PANDEMIC GRATITUDE
At Chez Page, all the presents are now wrapped, which means Kitty is interested and annoying. Because we are not traveling to see family, and have not seen our family since March, presents were sent with the assistance of Santa Jeff Bezos. When I saw this picture, complete with the Amazon bubble packing material as the star on top, it hit home:
Although I’m on the team of folks who feel like Amazon is evil, I also realize it’s a part of life in the U.S. and that I can’t cut this giant out of my buying, especially not during COVID-19. So, if it lets me give and receive gifts with my family this Christmas, and sending Jackie @ Death by Tsundoku a baby gift, I’m thankful.
Speaking of Jackie . . . Baby Girl has finally arrived! I received the news when I was at work, and I definitely made some squeaky, gleeful noises that are not library appropriate. Jackie said it’s okay for me to tell everyone that baby arrived, but that in Jewish tradition her name will wait until Jackie and her spouse announce it. I mean, I know baby’s name. CUZ I’M SPECIAL. But you’ll have to wait for an update from her. Mom and baby are doing well. And I’m grateful that baby will come home from the hospital in the lil sheepie booties I got her! 😍 Arriving on the last day of Hanukkah, baby is an excellent present to her family and friends.
Lastly, our holiday cookie exchange by mail worked. My family received their lemon tea cookies and enjoyed them. My brother was even reported saying, “These crumpets taste British!” Just roll with it, people.
THIS WEEK’S BLOG POSTS
Bones on Ice by Kathy Reichs was a fun, intelligent mystery about solving the cause of death of a young woman who attempted to summit Mt. Everest, only to be left as a frozen corpse in the “death zone” of the mountain — that is, until an earthquake makes it possible to retrieve her remains.
Game of Hearts by Cathy Yardley was a romantic, nerdy read that balanced a variety of characters, avoided gender stereotyping, and had a fat female lead you can root for in her quest to be a great mechanic and an even better cosplay costume designer.
NEXT WEEK’S BLOG POSTS
My first-ever Goodreads giveaway win was The Office of Historical Corrections: A Novella and Stories by Danielle Evans. I read Evans’s previous collection, Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, four years ago, so was quite excited to see what she’s been up to. I’m not sure this collection made much of an impact on me, despite other readers’ love for it on Goodreads. Review Tuesday.
A book I was excited to read with someone is Some Sing, Some Cry by sisters Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza. My mom and I have a book club (is it a club with two people? or is it a buddy read?), so I pitched the title to her. Given the authors’ backgrounds in theater and poetry, I wondered if a novel they created together would be fairly challenging. I’ll share my review on Thursday.
Grab the Lapels 
If it involves coffee and sitting down and talking a lot and sometimes remembering you were both meant to have read a book, then it’s probably a book club (and I know you’re in different cities, that just means you have to make your own coffee).
Have I asked you yet to read an Australian book in the period 1945-1960? I wonder what I could suggest.
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Heh, we meet in the evening, 8PM, so no coffee. However, we do have to occasionally remind ourselves we read a book!
You have not asked me to read an Australian book set around 1945-1960. The latest was Sarah & Patience.
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You’ll see when you get to my latest post (Sunday. Dymphna Cusack, Say No to Death). Emma has asked for suggestions too, so I’ll see what I can come up with.
(If Jackie asks you about a strange Australian-looking childrens book in the post, tell her it was probably me and A#*@#’s seller didn’t have an option to put a note with it).
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I asked her a week or so if she got anything from you because I know I gave you her address, but nothing yet! I’ll check in again.
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Thanks Melanie. Amazon advised me it was shipped 12 Dec.
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I talked to Jackie last night. The Magic Pudding arrived! The plot sounds ridiculously fun. I told Nick about it, and he said he used to have a VHS tape of an Australian cartoon that had a character named Bunyip, and that this is a creature of Aboriginal lore!
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Nick is quite right, but in this case Bunyip Bluegum is the name of a koala. I’m pretty sure the book is out of copyright and you can see a fully illustrated version online.
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Oh, nice!
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I am always amazed at the number of cookies Americans bake for these cookie exchanges – like hundreds. How do you do it?
Love the cover and title of The office of historical corrections. I would love to have used that in My life in books meme, if I’d read it.
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You typically only bake 12 cookies for each person participating, so because there were three of us total, I baked 72 wee cookies, which are put together to make 36 total cookies. They’re very small and don’t spread while baking, so they were only 2-3 trips into the oven. Not hard at all! I have seen the people who bake large cookies, so it’s tray after tray, which certainly must take the better part of a day and would wear me out.
I saw your book meme! It’s circling around the blog-o-sphere right now, so I’ve seen a few of them just recently.
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You sound very sensible Melanie. I think I could do that.
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Oh, lord, I just started baking dozens more cookies for co-workers, and all I could think was, “Sue called it.”
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Haha … sorry if I was a jinx!
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Um WHAT? those lemon sandwich cookies look amazing, I’m super impressed. We have a whole whack of wrapping still left to do so I’m also impressed with how ready you are.
True about Amazon, I’m avoiding using it as much as possible but sometimes it can’t be helped, especially right now when we don’t want to leave the house! We have to find balance in everything, and feeling guilty about every Amazon purchase won’t help any of us ammiright?
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The lemon cookies are easy to do, through it’s in three separate steps: mix dough and roll into a log so you can refrigerate over night, cut pieces off as if this were break and bake dough and bake it, then frost when totally cooled.
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I think it’s the fact that there are so many steps that are impressive!
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Thanks 🙂
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I think Amazon is a necessary evil this year. I went into the local toy store and took pictures of stuff my girls would like for family who wanted to get presents for them and offered to pick up and wrap stuff and then my mom ordered from Amazon anyway! Oh well… Those sheep booties are super cute!
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We even created Amazon wishlists, which you can then email to other people. I can’t imagine the craziness that could have ensued it we tried to exchange just regular lists. Firstly, people in my family don’t seem to know what they want. But you put them on Amazon and they can find dozens of things that make them happy.
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That does make it easy! We are currently trying to figure out how to schedule three different live gift openings via zoom without entirely overwhelming our children!
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Can you have multiple people on the same zoom call? Even if they aren’t related and are separate families, I would hope they would understand.
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Yes, we can! And fortunately, my brother and his family will be with my parents on Christmas Day. Hope you and Nick have a peaceful day. Merry Christmas!
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Those biscuits look amazing! And a happy week of nice news – hooray!
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Thank you! They were fairly simple to make. We ended up baking more last night: butterscotch gingerbread cookies and dark cherry chocolate kiss cookies, both for coworkers.
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Those cookles look amazing! I think I’m going to make some more sugar cookies this weekend just not put icing on them. I just want the sugar and the butter, LOL.
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Ooooh, especially if you bake the sugar cookies just right so they’re a little bit soft.
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We didn’t even mail presents this year. We agreed with most people to just celebrate really big next year. So I expect one chaotic as hell Christmas in 2021.
I’m glad that you still made it memorable! Those sheep booties are TOO cute.
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Those cookies! Drool! I’m glad to hear the exchange was a success, and the cookies well received (though how could they not be?!).
Also, Tiny Nightmares is a great title, I am now intrigued…
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I found Tiny Nightmares because I was looking up Chavisa Woods titles. Her first collection was one of the first books I reviewed on GTL. I’m listening to another collection of hers right now, plan to read her memoir soon, and discovered she has a novel that sounds right up my alley. Tiny Nightmares includes one of her stories.
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