Two More Christmas Book Recommendations

One Christmas in Paris by Mandy Baggot hit all the right buttons for me.

The description below from Amazon really doesn’t do it justice.

“How many croissants does it take to mend a broken heart?

Ava and her best friend Debs arrive in Paris just as the snow starts to fall. The Eiffel Tower glitters gold, but all Ava can think about is Leo, her no-good, cheating ex.

Debs is on a mission to make Ava smile again, and as they tour the Christmas markets, and eat their body weight in pain-au-chocolat, Ava remembers there’s more to life than men… Until they cross paths with sizzling hot, oh-so-mysterious photographer Julien, with his French accent and hazelnut eyes that seem to see right inside her.

Ava can’t ignore the intense chemistry between them, but she can’t help but feel he’s hiding something. Her fingers have been burned before and she can’t forget it, especially when her ex, Leo, starts texting again. Can Ava really trust Julien – and what exactly is his secret?

Will Ava go home with a broken heart, or will she find true love in Paris?

Join Ava and Julien in the most romantic city in the world this Christmas, as they discover the importance of being true to themselves, and learn how to follow their hearts.

One Christmas in Paris is a gorgeous, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy.”

And -

"ONE OF THE BEST FEEL-GOOD BOOKS OF 2021 BY THE WASHINGTON POST

“I read Eight Perfect Hours in one sitting, in four perfect hours, because I couldn’t bear to put it down without knowing the ending.” —Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author

In this romantic and heartwarming novel, two strangers meet in chance circumstances during a blizzard and spend one perfect evening together, thinking they’ll never see each other again. But fate seems to have different plans. From the acclaimed author of the “swoon-worthy…rom-com” (The Washington Post) Dear Emmie Blue.

On a snowy evening in March, thirty-something Noelle Butterby is on her way back from an event at her old college when disaster strikes. With a blizzard closing off roads, she finds herself stranded, alone in her car, without food, drink, or a working charger for her phone.

All seems lost until Sam Attwood, a handsome American stranger also trapped in a nearby car, knocks on her window and offers assistance. What follows is eight perfect hours together, until morning arrives and the roads finally clear. The two strangers part, positive they’ll never see each other again but fate, it seems, has a different plan. As the two keep serendipitously bumping into one another, they begin to realize that perhaps there truly is no such thing as coincidence.

With plenty of charming twists and turns and Lia Louis’s “bold, standout voice” (Gillian McAllister, author of The Good Sister), Eight Perfect Hours is a gorgeously crafted novel that will make you believe in the power of fate."

Enjoy!

Christmas Eve in Meat Camp from Years Past

 

Each and every Christmas has its own personality.

As Donald and Annabelle and I spend a very quiet one at home this year I've been reminded of past Meat Camp Christmases.

Here's a random smattering from over a few years.

We wish all of you a safe and healthy holiday! 

The Week Before Christmas

This is what our sunroom usually looks like the week before Christmas.

Due to circumstances that couldn't be helped, this is what it looked like last week.  And Don had to leave again.

You might remember back at the end of summer we started a closet re-do project.

Since the entrance to the attic is in that closet, Donald thought it would be the perfect time to add some insulation in the attic.

Who knew that he would discover a couple of bats.

During all this, Donald had to make a couple of family emergency trips to Alabama.  He was gone for a few weeks and the attic/closet projects were, understandably, put on hold.

A long story shortened -

Bats gone (NO bats were harmed.  I promise).  

Insulation done.  

Closet re-do done.

Yay!

But then another family emergency in Alabama.

Donald's been gone about a week.  I've been sick most of that time, but determined to have at least some semblance of normalcy returned around here, and oh yeah -  Christmas!  

Christmas is coming ready or not!

I decided to do what I could, and I have actually gotten a lot accomplished.

Things are slowly returning to normal . . .

And if things go as planned, my best guy/partner/husband will head home tomorrow.

He has been missed.

He will always, of course, head back that way when needed.  

But in the meantime, Meat Camp needs him.

See how much I've accomplished?!  Things will, I'm sure, move and move again, but at least there is now a little floor space.

Yay, me!

As far as Christmas goes though, I haven't done one thing other than find the Christmas china and have kinda/sorta set the table so that it at least acknowledges the fact the it IS, after all, the Christmas season.

This end of the sunroom?  Oh dear.  Trying to ignore it until Donald returns home and our life returns to normal.  We will move all this to the storage building, try to find the Christmas tree and a few decorations to hang on it.

And maybe get an updated Christmas pic.

In the meantime, we wish you all the very happiest of holidays, and much love.

Merry Christmas !

Two more Christmas book recommendations

 

From Amazon- "In Winter Solstice Rosamunde Pilcher brings her readers into the lives of five very different people....

Elfrida Phipps, once of London's stage, moved to the English village of Dibton in hopes of making a new life for herself. Gradually she settled into the comfortable familiarity of village life -- shopkeepers knowing her tastes, neighbors calling her by name -- still she finds herself lonely.

Oscar Blundell gave up his life as a musician in order to marry Gloria. They have a beautiful daughter, Francesca, and it is only because of their little girl that Oscar views his sacrificed career as worthwhile.

Carrie returns from Australia at the end of an ill-fated affair with a married man to find her mother and aunt sharing a home and squabbling endlessly. With Christmas approaching, Carrie agrees to look after her aunt's awkward and quiet teenage daughter, Lucy, so that her mother might enjoy a romantic fling in America.

Sam Howard is trying to pull his life back together after his wife has left him for another. He is without home and without roots, all he has is his job. Business takes him to northern Scotland, where he falls in love with the lush, craggy landscape and set his sights on a house.

It is the strange rippling effects of a tragedy that will bring these five characters together in a large, neglected estate house near the Scottish fishing town of Creagan.

It is in this house, on the shortest day of the year, that the lives of five people will come together and be forever changed. Rosamunde Pilcher's long-awaited return to the page will warm the hearts of readers both old and new. Winter Solstice is a novel of love, loyalty and rebirth."

From Amazon - "A relic of Manhattan's Gilded Age, the Erich Bruel House is home to an idiosyncratic collection of art. For over sixty years it has managed on donations from the visiting public and its dwindling trust fund. But tastes in art do change and in trying to restore the house's faded luster, its trustees propose a major retrospective for renowned artist Oscar Nauman. A festive Christmas party in Nauman's honor ends in acrimony--and next morning one of the trustees is found in a most unfestive heap at the bottom of the basement steps. Lt. Sigrid Harald had been an unwilling guest and the party and now she must return to investigate why that trustee was so universally hated. As often happens when Nauman is involved, Sigrid's professional duties are complicated by her off-duty relationships.

Corpus Christmas was first published in 1989, but unlike others in this series, there is little, in a technological sense, to jar the reader unless one compulsively adds and subtracts from the few dates scattered through the text. The New York depicted here is very much as it is today, except—tragically—for the view of lower Manhattan that Sigrid enjoyed from the deck of a Staten Island ferry. Although loosely based on an amalgam of the National Arts Club on Gramercy Park, the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace, and the Horace Williams House in Chapel Hill, the Breul House itself is a complete fiction."

Happy Christmas Reading !!

In Praise of the Grumpy

 Some of us get a little grumpy this time of year.  It's Okay. 

This poem's for you. For us. I'm a little grumpy today.  I'll get over it.  No notes of sympathy needed.  I'm just grumpy. I'm allowed.  We're allowed. (if you don't read the poem you're missing the whole point).

IN PRAISE OF THE GRUMPY

And as you stand there

Arms crossed

Managing to look both infinitely patient and impatient at the same time

Trying not to roll your eyes and wonder how much longer all this will take

Let us now praise you.

You: the grumpy, the grouchy, the grumbling.

You: the beleaguered and the put-upon.

You: our hidden hero.

Because while you are

Short-tempered with the witless

Furious with the shallow and

Yelling at the television

It is only because you are so thoughtful

That everyone else seems so thoughtless.

And while you insist that you do not care about

What anyone is wearing or

What anyone said or did or

What so-and-so said or did back,

Nor do you give two figs about

The disenfranchised urban-dweller of today or

The illiterate or

The underprivileged of some foreign land or

Whomever it is we're supposed to be caring about today and that

You will not, under any circumstances,

Attend the choir concert or

The holiday party or

The 12-step meeting or

The neighborhood street fair or

The fancy dress ball or

The class reunion - for God's sake especially not the reunion - and that

You mustn't be relied upon for

Donations or

A ride home or

Free advice or

Help moving in to your new townhouse or a

Damn birthday present or

Whatever it is that all those people with all those

Outstretched hands

Seem to want

You must know that we all know

That you do, indeed, care and that

You will, if pressed, attend and that

We all do rely

On you.

We can tell that you care,

Because you so assiduously refuse to conform to

Some greeting-card version of caring

And instead insist on caring about us as individuals.

You remember the conversation we had about

Ry Cooder's guitar playing, and

Six weeks later you slip us a

Homemade cassette tape with no label.

You shun the collection plate, and yet

You shove a hundred dollars into the Youth Group's coffee can

(A check, of course - no sense missing out on the tax deduction just because you had a weak moment.)

And when you go to greet us,

You look us in the eye and take our full measure

And if you should

Notice that we look a bit sad,

You will grab our hand and

Kiss us roughly on the cheek and say,

"You OK, darlin'?"

You might grouse about Christmas Eve,

But you do love Christmas morning.

And while you would never voluntarily look at a

Photo album,

You forever hold a picture in your mind of

How we looked in

That Halloween costume

That prom dress

That uniform.

And we know you will attend

(Quit squirming - this poem isn't that much longer)

Because underneath your self-proclaimed

Disdain for all humanity

You are curious.

Intensely, insatiably, incorruptibly curious

And while you act repulsed

I suspect you are truly fascinated by us -

This clamoring horde of strangers you are compelled to share the planet with.

OK, OK: with whom this planet you are compelled to share.

Good grief you can be a pain sometimes.

And oh, how we rely on you.

And finally,

While you have largely succeeded in getting yourself off of

The phone tree

(That tactic you had about boring everybody silly with the excruciating details of your latest Water Filtration Project did wonders for removing you from any thinking hostess' guest list)

We do still rely on you.

Oh how we rely on you.

Oh how we rely on you.

You are our voice of sanity

Our comrade-in-arms

Our truth-telling ally in a world of endless bullshit.

You are our hidden hero

Deceptively chivalrous with

Your tender heart clad in dented armor.

And you must know that

When you are gone

We miss you.

So go ahead and

Sneak out at intermission and

Have an extra drink to get you through the reception and

Just turn and walk away from the

Over-gesticulating and the infuriatingly self-righteous.

Save yourself from these petty cruelties so that

When the world becomes just too much for us poor mortals to bear

We can rely on you to save us.

Oh how we rely on you.

Oh how we rely on you.

Oh how we rely on you.

Now stand still, because we're going to give you a nice, big hug. 

Samantha Bennett

© 2009