A Christmas Carol – Carol's Notebook

The Impossible Quest of Hailing a Taxi on Christmas Eve by George Saoulidis

December 14, 2020December 14, 2020 by CarolNo Comments

"The Impossible Quest of Hailing a Taxi on Christmas Eve" is a fun re-telling of A Christmas Carol. Scrooge tries to order a cab on Christmas Eve from an app. The problem is that the cabdriver who shows up won't take him. He's an undesirable customer. While he was busy denigrating the cab drivers in his reviews, the cab drivers were also reviewing him. Eventually Scrooge agrees to a "test" to determine whether he will accepted into a cab again. The ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future are all cab drivers. It had all the pieces of the standard story, but with just enough of a twist to make it feel fresh....

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford

December 6, 2018November 14, 2018 by Carol10 Comments

I was looking for one last non-fiction book for the year to make it an even 12—a lot for me, and I've been in the mood for Christmas reading, if you haven't noticed from my last few posts. Which led me to The Man Who Invented Christmas. No, Charles Dickens didn't invent Christmas, but he did help re-popularize it and shape it as a holiday about family and charity and giving. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol at a point where he was almost flat-broke. He self-published the book, supervising everything from the illustrations to the printing. The story provides a lot of information about how books were published and marketed during the Victorian Era, along with how many were pirated and resold under various guises or made into plays without the author/publisher's consent. While A Christmas Carol didn't make him the money he had hoped, it did become a perennial favorite. It helped shape how we celebrate Christmas and the values we think...

A Christmas Tartan by Paige Shelton

December 5, 2018March 11, 2019 by Carol3 Comments

I've read all three full-length books in the Scottish Bookshop Mystery series and enjoyed them all. Delaney is someone I would like to be friends with. And the other folks in the bookstore, including the owner are fun to spend time with. The bookstore also has a backroom full of various interesting objects and it's often these that lead to the mysteries. In A Christmas Tartan, Delaney is given a box of things that includes a copy of A Christmas Carol with a photo inside. She of course is curious and the photo leads her to an elderly woman in town whose granddaughter is missing. This one is slightly more paranormal than most of the series. The present is connected to the past and to some extent, Delaney sees both, or maybe she doesn't. Either which way, the mystery of what happened to the girl is well-done and the solution made sense. The ending scene made me smile. It's a warm holiday...