TTT: My Winter Reading List (and how I did on my Fall list)

Top Ten Tuesday: Winter Reading List. 

Below the line is how I did on my fall reading list.

Winter reading list: 

Book Club Selections:

1. SOTH Gals (January) : The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende
2. RHS Ladies (January): The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali
3. SOTH Gals (February) : All My Knotted-Up Life: a Memoir by Beth Moore
4. RHS Ladies (February) : The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
5. SOTH Gals (March) : TBA
6. RHS Ladies (March: TBA

Challenge Books:

1. Classics Club Spin Book TBA from this list -- Possibly: The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov)
2. Printz Award Winner or honor book (To-be-announced in Jan.)
3.  A past Pulitzer Prize winner from this list -- Possibly: American Pastoral (Roth)
4. 2026 One Big Book Challenge -- Moby-Dick (Melville)
5. First book of 2026 -- Worth Fighting For (Pavlovitz)

Books I've already started, recently acquired, and/or have on-hold at the library:

1. A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst
2. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
3. So Far Gone by Jess Walter
4. Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang
5. Wreck by Catherine Newman
6. Replaceable You by Mary Roach
7. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
8. Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico

Update: How I did on my fall reading list.

 Yellow: completed. 

Aqua: in progress

Green:  not completed, DNF

Light pink: Did not get to yet!

Fall reading list: 

Book Club Selections:

1. SOTH Gals (October) : The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware
2. SOTH Gals (November) : Furious Hours: Murder, Mayhem, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee by Casey Cep
3. RHS Ladies (November) : My Friends: a Novel by Fredrik Backman
4. SOTH Gals (December) : The Stars are Fire by Anita Shreve

Challenge Books:

1. Classics Club from this list -- Persuasion by Jane Austen
2. Two 2025 National Book Award Winners or Finalists from the five categories. Possibly:
• The Teacher of Nomad Land by Nayeri (Young People's Lit)
• I Do Small Things by Richard Silkin (Poetry) 
3. The 2025 Booker Prize winner or a finalist. Audition by Katie Kitamura
4. Read Across America (Read a book set in every state): Winter Counts by Weiden (South Dakota)
5. Four novellas for 'Novellas in November' Challenge:
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn
• What Does It Feel like by Sophie Kinsella
• The Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
• We the Animals by Justin Torres 

Books I've already started, recently acquired, and/or have on-hold at the library:

1. Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
2. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
3. How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz
4. Tilt by Emma Pattee
5. The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Jones
6. My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende
7. The Afterlife of Data by Carl Ohman
8. Henry and June by Anais Nin
9. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
10. The Timecode of a Face by Ruth Ozeki
11. Shackled by Candy Cooper
12. Sunrise on the Reaping by Collins

I read like a madman all Fall and did so well on this challenge. However, and this is a perennial problem for me, I never feel like I've read enough. There are so many books I want to read and so little time to read all of them! Sigh.
-Anne

Sunday Salon ---December Fun

Our daughter took the family to Lion King last Sunday as our Christmas gift. It was FABULOUS! Thank you, Carly!

Weather: It has rained and rained here in our state this past week with so much flooding, rivers jumping their banks, bridges going out, traffic a snarl. The news reported that some areas got over 16 inches of rain during the days-long storm. Things were fine at our house, though we did have a pond spring up in our back yard overnight.

The spontaneous pond in our backyard. It is drained now.

Christmas shopping with our grandsons: Don and I took our grandsons shopping to a nearby town which has a cute downtown with small shops. We gave them $20 each and asked them to pick out gifts for their parents. The youngest wanted to buy everything he saw, including eyeball candies. In the end they were proud of their choices and delighted to wrap up gifts that will be a surprise for their parents. Afterwards we drove home via the back way and noticed a new play structure was finally open. It was mobbed with kids and their parents. Everyone must have wanted out of their houses after a week of rain. 

Brothers and grandpa. Yes, Ian is underdressed. Grandpa's wearing a puffy coat and Ian is wearing shorts.

Weight loss: I've lost a few pounds, nothing to get excited about, but the weird thing is now my wedding ring doesn't fit anymore. Leave it to me to go on a diet and lose weight in my hands. (Me, rolling eyes!)

TV Watching: Due to the weather Don and I have been watching more than our usual amount of TV. We watched all five of the National Parks episodes this past week and so did Bingley, our dog. (Now we're watching The Thursday Murder Club, but Bingley is snoring next to me. He can't be bothered. No animals.)

Bingley watching the episode of the National Parks on Yellowstone.

The Best 60 books of 2025: I did a roundup of 59 lists of Best Books of the year and determined the titles which percolated to the top most often. Check out my list here.

Books and Reading: Not much to report here. I've been listening to a LONG audiobook, The Rose Field by Pullman, and I'm working on a book club selection, The Stars Are Fire by Shreve. I've only finished two books so far this month. TWO! We'll Prescribe You a Cat and The Poet Warrior. After my reading frenzy in November it feels odd to be stuck barely reading.

Blogging:

• TTT: Memories for Past Christmas Seasons
• TTT: Books set in Snowy Places
• Review: We'll Prescribe You a Cat
• Review: Poet Warrior: a Memoir

My favorite new Christmas songs (new to me). You can listen to them on my Christmas Spotify list. They are the first ten songs on the list. I hope you enjoy them, too.

• "Glow" by Kelly Clarkson and Chris Stapleton
• "Holiday Party" by Dan + Shay
• "Merry Christmas" by Ed Sheeran and Elton John
• "Under the Tree" by Ed Sheeran
• "Santa's Coming for Us" by Sia
• "Winter Song" by Leslie Odom, Jr. and Cynthia Erivo
• " The King Emmanuel" by Nathan Pacheco
• "Coming Home This Christmas" by the Jonas Brothers
• "Wonderful Christmastime" by Straight No Chaser and Paul McCartney
• "When You Believe" by Pentatonix and Maren Morris

May you find joy and peace this holiday season.

-Anne

Review: POET WARRIOR (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Poet Warrior: a Memoir by Joy Harjo

Book Beginnings quote:

To imagine the spirit of poetry is much like imagining the shape and size of knowing. It is a kind of resurrection light; it is the tall ancestor spirit who has been with me since the beginning, or a bear, or a hummingbird. It is a hundred horses running the land in a soft mist, or it a woman undressing for her beloved in firelight. It is none of these things. It is more than everything. "You're coming with me, poor thing. You don't know how to listen. You don't know how to speak. You don't know how to sing. I will teach you."

Friday56 quote:

If I took those stories and thoughts of hell and placed them in a the crook of the tree in our yard, then the tree helped relieve the wheel of worry that followed the questions that turned in me. Why would the Creator-God make everything, then deem only those who were of a certain religion or church worthy of eternal life? 

Summary:  

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her "poet-warrior" road. 

Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth.  In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland, and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife, and community member.

Moving fluidly between prose, song, and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. (Publisher)

Review: As I poetry reader, I, of course, want to experience poetry through the eyes, mind, heart of poets from many cultures and experiences. Somehow I have never read any of Joy Harjo's poetry before this time even though she is a famed Native American poet from the Muscogee Nation. This book, her second memoir, was a nice introduction not only to her poetry but also to her Native storytelling style. As she shared her story about how she came to poetry, music, and art, her Poet Warrior poems told her story. These poems were interspersed throughout the book. For example, Chapter 1 starts here:

Girl-Warrior perched on the sky ledge

Overlooking the turquoise, green, and blue garden

Of ocean and earth.

From there she could hear the winds

Lifting from their birthing places

She could hear where sound began.

I confess at times to be a bit confused by Harjo's organization of information in Poet Warrior.

Her story was loosely chronological but not necessarily on a timeline I could perceive. Sometimes she'd slip into dreams and conversations with ancestors and other times she'd speed ahead in time to reveal something of meaning to jump back at a later point. At one point, I decided to just relax and not to worry if I didn't understand or know everything. I appreciated the storytelling aspect to this memoir, since it was so different than any memoir I've read before.

I was so touched by the Friday56 quote. At this point in her story she was a child attending church alone. She loved church, the rituals, the fellowship but even as a child she came to understand that the what the church was offering wasn't for everyone since there was such a strong message placed on being saved or you will go to hell. She worried about her mother. Would her mother really go to hell so they would be parted for ever in eternity. Isn't that an awful thought to place on a child's heart?

I recognize that this book wouldn't be everyone's cup-of-tea but I do encourage readers of my blog to read broadly and Poet Warrior is a book to consider and to savor.

My rating 4 stars.

-Anne

Friday56 participants. Please give me feedback! Is it time to say goodbye to this meme? I've noticed that participation has fallen off steeply this season. Is it time to let it go? Do you enjoy participating and it is worth taking into the New Year? Please leave me your thoughts in the comments. Thank you.

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

TTT: Books Set In Snowy Places

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Set In Snowy Places

I did a similar post in 2020 titled Books with Wintry Themes. I tried not to duplicate that list too much. Check it out if you want more suggestions. As per usual, I've read all of the books on this list, though some of them I read a very long time ago.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis -- In the beginning of the story it is a place where it is always winter but never Christmas. 

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon -- It is an especially cold winter. When a man is found frozen in the river, the town's midwife, Martha Ballard, is asked to figure out what killed him.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey -- In brutal Alaska in 1920s a homesteading couple make a child out of snow to ward off their loneliness.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden -- Vasilisa lives on the edge of Russian wilderness where winter lasts most of the year and snowdrifts are taller than houses.

The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman -- Lyra goes up to the cold, far north where witch clans and armored polar bears rule.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson -- A mystery set in the Pacific NW in the 1950s in a snow-covered town.

White Fang by Jack London -- Set in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush, White Fang is a hybrid wolf-dog who has to fight for survival. 

Isola by Allegra Goodman -- A young heiress and her lover are marooned on an island in the Bay of St. Lawrence off the coast of New France (Canada) in 1542. She has to survive two winters in this desolate spot before she is rescued. (Based on a true story.)

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -- set in a Gulag in the Soviet Union during the winter, this tells the story of one day in the life of a prisoner, Ivan Denisovich. Brr.r.r

Little Bear by Else Holmelund Minarik, illustrated by Maurice Sendak -- Little Bear asks his mother if she will make something for him to wear so we can go out in the snow, in the first story of this collection, titled "What Will Little Bear Wear?". Nothing is right until she takes off all his clothes and he goes out in his own fur. This was my first book, given to me the year of my birth and my first snow story.

-Anne.

The Top 60 Books of 2025: Best Books Round-Up

The 60 Best Books of 2025, based on a best-books round up

It's here -- the results of my Best-Books-of-2025 round up. 

My process: 

1. I consulted 59 best-books lists from all over the English-speaking world, confessing the list is very USA-heavy. Here are a few of those sources I used: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Publishers Weekly, Amazon Editors, Libby, Chicago Public Library, The Guardian, The Post (NZ), +50 more lists. 

2. I created a spreadsheet which ultimately ended up with over 900 titles on it. (Yes, that is a big spreadsheet!) 450 of the titles got only one vote and only 300 books got three or more votes. Narrowing that down to a digestible number for publication I'll be focused on the books which got eight or more votes -- that is 60 titles.

3. Of the 60 Best Books of 2025, 13 are nonfiction (NF), 21%. The remainder of the list is made up of not only literary fiction, but also romance, horror, fantasy, YA, Sci-Fi, dystopia, historical, short stories, LGBTQ-themes, mystery, and thriller genres. The authors come from all over the world supporting a variety of viewpoints. There is probably a book for everyone to love on the list. I've read and liked 15 of them.

Without further ado... The list!

On 23-21 lists:

⭐Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy (23, NF)
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai (22)
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (21)

On 20 lists:

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong
Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
Heart the Lover by Lily King

On 19 lists

Audition by Katie Kitamura
The Guardian and the Thief by Megha Majumdar
Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

On 18-17 lists

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (18)
The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy (17)
Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs (17, NF)
 One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (17, NF)
Flashlight by Susan Choi (17)

On 16 lists

Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams (NF)

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Flesh by David Szalay

We Do Not Part by Han Kang

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan 

On 15-13 lists

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (15)
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (14)
Antidote by Karen Russell (13)
A Flower Traveled in My Blood: An Incredible True Story of the Grandmothers Who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of Children by Haley Cohen Gilliland(13, NF)
A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst (13, NF)
Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (12)
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (12)

On 12-11 lists

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (12)
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab (12)
The Director by Daniel Kehlmann, translated by Ross Benjamin (11)
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry (11)
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane (11, NF)
Raising Hare: a Memoir by Chloe Dalton (11, NF)
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood (11)
Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (11, NF)

On 10 lists

Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (NF)
Heartwood by Amity Gaige
Isola by Allegra Goodman
Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
The Names by Florence Knapp

On 9 lists

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
Book of Lives: a Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood (NF)
Memorial Days: a Memoir by Geraldine Brooks (NF)
My Friends by Fredrik Backman, translated by Neil Smith
Endling by Maria Reva

 On 8 lists

/ The Bewitching // The Compound // The Correspondent // Cursed Daughters /
/ Everything is Tuberculosis (NF) // Good Dirt //The Impossible Fortune /
/ On the Calculation of Volume III // Perfection // The River Has Roots // The Sisters /
/ So Far Gone // These Summer Storms // Witchcraft for Wayward Girls /
/ A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping // The South /

 

My thoughts:

I was surprised and delighted that Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy got the most mentions of all the 900+ books listed. Surprised because I'd barely heard of it before this exercise and it is memoir! Delighted because I love everything I've read by this author. I'm adding it to my TBR right now.

I always expect award-winners to percolate to the top. In some cases they did but in others they didn't. For example, of the five winners for the 2025 National Book Award, only the nonfiction winner, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, made the list with 17 votes. The fiction winner, The True True Story of Raja the Gullible got 6 votes. Two finalists for the NBA did better -- The Guardian and the Thief with 19 points and Antidote with 13. Theory and Practice cleaned up in the awards in Australia this year but only got 5 votes here. Not to pick on that book because Heart Lamp, the winner of the 2025 International Booker Prize also only got 5 votes.

If your favorite book wasn't among the top 60 books published this year, don't despair. It is likely just below the cut line or somewhere on the list. I was amazed at how many books got just one vote, yet that book got such praise by whoever published the list. Clearly 2025 was a year of a lot of good books! One example of that is the winner of the B&N Best Book of the Year honor, Mona's Eyes. No one else mentioned this book and they picked it as their best. Another way of looking at this is the top book on my list this year got 23 votes, that is 38% of the lists mentioning it. By contrast, last year I only looked at 37 lists before I published the round-up of the best-books-of-2024 list. James won top honor with 31 votes. That is 83%. I think the wealth was really spread out this year.

What books are you happy to see in the top 60 books of 2025? My three favorites of the year -- Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Heart the Lover, and Antidote -- are the list. Woot woot!

PS: I started wondering if this was truly a world-wide list so I investigated the nationality of the authors of the top 60 titles. Here is the breakdown: Australia -- 3; Britain -- 5; Canada -- 3; China -- 1; Denmark -- 1; Egypt -- 1; Germany -- 1; Hungary -- 1: India -- 4; Italy -- 1; Jamaica -- 1; Malaysia -- 1; Mexico -- 1; Nigeria -- 2; New Zealand -- 1; South Korea --1; Sweden -- 2; USA -- 27; Vietnam --1. 

-Anne

Review: WE'LL PRESCRIBE YOU A CAT (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ichida, translated from Japanese by E. Madison Shimoda

Book Beginnings quote:

Shuta Kagawa stood at the end of a shadowy alley, gazing up at a multipurpose building. After getting thoroughly lost, he had finally arrived. The structure looked like it had been built to fill the narrow gap between two apartment blocks.

Friday56 quote:

"I see," said the doctor. Then he broke into another smile. "We'll prescribe you a cat. Let's keep an eye on your condition." 

Summary: In a multipurpose building at the end of a narrow alley in Kyoto is the Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. It can only be found by people who are struggling and need help in their life. The clinic is unique for another reason, they prescribe cats and require the patients to follow through on the treatment for the required number of days. To stop taking their prescription early might mean less than desirable results.

All five of the patients who find their way to this odd clinic and are able to open the door to get in, find themselves leaving with a cat even though they didn't want one. Yet, the human-animal bond is strong and eventually all five find their way out of their inner turmoil with help from their feline companions.

Review: I decided to read We'll Prescribe You a Cat as one of the last Goodreads challenges of the year. It isn't the type of book I usually read but I had seen it at the bookstore and thought it looked cute. And it was cute, and funny, and poignant. The cats didn't do remarkable things, they were just cats, but the impact their presence had on the humans was noteworthy. 

Right now we don't have a cat. But I have had cats my whole life. Our last two cats died at age 19 each and we felt it was time to take a little break from cat ownership, but if I need a fix, I just need to visit one of my daughters. They both have two cats now. I know the therapeutic qualities of cuddling with a purring cat and how much fun and how silly they can be. This book captured both the cuddling and silliness. At one point in the story, when the patient came home with another cat to join the first prescription cat, the two animals got a case of zoomies and made an absolute mess of the house. I didn't realize the word "zoomies" was  a word used by anyone other than us. Ha!

One of the things I appreciated about the book was the peek it gave me into Japanese culture.

If you want a lighthearted book with an intriguing solution to problems, I recommend this book to you. And if you become a fan, there is a second book in the series already published.

My rating: 3.5 stars.

Grandcats: Skimble and Sasha as kittens

Grandcats" George and Fred

Sign up for The Friday56 on the Inlinkz below. 

RULES:

*Grab a book, any book

*Turn to page 56 or 56% in your e-reader (If you want to improvise, go ahead!)

*Find a snippet, but no spoilers!

*Post it to your blog and add your url to the Linky below. If you do not add the specific url for your post, we may miss it! 

*Visit other blogs and leave comments about their snippets. Expand the community. Please leave a comment for me, too!  

Also visit Book Beginnings on Friday hosted by Rose City Reader and First Line Friday hosted by Reading is My Super Power to share the beginning quote from your book.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

-Anne

TTT: Memories from Past Christmas Seasons

Happy Christmas Season memories. Do you see my grandson looking for Santa behind the mailbox?

Top Ten Tuesday: 

Happy Memories from Christmas Seasons Past

These memories are not in chronological order. I am just writing them down as they come to me.

1. One year we bought an artificial Christmas Tree which had a motor which rotated the tree around in a circle endlessly. What were we thinking? I think the idea was to be able to see all the decorated sides of the tree (no back and front). Our cat, Demi, loved to get into the tree and would ride the tree round and round. I can still picture her tucked back in the branches as she floated by.

This is not the rotating tree, but the cat in the photo is the one who liked to go for rides on it.

2.  When I was a middle grade kid, my parents moved the family to Africa and we lived very near the equator. My mother still insisted on doing Christmas traditions as if we lived at home. One day she insisted we walk around the neighborhood, singing Christmas carols . When we got to one door and started to sing, the homeowner stopped us and insisted we sing the song correctly: 𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮𝅘𝅥𝅮I'm dreaming of a GREEN Christmas, just like the ones I've always known. With the palm trees swaying...." I can't sing White Christmas without thinking of this version.

3. We had a very dignified, standoffish cat, Ichi. He rarely hung out with us in his earlier days, preferring his own company. But the day we set up the Christmas decorations each year, he would always be underfoot. When we'd bring the 8 foot ladder into the house, to change out our wall-hanging, he'd take it as an opportunity to play king of the mountain, climbing to the top of the ladder and refusing to relinquish his spot even if our younger cat teased him and tried to dethrone him.

4. We hang up the Christmas stockings on the fireplace mantle and use them as decorations all December. One year I thought I'd get a jump on stuffing the stockings (helping Santa out!) by putting chocolate candies in them early. I didn't even think about how the stocking got warm (hot) as we had fires on those December evenings. Everyone had melted chocolate in their stocking on Christmas morning. 😕

5. We have a tradition to read two books every year, even now that my daughters are grown, they still want to us to read them when they come over: The Worst Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson and The Shepherd, the Angel, and Walter the Miracle Christmas Dog by Dave Barry.

6. My husband, Don, grew up in Eastern Oregon. I grew up on the west side of the state. I wasn't used to COLD and SNOWY Christmas days. When we were first married, we spent Christmas with his parents and the next day planned to drive over the mountains to spend the rest of the holiday with my family. But when we woke up, the world had transformed into a snowy landscape with freezing temperatures. Our car wouldn't start. It was too cold. We tried to get it going by using a hair dryer on it.

7. My daughters love Star Wars and Yoda. One year they couldn't stop laughing at the midnight church service when we sang We Three Kings. One verse has an especially Yoda-like sounding phrase. And it really sets them off: "Frankincense to offer have I." That verse is followed by the fourth verse, which is all about death and dying. They can't stop laughing at the absurdity of this verse in light of the it being a Christmas carol!

[Verse 4]
Myrrh is mine
Its bitter perfume breathes
A life of gathering gloom
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying
Sealed in the stone cold tomb

8. Speaking of church, our daughter was in charge of the Christmas play at church two years in a row. It was a a completely unrehearsed event. She just guided the children with her voice and according to what headgear they chose to wear. Our grandson, her youngest, was the donkey. She asked him to go sit by the manger, and he did. It was so precious. A little donkey boy sitting in adoration the whole rest of the service.

9. Horsing around with my daughter and grandsons with the filters on her phone. We all became reindeer, or elves, or Santa. Laughter abounded.

10. My father always read How the Grinch Stole Christmas to the assembled family on Christmas Eve. Now that Dad is gone, my nephew has picked up the mantle. I can't hear the story without smiling through my tears.

11. Our second daughter was born a week before Christmas. The day after her delivery the nurses at the hospital brought her dressed up in a Christmas stocking, ready to go home. The best Christmas present ever got.

-Anne