Caleb doesn’t mind defending his family, but too many of the Celebration teams have started acting like the real point of it is the shootouts i
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Caleb doesn’t mind defending his family, but too many of the Celebration teams have started acting like the real point of it is the shootouts instead of the holiday specials. Lyle Odenkirk is a cheerleader for bloodshed, and his ratings suggest many Americans feel the same. To Caleb this borders on blasphemy, a legacy perversion from the days when open-carry groups started patrolling the malls. To him, the guns were never the point. It was about family. Still is.
a not at ALL distressing vision of the future combining reality teevee, black friday mania and a hunger games-flavored all-american celebration of guns and consumerism. oh yeah, and family. let's not forget family. i wouldn't say it's enjoyable - too many mass shootings in the real world make this impossible to enjoy, but it's a good premise, well-written, and you'll probably be thinking about it in the back of your mind for a while after you read it. for once, i'm glad this is just a short story - anything longer than this would water down the concept. AND - since i no longer write long reviews for short stories to save myself the self-imposed stress-and-failure cycle, that's all you get, chums!
Caleb doesn’t mind defending his family, but too many of the Celebration teams have started acting like the real point of it is the shootouts instead of the holiday specials. Lyle Odenkirk is a cheerleader for bloodshed, and his ratings suggest many Americans feel the same. To Caleb this borders on blasphemy, a legacy perversion from the days when open-carry groups started patrolling the malls. To him, the guns were never the point. It was about family. Still is.
a not at ALL distressing vision of the future combining reality teevee, black friday mania and a hunger games-flavored all-american celebration of guns and consumerism. oh yeah, and family. let's not forget family. i wouldn't say it's enjoyable - too many mass shootings in the real world make this impossible to enjoy, but it's a good premise, well-written, and you'll probably be thinking about it in the back of your mind for a while after you read it. for once, i'm glad this is just a short story - anything longer than this would water down the concept. AND - since i no longer write long reviews for short stories to save myself the self-imposed stress-and-failure cycle, that's all you get, chums!
i am late to the...game on this one, but since retailers have trained us to start focusing on christmas the day after thanksgiving (or in SEPTEMBER, ii am late to the...game on this one, but since retailers have trained us to start focusing on christmas the day after thanksgiving (or in SEPTEMBER, if we're talking about michael's), i'm ignoring those heart-shaped boxes of chocolates that are already peppering the drugstore shelves and claiming an extension on christmas in t'other direction, without the panic and only the joy! joy! joy! of it. and, i suppose, also the murrrrrrder.
and if i buy some heart-shaped boxes of chocolates to munch on while i'm reading this, that's my own holly jolly business....more
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the SEWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the SEVENTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your annual reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.
GR has deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. i have tried to restore the ones i could, but my to-do list is already a ball of nightmares, so that's still a work-in-progress. however, because i don't have a lot of time to waste, and because my brain has felt scraped clean ever since my bout with covid, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case GR decides to scrap 'em again.
i am doing my best. merry merry.
DECEMBER 24
merry christmas eve-afternoon, unintentionally the perfect time to (finally) read this christmas classic, whose third paragraph occurs on a just-like-today, and involves unspeakable crimes against cats. or the intent thereof:
It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.
cats are too smart to get snowballed. unlike the heroine of Snowballin': I Fucked Frosty, a veryfine book i wrote once upon a time.
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIFTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards, because i have not compiled as many as usual this year.
IN ADDITION, this may be the last year i do this project since GR has already deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case gr decides to scrap 'em again. 2020 has left me utterly wrung out and i apologize for what's left of me. i am doing my best.
DECEMBER 30: MR. SALARY - SALLY ROONEY
oh, man. this is such a tender and vulnerable love story. because the reader only gets the female POV, it's also a little painful and uncertain, trying to read between the lines of his words and actions; their shared past, not knowing what he's thinking or feeling, trying to gauge his level of investment and unsure whether we should be feeling sorry for her or not. which, basically, puts us in the same emotional boat as the protagonist; spinning in the insecurity of the relationship. deft and authentic bones, here.
i read one of her short stories last year for this project (don't go looking for it, it's one of the reviews goodreads DELETED, before putting the book back up, so i COULD restore it, if i wasn't feeling so once bitten/twice shy about it. still debating whether it's worth my time to restore all the deleted reviews). in any case, this story makes me want to jump on the sally rooney train and read those two books everyone is always going nuts over.
it's also a CHRISTMAS story, sort of, which was an unexpected treat as i continue to grasp at festive feelings in this horrorshow of a year.
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FIFTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2020 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards, because i have not compiled as many as usual this year.
IN ADDITION, this may be the last year i do this project since GR has already deleted the pages for several of the stories i've read in previous years without warning, leaving me with a bunch of missing reviews and broken links, which makes me feel shitty. because i don't have a lot of time to waste, i'm not going to bother writing much in the way of reviews for these, in case gr decides to scrap 'em again. 2020 has left me utterly wrung out and i apologize for what's left of me. i am doing my best.
DECEMBER 25: CHRISTMAS TALE - MARK LAWRENCE
yes, i've already read a mark lawrence story during this year's short story advent calendar, but this one is called CHRISTMAS TALE, for goodness' sake! and, since it is a christmas story involving satan and demons, (theoretical/conceptual) dead puppies, and bread falling buttered-side down, it is pretty much the perfect holiday story for our collective 2020 moods. may your days be merry and bright, all! or at least virus-free. make good choices!
this is the second m.r. james story that seth included in his ghost stories for christmas series (after The Diary of Mr. Poynter: A Ghost Story for Chthis is the second m.r. james story that seth included in his ghost stories for christmas series (after The Diary of Mr. Poynter: A Ghost Story for Christmas, which is about HAUNTED CURTAINS!!!). this one is equally bonkers. it's a genre chimera most accurately, albeit cumbersomely, described as a found-epistolary ghost story/murder mystery with additional horror elements coming from...puppets.
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it begins:
The letters which I now publish were sent to me recently by a person who knows me to be interested in ghost stories. There is no doubt about their authenticity. The paper on which they are written, the ink, and the whole external aspect put their date beyond the reach of question.
what follows are six letters written by a man to his brother concerning his investigation into the disappearance of their uncle henry, the rector of a rural village.
the author of these letters repairs to this village over the xmas holidays to assist in the search for his not-particularly-beloved uncle, as the situation develops from disappearance to suspected death to homicide, offset by appearances of a dickensian innkeeper and his bewildering and irrelevant(?) story about a disagreement about beer that i truly i never understood, partially due to having to parse his (santa?) clause-riddled speeches:
"When I think," he said, "of the language that man see fit to employ to me in this here parlour over no more a matter than a cask of beer—such a thing as I told him might happen any day of the week to a man with a family—though as it turned out he was quite under a mistake, and that I knew at the time, only I was that shocked to hear him I couldn't lay my tongue to the right expression."
He stopped abruptly and eyed me with some embarrassment. I only said, "Dear me, I'm sorry to hear you had any little differences: I suppose my uncle will be a good deal missed in the parish?" Mr. Bowman drew a long breath. "Ah, yes!" he said; "your uncle! You'll understand me when I say that for the moment it had slipped my remembrance that he was a relative; and natural enough, I must say, as it should, for as to you bearing any resemblance to—to him, the notion of any such a thing is clean ridiculous. All the same, 'ad I 'ave bore it in my mind, you'll be among the first to feel, I'm sure, as I should have abstained my lips, or rather I should not have abstained my lips with no such reflections."
he makes several equally chatterboxy appearances, and i have no earthly idea why he took up so much space in this <50-page story, other than to be comic relief against the real selling point of the piece—the narrator's creepy-creepy supernaturally-enhanced christmas eve dream sequence, featuring a punch-and-judy show whose violence is eerily realistic.
The crack of the stick on their skulls, which in the ordinary way delights me, had here a crushing sound as if the bone was giving way, and the victims quivered and kicked as they lay. The baby—it sounds more ridiculous as I go on—the baby, I am sure, was alive. Punch wrung its neck, and if the choke or squeak which it gave were not real, I know nothing of reality.
The stage got perceptibly darker as each crime was consummated, and at last there was one murder which was done quite in the dark, so that I could see nothing of the victim, and took some time to effect. It was accompanied by hard breathing and horrid muffled sounds, and after it Punch came and sat on the footboard and fanned himself and looked at his shoes, which were bloody, and hung his head on one side, and sniggered in so deadly a fashion that I saw some of those beside me cover their faces, and I would gladly have done the same.
this dream will tell him everything he needs to know about his uncle's disappearance, if he knows how to interpret it. 'course, it doesn't matter if he interprets it correctly or not, because anything that can scootch into yer dreams doesn't need a proxy to effectuate their revenge plots, which will soon become clear.
on the first day of christmas, my true love gave to me: several bodies, zero motives, and absolutely no closure on the matter of the beer disagreement.
not as memorable as haunted curtains, but still, a good creepy story for your xmas eve zoom party.
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOURTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2019 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.
if you scroll to the end of the reviews linked here, you will find links to all the previous years’ stories, which means NINETY-THREE FREEBIES FOR YOU!
reviews of these will vary in length/quality depending on my available time/brain power.
so, let’s begin
DECEMBER 28
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i liked this one very much, and i especially like that one of the panels has a little secret nestled in it that will burst out at you unexpectedly, and i especially especially like that this is sort of a christmas story, a day or two (okay, three) too late.
i am too weary and sad and grouchy to write more today. i am still mad at goodreads for messing with my project and too tired from my dumb life to fake good cheer, but i'm very grateful for graphic shorts, because i do not have the energy to read AND visualize and i'm glad for anything that takes away part of my burden.
this one is fun and pretty and spooky, and i'm hoping for better days in 2020 please please ffs please.
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOURTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2019 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.
if you scroll to the end of the reviews linked here, you will find links to all the previous years’ stories, which means NINETY-THREE FREEBIES FOR YOU!
reviews of these will vary in length/quality depending on my available time/brain power.
so, let’s begin
DECEMBER 23
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It was hard to pick between the books and the locket, but the locket was forever whereas a book gets used up after a while. I was worried Gary was going to say that the locket was too valuable to keep, but he inspected it, nodding, and said: “Filigree.” I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew it was something that wasn’t quite good enough. I could imagine him looking at me one day and saying just that. “Filigree.” I was filigree and Barrett was pure gold. I didn’t mind. She was his real daughter, after all. I wanted him to treat her good, to think of her as something far more precious than me.
reminds self (not for the first time) to read more laura lippman ASAP.
laura lippman is so good. this story is so good.
it's a baltimore christmas story featuring tess monaghan—lippman's much-beloved/acclaimed PI and it is a perfect antidote to all that feel-good holiday fare bing-bonging around that's been making me feel extra grinchy lately.
it's absorbing and engaging and you're deep into it; engrossed in the situation, feeling the characters, loving the voice and then it bites your head off just because it can.
holidays are exhausting and emotional. my feet hurt, my time is spoken for, my wallet is empty; the days are all unreasonable to do lists and the nights are all stress dreams. but carving out a little time each day to read a short story, especially when they are good, has given me an oasis in the glittery sugarstorm of panic and despair and double-sided tape. i am grateful for these moments.
give yourself a stocking stuffer of me-time and read this one!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOWELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
this explanation/intro will be posted before each day’s short story. scroll down to get to the story-review.
this is the FOURTH year of me doing a short story advent calendar as my december project. for those of you new to me or this endeavor, here’s the skinny: every day in december, i will be reading a short story that is 1) available free somewhere on internet, and 2) listed on goodreads as its own discrete entity. there will be links provided for those of you who like to read (or listen to) short stories for free, and also for those of you who have wildly overestimated how many books you can read in a year and are freaking out about not meeting your 2019 reading-challenge goals. i have been gathering links all year when tasty little tales have popped into my feed, but i will also accept additional suggestions, as long as they meet my aforementioned 1), 2) standards.
if you scroll to the end of the reviews linked here, you will find links to all the previous years’ stories, which means NINETY-THREE FREEBIES FOR YOU!
reviews of these will vary in length/quality depending on my available time/brain power.
so, let’s begin
DECEMBER 17
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He’d seen awful things too. A man sliced in half by a flying glass pane, his entrails worming from his stomach. Craig’s broken skull. The good things had to be held in the mind, and remembered, and celebrated. That was why he had to get the pages for Helene and why they would have a nice Christmas.
BING BONG, BING BONG! the first of the december short story advent calendar stories to be christmas-themed. sort of. it takes place in a ruined world, made of cold and extreme wind, survivors and tinned food, where nearly all of the animals are dead and nearly all of the books have been ruined. no, thank you, says me, but the narrator is a man with a much stiffer upper lip than mine, and a pregnant woman under his care. out he ventures into the raging winds, risking his life to get her a very special christmas present, making every black friday nightmare story you've heard seem like child's play.
a lovely and very harrowing christmas miracle tale.
fulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #3: Read a mystery where the victim(s) is not a woman
i knew i was in trouble with this one fromfulfilling book riot's 2020 read harder challenge task #3: Read a mystery where the victim(s) is not a woman
i knew i was in trouble with this one from the very first page:
Claudine couldn't see them outside the salon's picture window, her head stuck under a hooded dryer. With a freshly French-manicured hand, she reached into her cream-colored Chanel flap bag and pulled out the guest list: not counting herself, Henry, and their six employees. There hadn't been much time to put the list together. Zara had let her know she was coming just a few days before. Considering the short notice and how packed Aspen social calendars were during the holiday season, these were good, solid choices:
Captain and Mrs. Tiggleman Kevin and Jerry The Alpine Brothers
it goes on from there to enumerate her reasons for inviting each of these people and how they will contribute to her 'sell a house to a pop star at a holiday party' scheme, but surely there's a more credible transition to that bit o'exposition than to have a character for whom physical appearance is clearly a priority risk her new manicure to consult a written list of six names? because she can't just remember those names on her own?
sure, it's a tiny moment that most readers probably sailed through without distress, but it's a clumsy move so easily avoided, and it just set the tone for me, clouding my opinion from the get-go.
the premise sounded great: a festive white elephant exchange goes awry when one of the unwrapped items turns out to be a statue that hosts claudine and her husband henry recognize as the murder weapon responsible for all of their professional successes, and which they assumed had been safely tucked away in a police evidence locker all these years. someone knows their murdery secret! but who? someone is messing with their heads! but why? it is all very distressing!
for the characters, maybe. for the reader, it's kind of a drag. the statue isn't even revealed until page 136, with fewer than 100 pages to go, so there's not much in the way of tension-building on the journey to whodunnit-town.
worse than that, this synopsis of this book promised me Clue, and it did not give me even a tiny bit of Clue, other than there being a house full of people and some inclement weather. there's no humor, there's no cast of colorful characters with seeeecrets, there's not even a murder at this damn party! there's some murder in the past, and claudine and her husband for sure have some secrets, but the rest of the characters are just...there, not even developed enough to be viable suspects.
the synopsis is also misleading with its claim that Further adding to the drama is a snowstorm that closes nearby roads—preventing anyone from leaving, as well as keeping law enforcement from the scene. i mean, sure, there's a mighty snowstorm, but there's never a scene where guests try to leave and are prevented from leaving because of the snowstorm, and there's no mention of the police until page 224 of 229.
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even then, it's more about getting the paramedics there than the cops, and the difficulty of getting to the house is delivered in a single, grammatically awkward sentence: Once they were called, it took them a while to get there, the roads were terrible.
hardly synopsis-worthy.
it's a fast read, but there's not much to it. there's some shitty behavior by people in their personal and professional lives, a lot of blurry background characters eating hors d'oeuvres, one reveal that was predictable and one that unsatisfyingly toes the line of the genre's rules of fair play, plus a cringey late-stage attempt at moralizing w/r/t polite society's fascination with true crime stories.
i give it a three because twos are what i give books that i resent for wasting my time, and this one was such a quickie that it didn't put me out much, but it's a weak-tea three at best.
my monsterporn read of the month. i am a little bit late. unlike the arrival of christmas decorations. i am also much less sexxy than the unexpectedlymy monsterporn read of the month. i am a little bit late. unlike the arrival of christmas decorations. i am also much less sexxy than the unexpectedly early arrival of christmas decorations.
for the past two years, i’ve set december’s project aside to do my own version of a sh
WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
boilerplate mission statement intro:
for the past two years, i’ve set december’s project aside to do my own version of a short story advent calendar. it’s not a true advent calendar since i choose all the stories myself, but what it lacks in the ‘element of surprise’ department it more than makes up for in hassle, as i try to cram even MORE reading into a life already overcrammed with impossible personal goals (live up to your potential! find meaningful work! learn to knit!) merry merry wheee!
since i am already well behind in my *regular* reviewing, when it comes to these stories, whatever i poop out as far as reflections or impressions are going to be superficial and perfunctory at best. please do not weep for the great big hole my absented, much-vaunted critical insights are gonna leave in these daily review-spaces (and your hearts); i’ll try to drop shiny insights elsewhere in other reviews, and here, i will at least drop links to where you can read the stories yourselves for free, which - let’s be honest - is gonna serve you better anyway.
HAPPY READING, BOOKNERDS!
links to all stories read in previous years' calendars can be found at the end of these reviews, in case you are a person who likes to read stories for free:
scroll down for links to this year’s stories which i will update as we go, and if you have any suggestions, send 'em my way! the only rules are: it must be available free online (links greatly appreciated), and it must be here on gr as its own thing so i can review it. thank you in advance!
DECEMBER 25
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The kit-bag lay close in front of him, several feet nearer to the door than he had left it, and just over its crumpled top he saw a head and face slowly sinking down out of sight as though someone were crouching behind it to hide, and at the same moment a sound like a long-drawn sigh was distinctly audible in the still air about him between the gusts of the storm outside.
HAUNTED BAG!!!
okay, i got a day behind in the reviewing of these short stories, and i am too weary to drop two tonight, so i will do two tomorrow. christmas made me a short story grinch, i apologize!
i did READ this one yesterday, if that counts. but i am mini-reviewing it late and everyone's okay with that.
because, you guys, this one was actually pretty spoooky! i KNOW! i was amazed. i really, really liked it. i thought i wasn't a fan of blackwood because of his whole horror is best served IMPLICITLY thing, but this story had a really good creepery mood going on, and it gave me those good DON'T LOOK BEHIND YOU vibes.
tomorrow i will be better at everything, i promise, but today i am too depleted to get back on track.
for the past two years, i’ve set december’s project aside to do my own version of a sh
WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
boilerplate mission statement intro:
for the past two years, i’ve set december’s project aside to do my own version of a short story advent calendar. it’s not a true advent calendar since i choose all the stories myself, but what it lacks in the ‘element of surprise’ department it more than makes up for in hassle, as i try to cram even MORE reading into a life already overcrammed with impossible personal goals (live up to your potential! find meaningful work! learn to knit!) merry merry wheee!
since i am already well behind in my *regular* reviewing, when it comes to these stories, whatever i poop out as far as reflections or impressions are going to be superficial and perfunctory at best. please do not weep for the great big hole my absented, much-vaunted critical insights are gonna leave in these daily review-spaces (and your hearts); i’ll try to drop shiny insights elsewhere in other reviews, and here, i will at least drop links to where you can read the stories yourselves for free, which - let’s be honest - is gonna serve you better anyway.
HAPPY READING, BOOKNERDS!
links to all stories read in previous years' calendars can be found at the end of these reviews, in case you are a person who likes to read stories for free:
scroll down for links to this year’s stories which i will update as we go, and if you have any suggestions, send 'em my way! the only rules are: it must be available free online (links greatly appreciated), and it must be here on gr as its own thing so i can review it. thank you in advance!
DECEMBER 24
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Yet he was but four and twenty, this man he looked even younger and he had a father some place down East who had been very proud of him once. Well, he had taken his life into his own hands, and this was what he had made of it. That was all there was to be said. He could remember the hopeful things they used to say about him at college in the old days, before he had cut away and begun to live by his wits, and he found courage to smile at them now. They had read him wrongly. He knew now that he never had the essentials of success, only the superficial agility that is often mistaken for it. He was tow without the tinder, and he had burnt himself out at other people's fires. He had helped other people to make it win, but he himself he had never touched an enterprise that had not failed eventually. Or, if it survived his connection with it, it left him behind.
this is a holiday-based prodigal son archetype story, whose first half hit me real close to home with all the woe and despair of an end-of-year self-reckoning when the year (or longer) has not gone very well at all.
and then it all gets sentimental and schmaltzy and MUST BE NICE&yadda.
i loved the first half.
it made me feel terrible when i was already in QUITE a mood. the second half... not so much. it actually made me feel worse, so kudos on writing something that provoked an emotional response, mizz cather, but i have been around the block a few too many times to feel uplifted by christmas miracles, and "hope" and "optimism" are as unrealistic to me as flying reindeer, so as far as the intended goal (presumed by me), of feel-gooderie and earthly rewards as a balm for suffering, not this year, willa claus.
for the past two years, i’ve set december’s project aside to do my own version of a sh
WELCOME TO DECEMBER PROJECT!
boilerplate mission statement intro:
for the past two years, i’ve set december’s project aside to do my own version of a short story advent calendar. it’s not a true advent calendar since i choose all the stories myself, but what it lacks in the ‘element of surprise’ department it more than makes up for in hassle, as i try to cram even MORE reading into a life already overcrammed with impossible personal goals (live up to your potential! find meaningful work! learn to knit!) merry merry wheee!
since i am already well behind in my *regular* reviewing, when it comes to these stories, whatever i poop out as far as reflections or impressions are going to be superficial and perfunctory at best. please do not weep for the great big hole my absented, much-vaunted critical insights are gonna leave in these daily review-spaces (and your hearts); i’ll try to drop shiny insights elsewhere in other reviews, and here, i will at least drop links to where you can read the stories yourselves for free, which - let’s be honest - is gonna serve you better anyway.
HAPPY READING, BOOKNERDS!
links to all stories read in previous years' calendars can be found at the end of these reviews, in case you are a person who likes to read stories for free:
scroll down for links to this year’s stories which i will update as we go, and if you have any suggestions, send 'em my way! the only rules are: it must be available free online (links greatly appreciated), and it must be here on gr as its own thing so i can review it. thank you in advance!
DECEMBER 23
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On the ride home, we’d had our discussion, and father dissected the components of the service.
“At the end,” I told him, “they prayed for the Santaman’s return. Do they do it every Dragonsday?”
He nodded. “Some of them do it every day.”
“Not just on Dragon’s Mass Eve?”
“No.”
“But they believe one day it will work?”
“Yes.”
“They really really believe?”
He nodded again. “They really really believe. And I used to, too. Even your mother, in some ways, believed. Only she believed that if there was a Santaman, he expected us to work while we waited and make things as good as we could.” He looked thoughtful for a moment.
“But we don’t believe now,” I said.
He smiled at me. “I don’t believe now. Do you?”
I smiled back. “No, I really don’t. I think…” I tried to find something to hitch my thought to. I remembered the growing stack of bound cardboard covers he kept in the drawer beside his bed, each containing my carefully written pages of our fictional misadventures spread out over a half-dozen Dragon’s Mass Eves. “I think it’s a good story but I don’t think it’s true.” Then, I said what I knew he was going to say next. “But I suppose being true isn’t always required.”
He smiled. “Exactly so.”
OH GOOD ANOTHER SAD CHRISTMAS STORY, WHEEEEE! i guess it's not technically a christmas story, but a dragon's mass eve story with an absentee hero figure called santaman, assorted creatures, largely undefined, and a generational passing of a torch as a father dies and is mourned before mourning paves the way for motherhood. also a character named parson brown LIKE IN THAT SECULAR XMAS CAROL! and it's fine. i took a break from baking and crafting and wrapping to read it and it was longer than i thought it would be (TWSS) and i swear i'm not resenting it on those grounds, but i didn't respond to it in any particular way other than feeling pleased at having notched my short story advent calendar belt for the day. does this make me a grinch? perhaps. but it makes me a grinch who is ACHIEVING ALL THE GOALS! which is a christmas miracle, so i'll take it.