Howling Frog Books

I took a look at my reading for this year, and there was a definite trend.  I tended to do two things: I either read difficult and depressing books about politics, or I hid in comfort reads.  If there was a Nancy Drew on the donation table, I took it home.  I read a simply incredible number of fluffy mysteries, which meant that there wasn't as much to blog about, even if I'd been keeping up my former writing rate, which I certainly was not.  Of course I read other things too, but ambition, international reads, or classics were pretty thin on the ground.  I don't feel bad about it or anything; I just noticed it when I looked at my Goodreads list.  (My goal for the year was 170 books, and I passed 200, but a hefty percentage of that list involved titles like Three Investigators and so on.) This month I've been in the mood for a lot of Christmas reading.  Not much new, just a bunch of old and easy favorites. I'm a bit late to get very detailed, so here's ...

The Little Book of Hygge, by Meik Wiking It's Christmas Eve, so what better time to talk about a book entirely about coziness?  I'm sure no Howling Frog readers have been able to avoid the hygge trend that swept the English-speaking world a couple of years ago.  I must confess that I mostly rolled my eyes at it, because hygge is a Danish thing, and I spent a year in Denmark, and therefore I already know about things hyggelige and I don't need a lifestyle editor in a magazine telling me about an expensive blanket I need to buy in order to achieve it.  But when this book came across the donation table, I saw that it was by an actual Danish guy and I thought I'd take a peek to find out if I should enjoy it or toss it. And I enjoyed it. So here we are.  An entire book about hygge.  And what is that (and how do you pronounce it*), exactly?  As most people have probably already heard, at hygge is to be cozy, relaxed, and friendly all at once.  Yo...

I've been running around doing Christmasy stuff (and having a cold, fooey), so I might as well write a post too!  Lois at You, Me, and a Cup of Tea found this fun tag, and I thought I'd play along. Does it snow where you live around Christmas? Ha ha, nope.  We got a light dusting 15 years ago.  I live in the central valley of California and we don't get snow, but on the other hand I live quite near the foothills of the mountains, and they do.  So it's not very far to drive. Do you get a real tree or a fake tree? We used to always get real trees from Grandpa's Christmas Tree Farm (that is, my parents' back acre, which has a planting of pine trees).  They were always huge and sprawly things and it was pretty awesome, but the back acre has run out of trees that look halfway acceptable in a living room -- it's more like Hansel and Gretel's forest now -- and a few years ago the clever siphon arrangement we had slipped and we had a flood, so now we...

All Seated on the Ground, by Connie Willis I love Connie Willis.  She can be too long, but even then I don't mind too much.  And one thing about Connie Willis is that she frequently indulges in screwball SF comedy, usually with a romance attached.  She is the only author I know of that does this, and All Seated on the Ground is a good example of it.  It's also a Christmas novella! The aliens have landed!  Finally, they really have; aliens landed in Colorado, but all they do is stand there and glower disapprovingly at everyone and everything.  They don't speak, they don't respond, nothing.  Meg is on the welcome committee, which has been trying to communicate with the aliens for two months now, and all they've managed to do is to get the aliens to follow them on field trips to try to introduce them to life on Earth.  It's almost Christmas when they take the aliens to the mall to meet Santa, and finally, something happens, but what does it mean...

Christmas With the Savages , by Mary Clive This was a Christmas present!  It's a novel presented as a childhood memoir, based on the author's life, of a Christmas spent at an Edwardian country house.  Young Evelyn is about 8 years old, and her parents are detained in Scotland, so she is sent to the home of a family friend for the holiday.  It's a gathering of a large extended family with three sets of children, with the largest and loudest set named Savage. The great thing about this memoir is how completely honest and unsentimental it is about what she thought as a child.  Evelyn, and all the other children, are show-offy, quarrelsome, self-centered, and ignorant enough to sound snotty when they're trying to sound sophisticated and knowledgeable.  They are hilarious.  The whole thing is a laugh riot. There are also some nice details about everyday life during the Edwardian period--clothes, domestic items, and so on.  In particular, it's amazing ...

Merry Christmas everybody--hope yours is full of good books and good company.

The Cricket on the Hearth , by Charles Dickens For the Christmas challenge I chose one of Dickens' short Christmas novels.  We meet a cozy family: John and Dot have been married for just a year, and they have a brand-new baby.  They have several friends, and a neighbor is preparing to marry Dot's best friend May. Then a Three's-Company-esque misunderstanding occurs, throwing everything into confusion, and it gets straightened out at the end.  I wasn't really all that impressed with the story, but it was OK. I don't quite understand why everyone seems to have a cricket living by the fireplace.  Did crickets just come in and spend the winters in warm spots?

Miracle: and Other Christmas Stories , by Connie Willis I re-read this collection every couple of years--I just really like it.  There's a very nice variety here: a funny one about a new-age Spirit of Christmas Present who only approves of recycled gift cards, a weird one about a pod-people style alien invasion, a heartbreaker about a lonely dad in a bookstore, a classic cozy mystery (with a twist), and even an Epiphany story.  But my very favorite is "Inn."  Makes me cry every time. Be sure to read the introduction, which has a nice bit about how difficult it is to write original Christmas stories and the vast oversupply of Christmas stories that are either horribly depressing or horribly schmaltzy: ...the Christmas-story writer has to walk a narrow tightrope between sentiment and skepticism, and most writers end up falling off into either cynicism or mawkish sappiness. And, yes, I am talking about Hans Christian Andersen. He invented the whole three-hanky sob...

Not the right book, but it's excerpted. A Christmas Book , by Elizabeth Goudge I really like Elizabeth Goudge; I wish my library had more of her books.  And a couple of the ones it does have are anthologies of bits taken out of larger books.  This is one of them, but there were at least some stand-alone stories as well. There were two short stories, several excerpts from longer novels, and one account of the birth of Christ that seems to be taken from a longer work (perhaps for older children?) that probably covered the entire life of Christ.  The short stories were very nice, and I admit that I skipped some of the excerpts if it seemed like they wouldn't make enough sense, but I read some of them too--I quite enjoyed the ones from City of Bells and Pilgrim's Inn , which I've read.  Then the story of Jesus' birth was very well-done; I'd let my kids read it. Some are funny, some are melancholy, most revolve around the lives of churchpeople (rather like...

 The other day I was looking through my shelf of Christmas books and realized that I have had a lovely copy of A Child's Christmas in Wales for years, illustrated by Edward Ardizzone no less, but I've never actually read it.  I decided to fix that problem right away. Thomas Dylan recounts his childhood memories of Christmas in the 1920s in a meandering, stream-of-consciousness kind of style.  He remembers food, fires, innumerable aunts and uncles, fights with other boys, toys, all sorts of things. It's reasonably pleasant but to be honest I expected to enjoy it more.  I usually love reminiscences of childhood Christmases from long ago.  But, meh. I'll count this as a half or something towards my Christmas challenge.  It's a pretty tiny book to count as a whole one, and I have other plans!

Clearly I need to have a little fun and read something nice.  So I'm joining Michelle at her Spirit of Christmas blog for the annual Christmas reading challenge.  The rules: challenge will run from Monday, November 19, 2012 through Sunday, January 6, 2013 (Twelfth Night or Epiphany). cross over with other challenges is totally permitted AND encouraged! These must be Christmas novels, books about Christmas lore, a book of Christmas short stories or poems, books about Christmas crafts, and for the first time...a children's Christmas books level! visit this  POST  for a list of new Christmas books for 2012.  There are a lot of good ones coming out this year, including the new Richard Paul Evans novel, A Winter Dream (I just got it yesterday!). Levels:              --Candy Cane:   read 1 book              --Mistletoe: ...