Virtual Advent Tour - Books for Christmas

    I stumbled across the virtual advent tour and thought it was a great idea. As a new blogger I also thought it would be a guide to other blogs and would also introduce my blog to others. I hope that this will become a new Christmas tradition for me.

I'm very lucky to have been born into a family of readers. For as long as I can remember, my mother has sat in her rocking chair reading. She reads mainly mysteries, so I come by that reading choice honestly. My father reads mostly non-fiction, my brother sci-fi, and my sister literary fiction. There are always newspapers and magazines around, and lots and lots of books. I'm also very lucky to live in a country that observes Boxing Day, Dec. 26th, the perfect day to hunker down and read the new books that have shown up under the Christmas tree, and to eat left-over turkey.

This usually works out, but one year I did not receive a single book for Christmas. I can hear you gasp in horror. Everyone else got something new to read, but not me, and I wandered around bereft without anything to do. Mind you, I could have got in my car and driven fifteen minutes to my place and chosen any number of books from Mt. TBR, but it just wouldn't have been the same. I now put several titles on my Christmas list, and my sister makes sure I will get at least one of them. Actually, now that my sister and I are the main shoppers for the family, we make sure that everyone will have some reading material for those nice lulls that occur between gift-giving and turkey-eating, and on Boxing Day. Everyone gets a magazine in his or her stocking, and everyone gets at least one book under the tree. In the picture my nephew Ian is opening his stocking and you can see the book he got in it.
So, what are the books on my list to give and receive?
For my mother I think it might be The Brutal Telling by Louise Penny.
For my father, The Damned by Nathan Greenfield, nonfiction about Canadians in the battle of Hong Kong and the POW experience.
For my sister, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen.
For my brother one of the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett that he doesn't have yet.
And for my nephew Ian, I think I'll get him Bunnicula.
As for my brother-in-law, I haven't a clue!
Some of the titles on my list are: Sign of the Cross by Anne Emery, Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane, and On the Line by S.J. Rozan, just to name a few.

Thanks for dropping by. I hope you all have a Merry Christmas with lots of love and laughter, and maybe a lull or two for some good reading.

Lesley
P.S. The videos on the side are of my hometown, Wolfville, Nova Scotia, where the Hallmark movie November Christmas was shot this past August. It was fun to see all the Christmas decorations up in the middle of a heatwave.