2015 Christmas Spirit Readathon and Reading Challenge

Aren’t these beautiful banners? They were created by Michelle Miller for these events which she graciously hosts for us at her lovely blogs, Seasons of Reading and The Christmas Spirit.

My focus for this year’s Christmas Spirit Read-a-Thon and Christmas Spirit Reading Challenge will be Christmas traditions.  First, I am reading from three books which describe Christmas traditions in Scandinavia. For the Read-a-thon my first goal will be to read Sigrid Undset’s book, Happy Times in Norway, the first third of which is devoted to her memories of a Norwegian Christmas before the Second World War. Undset, best known for her masterpiece trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter, wrote this memoir of the prewar years while living in New York, having fled the Nazi invasion and occupation of Norway.

For the Reading Challenge, I also  plan to cover the Christmas traditions in two books: Of Swedish Ways by Lilly Lorenzen and Of Finnish Ways by Aini Rajanen. Together, these three books will be part of the Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge, and I’ll write about them at my Northern Lights Reading Project.  These will also be some reading for my Nonfiction November!

One of my own Christmas traditions is to break out (and dust off) the cookbooks! Last year I tried a wonderful Scandinavian Christmas cookbook.  This year I have decided to browse through my two Gooseberry patch Christmas books, which have delightful reminiscences of family Christmas traditions submitted by readers and compiled by the authors over the years.  The recipes are very homey and festive; I usually get some new ideas for dressing up turkey leftovers (such as easy Turkey Tetrazzini) from these books.  They also have ideas for simple decorations and fun activities to do with kids during the holiday season.

Another of my Christmas traditions is to read something by Dickens, and this year I will read his last Christmas ghost story, The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain.

Haunted Man frontispiece 1848 by Bradbury & Evans – Heritage Auction Galleries. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons

He wrote it in 1848, interrupting his work on Dombey and Son.  Since I have just begun reading Dombey myself, I thought it was perfectly fitting that I too interrupt his novel to enjoy this Christmas novella! It can be found online at several places.

Finally, my last reading tradition is to gather some daily advent reflections. This year I am looking forward to one by Mother Mary Francis called Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Art of Waiting.

I wish everyone happy reading, Happy Thanksgiving, and many unexpected joys in the holiday season ahead.

 

 

 

 

#TTWIBRAT 2015 Mini-Challenge Wrap-Up, Giveaway Winner, and Highlights!

Image courtesy of potowizard at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

The November issue of Real Simple magazine features as its lead story, “How to Make Time for What Matters.” That headline describes so well my feelings about the last two whirlwind weeks of time spent participating in our Travel the World in Books Readathon. I can’t say enough how much fun it was to make time to instagram daily, write posts, read posts, tackle mini-challenges, join in two Twitter chats, and see and share what everyone was doing to read widely and diversely.  I feel even more motivated to plan for further worldwide reading with the help of all the creative exchanges of book recommendations.  Doing this stuff really matters, and will affect my reading choices in months and years ahead. My thanks to hosts Tanya from Mom’s Small Victories, Becca from I’m Lost in Books, Savvy Working Gal, and Aloi from Guiltless Reading; I’m so glad to be among you, for this readathon and for the Travel the World in Books Reading Challenge, with more readalongs and other events (such as Nonfiction November going on now) planned for the coming year.

I was delighted to host a mini-challenge on Favorite Characters and Cover Art, with a Giveaway (by random drawing) of a book displaying some of my own favorite characters in fabulous cover designs. Here are the cover art entries:

Lory of The Emerald City Book Review (who was also the WINNER of this Giveaway!), submitted this beautiful cover depicting the March sisters from Little Women:

My pick for the #TTWIBRAT cover art mini-challenge hosted by @Fictional100: The March sisters by Jessie Wilcox Smith pic.twitter.com/IdeI6ObkVr

— Lory (@LoryECBR) October 25, 2015

Susan at The Book Trail wrote a lovely post about four of her favorite characters, including a cover art collage of them:

Becca of I’m Lost in Books shared her amazing collage of favorite world lit characters on Instagram, which included:

1) Nefertari from The Heretic Queen by Michelle Moran
2) Mr. Darcy
3) Elizabeth Bennet
4) Sherlock Holmes
5) Miriam and Laila from A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
6) Lisbeth Salander from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
7) Hermione Granger
8) Okonkwo from Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
9) Midori Kobayashi from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Emma of Words and Peace shared this amazing cover art:

#TTWIBRAT mini #challenge@Fictional100 favorite #character in #cover art. thanks for the fun challenge Lucy! pic.twitter.com/NeN1BrnrBu

— wordsandpeace (@wordsandpeace) October 26, 2015

Aloi from Guiltless Reading also made a photo collage of four favorites:

#TTWIBRAT mini challenge! 4-in-1 fave characters in cover art! All around the world for this shot! 🙂 @Fictional100 pic.twitter.com/iH3HD8f5Ia

— guiltlessreader (@guiltlessreader) October 26, 2015

Tanya from Mom’s Small Victories admired a cover I also found especially striking, from a very moving book about a mysterious little girl:

Another favorite character in cover art is The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey for @fictional100 ‘s… https://t.co/uwHe6f4pfO

— Tanya (@momsvictories) October 26, 2015

Isi of From Isi shared her lovely copy of a book about a favorite teddy-bear character, Henry Brown, who I definitely want to check out!

#TTWIBRAT This is for Lucy’s @fictional100 mini-challenge: the teddy bear is called Henry Brown, and… https://t.co/mklciqtVYU

— Isi (@IsiOrejas) October 31, 2015

Sharon of Faith Hope and Cherrytea made this bold collage of one of her favorites, Drew Farthering, who appears in some pretty stylish cover art!

@Fictional100#TTWIBRAT Fav fictional world lit character? #DrewFarthering [collage 4 xtra impact] 😉 TY Lucy! pic.twitter.com/CEl1cIkJCc

— Faith Hope Cherrytea (@_eHope) October 31, 2015

Thanks to all of you for sharing your favorite characters and the snappy, bold, and beautiful covers that display them!

I was so happy to participate myself in Tanya’s Instagram challenge all through the readathon, Isi’s bookmark pairing challenge, and Heather’s creative book photography challenge.  I also worked on my Fictional 100 book map for Aloi’s terrific book mapping challenge.  So far, I’ve finished 68 of 100 characters, with popup pictures and a description for each one. I WILL finish them all, I promise, one day, and I’ll post about it again, but for now, here it is:

Oh, yes, and since this was a Readathon, I did read some books!! I read about 100 pages in each of two of my planned books:

Although most of my recent traveling by way of books has taken me to Scandinavia, my reading during this readathon was clearly in Eastern Europe, specifically in Poland and Russia. Stories in these countries seem instantly to attract my interest lately, and that is one of the amazing fruits of this challenge: finding stories (fiction or nonfiction) from new places in the world that speak to one’s heart, mind, and spirit.