Merry Christmas Eve and Day from me too. I have been spending a few days with one of my sisters and since tomorrow is a travel day for me, we exchanged Christmas stockings this evening. After a special pancake breakfast tomorrow morning we will exchange the rest of the gifts and I will be on my way home.

A Happy Christmas to you all from a sunny and cold England. The turkey is in the oven, the presents under the tree, guests have returned from church, carols are on the radio.
Has anyone received some interesting books?

9.10 pm. Christmas Day is almost over In Western Australia and it is Boxing Day now in some of the Eastern States...
I spent the day at my son's place and after the cold lunch sat in the garden watching over the children in the pool.
Vee, I got two mystery books by Janet Evanovich. The other gifts were mainly chocolates to devour with the books!

Merry, merry Christmas to all!

We've just finished breakfast and opened presents and we'll be off to my mother's house for a proper Christmas dinner with the extended family later this afternoon. I've received quite a few books, as well. We even have blue sky and sunshine this morning after a solid week of depressing grey skies and drizzle. Hooray!

Aloha. Mele Kalikimaka!

Many of you are well into Christmas Day or it's already over, but we in Hawai'i just got up. We're the last in line to the rest of the world, as always.

The adults in my family opened our presents last night; then we ate our traditional Christmas Eve homemade tamales (6 dozen beef and pork ones flown in by my son from Texas) with fresh-made chili and several kinds of salsa, including pineapple-jalapeno for a bit of Hawaiian style. Later today we'll have the Hawaiian favorite, Spam-pineapple kabobs, along with turkey and other traditional mainland dishes.

My older son heard me mourn for my lost copy of Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare so he replaced it for me. He also found a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare that I had as a textbook in college (it has the Chandos portrait on the cover). It's in stellar condition with only a few underlinings and annotations, which I don't mind at all -- in fact, I quite like marginalia. At least it doesn't have yellow or pink highlighting. I think student readers who highlight too much -- sometimes whole pages, page after page -- suffer from some sort of mental quirk.

Anyway, it's been a Shakespeare Christmas for me. I wonder what Shakespeare would have thought of his work traveling, as it has done, to places that he never knew existed.

Merry Christmas, everyone. We are home (and one of us is dozing) from an enormous family breakfast and present opening. Christmas dinner was last night, and I'm stuffed after two big meals.

I didn't get a single book but gave one which I pre-read. It's a good thing, really, because I have quite a number of library books checked out, one of which is due tomorrow and not even half read. This month has been especially busy for me, with not enough reading time, but January should fix that.

Two books received for Christmas and only now have I had time to sit down and look at them . . . reading will have to come later.

And Man Created God by US writer Selina O'Grady. It does look rather heavy-going but O'Grady, a producer of religious affairs programmes at the BBC, has detailed all that was going on in the 'Known World' at the time of Jesus . . . all the many cults, sects, weird groups that came and went and the huge part played by the Roman Empire in crushing/supporting them.
Below is a review from the 'Independent'.

On a much lighter note Les Très Riches Heures de Mrs Mole by artist Ronald Searle is a delightful set of drawings Searle did for his wife while she was undergoing chemo' treatment. A pleasure to look at.

Here is a link that might be useful: Independent article 'And Man Created God'

Veer, thanks much for the link to the O'Grady book! Looks like it will be a good companion book to one I just finished: Henry Chadwick's Penguin History of the Early Church. Chadwick assumed his reader already knew the political history, which I don't - so I really struggled with the timeline, since Chadwick referred to events and individuals without much explanation of what and who, but only how they affected Church doctrinal development.

donnamaira, I'll have to get back to you on the Man Created God book; though it may take a while to get through it.
I am in no way a religious person but I do find the history behind biblical, especially New Testament, events fascinating although I know very little about that period.

Back to the 'Mrs Mole' book, below is an article about the making/drawing of it.

Here is a link that might be useful: Mrs Mole

Two books for Xmas: one especially lovely one on the work of William Morris, the other a book on classic fashion, with photos of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Kate Hepburn.

Vee, have you ever read Thos. Cahill's "Desire of the Everlasting Hills"? It is about early church history, after the historical personnage of Jesus (Joshua in Hebrew), and is not written for the "religious-minded" but for those who are curious about exactly how the new religion of Christianity sprang from Judaism.

Mary, thanks for the recommendation, 'though I don't think Cahill's work is much read/available over here. The Amazon reviews (mostly US) vary SO widely, some love him, others . . . less so.