Books, Fiction

Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien

Worth A Read YES
Length 192
Quick Review J.R.R. Tolkien spent over twenty years writing letters and drawing pictures to his children as Father Christmas. They have been beautifully documented in this sweet book.

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Reading Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien at River Oaks District in Houston, Texas. | Skirt | Sweater | Earrings | Red Embellished High Heels |

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Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien

I am a sucker for Santa stories. This is not new to… anyone. I’ve mentioned it more than twelve times throughout my many interweb presences. I also love Tolkien. I’ve read all the Lord of the Rings books, so this book was an obvious holiday choice on my part. Tolkien is brilliant at creating worlds and characters. He also deeply loved his children. Letters From Father Christmas tells an entertaining and beautifully depicted story of Santa Claus’ adventures, but beneath the surface, it’s an embodiment of a man’s dedication and adoration of his children, their innocence, and a preservation of their childhood wonder. 

Father Christmas started leaving letters and drawings in a shaky and recognizably unique handwriting for the Tolkien’s oldest son, John, when he was three years old. The letters and images continued arriving for twenty-two years discussing the inhabitants of the North Pole, the adventures, and the setbacks as John, Michael, Christopher, and finally Priscilla grew up. Father Christmas wrote to the children, and his assistant, Polar Bear, often made side notes and comments. Father Christmas is wise and kind but also frustrated by the unique everyday goings-on at the North Pole. 

I finished the book in a morning. I loved reading this one. The pages are glossy and feel like heaven on the fingertips. I love that images of the original letters in Father Christmas’ uniquely shaky handwriting are included along with the paintings and drawings. It feels like Tolkien is bringing you into the family for Christmas. Everything about the letters are Tolkienesque. They are well thought out, and each character has their own unique style of writing linguistically and chirography. Polar Bear even went so far as to create his own language – of course Tolkien would. 

Letters From Father Christmas is an enchanting world of clumsy polar bears, visits from the Man in the Moon, goblin wars, lost reindeer, busy elves, and more. Father Christmas documents imagination while also harkening back to the ever changing world and the struggles people faced throughout the 1920’s, ‘30s, and early ‘40s. It’s just a pleasure to read. Perfect for children of all ages – how does that song go? to kids from one to ninety-two

Memorable Quotes
“Very much love from your old friend Father Christmas and Polar Bear.”

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Title: Letters From Father Christmas
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
Publisher: Harper Collins
Copyright: 2004
ISBN: 9780007463375

Books, Fiction

Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb

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This was my Christmas dress from Pippa and Pearl. I adore it!!! | These red heels have a gold heel! | Last Christmas in Paris | I love this red clutch

Worth a Read Meh
Length 368
Quick Review An old man looks back at letters written during WWI. The narrative is 98% letters. It’s a sweet wartime love story.

Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb is my last holiday read of the season… a month late. I actually finished it a few weeks ago, but I have been so busy I didn’t get around to writing this review. Oops. Oh well, that’s life.

The most interesting part about Last Christmas in Paris is the narrative style. It’s told mostly through letters from the past between several people during WWI. An old man tells a story in the “present,” which is the 1960’s. There wasn’t anything remarkable about the style or plot. It was a good historical fiction piece. It’s not terribly Christmas oriented, so it works for any time of the year. I liked the characters just fine. It was a fairly bland story. The fact that the narrative was driven by letters made the reading process go really quickly.

My favorite relationship in the book was not the romantic one. That one was very boring. Sweet but boring. I liked the friendship between the two female characters. They were supportive, kind, blunt, and had fun banter.

There was a lot of talk about “war neurosis” in Last Christmas in Paris, which is old timey speak for PTSD. I’m glad this was a part of the book, but it was a fairly minor part of the book.

Overall, it’s a really good mindless read to take your mind off life. It’s pretty forgettable, though.   

Memorable Quotes
“I know you are convinced that my heart was stolen by Tom Harding years ago while I wasn’t paying any attention, and I’m beginning to think you may be right, darling.”

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Title: Last Christmas in Paris
Author: Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb
Publisher: William Morrow (HarperCollins Publishers)
Copyright: 2017
ISBN: 9780062562685

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I love this dress. Did I mention that?
Books

Purple Hibiscus

Read Yes
Length 307
Quick Review Set against the backdrop of a Nigerian coup, a 15 year old Kambili learns about love and life outside of her childhood home controlled by a religious zealot.

I love Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She is my favorite author, and I have now officially read all of her books. Purple Hibiscus is her first novel, and it’s beautiful.

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Nigeria is in the midst of a complete upheaval. Kambili, a 15 year old girl, and her brother, Jaja, stay with their aunt and cousins in Nsukka. Kambili begins to realize the extent of her father’s religious fundamentalism and abusive nature when she compares it with the loving, open household her cousins flourish in.

Adichie explores so many interesting themes throughout the progression of the novel. Christian fundamentalism is a looming presence as Kambili struggles with her father’s oppression even when she is far out of reach. She is unable to engage with her surroundings, family, and even herself because she lives in perpetual fear of her father’s wrath and eternal damnation. The physical and psychological abuse Kambili, Jaja, and their mother live with is intense. Aunt Ifeoma and her children are the voice of progressivism.

I love Adichie’s inclusion of Igbo words peppered throughout the narrative.

I seriously suggest this novel to anyone interested in reading. It’s a beautiful and moving novel full of hope and heartbreak speaking to the resilience of the human spirit.   

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Memorable Quotes
“I was not sure what my laughter sounded like.”
“We didn’t scale the today because we believed we could, we scaled it because we were terrified we couldn’t.”

Title: Purple Hibiscus
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Publisher: Collins (HarperCollins Publishers)
Copyright:  2004
ISBN: 9780007345328

Books

The Sweetness of Tears

Difficulty: II
Length: III
Quick Review: When a conservative Christian family’s secret is revealed by science, Jo’s path changed drastically opening her mind as she navigates life in a Muslim country.

I’ve read a bunch of not great books lately… So I approached this hesitantly because I was temporarily, literarily jaded. Thank goodness, this lifted my spirits considerably. I loved it! 20180420_131241.jpg

In The Sweetness of Tears, Nafisa Haji weaves complicated stories to create a beautiful novel full of truly human experiences. In today’s society, Christians and Muslims are viewed as opposites and even enemies. Haji contradicts these assumptions through parallels, by placing the two in the other’s worlds, by creating situations calling for openness and understanding instead of hostility and animosity.

Jo March is a twin raised by a conservative Christian family with a legacy in the evangelist circles. When she studied genetics in high school, she learned the impossibility of her brown eyes by her blue eyed parents. When she found the answer she was looking for, her life changed. She studied Arabic and Urdu in college before embarking on a career as a translator in the Middle East during the beginning of war. Her time there lead her to seek out the answers to questions she had been to scared to ask before. I won’t tell you more because you should read the book, and I don’t want to spoil anything.

I found it addicting from the first page, which rarely happens. I shy away from books with conservative Christians at the center because well, it’s just not my cup of tea. Haji confronts those stereotypes of intolerance, close-mindedness, and more the way she confronts similar to those that plague Muslims.

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Haji writes for a largely American audience with the assumption they have a Christian upbringing. She explains Pakistani and Islamic customs for those who are not familiar, but she does not condescend or dumb down her culture. There are so many themes, ideas, customs, and cultures running through the book, I would be a fool to try and talk about them all. She is truly a wonderful storyteller. She is able to put questions in the reader’s mind while waiting to answer them until the time is right.

One of the most overarching themes in the book connects to the way Haji wrote the book. The present is hard to define without first knowing the past, the choices, the situations, the people which created the present. Whether we like it or not, we are products of our parents and grandparents choices and experiences.

Other things I really appreciated: the character of Grandma Faith. She is what a good Christian should be: loving, accepting, and kind. I loved everything she said and stood for, though I am not a Christian myself. None of the characters in the book were dislikable, except for maybe Uncle Ron – the stereotypical evangelist.

I truly can’t recommend this novel enough. In today’s America, there is an overwhelming amount of mistrust, fear, and hostility when it comes to unfamiliar cultures. Haji writes a beautiful story about opening oneself to new and different, to accepting culpability, to being an intersectional world. It’s amazing.

Memorable Quotes:
“family values- only thing I ever saw being values when I’ve heard those two words getting thrown around is the act of not minding your own business.”
“Belief is about closing yourself off – a lie you tell yourself to make the world fit in with how you’ve decided it should be.”
“Real change in the world, real justice, cannot happen without the participation of women.”

Title: The Sweetness of Tears
Author: Nafisa Haji
Publisher: William Morrow (HarperCollins Publishers)
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9780061780103

 

Books

Go Set A Watchman

Read: Yes
Length: 278
Quick Review: Jean Louise – Scout – Finch is no longer the little girl we know and love. She is a grown woman returning home to her beloved Maycomb, Alabama.

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Published in what could be called a scandal, Go Set A Watchman became accessible to the public 55 years and three days after the publication of To Kill A Mockingbird. Nelle Harper Lee wrote Go Set A Watchman, but revised it into an entirely different book most every American has read, which won a Pulitzer. It would be hard to imagine Harper Lee as a public figure, but in her early years she was. Due to the drains of fame, she receded from the public eye never to publish again. In her old age, Go Set A Watchman was published under a great amount of scrutiny as to if this is what she really wanted. The reviews flooded in quickly. They were mostly skeptical and rarely glowing.

I never read To Kill A Mockingbird in high school. I read it one summer in college. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it the way others do. It took me over two years before I bought Go Set A Watchman because of the circumstances it had been released. Its blue spine sat untouched on my shelf for several months before I finally picked it up to read.

I understand why people didn’t love this second Lee book. I, however, did. I wish I could talk about Go Set A Watchman without talking about To Kill A Mockingbird, but they are intrinsically linked not only by their characters but by the integral part To Kill A Mockingbird has played in the landscape of modern Americana.

Scout is no longer a little girl; instead, she is a grown, college educated woman of 26 living in New York City. She is known as Jean Louise, and she’s going home to Maycomb for two weeks. A lot has changed in her hometown. Atticus has gotten older, but he has stayed the same. Jean Louise is an adult on her own in the world. Go Set A Watchman is a coming of age story. The kind that is rarely told: the difficulty of separating one’s identity from that of their idol’s. As people, we all go through it in one way or another.

I can understand why so many people have a hard time with this book. They’re comparing it to the first. It’s easy to do. The characters are present. The setting has only been phased by the passing of time.

The narrative of To Kill A Mockingbird flows forward through time; it’s easy to follow. Go Set A Watchman has a completely different rhythm. Jean Louise isn’t living in the present. She bounces between the past and present as memories are triggered. The book is well organized but anecdotal. It is a completely different reading experience than what one goes in believing it will be.

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Atticus is a hero to Scout in a way he is a hero to everyone who has read him. He’s even, educated, fair, loyal, true, just, kind, and more. He is an ideal of a person we strive to become someday. I always found him to be too perfect. I didn’t love him because he seemed flat. Too good to be true, in a way. I want my heroes flawed, human. Go Set A Watchman rips holes in the perfect man. Lee portrays him as human, as a man of his time, a good yet flawed man. All the while, Lee portrays Scout as a young idealist with grit. Scout stands up for what she sees to be right under the most difficult of circumstance: she doesn’t back down when her hero disagrees. It becomes tenuous when Scout compares Atticus and Maycomb to Hitler and the Russian communists saying, “You just try to kill their souls instead of their bodies.” (Ouch!) 

Scout replaces Atticus in our mind’s eye. She is the one who will go out into the world working to create a better and more just place for all. She believes in equality and opportunity for all, in helping, in tearing down walls based on gender or class or sex, that silence is support, and more. Jean Louise is no longer six years old; she is a young woman coming into her own in a world being torn further and further apart.

I think in many ways, Go Set A Watchman is more relevant today than To Kill A Mockingbird. We live in a world torn by intolerance and hate based on so many things, and sometimes the impact is felt most acutely in our own homes. As unfortunate as it is, many of the scenes playing out in front of Jean Louise’s eyes are familiar to the ones I see today. The relationship Scout has with her father is incredibly similar to the one I have with my father today. Many can relate to feeling betrayed by those we love when we find out their views fail to reach the standard we have set for them while failing to realize they are human too.

Go Set A Watchman has created waves. Many people do not feel for it the way they feel for the predecessor. I think this is a large part of its magic. It dares you to see a character and a book in a new light, no longer through rose colored glasses. Atticus is seen through the eyes of a child in To Kill A Mockingbird, but he is seen through the eyes of an adult in Go Set A Watchman. As children we see the world one way and another way as an adult. Lee makes us return to a favorite with the eyes of an adult.

Memorable Quotes
“Integrity, humor, and patience were the three words for Atticus Finch.”
“The course of English Literature would have been decidedly different had Mr. Wordsworth owned a power mower”
“They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn’t make them subhuman.”
“Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.”
“You just try to kill their souls instead of their bodies”

Title: Go Set A Watchman
Author: Harper Lee
Publisher: Harper (HarperCollins Publishers)
Copyright: 2015
ISBN: 9780062409850

 

Books

Cancel the Wedding

Read Yes
Length 416
Quick Review After her mother’s death, a young woman realizes how little she knows about her mother and herself. She goes on a journey to find both with her niece by her side.

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In Dingman’s debut novel she writes a sweet novel filled with family ties, mystery, love, history, and southern small town charm. It’s an easy read which screams to be read on the beach during a hot summer vacation.

Olivia has it all a stable fiancé, a high powered career, a life in Washington DC, and now a wedding date. When everything in her life couldn’t seem more stable, she decides to head south to a small town in Georgia with her niece to discover the past her mother left behind a long time ago. She has no idea what she will find and even less of an idea of how to find it. Guided by a short note in her mother’s will and determination, she sets off on what was meant to be a long weekend.

Behind the sweet façade of a story, Dingman explores the complex issue of a mother-daughter relationship. She uses Olivia and her sister, Georgia, to look into the relationship daughters have with their mothers as adults, and Georgia and her daughter, Logan, to show the difficulty both daughters and mothers go through to establish a sense of self and a link to one another. 

As the title suggest, Cancel the Wedding, delves into idea of a wedding and a marriage being linked yet separate identities. So often, it is easy to focus on the traditional steps of creating a life – meeting, dating, engagement, buying property, wedding – that one can forget the life after the wedding, and also lose oneself in the planning. Because life isn’t simple, Dingman is able to complicate her characters’ lives, so they have to sort out what means the most.

Cancel the Wedding is not a literary feat, but it is a great first novel appealing to a wide scope of readers with a penchant for romance and mystery.

Memorable Quotes
“You really only have a passionate row if you feel completely confident that you can get through it, or if you’re using it as the hand grenade tossed over your shoulder on your way out the door.”
“It took a lot of smoke and mirrors and subterfuge to make the world see you the way you wanted them to.”
“I was starting to get that prickly feeling again about not wanting to get married.”

Title: Cancel the Wedding
Author: Carolyn T. Dingman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Copyright: 2014
ISBN: 9780062276728