Hello to the holidays!

by Michelle Y. Souliere

Greetings, all!  As you could see, Sharon has been writing the bulk of posts since mid-summer, when I wound up on hiatus for a few months (major surgery, illness and death of my mom – all the not-fun stuff).  During the initial recovery from my surgery, I was under orders to avoid activity/working, so I read – A LOT.  I’ll be doing a little roundup of some of the excellent titles that kept me entertained at some point in the near future, because a lot of them were mysteries, and many were quite good.  But meanwhile…

There is a nip in the air, the store shelves are rife with pumpkin spice products, and grocery lists are filled with clues to the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday dinner.  The weather is promising to be cold and messy, encouraging folks to curl up indoors in a favorite cozy spot.  If you are me, and regularly distracted, now is the time to start snagging a few fun titles for your holiday reading list, so you don’t get caught empty-handed.

For me, Christmas reading usually includes mystery and horror, and some purely wintry reads, because who actually finishes books in a reasonable amount of time?  Not me. 

I didn’t set out to have a Christmas reading list until I was introduced to the experience of spending the holiday with my husband’s family up in Aroostook County.  Winter up there is a whole other thing than in southern Maine – all-encompassing, and swaddled in snow and fierce cold.  Patty, my mother-in-law, was all-in on Christmas, and walking into their house was to be surrounded by a kind of Christmas magic I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid.  It really made me want to immerse myself in the holiday in a way I hadn’t felt in decades.

The original cover art

It was once upon a time ago, when I worked at the Portland Public Library, that inspiration hit on the eve of our annual Aroostook pilgrimage – what better way to eat, sleep and breathe Christmas than to also read Christmas???  And so I went out to the stacks in search of wintry fiction, and came back bearing Van Reid’s Daniel Plainway: Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League. 

Oh, happy day!  I had never read Van Reid before.  Boy was I in for a treat.  Historic Maine fiction set in and around many places I knew, with the irascible crew of the Moosepath League as excellent company on the journey towards solving whatever mystery presented itself each time.  And while the Moosepathian sense of humor is dry, Reid’s writing never is.  That one book set me off, and to this day, I always set aside a few good candidates for holiday reading each year (sometimes more ahead-of-time than others).  AND as the years went on, I read all of Van Reid's Moosepath League books, too.

With the pleasures of holiday reading in mind, Sharon and I will be posting some recommendations for you in early December.  There should be some really fun stuff in our stacks, and some magical unknowns to look forward to.  Happy holidays!

May your Thanksgiving week be full of nice people, interesting conversations, and tasty foods.

Current cover art