A Few of My Favorite Christmas Books

I go on a hunt every year for the new Christmas books. My criteria: Not schmaltzy. I usually find one a year. Here are the last few years' worth:

A Christmas Journey, by Anne Perry.
In Victorian England, a snide comment ends in suicide. The lesson is expiation, restorative justice and tough-love forgiveness. What makes this book interesting is the undercurrent of the author's own story: she spent time in prison for her involvement in a murder prompted by youthful passion.

In the Land of Winter, by Richard Grant. A fable of magic and motherhood, complete with evil witch. Sweet and clueless wins the day. The writing is magic, too--not just the wordplay but the way the author sees and relates to things. Welcome to my world.

Whale Season, by NM Kelby. South Florida: kooks, trailer parks, cheap women, heartbreak, and no whales. By a former student of Carl Hiassen. Hilarity + heart.

My favorite scene:

On Christmas Eve, the down-and-out owner of a trailer park and a nut job who thinks he is Jesus play poker. The trailer park owner has lost everything. Riffling through his desk drawer he comes up with paper clips, pens, and...

"Raise," he says, inspired, and holds up a snack cake, its cellophane wrapper still intact. Two twin rolls of dark chocolate filled with white icing--and dusty.

Jesus looks at him with what Leon imagines to be a "moneylenders at the temple" kind of frown. "You're betting cake?" he says, incredulous.

Leon feels a bead of sweat roll down his spine.

Sell it, baby. Sell it, he thinks. "It's not just cake," he says and holds it in the palm of his hand oike one of those models he's seen on the home shopping channels, "it's devil's food."

The words hiss like a snake looking for a girl named Eve. I'm going directly to hell, Leon thinks...


Should you read these books?

I gave Michigan In the Land of Winter. I wouldn't say he hated it, but something like that. Sibling Two-of-Six read the poker scene, shrugged, handed the book back to me. She tells her kids: Half of what One Heart gives me I love, the other half makes no sense at all.

This year I am giving Two-of-Six The Uncommon Reader. From the jacket:

Queen Elizabeth II chases her runaway corgis into a mobile library and into the reflective, observant life of an avid reader. Guided by Norman, a former kitchen boy and enthusiast of gay authors, the queen gradually loses interest in her endless succession of official duties and learns the pleasure of such a common activity. ... Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading and toward writing, with astonishing results.