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.

Eggs-actly What I Needed

I have a book entitled Deviled Eggs: 50 Recipes from Simple to Sassy by Debbie Moose. I am fond of the recipes which range from "The Yolk's on You" to "the devil made me do it." (Clearly some of these defer responsibility.) I read through the book and deliberated upon the recipe to use for yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner.

I was having a bit of an nontraditional holiday in that I was spending it with friends rather than my family. Staying local meant that I was to have a meal sitting around a table with a designated chair rather than either standing while eating or using long-ago honed musical chair skills to grab a seat from my 40 or so relatives which would have been gathered at my Aunt's home. Different indeed.

For this meal, I had made several traditional recipes "from scratch" and thought perhaps the deviled eggs may need a bit more flair. What to do?

In the end, after having decided to make nutty sweet rolls for an afternoon snack, I opted for traditional [dirty kitchen+time to eat=safe recipe]. I decided to make them like my parents do. (They each have different techniques so I cannot be more specific.) Two of the other guests also brought dishes that were always included in their annual menus, and I realized as the jello mold was passed, that while some things will and do change, some things can still remain the same.

Things I'm Thankful For

In a somewhat particular order:

• the GBC - my friends and my family
• neighbors
• books
• yoga
• technology
• new experiences and their life lessons
• this journey
• those of you who read this blog on a regular basis (and those of you that don't)

Thank you and Happy Thanksgiving!

Reading Lolita in Tehran in Nashville

I am nearly at the half-way mark in Reading Lolita in Tehran. I am amazed at Nafisi's ability to shift from the world of literature and character studies to her life and experiences while in Tehran, both while at the university and during her meetings with students after her official resignation from teaching. But I think this is her point; literature and her life have these parallels. She has walked me through Lolita and now The Great Gatsby leaving me with my next read to tackle Section III called "James". Some of her sentences have a degree of foreboding, and I continue reading waiting for that moment when something bad will happen. I paused as I typed this last sentence as the first two sections have already been dotted with death and descriptions of dreams lost.

It is difficult for me to imagine a life where I would not be free to read any book of my choosing or one in which I did not have available door delivery from amazon. It is appropriate to have this reminder of my good fortune before tomorrow's holiday.