Solid Ice
Christmas Day was a beautifully, sunny, wintry and snowy day. But Boxing Day? Oh, we got hit hard on Boxing Day. Not only did we have to scrape the car to get out of the driveway, but upon every subsequent journey between parking lots. The ice pellets were enough to render the pavements into ice rinks. Perhaps we shouldn’t have ventured out at all, but I did enjoy the small adventure of the weather once we had altered our plans to keep us closer to home. It’s funny because, when we were younger, myself and my lovely spouse would never consider the weather. Often, we took it as a challenge. But I guess those days are gone. Maybe because life has much more value to me than it once did.
A Note on the Edition
Looking for a gift for some late Christmas party or gift exchange? Well, this little edition of Christmas stories from 1909 Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf definitely fits the bill. A compact, fabric-wrapped hardcover complete with a ribbon for a bookmark, it is beautiful to behold. The type is even larger, allowing ease of reading for both older and younger adults. I find that Penguin specifically really knows how to put out charming gift editions of older, out-of-print work. It allows even the most extensive reader to be surprised and delighted. I’d never even heard of Lagerlöf before, and I was so happy to be able to try something new for the holidays.
A Note on the Selection
This is a nice collection of stories ranging from memoir to folklore to ghost stories. ‘A Book for Christmas’ was particularly amusing as Lagerlöf recounts her childhood Christmas hopes of receiving a book as a gift and getting to read it far into the night. I also particularly like ‘The Skull’, which is a lovely spooky story for Christmas. However, I will say that the collection was a bit more religious than I prefer and may not be suitable for every reader because of it. That being said, it wasn’t unreadable, just not as accessible as modern literature is.
Nobel Prize Winning
Reading work from winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature can be a richly rewarding experience. You run into work that really pushes the boundaries of what literature can be and what it can do. But, when diving into the prizes from the beginning of the last century, it’s best to be wary and familiar with the biases that the prize was guilty of and its many subtle foibles. Don’t get me started. I’ll get so angry and I’ll start to rant, and that’s not very Christmas-y.
The older recipients of the prize can be more about the status quo than pushing boundaries and, as long as a reader is prepared for that, then the prize can be a great place to look for further reading in the classics.
What Will the New Year Bring?
We are entering the last few days of the year, so I am beginning to wonder just what next year will bring. It’s hard not to just embrace my regular habit of fear and dread and assuming the worst. I’m trying not to do that this year, because I do not want the turn of the year to be foreboding. Also? The fact that I am feeling some dread may be the first sign that I’m dealing with some burn out.
