RHYS BOWEN: By California standards it's very cold here. There was frost on my balcony and driveway this morning and I looked out on white rooftops. I know, it sounds wimpy compared to what most of you are experiencing.
But when I see frost and smoke rising from chimneys my instinct is to curl up by a warm fire with a cup of hot tea or cocoa and read a good book. So I'm wondering if you have particular old favorites that are brought out on cold and wintery days to be re-read. I always listen to the audio version of A Christmas Carol and always get a little weepy. And the Christmas part of Little Women. I am fond of Wind in the Willows and the scene when Mole gets lost in the snow and finds Badgers house. In fact I enjoy reading about other people trudging through snowy landscapes, knowing that I am safely indoors! I'm not sure what that says about my character.
And I might take out an Agatha Christie Christmas mystery--is it called A Holiday with Murder? The one with Simon Lee and his sons.
I might even re-read my own Twelve Clues of Christmas as I wrote it to recreate my fantasy English Christmas in an old manor house. Do you ever read your own books, Reds? And enjoy them? Anyway, recommendations please for good reading by a roaring fire, with a glass of hot mulled wine in hand.
HALLIE EPHRON: I'm reading ... ahem, STILL reading THE GOLDFINCH. It is endless and it makes my hands ache to hold it but oh so engrossing. But for a Christmas read I'd go to poetry. A Child's Christmas in Wales. Followed by Agatha Christie or P. D. James short stories. Or a book about food. Laurie Colwin's HOME COOKING. Hoping my granddaughter is old enough to sit through 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: When we were little, my Mom would read A Child's Christmas in Wales to us...
“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”
and then my step-dad would read A Visit from st. Nicholas.
"...when out on the roof there arose such a clatter--I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter!"
“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”
and then my step-dad would read A Visit from st. Nicholas.
"...when out on the roof there arose such a clatter--I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter!"
I'm trying to think what Christmas books I've read, besides A Christmas Carol. Hmm. But please read Winters Tale, by Mark Helprin. The snowiest coldest most beautiful book ever. Dead of winter in Manhattan, in two different centuries, with a flying white horse.
Somehow I did not manage to pass my love of these traditions to my offspring. I'm hoping for better luck with the next generation:-)
Oh, and Rhys, I'm going to reread The Twelve Clues of Christmas! It is--well, maybe, because it's such a hard choice--my favorite Georgie. And I adore the traditional Christmas in the manor.
HANK: What about you, Reds and readers? Christmas reading? Or are you too crazed?
