I'm Dreaming of a Grey Christmas

Persephone grey, that is, and wondering if others will want to join in and spread the Persephone cheer by playing Secret Santa to our fellow Persephone-loving bloggers. Here are the particulars:

1. Email me at slaven614@gmail.com on or before November 10th with your name, address (all personal information will be destroyed after completion of gift exchange), a list of Persephone titles you have read and/or own and specify whether or not you are willing to ship your gift internationally.

2. On November 11, names will be randomly drawn and participants will be notified as to who they are playing Santa to.

3. Using the list of Persephone titles provided by your recipient, go back through your assigned blogger's posts looking for favored authors or subject matter and choose a title you know the blogger will enjoy.

4. At this point, it is up to you as Santa how creative you wish to be in the workshop. You can order the book, have it gift wrapped and sent straight on to the recipient...or you can have the book sent to you first and go a step further by including a small gift that is homemade, bookish in nature or related to how you celebrate Christmas, then wrap it all up and send it on its way. Either way make sure you include a card revealing your identity. (Please indicate in your email if you will be including an additional gift.)

5. With the increase of packages being sent during the holidays, please aim to have your package delivered before or during the first week of December. Take into account the extra time needed if shipping internationally or if you are going on vacation.

6. On December 15th, let's get together by posting who your Secret Santa is and sharing what he (or she) brought you.

7. Spread the word...the more the merrier! Feel free to use the image above.

If after signing up, something comes up to where you cannot participate, let me know as soon as possible so that I can make other arrangements. Please consider all costs involved before participating (for the book, for any shipping, the additional gift, etc.). This is meant to be fun, not stressful, and I wouldn't want anyone to feel overwhelmed by the commitment.

If you have any questions, you can leave a comment or email me.

Thank you to Claire at Paperback Reader for your help in coming up with the particulars and to my oldest who will be assisting in the matching up so I can play Santa too.

Awesome Author Challenge 2010

Alyce at At Home With Books is hosting this awesome Awesome Author Challenge 2010. It runs all of 2010 and you can choose from four different levels of challenging. Alyce writes, "The idea behind this challenge is to read works by authors who have been recommended to you time and again, yet somehow you haven't managed to read any books by those authors. These are the authors that everyone else tells you are awesome, thus the "Awesome Author Challenge" title." I am choosing the easy level which is to read one title from three 'awesome' authors. Here are the authors:

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Anthony Trollope
Dorothy Whipple (completed Someone At A Distance)

If you are interested in participating, please click on the button able to visit At Home With Books.

Reading Susan Hill

It seems that I have had a little bit of Christmas in each month of 2009 whether it is something as small as my White Christmas ring tone or something as wonderful as Howards End is on the Landing. When my husband told me I had a package from The Book Depository, I couldn't help grinning and saying 'it's like Christmas in October'. That was before I started reading it, I was so sure it would be my kind of book, and it turned out to be so.

From the beginning, Hill's account of her year reading from the shelves of her farmhouse took on a conversational quality as I agreed, argued, tried to persuade and meditated upon my own reading history.

Agreed on issue-led children's books: "Realism comes home soon enough and many children have too much anguish to cope with in their everyday lives as it is. Their books can be one corner of life that remains untainted by the troubles brought upon their heads by unthinking, unloving adults."

Argued about the effects of the internet: "The internet can also have a pernicious influence on reading because it is full of book-related gossip and chatter on which it is fatally easy to waste time that should be spent actually paying close, careful attention to the books themselves, whether writing them or reading them." (This sentence is qualified by the word 'can' but I wanted to argue for the opposite effect it can have...from finding new books and authors, and since I started blogging about the books I read I find that I pay closer attention to what I am reading because I plan to write about it at some point. I have found the internet, and book blogging in particular, to be more beneficial than detrimental to my reading.)

Tried to persuade: "Here are two collections of short stories by P.G. Wodehouse, that comic genius. But they don't work, or not for me, because Wodehouse thrived on the leisurely approach, ambling up to a novel, taking the scenic route, and the short story form does not work like that." (They so work for me...Rodney Has a Relapse, Uncle Fred Flits By, the whole of Young Men in Spats...so many have I loved just as much as his best novels.)

Meditated upon: I found the discussion on disapproval of Roald Dahl's books fascinating because when I was growing up Dahl was read in classrooms and his books were given as gifts by our parents. Her trips to libraries on Saturdays and Wednesdays reminded me of my own happy hours spent among the stacks. Although I dared myself to be inspired by Hill to write my impressions in her book, I just couldn't, and don't think I ever will write in books again. And, finally, I couldn't agree more...the book ain't broke.

Of course my tbr list grew: Trollope, Greene, Wodehouse, Sayers, Sebald and Dickens along with Hill's own titles which brings me to The Woman in Black. read_warbler suggested I start here with Hill's fictional work on the strength of it being "very atmospheric and genuinely scary". This ghostly tale is both of these and I was surprised to find that such a story could have me so on edge one moment and completely devastated another. Arthur Kipp is sent by his firm to settle the affairs of the deceased Mrs. Drablow. Eel Marsh House and its grounds (which include a graveyard) are perfectly suited for a haunting as it is unreachable when the tide is in and subject to sudden fogs and mists. No one in town wants to discuss the house or Mrs. Drablow in depth but he is warned off, in not too many words, staying at the house for an extended period of time. But just like those horror films, Kipp decides to stay for a couple of nights in order to complete his work, even after prior unpleasant experiences at the house and in the marsh. What happens during and after his stay makes this another perfect read for October.