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What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Kate Seredy’s A Tree for Peter, which the library catalog listed as a Christmas book although it has actually just one (admittedly pivotal) Christmas scene. Little Peter lives in Shantytown, a miserable poverty-stricken slum. But his life changes when he meets a tramp, also named Peter, who gives him a red spade and promises to plant a tree for him if he’ll dig a hole for it. Peter does, and on Christmas Eve tramp Peter plants a spruce tree all decorated for Christmas. The candlelight draws the other residents of Shantytown out, and in the warm glow they see that if they worked together to clear out the junk and enlarge Peter’s garden and make the drafty shanties air-tight, they could make this a pleasant place to live… A classic 1930/40s story about common folk banding together to improve their lives.

I also read Ally Carter’s The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, a romystery that is two part romance to one part mystery which is, unfortunately, the opposite of my preferred mystery-to-romance ratio. I also found it annoying that ( spoilers )

Sadly I think I need to accept that Ally Carter is simply not for me. I’ve tried a bunch of her books and I always come away with the same feeling of “too much boyfriend, not enough spy school and/or mystery-solving.”

By this time I was getting frankly a bit tired of Christmas books, so I took a semi-break with Agatha Christie’s What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! (4.50 from Paddington outside the US), which just barely squeaks within the parameters of the Christmas book challenge because What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw is a murder in a passing train at Christmastime as she is on the way to visit her dear friend Miss Marple.

My first Miss Marple! I’ve been kind of meh on Christie in the past, but I really enjoyed the experience of reading this one although I found the final solution to the mystery somewhat unconvincing. However, I am not reading mysteries for the solution! I read mysteries for the journey and if the journey happens to end in a convincing solution, so much the better.

What I’m Reading Now

This week in Ruth Sawyer’s collection The Long Christmas, a story from the Dolomites about a town of rich, greedy, gluttonous, selfish folk, every single one of whom refused to give shelter to a traveler on a cold Christmas Eve, for which sin the town flooded and became a lake. If you stand on its shores at Christmas Eve, you can still hear the bells ringing for the midnight Mass.

This story is centuries old and therefore not intentionally a parable for global warming and/or the crisis of global economic inequality. However, if the shoe fits…

What I Plan to Read Next

My hold on J. Jefferson Farjeon’s Mystery in White: A Christmas Crime Story has arrived!

Despite some scheduling complications, I’ve kept up with the Picture Book Advent calendar. A strong week! Very Jan Brett-forward.

Admiring the illustrated endpapers of The All-I’ll-Ever-Want-for-Christmas Doll, I mused, “That looks like a Gee’s Bend quilt.” Then I flipped to the first page, where I learned from the author’s note by Patricia McKissack that the book grew out of her interviews with one of the Gee’s Bend quilters, who glowed with joy at the memory of receiving a store-bought doll one Christmas. Luminous illustrations by Jerry Pinkney. I especially love the way he draws the children in this book, most particularly the scene where the three sisters are having an argument and their poses are just so perfect.

The Christmas Anna Angel, by Ruth Sawyer, illustrated by Kate Seredy. In Hungary, near the end of World War I, Anna’s family has no white flour for Christmas cakes, let alone nuts or honey. But Anna wishes on her angel (the Anna Angel), and on Christmas Eve, the angel shows up to bake cakes… Enchanting illustrations by Kate Seredy, who grew up in Hungary and is recreating the world of her youth, with the extra magical touch of the baking angel who summons some bees to make honey from the real flowers decorating her white skirt. (As she settles down to the serious business of mixing the cake, she hangs her halo off the knob on a chair, a businesslike touch.)

Who’s That Knocking on Christmas Eve?, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. For the past few years, a bunch of mischievous trolls have been bursting into Kyri’s house to eat up the Christmas feast. But this year, a traveling boy knocks on the door with his ice bear, and the trolls get a surprise! Very cute. Love the cabin interior and the aurora.

Home for Christmas, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. Naughty troll boy Rollo runs away from home, living with an owl, a bear, an otter, a moose, but comes home in time for Christmsa. I must admit that every time I read a book about a naughty boy running away (i. e. Where the Wild Things Are), a part of me is gunning for the folks back home to decide that life is actually so much better without him and they’d like him to stay away, please.

The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree, written by Gloria Houston, illustrated by Barbara Cooney. In Ruthie’s Appalachian village, it’s tradition for a different family to provide the church Christmas tree each year, and this year it’s her family’s turn. But with Ruthie’s father gone to fight in the Great War, will Ruthie and her mother be able to get the tree to the church? Lovely mountain landscapes. One thing I love about Barbara Cooney’s work is the botanical exactness: she doesn’t just draw flowers, she draws columbine and honeysuckles, very simple but still recognizable.

Jan Brett’s The Nutcracker, written and illustrated by Jan Brett. A mild disappointment, perhaps because no picture book (no matter how detailed) can quite match the richness of a two-hour ballet.

The Christmas Boot, Lisa Wheeler, illustrated Jerry Pinkney. Coming full circle with another Jerry Pinkney! Hannah Grayweather finds a big leather boot in the snow… and when she puts it on, it molds itself to fit her foot. “If only I had another one just like it,” Hannah muses that night, and wakes up to find a second boot waiting for her in the morning… An enchanting fairytale.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Ngaio Marsh’s Tied Up in Tinsel, which is actually a reread, which I realized fairly early on when the foppish country house owner explains that he’s staffed the place with murderers who have served their time. Just oncers, no more dangerous than the average man on the street, and anyway how else is he supposed to staff a country house given the servant problem in 1970s Britain? But I kept going, because Ngaio Marsh is always a good time, and also this book prominently features Troy who just happens to be at the country house to paint said foppish owner when the murder occurs… A Troy book is always especially a good time.

Maud Hart Lovelace’s The Trees Kneel at Christmas is set in Park Slope, where one of my friends lives, so every few pages I was shrieking “I know that place! I’ve crossed that street!” So naturally I loved the book, haha. Our heroine Afifi hears a story from her grandmother about how the trees kneel at Christmas back home in Lebanon, and becomes determined to walk to Prospect Park at midnight on Christmas Eve to see if the trees kneel in America, too.

I checked out Ruth Crawford Seeger’s 1953 American Folksongs for Christmas purely because it was illustrated by Barbara Cooney, but found it unexpectedly fascinating. Seeger (stepmother of Pete Seeger) was, among other things, a collector of folk music, and this book is full of songs I’ve never even heard of, from the tradition of all-night Christmas Eve church singalongs, often in the South, where people would gather and sing till dawn.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve started Tasha Tudor’s Take Joy, which is a compilation of Christmas stories/poems/carols etc illustrated by Tudor. The second story is Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of the world’s saddest pine tree. In the woods, the pine is too entirely focused on growing bigger (big enough to be a Christmas tree!) to ever feel happy. Then it’s cut down to be a Christmas tree, and it’s taken to a house and covered with ornaments and candles, and it’s all very strange and confusing, but the pine tree thinks that it will be able to enjoy these celebrations once it gets used to them… except of course its life as a Christmas tree lasts for just one night, and then it’s tossed in the attic and dried out for firewood.

What I Plan to Read Next

As I feared, I’m already running low on Christmas chapter books. However, Christie has a Poirot Christmas book and a Miss Marple that’s set at Christmas (although not perhaps a Christmas Book), and I have been meaning to to a Miss Marple, so…

If you have any other classic mystery Christmas recs, let me know!

Naturally I’ve decided that this is the year to rewatch some best-beloved Christmas movies, so I kicked off the season with The Man Who Invented Christmas, starring Dan Stevens as a charming but moody Charles Dickens as he scrambles to write A Christmas Carol in time for the Christmas rush in order to save his tottering finances.

This is such a fun movie. I always love a period piece, and I love Dan Stevens, and I love movies about creating art of any kind (if it’s well done, which it isn’t always…), and this one has such a good balance of seriousness and humor.

On the serious side, we have the demons of Dickens’ childhood coming back to haunt him, especially in his difficult relationship with his father, to whom he is far too similar for comfort. He inherited his father’s charm, his taste for the high life, his gift for performance - and he’s afraid he’ll follow his father’s example by running his family into debtor’s prison with his extravagant spending. A new house! All remodeled! A crystal chandelier and a mantelpiece of Carrera marble!

Unlike his perpetually sunny father, Dickens also has darker moods, where the charm gives way to abrupt outbursts of rage. He stalks around his study in the middle of the night making a racket when composition isn’t going well, apparently unaware that he’s keeping the whole house up. He snaps at his wife, sends away a long-time friend, fires a servant girl - then in the morning demands to know why the servant girl is gone. “You have no idea,” Mrs. Dickens tells him, on the verge of tears but displaying all the self-control Charles lacks, “how hard it is to live with you.”

(I’m happy to report the servant girl shows up again, and is of course rehired. I sort of suspect that the housekeeper keeps these impetuously fired servants in an out of the way corner for a day or two just in case Dickens didn’t really mean it.)

But this is not a grim study of a historical figure’s dark side. There are so many wonderful funny bits, too. In his good moods, Dickens is incredibly charming and funny - you can see why all these people put up with his darker side, just because the lighter side is such a delight.

I love Trollope as the guy in the club who always comes over to commiserate (gloat) when someone receives a bad review. Those cruel reviewers, claiming that Martin Chuzzlewit was “dull, vapid, and vulgar” (which Trollope quotes from memory). “I didn’t think it was vulgar,” Trollope assures Dickens, who is looking for an exit, but fortunately Trollope sees someone else who just got a bad review and scuttles off to crow. I mean sympathize.

And I loved how the Christmas Carol characters start appearing to Dickens. As he gets deeper into composition of the book, they start following him around. There’s an especially funny bit where Dickens looks out a window - he’s trying to avoid the book because he’s struggling with the ending - and the characters are all standing in the street below. Mrs. Fezziwig waves a handkerchief at him.

Also, I covet Dickens’ book-lined study, with a little half-staircase up to a mezzanine level with more books. Why is the study built like that? Who can say? Possibly on purpose to be charming, and charming it absolutely is.