Home for the Holidays Reading

I’m home for the holidays! After dragging myself to the finish line of a rough semester, I’m excited for two weeks at home. Going home means good food, lots of family, and of course extensive reading.

Personally, I don’t want to bring home ten pounds of books, so I like to strategize while packing. I want a nonfiction, a more literary read, something light, and something I can dip in and out of. I also want to keep in mind that there’s a good chance I will get at least one book for Christmas. This year I didn’t fully succeed on the lightness, since a lot of the books on my current TBR are heavier reads.

This year I brought home Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2014, North and South, One Hundred Years of Solitude, and my Kindle. My Kindle has the Complete Sherlock Holmes as well as some YA re-reads.

I don’t bring all these books home because I’m planning to finish every single one. I have a big family who I enjoy spending time with, so most of the day the house is either too loud to read or I’m doing family activities. I just like to have a variety of books to choose from. This is why I like to have books like Best American Nonrequired Reading or Sherlock Holmes short stories, because they’re easy to sit down for twenty minutes. Other books like Empress Dowager Cixi I read at night, when I usually get about two hours of reading done.

The holidays are also a great time to catch up on all the pieces I have saved in my Pocket. When I’m on Twitter or going through all the newsletters in my inbox, I fill up my Pocket with tons of stuff but only manage to get through a portion of it. During the holidays I have a lot more time to settle down with pieces like this meditation on whether philanthropy is bad for democracy, money and the Gilmore Girls, and what to listen to now that Serial is over.

There are lots of different ways to enjoy all the extra reading time at the holidays, so feel free to share how you’re reading this holiday season!

Holiday Gift Guide

It’s officially Christmas season! Like many other people, I have already gone Christmas crazy with movies, advent calendars, and candles. Christmas season also means trying to get presents for people you may not actually know that well or for your niece/nephew who is too old for toys but too young for Call of Duty. I’ve compiled some bookish ideas to make your life easier this Christmas.

For all ages and interests:

America’s Best NonRequired Reading

This is a yearly anthology full of short stories, essays, and poems. What makes this unique, is the glorious random bits. This year’s features a script from Welcome to Night Vale, while previous editions have had Best American Palindrome and Best American Term Paper Assignment.

For nonfiction lovers:

Empty Mansions

This book focuses on a mysterious socialite who owns multiple impeccably maintained mansions despite having lived in a New York Hospital for years, allowing no visitors. It traces back through Gilded Age politics, Montana oil fields, family lore, and ends in modern-day New York. It’s such a uniquely American story, with a patriarch on par with the Carnegies and Rockefellers, yet whose name is in relative obscurity.

Fiction to fit (most) tastes:

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour-Bookstore

This was one of my favorite books of the year. The cover glows in the dark, which is just a cool touch, and the story isn’t half-bad either. Clay finds himself unemployed, working in Mr. Penumbra’s bookstore, which seems to have no customers, only people who check mysterious books out. When he starts to investigate, the truth is crazier than he imagined. Intrigue! Romance! Secret societies! Google! I cannot imagine a person who hates this book.

Kids who love fart jokes:

Captain Underpants

Always Captain Underpants. I have a reluctant reader in my life (8-year-old boy) who also hates “girl things.” So, I have put aside my inclination to buy him every Judy Moody and Ramona and Beezus book (even though I feel VERY STRONGLY that boys are more than capable of empathizing with female protagonists BUT THAT IS A DIFFERENT POST) and got the first book of the Captain Underpants series. It features two young boys who write comics featuring their hero Captain Underpants, with the story flipping between their adventures in school and Captain Underpants’ adventures. It’s silly and cute and the hero wears tighty-whiteys.

Baby feminists:

Anything from the Dear America series. Fictionalized diaries of girls growing up during important historical events, they deal with things like crushes and fights with friends, but also with being a teenager on the Oregon Trail (Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie), being a Sioux girl in the Carlisle School (My Heart is on the Ground), or growing up during the Vietnam War (Where Have All the Flowers Gone?). All the books feature kickass girls who make the best of what they have and push for more for themselves.

Kids in general:

The first three Series of Unfortunate Events books. They’re so gloriously dark and grim and weird in the most fantastic kid-friendly way. Depending on who you ask, they are absurdist, steampunk, mysterious, or action.