Where Is Your Bookmark? (11/17/2015)

So far this week:

Listening To: Christmas music. I know, I know. It's too early still. One of the local stations switched to all holiday music this past week and will keep it up through Christmas Day. One thirty minute drive and my husband is already tired of it. It will take me longer, but I imagine I will be turning the station now and then to avoid burn out. I do love holiday music though--I just wish the station played more variety. They seem to play the same songs and same versions of those songs over and over again.

Watching: The Walking Dead. I am actually caught up, which makes one of my coworkers happy because she did not have to wait to talk about it like she always does.

I never watch the news on television anymore, but I did tune in on Friday to catch some of what was going on in Paris and elsewhere in the world. Every time I hear about a mass shooting, a suicide bombing, of some other act of terror, it breaks my heart. Others have said so much better than I can how I am feeling and what I wish for everyone in the world. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and friends.

Making: This weekend Anjin, Mouse and I made our traditional Nuts and Bolts snack for the holidays. It turned out pretty good, I think. Also, my husband and I enjoyed homemade root beer floats the other evening--something I haven't had in a long while.  Yum!

Planning: I am still thinking of what to get everyone for Christmas this year, and then I need to actually start buying gifts. Every year I try to start early so we're not spending so much money all at once, but I can never think that far ahead in terms of what to get people. People's ideas of what they want change over the course of the year. At least I know it's that way for my immediate family.

Enjoying: Coloring with my daughter. She is always asking me if we can color pages in my adult coloring book. I try to ration the pages out by suggesting we color a couple of mine and then color pages in her own book.  That works some of the time. Evidently my books are the preferred coloring books--probably because they are mine. 

Reading: I was having trouble sleeping Sunday night, and so started reading my second Christmas-themed book of the year, Christmas Bells by Jennifer Chiaverini, which is set in both the present and the past. One is of a music teacher who has just learned that she will no longer have a job at the end of the school year due to budget cuts. She tries to find comfort in her role as director of her church's children's choir, keeping busy with the coming Christmas program in which the choice will be performing a song based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "Christmas Bells." The novel also takes us back to 1860's and Henry Longfellow and his family. Civil War is in the air, and a horrific tragedy strikes his family shaking Longfellow's entire life. It was at that time that he penned "Christmas Bells," one of his most famous poems.

I like Chiaverini's writing so far. It is still too early to tell what I will think of the book overall, but right now I am enjoying it.

First Paragraph from Jennifer Chiaverini's Christmas Bells:

Only the most jaded of critics would deny that the Winter Holiday Concert had been an artistic triumph, and as far as Sophia could tell as the audience filed from the auditorium to meet the young performers in the cafeteria for juice and cookies, no one fitting that description had attended. Granted, the fourth-grade recorders might have been a little shrill on "Frosty the Snowman," and perhaps half of the second grade had mumbled all but the chorus of "I Have a Little Dreidel," and Sophia should have known better than to assign a treble solo to a boy who had started the semester as a sweet-voiced cherub but now looked as if Santa might need to bring him a shaving kit for Christmas. But despite those few glitches, the children had performed beautifully. Certainly the rapturous smiles and the crash of applause that met their curtain calls proved that the audience was well pleased.

Teasers from Christmas Bells at 32%: 

"I don't see any burn marks," her friend Emily had whispered, frowning skeptically at the library floor as the tour guide described the artifacts on display.

"Mr. Longfellow probably cleaned them up," Charlotte  had whispered back. 


What do you think? Would you keep reading?  



What are you reading at the moment?  Is it anything you would recommend?

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