My Holiday Reading

I would like to do a little holiday reading this season; so, I am joining in on the fun with The Winter Holiday Reading Challenge from November 1st through January 31st. My books will celebrate the Christmas season. I have chosen the following books from my bookshelf for this challenge:

Bittersweet Christmas: Christmas Spells Time for Change in Three Romantic Novels by Joyce Livingston, Gail Sattler, and Janet Spaeth

Christmas Wishes by Debbie Macomber

The Gift by Pete Hamill

Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet Evanovich

I can't wait to get started. Oh... and Happy Holidays!

Holes

There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. There once was a very large lake here, the largest lake in Texas. That was over a hundred years ago. Now it is just a dry, flat wasteland. There used to be a town of Green Lake as well. The town shriveled and dried up along with the lake, and the people who lived there. (p.3)

The reader is probably asking: Why would anyone go to Camp Green Lake? Most campers weren't given a choice. Camp Green Lake is a camp for bad boys. If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy. That was what some people thought. (p.5)

Holes by Louis Sachar was the 1999 winner of the Newbery Medal Award. The book's storyline has three stories in one that are interconnected in a most unusual way. Stanley Yelnats is a teen boy who was falsely accused of stealing a famous pair of tennis shoes. Instead of going to jail, he was sent to Camp Green Lake, a youth detention camp where the punishment is having to dig a hole each day in the dried out lake. This is just another incident for Stanley's family, a family that seems to constantly endure bad luck because of a curse that was cast upon them after Stanley's "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather" reneged on a promise to a "one-legged Gypsy" named Madame Zeroni. Stanley's family also has a connection to the town of Green Lake. His great-grandfather was robbed there by Kissin' Kate Barlow, once known as Miss Katherine until her community turned on her when she showed her affections to a man by the name of Sam, the onion man.

While doing his time at Camp Green Lake, Stanley befriends a boy by the name of Zero. Zero is a ward of the state, can not read, and is often overlooked by the other boys and staff in the camp. Stanley's camp adventures take a major turn after he and Zero begin to realize their fate and possible connection to one another. Is their connection deeper than just that of a stolen pair of shoes? As the three stories unfold, the reader can only wonder...

I very much enjoyed the book Holes. I saw the movie years ago and was a bit sceptical about reading the book after seeing the movie. But I am glad I did. This is one occasion when I can say that the book and the movie are equally well done! I definitely recommend Holes to other pre-teen through adult readers.

Winter Holiday Reading Challenge

After much thought and after much encouragement and interest from my "reading friends", I have decided to enjoy the holidays by hosting a Winter Holiday Reading Challenge. We are all busy people, so the guidelines will be simple in order for us enjoy our little holiday getaways into reading.

The Winter Holiday Reading Challenge will last from November 1, 2008 to January 31, 2009.

The theme for this challenge is Winter Holidays. The books that you choose to read must have a storyline that includes celebrating a winter holiday, such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year's, etc. (However, the holidays are not limited to just these examples.)

You choose the number of books you wish to read.

Leave a comment at the end of this post if you want to join in on the fun.

Each month, leave a comment at the end of the Winter Holiday Reading Challenge Update post that includes the book (title and author) that you read for that month and the link to your review (if you have one).

And finally... Enjoy your holiday reading!

Participants of The Winter Holiday Reading Challenge include:

Lindy (Grilsgood)
Callista
Lynne
Sally (sally906)
Diane
Jenny
Sherri
The Holistic Knitter
Diane (bookinhand)
Christina
lupingirl
Priscilla
Rebecca
Brie
SueFitz
Kylee
Kristen
Lena
Nely
Judy (Intergalactic Bookworm)
raidergirl3
Janet
Stacy
Becca
Carol's Notebook
Antonette
Violette

Winter Holiday Reading Challenge updates:
November
December
January

It's Tuesday, where are you?

I am digging holes at Camp Green Lake with Stanley, Zero, and an assortment of other boys.

Where is reading taking you this day?

CR: Holes by Louis Sachar

The Secret Of The Old Clock

"Dad, do you suppose Mr. Crowley was trying to tell the doctor something about another will which he had put some place where the Tophams couldn't find it?" Nancy asked.
"Very likely," the lawyer replied. "Probably he intended to leave his money to relatives who had been kind to him. But fate cheated him of the opportunity."
"Do you think anybody has looked for another will?" Nancy questioned.
"I don't know. But I'm sure of this. If another will shows up, Richard Topham will fight it. The estate is a considerable one, I understand, and they aren't the kind of people to share good fortune." (p. 16)

Over the past couple of weeks I have shared the pleasure of reading a book with my nearly ten year old daughter. She wanted to read the same book at the same time, with two motives in mind: first, to complete her daily reading requirement for school and second, to enjoy some mother-daughter time. Together we enjoyed the Nancy Drew Mystery Story The Secret Of The Old Clock by Carolyn Keene. Mind you, I read Nancy Drew when I was a young girl as well as watched the tv show as a young teen, so I found it amusing that even in this day and age that young people still like old classics like Nancy Drew Mysteries. We found two copies of the book in our local library; and then, for the next two weeks, we enjoyed some special time together reading.

Eighteen year old Nancy Drew meets some neighbors that are having a hard time providing for their young niece of whom they are raising. She discovers that they were promised an inheritance from a man named Josiah Crowley, their cousin. However, upon his death one family received everything. The Topham family claimed that there are no other wills and that they deserve the money that Josiah had left to them. But soon Nancy discovers that there are others in the area that were made the same promise of an inheritance by Josiah and believe that there was one last will written shortly before his death. Nancy enjoys a good mystery and is soon on the hunt for people and clues. She also searches for an old clock, a family heirloom of Josiah's, that may hold the hidden information she needs to eventually lead her to the possible final will.

Just enough mystery to keep my daughter intrigued and just enough plot to keep me entertained, The Secret Of The Old Clock was a very fun read. We laughed, we thought, and we compared notes as my daughter and I worked our way through the mystery. If you have a young reader in your home or if you yourself wish to enjoy a fun blast from the past, I would recommend trying the classic Nancy Drew Mystery Stories.

In fact, my daughter enjoyed it so much that we are going to start a second book this weekend!

The Romance Reading Challenge - Completed

Ahhhhh, love is in the air and another challenge has been completed. In the spirit of love, my list of romantic escapes included:

Dual Image by Nora Roberts

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Cloud Nine by Luanne Rice

Texas Neighbors by Debra White Smith

Moment to Moment by Barbara Delinsky

The Secret Hour by Luanne Rice

Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella

The Rocky Road To Romance by Janet Evanovich

My favorite books were Cloud Nine, Moment to Moment, and The Rocky Road to Romance. My least favorite book was Love In The Time Of Cholera.

One of my favorite genres of reading is romance novels, so this challenge was very enjoyable and an easy one to finish! Thank you bookworm07 for hosting The Romance Reading Challenge!

The Rocky Road to Romance

His life wasn't going well, Steve decided. Everything used to be so smooth. Women never said no, old ladies used to think he was bright, people he employed followed instructions. At least he had a dog. The thought lifted his spirits. He'd go home, take Bob out for a burger, and then they'd go run a couple fast miles together. Afterward they could watch television and maybe put a frozen pie in the oven for dessert. Pretty damn domestic, he thought to himself. He'd turned into a regular family man. An SUV, a dog, a frozen pie. Life didn't get much better than that. Not tonight anyway. (pp. 79-80)

If you want some overly sweet mind candy, The Rocky Road to Romance by Janet Evanovich is exactly the book you need. In true Evanovich style, the story is full of intense romance, full of high adventure, and full of wacky situations. From the living room floor to the kitchen table to a completed dissertation, the romance is non-stop. From radio traffic reports to a hit-and-run to two stolen cars and two separate high speed chases, the action is non-stop. And from an author of a doggie cookbook to an elderly bodyguard who packs a gun in her purse to a dog named Bob who thinks he's human, the wacky situations just don't stop.

She wasn't a rational person when she was around him. She only had to look at her ring finger to be reminded of that fact. Steve's parents had left an hour ago, and the ring was growing heavier and heavier. The confused joy she'd first felt was fast turning to gloomy disbelief. How could she possibly have managed to get herself engaged? She'd been so determined not to let this happen, and now she was dragging a diamond the size of Mount McKinley around on her finger. (pp. 221-222)

Daisy lives with her teenage brother in a modest home. She works several jobs, interns at a local nursing home, and is completing her doctorate's degree in geriatric counseling. One of her many jobs is a five minute spot on WZZZ AM radio as the Dog Lady, telling dog stories and reading gourmet dog recipes on air each morning. When the current traffic reporter is in an accident, she convinces her boss Steve to give her the job until the other reporter is healed. He reluctantly agrees, but soon finds himself falling in love with this crazy woman who brings nothing but trouble, ok... adventure, into his life. Now head over heels in love with Daisy, Steve needs to convince this head strong woman to marry him... that is, if they live that long.

Crazy, crazy romance, The Rocky Road to Romance is a mindless, fun book to read. It was my perfect escape for the past of couple days! If you like the wackiness of Janet Evanovich, you will definitely want to add this book to your TBR list.

Pa's Darling

As I have already suggested, I was always supposed to be Pa's favorite daughter. He made a good deal of me, particularly before company; he like to show me off --- he was proud of my good looks, of what he called my "pale-faced, raven-haired beauty." But he was like a financial magnate showing off a master painting he has just acquired, inwardly confident that the owner of the picture is superior to both the work and its artist. There was always a distinct vein of sarcasm in his ebullient mirth.

Louis Auchincloss' short story Pa's Darling tells Kate Hemenway's view of her past, "to make a probably vain attempt to get it off my chest." She speaks of the way her father treated life, the arts, his wife, and people in general. She then speaks of her first husband of whom she met through her father and then of her second husband whom she discovers is much like her own father. She draws parallels between these men in her life and compares them to the relationship she saw between her own parents. And following the death of her father, Kate discovers a secret of her parents that she had always suspected. This secret along with her husband's prolonged mourning of the passing of her father leads her to suspect that history is repeating itself.

The world might admire power and money, but it also esteemed the arts. By associating himself with Pa, might he not borrow a few rays of Pa's aura? To Dicky appearance and reality were the same. If he looked as if he had everything, why, then he had everything. It was why he was perfectly happy. I had again been married to my father.

Although the characters were not overly developed, the story was exactly as the author introduced: an assessment of a character's past following the death of her father. Taking an assessment of our past is something we all tend to do when an event changes our course in life. Pa's Darling was an interesting short story that I enjoyed.

"Pa's Darling" by Louis Auchincloss (from The Yale Review) from The Best American Short Stories 2007 edited by Stephen King with Heidi Pitlor

Beloved

Sethe knew that the circle she was making around the room, him, the subject, would remain one. That she could never close in, pin it down for anybody who had to ask. If they didn't get it right off --- she could never explain. Because the truth was simple, not a long-drawn-out record of flowered shifts, tree cages, selfishness, ankle ropes and wells. Simple: she was squatting in the garden and when she saw them coming and recognized schoolteacher's hat, she heard wings. Little hummingbirds stuck their needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thought anything, it was No. No. Nono. Nonono. Simple. (p. 163)

If you have ever read anything by the author Toni Morrison, you know that her books are heart-wrenching yet extremely gripping. I quickly remembered this when I began Morrison's book Beloved, and I continued to remember this as I read the story of Sethe's struggles with her past and how it comes back to haunt her. Her past is painful, disturbing, and life changing. This is not surprising, as Beloved is set in Ohio just after the Civil War and Sethe and her family are former slaves. But the past memories that have been so carefully forgotten are now brought back to memory as they try to reshape the present for Sethe and those she loves.

"I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it was my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Others you never do. But it's not. Places, places are still there. If a house burns down, it's gone, but the place --- the picture of it --- stays, and not just in my rememory, but out there, in the world. What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. Right in the place where it happened." (pp. 35-36)

Sethe and her daughter Denver live at 124, a grey and white house on Bluestone Road just outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. They settled there after a horrific flight from the south, reuniting with Sethe's other three children and her mother-in-law Baby Suggs who was bought out of slavery by Sethe's husband Halle. But within days of their arrival, a very tragic event happens that adds another piece of history to everyone's already troubled past.

That before Sethe could make her understand what it meant --- what it took... --- Beloved might leave. Leave before Sethe could make her realize what worse than that --- far worse --- was what Baby Suggs died of, what Ella knew, what Stamp saw and what made Paul D tremble. That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you. Dirty you so bad you couldn't like yourself anymore. Dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own. The best thing she was, was her children. Whites might dirty her all right, but not her best thing, her beautiful, magical best thing --- the part of her that was clean. (p. 251)

The tragic event is slowly revealed to the reader after Paul D arrives to 124 and finds the house a very disturbing place. He and Sethe share the details of their years following her flight from Sweet Home, the farm where they both had been slaves since childhood. Paul D learns the details of Sethe's departure from the farm and Sethe learns why her husband never arrived to 124. Together they try to begin a new life; however, this new life quickly encounters difficult times after the arrival of a strange young woman named Beloved. She eventually draws out the rest of the details about Sethe's past, and Beloved's presence will eventually leave a very profound imprint on everyone's life.

Whatever Sethe had done, Ella didn't like the idea of past errors taking possession of the present. Sethe's crime was staggering and her pride outstripped even that; but she could not countenance the possibility of sin moving on in the house, unleashed and sassy. Daily life took as much as she had. The future was sunset; the past something to leave behind. And if it didn't stay behind, well, you might have to stomp it out. Slave life; freed life --- every day was a test and a trial. Nothing could be counted on in a world where even when you were a solution you were a problem. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and nobody needed more; nobody needed a grown-up evil sitting at the table with a grudge. As long as the ghost showed out from its ghostly place --- shaking stuff, crying, smashing and such --- Ella respected it. But if it took flesh and came in her world, well, the shoe was on the other foot. She didn't mind a little communication between two worlds, but this was an invasion. (pp. 256-257)

Even though I found Beloved a very disturbing read, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The story weaves the past and present in a very interesting way, and I really liked the ending that included Paul D's continual struggle to make a new life for everyone. I recommend this book to others, especially those who are fans of Toni Morrison.

Jacob Have I Loved

I could probably live out my life on the island in my own quiet, crazy way, much as Auntie Braxton always had. No one paid much attention to her, and if it hadn't been for the cats, she would have probably lived and died in our midst, mostly forgotten by the rest of us. Caroline was sure to leave the island, so the house would be mine after my grandmother and my parents died. (With only a slight chill I contemplated the death of my parents.) I could crab like a man if I chose. Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied. Thus as long as I left everyone alone, I could do as I pleased. Thinking about myself as a crazy, independent old woman made me feel almost happy. (pp. 131-132)

In celebration of an author's birthday in October, I read Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson. This book was the 1981 winner of the Newbery Medal Award. The title comes from Romans 9:13: "As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." This verse is whispered into Sara Louise's ear by her grandmother when once again her twin sister Caroline steals the limelight and has everything going for her. Sara Louise (also known as Wheeze) believes her parents prefer her sister over her, and she also believes that her sister takes everything from her, from attention to friends to opportunities. The Bradshaw family live a very modest life on a tiny island in Chesapeake Bay in the 1940's. Life is not easy and many of the younger generation dream of leaving the island to make a better life for themselves. The story of an adolescent coming to terms with her dreams and desires, Jacob Have I Loved is a moving book that makes one think about how we treat one another fairly and how we deal with the fear of growing older.

I love Rass Island, although for much of my life, I did not think I did, and it is a pure sorrow to me that, once my mother leaves, there will be no one left there with the name of Bradshaw. But there were only the two of us, my sister Caroline, and me, and neither of us could stay. (p. 3)

While reading this book, I was trying to decide if I liked the story or not. I believe it hit a bit close to home for me with its treatment of adolescence and how teens view themselves and those around them, especially unhappy teens. But then as the conclusion drew near, I really became engrossed in the ending and loved the book! The story's layers left me thinking about Wheeze and her struggle to deal with the people and circumstances that formed her views of life. I highly recommend Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson.

(Mini-Challenge #4 is to read a banned book and review it. Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Patterson also fulfills this requirement.)

Gilead

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren't very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the live you've had with me, and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. (p.3)

John Ames is a Congregationalist minister in Gilead, Iowa. He is ill and does not have much time left to live. He has a young wife and son whom he will leave behind upon his passing. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson is his letter to his son in which Ames writes of his thoughts, memories, and dreams of the past, present, and future. He speaks often of his family, recovery, and God's miracles and creation. Although I only read about half the book, I could see the spiral technique of writing that continued to bring like thoughts back to the letter on several occasions. I had a tough time getting into this book, but I did not not like it. It was just a slow read that did not grab my attention like most books do. I did find several passages inspiring and I know that many readers do enjoy reflective fictional reading like Ames' letter.

I don't write the way I speak. I'm afraid you would think I didn't know any better. I don't write the way I do for the pulpit, either, insofar as I can help it. That would be ridiculous, in the circumstances. I do try to write the way I think. But of course that all changes as soon as I put it into words. And the more it does seem to be my thinking, the more pulpitish it sounds, which I guess is inevitable. I will resist that inflection, nevertheless. (pp. 28-29)

I'm writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you. (p. 52)

Existence seems to me now the most remarkable thing that could ever be imagined. I'm about to put on imperishability. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye. The twinkling of an eye. That is the most wonderful expression. I've thought from time to time it was the best thing in life, that little incandescence you see in people when the charm of a thing strikes them, or the humor of it. "The light of the eyes rejoiceth the heart." That's a fact. (p.53)

Sometimes the visionary aspect of any particular day comes to you in the memory of it, or it opens to you over time. (p. 91)

My list of regrets may seem unusual, but who can know that they are, really. This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it. (p. 28)

My point here is that you never do know the actual nature even of your own experience. Or perhaps it has no fixed or certain nature. (p, 95)

Even though I did not finish Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, I would still recommend the book to others.