Welcome to day seven of this year’s Virtual Advent Tour!
We’ve made it a full week, friends, and I hope that your holiday celebrations continue apace. My tree is up and mostly decorated and I’ve started my shopping, which will continue this week. Tonight, I had a huge hankering for my grandmother’s cranberry bread, which she always made this time of year (and the recipe for which I shared during last year’s tour), so I suspect that will be on this weekend’s agenda.
Today’s host is Judith of Reader in the Wilderness, one of our first-time participants this year. She has a great post on her favorite Christmas reads of the past five years, which recalls the Virtual Advent Tour’s origins in the lit-blogging community. Please stop by her post and make her feel welcome!
I’ll see you back here tomorrow for our next calendar door!
1. St. Nicholas stopped by last night, and we must have been pretty good this year because he left behind candy and a Harry Potter ornament for me and candy and some kitchen knives for Rudi.
2. I mailed my first Christmas card this week, which only bodes well for the rest of them, just as soon as I figure out where the stamps disappeared to during the great Christmas party cleanup.
3. Speaking of which, Rudi found my Mets cap, which was missing for the entirety of the 2018 season. I blame its absence for their performance, because in order to be a true baseball fan for the team that’s home to the Cy Young winner you have to believe it’s your headwear choices, rather than their playing, right?
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
Happy St. Nicholas Day! I hope you’ve all been good this year and receive only treats overnight in your shoes!
Today’s guest host is longtime Virtual Advent Tour contributor, raidergirl3, who has been a part of it since the beginning. (You can see her history of contributions here.) Today she shares why December 6th is such an important date in Canadian history.
Stop back tomorrow for yet another stop on the Virtual Advent Tour. (And if you’re interested in joining us, we still have some dates available for writers!)
It was a hectic week, which means not much knitting got accomplished. Nothing old is done. Nothing new is started. Tomorrow I vow to do one or the other.
I’ve done better on the reading front. I read the first chapter of The Muse of Nightmares, which is dark (duh!) and kind of maybe don’t want to read it right now. I was able to renew it, so maybe I’ll put it aside and try again next week. I have plenty of other paper books to choose from, including Glad Tidings, two holiday romance novellas which have been perfectly adequate bathroom reading but seem unlikely to advance beyond that. I think I’ll finish The Wolves of Willoughby Chase next, provided I can lay hands on it quickly. Otherwise, Christmas Caramel Murder, Christmas at Eagle Pond, and Ghosts of Greenglass House are the leading contenders to read next.
I’m listening to Michelle Obama’s Becoming, which she reads, and I now feel like I have a wise girlfriend keeping me company while I wash the dishes at night. I also have Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery out on audio, which is by the same author who wrote The Bookshop on the Corner, which was fine, but nothing particularly special. I’ve listened to the first few chapters, because a lot of people seem to really think it’s sweet, but I’m not sure I’m invested enough after the first few chapters to keep going. There’s probably another half hour before we learn what the driving force of this book’s plot is going to be (there’s been almost 45 minutes of set-up so far), so I suppose I’ll give it that much. Otherwise, I’ll probably just return to hanging out with Michelle.
Season’s Greetings! We’re already several days into Hanukkah, are officially into the Christian Advent season, and narrowing down on the end of the year. I hope you’re making the most of it, regardless of what you’re celebrating!
Speaking of celebrating, Nan at Letters from a Hill Farm is doing just that today and has a post full of family joy!
In the meantime, in honor of the third day and fourth night of Hanukkah today, I thought I’d share a video with you from a cappella group Six13:
Today’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl asks about our top ten list of cozy, wintry reads. Unsurprisingly, I’m going to focus my list on Christmas reads. (Readergirl3 also narrowed her topic similarly and we have a bunch of the same books in her list.)
Here are 11 of my favorites (once I got going, I ran long…)
Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales beautifully captures the nostalgia surrounding the holidays. If you can find the audio of Thomas reading it himself, it’s worth a listen. Similarly a staged reading of the text also makes for an enjoyable evening.
The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. Also has, as I recall, a decent 1980s made-for-tv adaptation.
The Birds’ Christmas Carol by Kate Douglas Wiggins: An overly melodramatic Christmas picture book about a sick girl and her neighbors from the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
The Polar Express, a picture book by Chris Van Allsburg, tells of a boy’s test of his faith. I first read this in French in high school, and it’s a beautiful read-aloud in any language.
My True Love Gave to Me, edited by Stephanie Perkins, gives you a dozen YA love stories in a range of genres from some of the top authors writing for teens today. Not all 12 stories were loved, but I could appreciate even the ones I didn’t.
Speaking of which, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! gives you three interrelated Christmas stories from John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson.
For many years, I did not enjoy Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but for the past decade or so, I’ve finally grown into it. I’m currently waiting on an audio version read by Jim Dale from the library.
Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas is the source material for the original cartoon and the subsequent movies and may be one of the few times in history where the book and the adaptation are equally good.
It’s been nearly a decade since I read Connie Willis’ Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, but I’d totally read the sci-fi Christmas-themed collection of stories again (or, at least, most of them).
A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flagg gives you everything you expect from a Flagg novel — lots of laughter, Southern charm, and quirky characters. I don’t know if Southerners enjoy her writing, but this Northerner sure does.
Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, is a sweet YA romance set in New York City and features one of my favorite grandfather characters in recent memory. Plus, it told me that I could find copies of the OED at The Strand if I were willing to shell out for one.
How about you? What’s on your list of cozy, wintry reads?
