Monthly Book List: Holiday Stories

A couple of days late, but who cares? This list does consist of some books I haven’t read before, but I daresay I will, soon. Here we go:

1. The Greatest Gift-Philip Van Doren: This is the book on which the screenplay for the movie It’s a Wonderful Life was based. Fairly short but a read I enjoyed very much.

2. A Christmas Carol-Charles Dickens: Classic, right? But how many people have actually read it? I began it this Christmas. I love the voice of this very present, very intrusive, probably very Dickens-like narrator. But remember, if you please, that Marley is dead to begin with.

3. ‘Twas the Night Before-Jerry B. Jenkins: Yes, even I like to read books from time to time that don’t require so much thought. But as far as Romance/Fantasy novels go, this one is quite good. I always like reading it.

4. Cowboy Night Before Christmas-Jame s Rice: This was one of those coffee table decoration books my family bought for Christmas but I’ve always really liked it. Santa on the wide open cattle range in Texas. Lots of fun.

5. ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: A Visit from Saint Nicholas-Clement C. Moore: Get a good version of this poem in book form, preferably one with really great illustrations. There’s a version with illustrations from 1912, an African American Version. Take your pick, friends, but I suggest putting it on your bookshelf with care.

6. The Polar Express-Chris Van Allsburg–Here’s our friend Van Allsburg back again with what has become a huge holiday book and movie. Lots of great illustrations again. This is the kind of book you stand around reading in bookshops but take one and give a good home.

7. If You Take a Mouse to the Movies–Laura Numeroff: I love this whole series of conditional statements with troublesome moose, pigs and, in this book, a mouse. This one is Christmas themed because the mouse sees a movie and wants to have holiday fun. The poor boy ought to get a fish, but the mouse is more fun for us, the readers.

8. Chicken Soup with Rice-Maurice Sendak: Not exactly a holiday book. It’s a book of months but I still love it. What’s better in the cold than some hot chicken soup with rice. Tasting once, tasting twice, tasting chicken soup with rice. Yum.