I received a copy of Intimations of Austen: Stories Inspired by the Works of Jane Austen by Jane Greensmith and To Feel Stuff by Andrea Seigel:

As well as a nifty bookmark with the appropriate saying, “One joy scatters a hundred griefs,” and some yummy Lindt truffles. Nom nom.

I’m especially excited about the Andrea Seigel book, since I really enjoyed The Kid Table. (It’s also apparently about a “college student and medical anomaly [who]… suffers such a frequent barrage of illnesses that she moves into the Brown University infirmary.” I am sorry to say that I can relate, these days. Why do we always get sick as soon as we go on vacation?)

Thanks so much, mystery blogger from Colorado! (And extra thanks to the Holiday Swap organizers!)

Annual “holiday season” apologia:
The picture over there has Santa-oid creatures. And Santa is about Christmas, sort of. And I’m Jewish, sort of. But really I’m some sort of secular humanist hippie atheist who had a bat mitzvah and goes to synagogue on Yom Kippur. And the “holiday season” excludes lots of people, because the phrase is a euphemism for “Christmas and maybe the western New Year and some other stuff that also happens in December, like Hanukkah, which isn’t actually important except that it happens to fall near Christmas.” And Christmas song audio pollution sometimes makes me want to gouge my ears out with a fork.

I know all this, and it makes me sad. But the truth is that the time from (USian) Thanksgiving through New Year’s does feel like a “holiday season” to me. I’m celebrating the turning of the seasons, the end of the harvest and the cracking open of the freezer and canning jars, the slide towards darkness and the beginning of the slow crawl out of it, and if I’m very lucky, the first snow. It’s one of my very favorite times of year, and I hate that high-pressure expensive-stuff-buying and fights about religion eclipse the things I love about it. So I try to ignore those things as much as I can, in favor of baking cookies and having gift swaps with nice people on the internet. La la la, I can’t hear you.

If those things bug you too much to ignore, I totally respect that and I’m sorry to make you think about them on my blog two weeks before Thanksgiving. I just felt I should explain that I don’t do things like the Holiday Swap, or use phrases like “holiday swap,” uncritically, but that I love them anyway. I now return you to your regularly scheduled book reviews and other silliness.

Thank you for making me miss science fiction.

And just for fun, a Christmas card from somewhere else out there. Happy days-between-Christmas-and-New-Year’s, everyone!

(Do those days have a name? Besides “The Dead Days,” that is. I want something a tad more uplifting. “The Winter Break That I Get and You Don’t,” perhaps? La la!)

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I’m not usually a short story fan — by the time I get into it, it’s over — but this worked for me, because the characters kept wandering in and out of each other’s stories. The authors managed to make this generic suburban town (in which the main settings are people’s homes and cars, a Waffle House, and a Starbucks) feel as quirky and lovingly created as something out of Garrison Keillor.

The authors’ styles worked remarkably well together, while retaining their own stamp. John Green’s was my favorite, though I got a kick out of Maureen Johnson and her Flobie Christmas Village, too. Lauren Myracle’s was the least impressive of the three. I’m willing to cut her some slack because her story was last, and so to her fell the awkward task of explaining the interconnectedness (to anyone who might be a little slow on the uptake)… but I don’t think that accounts for all of it. Her plot was a little clunkier, her protagonist’s Emotional Growth Moment was a little more contrived, her couple’s relationship was a little less believable. She’s a fine writer, but she can’t quite pull off the literary polish of Green and Johnson.

I will give her props, though, for her gentle ribbing of the other characters (or their creators?). Her protagonist, Addie, describes Green’s protagonist thusly: “Tobin wore scruffy sweaters and was friends with the Korean guy who said ‘asshat,’ and he and all of his buddies were intimidatingly clever.” Has John Green ever written dialog that wasn’t “intimidatingly clever”?

And then Johnson’s protagonist walks into Addie’s Starbucks. She had spent the entire first page of her story obsessively explaining that her name is Jubilee and she knows it’s weird but no, she’s not a stripper. So when she is introduced to Addie, she adds, “Weird name, I know. I’m not a stripper, I promise.” To which Addie replies, “Uh… okay.” Hee.

The authors are clearly all friends, and they clearly had an absolute ball writing this. If books could have commentary tracks, I would love to hear one for Let It Snow.

If you want a book version of Love, Actually — a quality romantic comedy to curl up with while drinking hot cocoa and watching the snow — this is perfect.

* Appropriate, since as it turned out, I read almost the entire thing while sitting on a stalled train for two hours on my way to work. No snow, just incompetence. Sadly, no dramatic romance either.

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