Christmas Books

By -
Now I'm late and no one will want to read about Christmas books.

After The Country Child, the other Christmas book I wanted to read this year was Christmas Stories, an Everyman collection of short stories. They're arranged approximately chronologically, starting with Charles Dickens and ending with some modern selections. I particularly enjoyed stories by Trollope, Tolstoy, Willa Cather, and O. Henry (not the Magi one, a cowboy story), and I wasn't so wild about the modern ones.



If you'd like to know about my favorite Christmas books that I always like to read in December, they are both children's books. The Children of Green Knowe is part of the classic-but-forgotten series by L. M. Boston--I think it's really the first one. Tolly goes to visit his great-grandmother at her old manor house of Green Knowe and starts to meet the many inhabitants of the place, but some are ghosts. My husband read this aloud to our kids last year and thought it was completely weird and creepy, but it's really good! If you're an Anglophile and like old stories and legends, this series is necessary for you to read.





My other favorite is The Dark is Rising, which is the second book in Susan Cooper's series of the same name. Will turns 11 on Midwinter Day and is sent on a quest for 6 ancient signs that he must collect over the Christmas season. This is a great series for a kid who enjoys fantasy, and another good selection for anyone who likes old British legend.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, as we did. The best part was that everyone in my extended family is employed, so that all by itself made it the best Christmas ever.

Comments

  1. EvaDecember 29, 2011 at 6:04 AM

    Children of Green Knowe is one of my favourite books ever. It's been that since I was 7-ish: I still have my copy & it's still magical! The rest of the series is wonderful too, but this one if my very, very favourite.

    Sounds like I'll have to try the Cooper then!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanDecember 29, 2011 at 7:52 AM

    I completely agree! Though "The Stones of Green Knowe" may be my second-favorite.

    If you've never read Susan Cooper, you should definitely put her on your list right now. "The Dark is Rising" is a 5-book set and a little odd because the 1st book was written 20 years before the rest of them and has a very different tone--it's kind of Enid Blyton, while the rest are quite strange fantasy. My other favorite Cooper book is probably her least-known, "Seaward." It's strange too. Let me know what you think!

    ReplyDelete
  3. EvaDecember 30, 2011 at 5:33 AM

    I'm one of those who enjoys Enid Blyton, so the tone of the Dark is Rising shouldn't put me off. I'll have to go ahead and put in a holds request!

    ReplyDelete
  4. JeanDecember 30, 2011 at 9:11 AM

    Wait wait, the Dark is Rising is the *second* book! I know, weird. The first one that is more Blytonesque is called "Over Sea, Under Stone." Enjoy!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more