Now I want to share some thoughts on favorite Christmas foods. As promised, there will be fruitcake. There will also be gingerbread, and lefse, and pfeffernusse and sandbakkels. Those of you who didn’t grow up in strongly German or Scandinavian parts of the country likely don’t know what those last three items are. Be patient and all will be revealed.
To get it out of the way: fruitcake.
This past Saturday’s Christmas viewing was Hogfather (2006), a miniseries based on Terry Pratchett’s 1996 Discworld book of the same title. It’s a faithful adaptation, although as with most movies based on books, some things had to be left out. (Just as well, though, considering the movie clocks in at just over 3 hours long.) Suppose a cadre of supernatural beings, in the interest of enforcing their idea of order on the universe, decided to capture the belief system of ordinary people?...
Created, the Destroyer by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir (1971). ***. The first book of the Remo Williams story. I don’t even remember getting this book and it wasn’t until I got into the actual story that I had any idea what it was (the prologue gave no clue). Being a fan of the Remo Williams movie, I jumped into it eagerly. The story is very different from that of the movie; the stakes of the plot seem lower, for one thing. Remo’s recruitment into the clandestine government agency is...
More favorite Christmas music: “A Christmas Song” by Jethro Tull. Not exactly an anti-Christmas song, but a bit cynical. “The Christmas spirit is not what you drink.” A quick meditation on the difference between the original meaning of the season and the over-indulgence of modern holiday celebrations. There’s a good live version of this song on Tull’s A Little Light Music.
“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” by Andy Williams. Perhaps mostly a nostalgia thing for me, since The Andy Williams Christmas Album (1963) was a staple in our house when I was a kid. It almost isn’t Christmas until I’ve heard this song. It’s kind of a list of all the fun stuff about Christmas: caroling and parties and family gatherings, “jingle belling” and “mistletoeing”. And the sweeping orchestral arrangement, heavy on the brass and bells, is the sound of the season.
*****. A story based in Russian folklore, it’s a fairy tale seasoned with metafiction, literary fiction and historical fiction. Reading this book at the same time as I’m reading the complete Grimms’ fairy tales, I recognized a lot of fairy-tale elements: groups of siblings, a found family of disparate friends, repetitions of phrases and events, and numbers – lots of numbers. (I imagine that the numbers and the repetition in fairy tales helped the original storytellers keep track of events.)....
“White Christmas”, as covered by The Drifters (1954, which as we recall is the same year the movie White Christmas was released). I think I first really became aware of this version in the movie The Santa Clause. The doo-wop version is a little more up-tempo and hence a bit more cheerful than the Bing Crosby “classic” version. I prefer it!
“O Holy Night” (or “Oh Holy Night”) is probably my favorite religious Christmas song. There have, of course, been some poor covers of it. I currently have...
The kids and I have this Christmas tradition that started entirely by accident. It used to be that we would open presents on Christmas morning, and then they would do their thing, whatever that was (mostly fighting over their new stuff), and I would spend the day playing The Sims. But on Christmas Day 2012, I came downstairs to find a functionally dead computer on my desk. No playtime for me that day (or for nearly a month afterward, as I recall).
Instead we spent part of the day watching...
I just finished reading Hotel Magnifique by Emily J. Taylor (2022). *****. So many of the books I’ve read lately have disappointed me in one way or another, so this one was a real breath of fresh air. I guess technically it’s a YA fantasy – the narrator/protagonist is 17 years old – but it could be enjoyed by any fantasy fan as long as they don’t expect something epic. It’s a very confined setting, but one with an expansive variety within. You never know what or who to expect next in this...
Somebody asked me the other day how a person could find time to read more. I told her she should figure out what she likes to read, and go from there.
But I'm not sure that's what she needed to hear. I think I missed part of what she was asking (hey, it was early in the morning and I hadn't eaten for about 10 hours; my brain wasn't what it should be). I was thinking more in terms of not finding enough reading material, rather than not finding enough time. So if I could go back and talk to her...
