Winter Reading Challenge

As a book club we have decided to participate in the world of book blogging and its reading challenges!

We will be participating in the Winter Reading Challenge sponsored by Book in Hand.

The criteria was to select a book that celebrats a holiday occurring between Nov 1 and Jan 31st.

Our group will be reading the book : The Stupidest Angel : A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore.

Our discussion will be on January 10th. After that - we will post our review!

Everyone in the club nominated a book for this challenge. Here was our list of nominees we chose from (book blurbs from Amazon):

Good Grief by Lori Winston : Some widows face their loss with denial. Sophie Stanton's reaction is one of pure bafflement. "How can I be a widow?" Sophie asks at the opening of Lolly Winston's sweet debut novel, Good Grief. The Christmas season especially terrifies her: "I must write a memo to the Minister of Happier Days requesting that the holidays be cancelled this year."

Hercule Poirot's Christmas by Agatha Christie: Christie, Poirot--and murder--are never out of season. A family get-together for the holidays begins with a game, and ends in cold-blooded murder. Who better to solve it than Poirot, who "has solved some puzzling mysteries in his time but never has his mighty brain functioned more brilliantly than in Hercule Poirot's Christmas" (New York Times).

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris : Those dreading the holiday season, bestseller Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames) makes life a little easier with this re-release of his uproarious essay collection, newly expanded from the original 1997 edition. Sedaris gets the most mileage out of Christmas, from his stint as a Macy's elf in "Santaland Diaries," to comparing American and Dutch holiday traditions in "Six to Eight Black Men.

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett : Discworld's equivalent of Santa Claus, the Hogfather (who flies in a sleigh drawn by four gigantic pigs), has been spirited away by a repulsive assassin, Mr. Teatime, acting on behalf of the Auditors who rule the universe and who would prefer that it exhibited no life. Since faith is essential to life, destroying belief in the Hogfather would be a major blow to humanity. It falls to a marvelously depicted Death and his granddaughter Susan to solve the mystery of the disappeared Hogfather, and meanwhile to fill in for him.

The Christmas Train by David Baldacci : A Christmas charmer set aboard a cross-country train. Tom Langdon's life hasn't been the same since his all-time love, Eleanor Carter, left him years ago while the two were hotshot journalists, and since he's quit serious reporting for writing fluff. Banned from flying for a year because of an air rage incident, he's decided to write about riding the rails over the Christmas holidays, planning to link up with his erstwhile girlfriend, a Hollywood star, in L.A. Aboard the Capitol Limited, running from D.C. to Chicago, Tom meets a host of unusual fellow travelers, including rambunctious train personnel, lonely wanderers and a pair of elopers.

The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens: "The Cricket on the Hearth" is Charles Dickens 1845 novel, which marks the third of five Christmas books written by the author between 1843 and 1847. It is the story of John Peerybingle and his family who are visited by a guardian angel in the form of a cricket who is constantly chirping on their hearth. A delightfully fantastic story, "The Cricket on the Hearth" was the best-selling of Dickens five Christmas books and is a perfect little tale for the Christmas holiday season.

Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival by Norman Ollestad: The story itself could take your breath away: an 11-year-old boy, the only survivor of a small-plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1979, makes his way to safety down an icy mountain face in a blizzard, using the skills and determination he learned from his father.

Skipping Christmas by John Grisham: Grisham's story revolves around a typical middle-aged American couple, Luther and Nora Krank. On the first Sunday after Thanksgiving they wave their daughter Blair off to Peru to work for the Peace Corps, and they suddenly realize that "for the first time in her young and sheltered life Blair would spend Christmas away from home." Luther Krank sees his daughter's Christmas absence as an opportunity. Instead, Luther books a 10-day Caribbean cruise. But things start to turn nasty when horrified neighbors get wind of the Krank's subversive scheme and besiege the couple with questions about their decision.