23 Days to Christmas!

 

24 Days to Christmas! An Advent Calendar Tradition

ADVENT: COUNTDOWN TO CHRISTMAS

Every year, I count down the days to Christmas with a daily post of a vintage holiday card. I've kept up this advent calendar since I started Rose City Reader back in 2008.

I love holiday traditions and vintage ephemera. If you also like vintage cards and want to see more, click on the "Advent" or "vintage postcard" tags at the bottom of these posts (or bottom of the page) to find hundreds of images from past years. You will find trees, ornaments, Santas, elves, cats, birds, dogs, deer, gifts, candles, bells, and lots more!

THIS YEAR'S THEME? WILL THERE BE ONE?

Some years I have a theme for the advent calendar, sometimes it's a hodgepodge. I've done all cats, all houses, all animals, all Santas. My goal is to use different pictures every year and it's getting harder to keep with a theme, so I'll probably mix it up this year. 

When it comes to real time Christmas cards, do you send them? I do! I still send old-fashioned cards out of a box, usually with a picture of me and Hubby stuck inside. 

I did order printed cards from Zazzle for my law firm. I was lucky to snap this picture with my law partner before she left for maternity leave! 

DECEMBER BLOGGING

Do you have special holiday-themes blogging you do in December? Besides this advent countdown, I don't do much Christmas-themed blogging. I don't really do Christmas-themed reading that lends itself to Christmas-themed blogging. Although I like the idea of reading Dickens in December so I'm reading Our Mutual Friend.

I get excited about next year's reading challenges this time of year, although with so much else going on, it is hard to get all the posts up before the end of the year. I usually end up planning in December and posting in January.

I am hosting the European Reading Challenge again in 2023 and a TBR 23 in '23 challenge. I will get those posts before the end of the year, I promise!

What are your blogging plans for December? Do they include planning or posting any 2023 reading challenges?

See you tomorrow when the advent calendar continues!

I Meant to Tell You by Fran Hawthorne -- BOOK REVIEW

 

BOOK REVIEW

I Meant to Tell You by Fran Hawthorne

Fran Hawthorne's new novel, I Meant to Tell You, starts with the disclosure of a little secret and follows the ripple effects of that disclosure back through years and relationships.

Miranda and Russ are engaged to be married and Russ is ready to start a new job in the U.S. Attorney's office. As part of a routine FBI background check, both must disclose any criminal history. Miranda had never told Russ that years earlier, she tried to help a friend and her child leave the US for Israel during her friend's nasty divorce. Although Miranda did not know this trip was illegal, is was, and she and her friend were arrested at the airport. Miranda was sentenced for a misdemeanor, which was later expunged. Because the conviction was not on her record, she didn't mention it to Russ or the FBI. Big mistake.

The story unspools from there. Other family and marital secrets come to light. The characters wrestle with the ethical dilemmas created by balancing secrecy and honesty. Hawthorne narrates the book through the multiple voices of those involved. The story remains upbeat and it is a fairly quick read, but provides food for thought. It would be a terrific book club pick.

I Meant to Tell You launched this month, in time for holiday gift giving. It is Fran Hawthorne's second novel after her 2018 debut, The Heirs.

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste by Luke Barr -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you celebrating our American tradition this week. It seemed to me like a perfect week to read about American food history.

One of the things I give thanks for are all you book blogging buddies who join me every week on Book Beginnings on Fridays! Thanks for gathering here each week to share the opening sentence (or so) of the book you are reading this week (or just a book you feel like highlighting). 

MY BOOK BEGINNING

On a cool August morning in August 2009, I drove up a sloping, narrow driveway in Glen Ellen, California, on my way to visit the past. 

-- from Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste by Luke Barr.

In this opening scene, Barr describes visiting Last House, the home of his Great Aunt, legendary American food writer M.F.K. Fisher. Fisher lived in Last House for over 20 years before her death in 1992. 

This is one of my picks for Nonfiction November. If you like food writing or are interested in the history of American food, you can see from the publisher's description of this book why it is so appealing:

Provence, 1970 is about a singular historic moment. In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery. Without quite realizing it, they were shaping today’s tastes and culture, the way we eat now. The conversations among this group were chronicled by M.F.K. Fisher in journals and letters—some of which were later discovered by Luke Barr, her great-nephew. In Provence, 1970, he captures this seminal season, set against a stunning backdrop in cinematic scope—complete with gossip, drama, and contemporary relevance.

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please add the link to your Book Beginning post in the linky box below. Use the hashtag #bookbeginnings if you share on social media, so we can find each other. 

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.

THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Provence 1970:

All this was percolating just as M.F., Child, Beck, Beard, and Jones gathered in Provence in December 1970. They would be joined by Richard Olney, a self-trained American cook who had long lived in France and had just published The French Menu Cookbook, outlining a bohemian version of the French ideal.

Midcentury Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America's Atomic Age by Cecelia Tichy -- BOOK BEGINNINGS

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAYS

Do you collect books on any particular subject -- gardening, outer space, sports, whatever?

I have a middling-sized collection of books about cocktails. They aren't all recipe books, although some are. They are books about cocktails culture and history, bartending guides, recipe books, books about entertaining with cocktails, and a couple of books about writers who enjoyed their cocktails, sometimes too much. I have a new one to share today on Book Beginnings on Fridays. 

Please share the opening sentence (or so) from the book you are reading this week. Or share froM a book that caught your eye.

MY BOOK BEGINNING

America at midcentury was a nation on the move, taking to wings and wheels along the new interstate highways and in passenger jets that soared to thirty thousand feet above the earth.

-- from Midcentury Cocktails: History, Lore, and Recipes from America's Atomic Age by Cecelia Tichy. 

This new book explores icons of midcentury American life -- such as commuter trains, tiki bars, suburban weekends, Playboy bunnies, bachelor pads, and Breakfast at Tiffany's -- and examines how they influenced and were influenced by cocktail drinking. After each chapter, there are recipes for related cocktails. 

The recipes are pretty simple because midcentury was the heyday of straightforward cocktails. Goofy early experiments had died off (for good reason) and today's crazy, anything goes cocktails had yet to be imagined. So there are several recipes in here that are not much more than put "very clear" ice cubes in an Old Fashioned glass, add 1 - 2 ounces of whatever liquor, and maybe stir in 4 ounces of soda water (the "recipe" for Scotch & Soda, for example). That's fine by me, since I live in a house where we consider ice a mixer. 

There are other recipes more elaborate, even frou-frou, especially in the tiki bar chapter. Those can be fun too, just not really my thing. 

YOUR BOOK BEGINNINGS

Please leave the link to your Book Beginnings on Fridays post in the box below. If you share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings. 

Mister Linky's Magical Widgets -- Thumb-Linky widget will appear right here!
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.

THE FRIDAY 56

Freda at Freda's Voice hosts another teaser event on Fridays. Participants share a two-sentence teaser from page 56 of the book they are reading -- or from 56% of the way through the audiobook or ebook. Please visit Freda's Voice for details and to leave a link to your post.

MY FRIDAY 56

From Midcentury Cocktails:

Page 56 has recipes, so here's one from the chapter on weekends in the suburbs: 

NEW YORK SOUR

    Ingredients:

1. 2 oz blended whiskey
2. Chilled dry red wine
3. 1/2 ounce lemon juice
4. 1 teaspoon sugar
5. 1/2 slice lemon

    Directions:

1. Put ample ice in shaker.
2. Vigorously shake whiskey, lemon juice, and sugar.
3. Strain into 6-ounce sour glass.
4. Fill glass with red wine.
5. Stir, garnish with lemon slice, and serve.

What do you think? Would you try it?