mellicious | Entries tagged with christmas reading

Note: I think I wrote this very very late on the 24th and forgot to post it!

I read a book called The Christmas Bookshop, which is a nice story about a woman reconnecting with her family and finding romance and all that feel-good kind of stuff. I like to read something like that around Christmas time, it puts you in the mood, kind of. (I also pulled out that novella that I talked about last year called "The Best Gift" and re-read it, too, for good measure.) I have some more Christmas-themed books that are new to me but it's already after midnight here and so obviously if I get any of them read this year it's likely to be post-Christmas.

We are going to my sister's tomorrow - we went to see The Fabelmans with them today but we just met them at the theater for that. I enjoyed the movie - Rob went and read some stuff about it when we got home and he came away with the impression that most of the movie is based on the real events of Spielberg's life, at least loosely speaking.

We went to see Licorice Pizza (me and Rob and my sister and her husband, too) and I honestly don't quite know what to make of it. It was interesting but I didn't love it. My sister thought dating a 15-year-old boy made you a pedophile, and while I don't feel like that's quite true, for a 25-year-old girl to date a 15-year-old boy is pretty damn weird. (And presumably illegal, these days. I guess it wasn't, back then?) Anyway, it's a coming-of-age movie set in the 70s, in case you don't know this part already, and it's well-made - it's Paul Thomas Anderson, of course it is - and the boy is Phillip Seymour Hoffman's son (who was apparently 17 at the time they filmed this) and the girl is Alana Haim, the musician. The rest of the Haim sisters are in it too, playing (guess!) her sisters, and her parents are played by their actual parents. I guess that makes casting easier! The first half of it just rambles and the second half has a bit more plot but it's still hard to figure out where it's meant to be going. I read that Anderson based it at least partly on some stories he'd been told by a guy who had been a child actor (as Hoffman's character is), so maybe it rambles because that's what real life does, I don't know. My brother-in-law hated it so he's going to be pissed if it wins all the Oscars, which they seem to think it might.

(Meanwhile, we're going to go see the Spiderman movie again this weekend.)

I had kind of a trying time at work this week, most everybody is off and our cranky computer system went down again, and every time that happens, our IT department and the vendor that makes the software have difficulty talking to each other - and so this week when everybody is understaffed in the first place it's even worse. I'll be surprised if it gets fixed before Monday. Plus we're on covid protocols again and that made everything a little more difficult - not with the vendor, but with everybody else! But I'm done for the week so it's all somebody else's problem.

Oh, that book I was reading (or not-reading, actually) before, called In a Holidaze, turned out to be a Groundhog Day thing, which didn't really grab me at first, either, but I kept going this time and it was actually pretty good. I won't tell you spoilers other than that, though.

I don't know if today (Monday) is the shortest day of the year or if it's tomorrow, but it's one or the other. I happened to look out my balcony windows, which face west, right after sunset - it was allllmost completely dark by 6:00 - there was a very faint glow left around the tree-line, but not much. So maybe tomorrow the day will be just as short, but at least after that we know they'll start getting longer again!

Added: I looked it up - the actual time of the solstice is apparently about 10 in the morning (my time, which is Central), which I think means Tuesday's sunset will be ever-so-slightly later than Monday's, right?

Let's see, as far as reading: I finished Sleigh Bells Ring, which was very low-key and nothing at all like most Hallmark movies that I've seen. Whoever wrote that blurb I read maybe thought amping up the drama would sell better? Anyway, it was pretty good. And I finished the book I've been reading off & on with the Regency Christmas novellas, which was called Under the Mistletoe. (That story I liked so much about the teacher and the viscount is "The Best Gift.") I have some more Regency short novels and maybe some more story compilations on my Kindle, too, so I may try to shoehorn some more of that stuff in while I'm still in the mood for it!

Somebody at work gave us both those holiday necklaces with the big blinking lights, and I draped them on the TV and put a picture on Instagram, if you care to look. (Mostly my Instagram is full of nail polish, but I'm trying to remember to take pictures of other things!)

Oh, I almost forgot - I meant to talk about those candles I bought from an Etsy seller, which came last week and which I really like so far. I bought the one 8-oz candle and a couple of samplers with 4 2-oz. candles in tins in each set. (You can see the bigger one and one of the tins sitting in front of my TV in that picture I linked to above.) Those two both smell really good - the small one is Wizarding Christmas (which just smells sort of generically Christmas to me, but in a good way - it says pine, fir, orange, and ginger) and the bigger one is At the Lamppost (I assume that's meant as a Narnia reference) and it smells like trees. My brain keeps insisting that it smells like snowy trees. It's blue spruce and birch, the label says. Those are trees that I associate with winter, I guess - I don't think either of those grows down here, much, so that's probably why I associate them with snow.

We went to see Spider-man:NWH and despite me saying a day or two ago that I don't identify with Peter Parker, I really liked it. I'm not going to say any more about it right now, though. (Tom Holland is pretty much grown-up now, even if Peter Parker's not, quite, so that may have helped.)

I started reading that book I was talking about before, In a Holidaze, and it turns out that it starts on December 26th - so it's really a post-Christmas book -- unless it goes on until the next Christmas, or something (which is possible, I don't know.) Anyway, I decided I would be better served to read the other contemporary holiday romance I bought (Sleigh Bells Ring, I think it was) now and save that other one til later. (And I've got more of those Regency Christmas things to get through, too.)

I finally finished another book I've been reading and that's called A Dance with the Fae Prince. I liked it. I have a definite weakness for stuff about elves and fairies. It's a sequel in an indirect way to a book called A Deal with the Elf King, which I also liked, but I felt like this second one was written with more assurance, somehow. It has a pretty twisty plot and I never quite figured out where it was going until it got there - always nice. (The heroine had a mysterious mother who died long ago, and I was sure that was going to figure into it eventually, but I never quite figured out how it was going to work out until right at the end.)

I had been working on a paper list of all my books, but then I didn't keep very good track of what I sent to Goodwill lately (because we did a big cleaning/de-hoarding project this fall). While that was going on, I also read some books that were paperbacks in bad shape and those I just tore up as I went, so I wouldn't be tempted to keep them. I have a ton of books on the Kindle and I'm trying to shift even more to that, just so I won't be destashing books I really would otherwise want to keep. I have books I've bought three or four times because I threw the previous copy out, or took it to Goodwill. I like reading on the Kindle just as well as paper, or really, even better, and they don't take up any space. (I am not giving up on the paper book-list but I think a spreadsheet is also in order, so it can be re-sorted at need!)

I have several holiday romance novels/novellas, so I'm prioritizing reading those, before Christmas passes and I decide I'm out of the mood to read them. I'm very much a mood-based reader, which is one reason I usually have several things going at once. (Me, talking to myself: "No, I'm not in the mood to read that right now, what else have we got?") I have some Regency ones, and something that was recommended called In a Holidaze - I assume it's a romance although I actually know nothing about it at all. If I looked at the info when I bought it I've already forgotten what it said.

I also bought the set of novellas that goes with that Thanksgiving one that I liked - I think the overall title is Holidays with the Wongs. There's the Thanksgiving one and and one for Christmas, Chinese New Year, and something else... Valentine's Day? New Year's Eve? Again, I read the titles but that last one didn't stick.

I also bought one more $1.99 romance from Amazon - I was about to say I don't remember the title but I just found where I wrote it down - it's Sleigh Bells Ring. It was in either an Amazon Books e-mail or a Book Riot because those are the only book e-mails I get right now. (And I buy too much stuff already so I sure don't need any more!) I remember thinking that this one sounded like a Hallmark movie - the convoluted plot, the good-looking but annoying boss/new neighbor/whatever, etc.

I enjoy Hallmark movies occasionally. Lest you think I'm a sad, unromantic, Christmas-hating old lady, I will tell you that I was pretty much in tears due to a story I read yesterday involving a lonely teacher, an orphan, and a viscount, all discovering the magic of Christmas together. (Do Americans other than Regency/Bridgerton fans even know what a viscount is? much less how to pronounce it - I only know that last part from some BBC Jane Austen adaptations, I think!) Anyway, my problem with Hallmark (and y'know, all those other channels that do the same thing) is that the plots rarely make any sense whatsoever. I'm not incredibly picky about this, even, but just a little logic goes a long way with me. I suspect the main problem is that they churn these things out so fast that they don't have time to worry over little stuff like the script. So I have to space my Hallmark (/Lifetime/etc.) movie-watching out so I don't start tearing my hair out.

I'll just go back to my reading instead.

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Entries tagged with christmas reading

Christmas Eve gift

Post-Christmas crankiness

Solstice, etc.

In a Holidaze

Holiday romance