|
| Re: Favourite seasonal reading [message #24424 is a reply to message #24421 ] |
Sun, 20 December 2009 20:15   |
 skating librarian
Messages: 570
Registered: October 2008
Location: Vermont |
Senior Member |
|
|
The Dark is Rising, the whole book. (By Susan Cooper) And her poem, The Shortest Day, which by coincidence our minister read in Church today. Of course I love all the references to old customs, and the connections between magic and this time of year. It would be impossible to pick a single passage, as for me the whole book is evocative.
And that usually leads to reading the whole series again.
Yesterday, when Sunshine fell off the bookcase, I had this sudden notion that I'd love to read about what Rae bakes at Christmas.
"Winning a war is like winning an earthquake" Jeanette Rankin
|
|
|
|
| Re: Favourite seasonal reading [message #24430 is a reply to message #24421 ] |
Mon, 21 December 2009 09:54 |
 |
AJLR
Messages: 2565
Registered: September 2008
Location: England, UK |
Senior Member
[Moderator] |
|
|
I think my favourite is still The Night before Christmas, corny as that is. 
Mind you, Keats' 'Eve of St Agnes' would run it a close second, for me. There's something about the various descriptions of cold, light, textures, etc, that always make me think of a festival in deep winter. I particularly like this bit:
"And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,
In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender’d,
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon."
[Updated on: Mon, 21 December 2009 13:17]
"Never let a computer know you're in a hurry."
|
|
|
|
| Re: Favourite seasonal reading [message #24455 is a reply to message #24421 ] |
Mon, 21 December 2009 23:00 |
skating librarian
Messages: 570
Registered: October 2008
Location: Vermont |
Senior Member |
|
|
Yes, of course to the Night Before Christmas ... it was first published in Troy NY, and having spent some time on the reference desk of the Public Library there, it was our second most asked query. The most popular was about "Uncle Sam" who resided there long ago.
I wish I still had the pop up version my Nana gave me when I was little.
I also love the Christmas scenes in Little Women.
Wilhelm Lange tells a story called "Favor Johnson's Christmas" on Public Radio which is a local classic (VPR). It features a dog and really good fruitcake. I'll try to find a link. It was just published as a picture storybook.
"Winning a war is like winning an earthquake" Jeanette Rankin
|
|
|
| Re: Favourite seasonal reading [message #24457 is a reply to message #24421 ] |
Tue, 22 December 2009 00:22 |
 |
blondviolinist
Messages: 1068
Registered: October 2008
Location: Midwestern United States |
Senior Member |
|
|
My dad used to read us "The Night Before Christmas" every year. Then someone gave him a book of "Cajun Night Before Christmas," and that was even better! (Santa Claus w/eight alligators pulling his sleigh? Fabulous.)
The poem I always return to at Christmas time, however, is T. S. Eliot's "The Journey of the Magi." I love how it reminds me that Christmas isn't about things being easy, or pretty, or warm & fuzzy. Christmas happens in the middle of raw life.
| Quote: |
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed,
refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the
terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and
grumbling
And running away, and wanting their
liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the
lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns
unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high
prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all
night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears,
saying
That this was all folly....
|
"Purity of heart is to will one thing." Kirkegaard
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Re: Favourite seasonal reading [message #25762 is a reply to message #24430 ] |
Mon, 01 February 2010 19:44 |
prairiehil
Messages: 34
Registered: May 2009 |
Member |
|
|
| Quote: |
There's something about the various descriptions of cold, light, textures, etc, that always make me think of a festival in deep winter.
|
Actually, I think St. Agnes' Day is in mid-January. So the deep winter thing is right. I love that poem. And Keats in general.
This time of year has meant Terry Prachett for me for the last several years. My dad always seems to have a new one that my brother and I haven't read, so we trade the book back and forth every day (he's nocturnal).
|
|
|
Members
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
