Well, I kicked off the "holiday reading" list as of the first day of Advent with the bookThe Gift of Hope: Advent and Christmas Reflections in the Holy Cross Tradition. The guy at the local Catholic Book Store (DeSales!) assured me that this was his favorite advent companion. I had gone in to look for an Advent Wreath that I had my eye on several years back... but, not surprisingly, they no longer had that specific one. Instead, I was forced to purchase a bunch of books (how cruel these bookstores are) -- including this one. I had intended to purchase an Advent companion at some point and this one looked like a likely candidate.
I'm enjoying it; it's a good daily reminder of the season, and each reading takes about half a minute. In fact, they're almost a little too short -- I finish reading almost before I've totally got in the mood to read, and then I'm tempted to read ahead a few days and have to stop myself... So I really wind up re-reading the day's entry twice or three times, to make sure I've got the gist of it. I'll post a review once I've finished the thing.
So far, the handful of books that I've got on my holiday reading list are as follows:
1. Gift of Hope: Advent and Christmas Reflections in the Holy Cross Tradition - By Andrew Gawrych
2.The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits - By Les Standiford
3. The Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas -- By Ace Collins
4. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus - By L. Frank Baum
5. An Unknown Christmas Mystery -- By Mary Higgins Clark
(No, that's not really the title for #5. I bought that book the other day, set it on my shelf... and absolutely can't remember what it's called. I even tried looking it up online (thinking she must only have a limited number of Christmas mysteries and therefore I could surely figure it out by process of
elimination), and failed. All I know for certain is that it's not The Christmas Thief -- 'cause I read that one last year. OH WELL! I will tell you what book it is in a different blog entry.)It's not a very long list this year... but I'm trying to be realistic about how much time I have, how fast I read, and trying very hard not to do unseasonal reading. (I am much annoyed that I had to read Jan Karon's Shepherds Abiding earlier this year. I had to read it then because it was the next chronological book in the series and I was eager to get along with that -- but then, too late, discovered that it was a Christmas story! I'm kind of cheesed about that right now because I'm very much in the mood to read a Mitford novel, but I've officially run out of them at this point. I could read Home to Holly Springs, but I tried that a month or so ago and so far I'm just not getting into it. Perhaps I'll re-read At Home in Mitford -- that one was the best!) -- Mrs. Hall












