Tag: Charles Dickens

Books, Fiction, Reading Lists

11… Of My Favorite Christmas Books to Read

RaeAnna
A Christmas Treasury is one of my favorite Christmas books and my #1 recommendation.

When I started blogging, I decided to dedicate December to reading Christmas and holiday books. By now, in my third year of continuing this tradition, I have now encountered many Christmas inclined books. Some have been beautiful classics and others have been smutty romances and others have been worse than a Hallmark movie with a bigger time commitment. 

To save you some time, I’m sharing eleven Christmas books I will always recommend. There are a couple silly romances, but they’re well done, and now is the time of year for love, joy, peace on Earth, and a little mindless reading.

  1. A Christmas Treasury This one is a beautifully illustrated book full of lots of Christmas stories. If you buy one book this year for Christmas, make it this one. Perfect for children and adults. Plus, it looks amazing sitting on a coffee table or under the tree. 
  2. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Arguably the greatest Christmas story ever told, it changed Christmas in England and America. It’s a classic because the tale is timeless and the writing is superb.
  3. Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien I adore everything about this book. Tolkien wrote to his children for two decades as Santa. The letters were accompanied by beautiful illustrations. 
  4. Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory So often Christmas stories involve white people. I love that this romantic comedy had a strong independent woman who gave up nothing for love and the two main characters are Black. Yay!!!
  5. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson I have an emotional connection to this one because I starred in the play version as I kid. It’s fun, funny, and full of redemption.
  6. The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn Full of history, adventure, and Christmas spirit, this is a great book for families to read with their kids. I also just enjoyed it immensely as a history buff.
  7. A Merry Christmas and Other Stories by Louisa May Alcott Alcott has been one of my favorite authors since I was a child. I love her Christmas stories as much as her novels. They’re sweet and beautiful.
  8. The Nutcracker by Alexandre Dumas This is not the ballet. It’s a great book about the Nutcracker and Christmas with the right amount of horror and fun.
  9. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum This is such a sweet and fun story. I absolutely love the mystical take Baum gives Santa and his world. It’s adorable and I read it again and again.
  10. Christmas at Thompson Hall and Other Christmas Stories by Anthony Trollope I have loved Trollope’s way with words, and his Christmas stories are witty and full of societal insight. 
  11. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry This is a classic Christmas story, and one that probably has more relevance than we would like to admit in today’s world of COVID and financial upheaval. 

Alright. These are my eleven Christmas picks. I highly suggest all of them. You can’t go wrong with any of them. They’re happy and full of Christmas spirit. This year, we could all use a little bit more of that in our lives; I know I could.

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna 

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Books, Fiction

Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva

RaeAnna

Worth A Read Yes
Length 271
Quick Review Charles Dickens is having a midlife crisis at Christmas time, and his publishers are demanding a Christmas novel when everything in his life is falling apart. 

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Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva | Dress | Watch

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Silva bases her novel, Mr. Dickens and His Carol, off a real winter of Dickens’ life but reimagines and reorders facts and people to make an interesting novel. I’ve read a fair few Christmas novels, and this is far from the worst.  

Charles Dickens should be feeling joy welcoming another child into the world before Christmas, but instead he’s feeling everything but. His latest book was a disaster, his family’s debts are piling up, his wife takes the children and leaves him, and his publishers are demanding a Christmas book. A usually jolly and kind man, Dickens becomes a morose grump searching for a muse when he stumbles on inspiration. 

Ebenezer Scrooge’s journey is paralleled with Charles Dickens’ character development throughout the plot of Mr. Dickens and His Carol. It’s a sweet story full of Christmas spirit and a little mystery. Silva gets three points for using “defenestration” in a sentence – not a word that normally comes up. 

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The style can be a little much for the story. Silva has a tendency to become overly descriptive in an attempt to mimic the real Dickens but with less success. When Silva is not decorating the page with her verbosity, she tells a pretty good story about Dickens’ internal struggle to be a good father, husband, citizen, and writer while not giving in to the whims of publishing or depression. The character development is solid and interesting if not predictable. 

Mr. Dickens and His Carol is a great easy read for the whole family this Christmas season. It will warm the heart and make you wish you could be in London listening to the real Dickens tell his carol.  

Memorable Quotes
“His father was north of sixty, but by temperament still a good deal south of death.”
“He knew that every person was a fiery furnace of passions and attachments, unknown to every other.”

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Title: Mr. Dickens and His Carol
Author: Samantha Silva
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781250154040

Books, Reading Lists

11 Books to Read This Christmas

RaeAnna

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Beau agrees, she can’t believe it’s Christmas already!!! | A Christmas Treasury | Christmas Dog Mug

Hi. Halloween has come and gone, which means it’s the best season of all. Christmas. I’ve been listening to Christmas music for eleven days now. Last year, I read a bunch of Christmas books in three weeks. I started earlier this year, but I have more to read. I haven’t posted any seasonal book reviews yet because I know not everyone is as Christmabsessed as I am. Anyways, here are eleven books you can and should read during the happiest time of year. 

  1. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (classic, duh)
  2. The Nutcracker by Alexandre Dumas (not the ballet)
  3. The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn
  4. The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
  5. Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
  6. Letter from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien
  7. Hiddensee by Gregory Maguire
  8. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
  9. Christmas Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella 
  10. Mr. Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva
  11. How Mrs. Claus Saved Christmas by Jeff Guinn

Some of these I’ve read in previous years. Some I have read this year, and there are a few I haven’t read yet, but they’re waiting for me on my shelf to read in front of the tree!!!

Books, Fiction

A Christmas Treasury

RaeAnna

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A Christmas Treasury is the perfect seasonal anthology! | Comforter (is perfection)

Should I Read Go Buy It
Length 368
Quick Review It is the quintessential collection of Christmas stories for the family. The perfect book to place on your coffee table year after year.

If there is one book you should purchase this Christmas season, it should be A Christmas Treasury. Not only is it a beautifully bound book, it is filled with iconic stories of the season and stunning illustrations. I also love the glossy pages. Nothing, to me, says classy like a glossy page. No bookmark needed; one comes included. Like I said: classy. It is the most beautiful book I have read all year. 

Every year, books are published to celebrate the spirit of the season. (I have read a bunch this year.) This is not a new phenomenon. Over time, some stories and poems have become ingrained in our psyches and traditions being passed down through the generations. Some stories have even shaped cultural identities and celebrations regarding the imagery, language, and even food we eat during the Christmas season. Sugar plums! Do you know what a sugar plum is? It’s delicious. Even if you don’t know what it is, you most likely think about them around Christmas time. There’s a poem to thank for that, which is in the book!  

A Christmas Treasury starts out with the legendary A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. If there is one Christmas story, it is this one. The rest of the pages are graced by the likes of Louisa May Alcott, O. Henry, L Frank Baum, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Clement Clarke Moore (of course), and more. The stories are beautiful and classic. They are sure to captivate even the youngest readers without disappointing the more seasoned Christmasers.

Even if you can’t make it through all the stories, you’ll have time to read one or two. It is perfect to read with your children – or someone else’s children with parental permission, obviously – before bed all through the Christmas season for years to come. Maybe, they’ll even read it to their children someday.

I really like this book. A lot. It is such a gorgeous anthology. It oozes Christmas spirit. I just want to hold it and walk around with it. That makes me cool, right?

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Title: A Christmas Treasury
Publisher: Sterling Publisher Co.
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9781435164598

Books, Fiction

A Christmas Carol

RaeAnna

Read Yes
Length 112
Quick Review MUST if you live in the Western Hemisphere and/or celebrate Christmas. It’s referenced for one month every year. A ton of Christmas movies are adaptations or inspired by this classic. 

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Even if you don’t like Dickens, do yourself a favor and devote one week to starting, reading, and finishing this novel; it’s not long like a majority of Dickens works. For one month every year, you can be the person in the room who has actually read A Christmas Carol and therefore knows the actual story instead of having the gist of it from all the different adaptations and the like. Hey, you might like it, and it could become the book you return to every Christmas season to enjoy again and again for the rest of your eternity.

A Christmas Carol is the iconic tale about a grumpy, rich, white guy who hates everyone was visited by ghosts helping him to become a better person and epitomized the spirit of Christmas in a mere 150 pages if the typeset is big. Dickens’ inspiration came from his impoverished childhood full of hardship, like much of his other works. I don’t want to give any of the plot away, but you probably know it already.

Anyways the language Dickens uses flows. There are moments of subtle humor in a sea of seriousness. It is easy to see why he is regarded as a master of the English language through his descriptions and narrative.

I was lucky enough to read a beautifully illustrated edition, which makes it an even bigger pleasure to read.

My favorite movie version of this classic story is A Muppet Christmas Carol. Full of humor and nontraditional characters, it really does stick with the original story. A great deal of the narration is pulled right from the text.

Memorable Quotes
““And what is that upon your cheek?” Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was a pimple.”

Title: A Christmas Carol
Author: Charles Dickens