I’ve seen my BFF, Karen.
My dad and I played pool. (I lost every game to him or Rudi.) We laughed a lot.
I’ve knit and read and watched Christmas movies in front of the fire.
I’ve cooked with Mum.
We’ve eaten a ton of food and danced to Christmas music.
Welcome to signups for this year’s Virtual Advent Tour. 2021 marks my seventh year as host of this annual event.
2020 was hard. I mean really hard. And I say that having been extraordinarily lucky. But I think all of us expected this year to be easier. And it … was. But, also, it wasn’t.
And yet, here we are again, less than a month away from Christmas and just over a month until year’s end. Some of us are celebrating with loved ones we couldn’t see last year. Some of us are trying to find ways to navigate through the holidays with holes in our closest circles — and in our hearts. And some built new traditions out of necessity last year and are sticking with them.
However you observe the holidays this year, I’d love for you to share your celebrations with us as part of this year’s Virtual Advent Tour.
As you likely know, a typical Advent calendar is usually a paper-based, time-marking device designed to count down from December 1st until Christmas. Each day, you open a door to unveil a treat of some kind — a hidden scene, piece of chocolate, or some other delight. The Virtual Advent Tour is a bloggers’ take on that. In our version, each morning I’ll point you to a post at someone’s blog in which they share something about their holiday season.
Would you be willing to share a holiday post or two in December? You’d know the date(s) ahead of time (and can request a specific one if you’d like). And you don’t have to decide ahead of time what you want to write about. Your post can be as simple or as complex and in text, video, or audio format.
If you’re looking for inspiration, folks have shared new traditions they’ve adopted, old traditions they keep alive, favorite holiday music, charities, recipes, books, events, memories, and more.
If this sounds fun and you’d like to participate, please leave me a comment on this post telling me what date(s) you’d like. I’ll update this post as people claim days.
A few annual housekeeping notes:
While both the tradition of the Advent calendar and the timing skew Christian, the tour is inclusive and open to anyone who celebrates December holidays of any sort. We love reading about all kinds of celebrations and the traditions you’ve developed around them!
I tend to write my posts shortly after midnight my time (Eastern U.S.) and will schedule them to go live at 6 a.m. If your post is live when I’m writing, I’ll give a little preview and link directly to it. However, if it’s not, no worries. I’ll assume you’ll get it live at some point, and will just embed a song and a link to your blog’s homepage.
I made 2021 Virtual Advent Tour badges in 600px and 400px that you’re welcome to download and use.
If you want to share on social media, I use the hashtag #VirtualAdventTour on Twitter.
Thanks in advance for making this one of my fun December traditions!
