Holly and Goblins and Dickens! (Oh my!)

The end of a holiday weekend and an extremely gray day create the perfect combination for reading (or napping). As we are just over a few weeks away from our monthly meeting, I decided to remove the binder clip and preview our packet of readings lovingly and perhaps cheekily assembled by GBC Bill.

Contents if you're reading along at home:

• "My Christmas Carol" by Budd Schulberg: short story which begins with a Hollywood reference. Nice.
• "Another Christmas Poem" by Wendy Cope: 4 lines and funny.
• "Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons: I have just recently re-watched the film courtesy of Hulu. Anyone else remember the Starkadders or the woodshed?
• "Buying presents" by E.M. Delafield from The Diary of a Provincial lady, 1930: Burberry mentioned even then
• "Lilliputians at the Malplaquet" by T.H. White from Mistress Masham's Repose: has to be the most unusual of titles we have read since HCBoTA
• Charles Dickens' "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton" and "The Pickwickians Celebrate": both though quite old are new to me.

The packet also includes a couple of other holiday poems, and as I now gaze at my sofa covered with stories, perhaps I should have asked if these reading were intended to have been completed in order.