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

O Christmas Three: O. Henry, Tolstoy, Dickens

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

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…)

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.

Miracle on 34th Street, by Valentine Davies

From the jacket: “A white-bearded gentleman who appears t the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade fills in for an unfit Santa Claus — and is asked to become the store’s resident Santa.”

My take: I went to the library seeking some Christmas reads and was disappointed by what I found in the adult section. Luckily, the hallway outside the children’s room offered a display of holiday books. Being a longtime fan on the movie, I snatched up this novella. Published concurrently with the movie’s release (both were based on a short story Davies wrote after getting out of the service following WWII), the book’s framework is familiar to almost everyone: When it turns out that our hero Kris Kringle’s MO is to send store patrons to whatever store best meets the needs of their children, he launches a campaign of goodwill that spreads across the city. At the same time, he decides to embark upon a more personal campaign — winning over the parade’s organizer, a single mother, and her young daughter.

As noted above, I found the story to be remarkably similar to its on-screen counterpart. Certain details were changed: At the start of the story, Kris is evicted from the old people’s home because of who he says he is. He also frequents the zoo, where he’s friendly with the reindeer. Alfred, the young man in the movie, doesn’t appear in these pages, while Mrs. Walker and Mr. Gaynor, her neighbor, get quite a bit of extra time devoted to their blossoming relationship.

It’s just different enough to keep you turning the pages. But it’s just similar enough to make you anticipate certain milestones and they occur more frequently than they did for me in The Wizard of Oz earlier this year. It’d be good as both a read-aloud book for young kids and a chapter-a-night Advent treat for the adults. As feel-good a classic as the movie.

Pages: 128

Fat Vampire by Adam Rex

From the jacket: “Doug Lee is undead quite by accident — attacked by a desperate vampire, he finds himself cursed with being fat and fifteen forever. When he has no luck finding some goth chick with a vampire fetish, he resorts to sucking the blood of cows under cover of the night. But it’s just not the same. Then he meets the new Indian exchange student and falls for her — hard. Yeah, he wants to bite her, but he also wants to prove himself to her. But like the laws of life, love, and high school, the laws of vampire existence are complicated — it’s not as easy as studying Dracula. Especially when the star of Vampire Hunters is hot on your trail in an attempt to boost ratings….”

My take: I do not, as a rule, read vampire novels. I am not drawn to the Transylvanian bloodsuckers nor to their sparkly, modern counterparts. That said, when I saw two reviews of this book describing it as hilarious and laugh-out-loud funny, I thought I’d give it a chance.

The premise of the book and the character set up is great. A pudgy, self-doubting Comic Con attendee is accidentally turned into a vampire one summer evening. He and his computer programming best friend, Jay, set out to figure out what of the vampire traits he suffers from besides a desire for blood and a sensitivity to light. When he goes back to school in the fall, he meets and falls for the new exchange student from India, a girl who is hiding from her new schoolmates that she suffers from the Google (a mysterious disease that includes an addiction to the internet, an obsession with updating your online profiles, and the eventual dehumanizing of all those with whom you have contact).

Unfortunately, it seemed to me that the author got confused about where he was taking the story. The last chapter so confused me that I read it a second time the next morning, convinced I must have missed the real ending to the novel. Maybe the vampire thing is symbolic of something else, I thought. It’d be a reasonable guess since that’s often the case. But then I don’t know what to do with the reality tv show host, desperate to keep Vampire Hunters on the air, who is hunting Doug down

Even now, more than a week after finishing the book, I find myself sputtering with frustration about the way this story ends. I usually put down and return to the library books that I’m clearly not going to enjoy. Life is too short, after all, to fit in all the good books I want to read, let alone the ones I don’t. But, then, what to do with the novel that you realize you’re not going to like the ending two pages from the conclusion?

I liked the premise and the set-up, but just couldn’t stomach the eventual execution. Too bad!

Pages: 324