Merry Christmas...

...may it be one of many blessings and much happiness!

Oh the Persephone Excitement!

A package arrived amidst the chaos of shopping and crafting...one with a royal mail stamp which my oldest immediately brought to me saying "I think it's a Persephone". She now associates any package coming from the UK with Persephone. Unfortunately I was getting ready to head 'into the city' to visit family and had to set the package aside but when I got home and up to bed around 2am...

...I couldn't resist a peek and saw this...
I practiced my patience until the morning when I pulled out this little bundle...
Can anyone say you had me at Quentin Blake? Oh, yes...this is all the goody goodness awaiting me...
The adorable card revealed who my Secret Santa is...Sakura of chasing bawa, a new-to-me blog which I can't wait to get to know.
Thank you so much, Sakura. The Whipple is perfect and I can't wait to read it in the new year. And I absolutely love the bag (which my oldest has already tried to borrow:) and your card is prominently displayed on the mantle. Here's one more peek at They Were Sisters...
Thanks again to my Persephone Secret Santa, and to Claire for organizing all the fun.

A Year of Good Reading

I know it is a little early for an end of the year meme but as I only plan to do a close reread of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, with the help of an annotated version, for the rest of my reading in 2010, I thought I would go ahead and look back.

I am using a survey created by The Perpetual Page-Turner which you can link your own answers to until the beginning of January. Here goes...

1. Best Book of 2010: This is a tie for me as opposed to last year which had a clear winner. Looking back over the list of books I read during 2010 (in my sidebar), all the others seem to fall away when it comes to Dickens' Great Expectations and David Copperfield and although Dickens could pick a favorite, I can't.

2. Worst Book of 2010: Now at this point, I am getting to know myself pretty well as a reader, so pretty much every book I read in 2010 I enjoyed to some degree. So my worst book of 2010 is not based on the story itself but the god-awful editing of High Rising by Angela Thirkell. Thank goodness the story was strong enough for me to get past all the editing I had to do in my head.

3. Most Disappointing Book of 2010: Definitely goes to Miss Read's Thrush Green. Just didn't measure up to my experiences with Fairacre.

4. Most Surprising (in a good way) Book of 2010: Richard Hack's The Duchess of Death had me completely enthralled from beginning to end, and read more like a novel than non-fiction.

5. Book Recommended Most in 2010: Was actually a book I read in 2009 and recently reread...Miss Read's The Christmas Mouse.

6. Best Series You Discovered in 2010: I feel a little saying 'I discovered' because if anything I felt I came late to the game when it comes to this author's work but the best series I read this year was James Herriot's first four volumes. I am saving the last.

7. Favorite New Authors in 2010: Well new to me anyway...James Herriot, Angela Thirkell, Dorothy Whipple and Elizabeth Taylor (the other one).

8. Most Hilarious Read in 2010: Definitely goes to Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small...laugh out loud kind of hilarious.

9. Most Thrilling, Unputdownable Book of 2010: Dickens' Great Expectations was the book I would have tried to read while sleeping, driving, showering, if possible.

10. Book Most Anticipated in 2010: Dorothy Whipple's Someone at a Distance...I had received it for the Persephone Secret Santa and couldn't wait to get to it because of all the positive reviews it received from other bloggers.

11. Favorite Cover of a Book in 2010: Another tie...I just love this edition of A Christmas Carol and bought it even though I had two other editions on my shelf. And the cover of Herriot's Dog Stories makes me smile every time I see it.

12. Most Memorable Character in 2010: Wemmick from Great Expectations. My initial judgment of this character was so wrong and I came to love everything about him. He is the character I remember most fondly all these months later.

13. Most Beautifully Written Book in 2010: This one is a bit difficult as there are so many beautiful passages found within the many books I read but if I had to apply this description to a whole work, it would have to be Miss Read's Tiggy. A short work but each and every word conveyed the love the author felt toward this unexpected pet.

14. Book That Had the Greatest Impact on You in 2010: Great Expectations, for so many reasons, beginning with it becoming this measure for all the books that came before and after, and it really changed the way I look at what I read. It wasn't something I realized at first but I noticed that it became a kind of standard-bearer. This book also made me want to be a better person. There have been other books that have inspired me in a similar way but not to the degree which Great Expectations did and which David Copperfield reinforced.

15. Book You Can't Believe You Waited until 2010 to Read: David Copperfield. I always felt I should read Great Expectations but David Copperfield I could take or leave or at least save for one of the last of his books to read. So Copperfield first came across my radar how many decades ago and in 2010 I finally read it.

Last year, I read 119 books, 100 short stories and 30 essays. This year, the count will be 49 books, one of those books being a collection of essays, and no short stories that I can recall. There was definitely a difference in the way I read this year and the amount of time I spent reading. In 2011, I am looking to read more classics, more Dickens especially, and to try to read at a deeper, more intimate level.

Why Do I Feel Like a Jealous, Possessive Lover?

Oprah's latest book club pick has me feeling like a silly adolescent. On the one hand, I think it is great that Dickens will be read far and wide. On the other, immature, hand, I want to fight Oprah in a duel to prove I love him more.

Reading a blog about Oprah's pick, it said she hasn't read Dickens before. Having Jonathon Franzen on at the time of the Dickens announcement, she asked him if he had read Dickens. His answer...'yes, all of them'. Perhaps he loves Dickens the mostest:)

Hill on Dickens

From Howards End is on the Landing...

In the silly game of which authors to throw overboard from the lifeboat and which one - just one - to save, I would always save Dickens. He is mighty. His flaws are huge but magnificent - and all of a piece with the whole. A perfect, flawless Dickens would somehow be a shrunken, impoverished one. Yes, he is sentimental, yes, he has purple passages, yes, his plots sometimes have dropped stitches, yes some of his characters are quite tiresome. But his literary imagination was the greatest ever...

That is just about how I feel at this moment coming upon the last hundred pages or so of David Copperfield. And with our thermometer hovering steadily at 32/33 degrees, I am completely feeling Hill's closing words to her chapter on Dickens...

Outside my window, the trees are bare. It is early dark but a silver paring of moon is bright in the sky, with a thousand frosty stars. The air smells of cold. A fox barks from the field.

Dickens for winter.

Throw another log on the fire.