Merry Christmas!

Here's an old favorite to get you in the mood.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson



I love the voice of the unnamed narrator in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. She really tells it like it is, calling the Herdman family "absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world."

She should know. She and her younger brother - and all of Woodrow Wilson School - have been terrorized by the six unruly Herdman siblings (who "lie, steal and smoke cigars - even the girls") for what seems like forever. They all have learned the tricks of staying out of the Herdmans' way.

But then little bro, Charlie, tired of having goodies stolen from his lunchbox, tells Leroy Herdman that the minister gives kids all the cake and cookies they want at Sunday School.

Inevitably, all six Herdmans show up at church the next Sunday... And the next thing you know they have the leading roles in the traditional (read: boring) Sunday School Christmas pageant, the fire department has to be called in, and the minister's running around town in his bathrobe.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever has been a holiday tradition at my house forever. It's a funny, funny story, but it also carries a deeper meaning. The Herdmans remind us Christmas is about more than just trappings and traditions.

As Gladys Herdman says it, "Hey, unto you a child is born!"

Bill Bryson: Cranky, but Funny

I was just reading that Bill Bryson was recently honored with the Order of the British Empire, so I thought now would be as good a time as any to honor him on the blog.

In The Lost Continent, I'm a Stranger Here Myself, and Notes From a Small Island, Iowa-born Bryson takes us through the absurdities of life and travel in the nation of his birth, and in his adopted country of Great Britain. Nothing is safe from his scrutiny - not vehicle cupholder design, not bad food, and certainly not tourist traps that fail to live up to expectations.

Lost Continent and Notes are basically travelogues. Bryson covers 38-states in the Continental U.S. in the first, and almost the whole of Great Britain in the second. Stranger is more contemplative; a series of essays he wrote on U.S. life to a British newspaper. Some have called them mean-spirited, (and Bryson does come off as a bit cranky now and again), but mostly they're just funny. His snide observations give it to you the way it really is.

These are the only three of his books I have read, but I'm eager to tackle his other travelogues, his books on the wackiness of the English language, and even his ambitious-sounding A Short History of Nearly Everything.

He's a funny, funny man.

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Love Books? Need a Good Laugh?

I can honestly say that the Thursday Next books by Welsh author Jasper Fforde are some of the most intelligent gut-busters I've ever read.

Detective stories don't normally do much for me - but crime thrillers set in an alternate universe where characters from famous books can (and do) get kidnapped, cloned dodos and neanderthals wander and people can get arrested for fooling around with Shakespeare - now that's entertainment.

The Thursday Next books (The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten) are kind of a cross between hard-boiled crime novels, literary exposés, and the silliest political statements you'll ever find. Thursday (yes, that's her real name) is a "literary detective" in (as the book jacket copy calls it) "a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985." Her job involves tracking down the bad guys who perpetrate crimes against books - such as kidnapping Jane Eyre right out of the pages of her own novel.

I'm convinced Jasper Fforde must have a very interesting mind to think up all of this stuff. He's recently moved on to a second, equally-loony series based on crimes against nursery rhyme characters.

If you've ever wanted to jump into the pages of a favorite book, you need to give these a try. My favorites are actually number 2 and 3.