… and following (almost) straight on the heels of MbD’s post, here is part 2 of your prize and our donation:
So, not only did you all earn enough points to furnish a mobile library in Africa with almost 30 books, the points you earned also make it possible to teach a child in Africa or Asia for a whole year. Yey for all of you — as MbD said, you guys rock!
Original post:
ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1632367/16-festive-tasks-the-prize-part-2
Sooo … with a staggering two-week delay, your hosts are finally getting around to the game’s closing post. (Yeah, we know. Let’s just say the new year started rather busy for both of us …)
Anyway, MbD and I wanted to thank all of you so much for joining the game and participating so actively! It’s been great fun watching the truly amazing things that everybody came up with to complete to the various tasks and book themes that we’d cobbled together into a semi-coherent whole — “imaginative” is putting it mildly; “6 degrees of separation” has got nothing on this crowd! (Not to mention the effect of this game on our respective TBRs … and the “oooohhs” and “aaawwws” induced by all the adorable pet photos floating down our dashboards.)
A special thank you, too, to everybody for reporting in and tallying up posts and for using the “16 festive tasks” tag; particular those of you who put together “final count” posts — all of this was a great help in keeping track of the running score and compiling the final count!
Speaking of which, without further ado:
The final count of points comes to a total of 528
— which translates into a donation of USD 55.00 from MbD and myself to each of the two charities we picked,
Book Aid International and
Room to Read.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some fun details on the outcome of the game:
Number of active participants: 27
(“Active” = completed at least one book or other task for the game)
Average number of points reached: 19.56
Number of card blackouts: 7
(“Blackout” = completed at least one book or other task per square)
Single biggest point-earning square: No. 2 (Guy Fawkes Night & Bon Om Touk) — 45 points total
Runners-up: Squares Nos.1 (All Saints Day / Día de los Muertos & Calan Gaeaf) and 3 (St. Martin’s Day & Veterans’ Day / Armistice Day) — 43 points total each
Least point-earning squares: Nos. 11 (Soyal & Dōngzhì Festival) and 14 (Dies Natalis Solis Invicti & Quaid-e-Azam’s Day) — 17 points total each
On a total of 11 squares (Nos. 1 – 4, 7 – 10, 12, 13 and 15), one or more participants completed all four tasks (book tasks and other tasks). Of these, the squares with the highest number of participants completing all four tasks (3 participants in each case) were:
No. 2 (Guy Fawkes Night & Bon Om Touk)
No. 3 (St. Martin’s Day & Veterans’ Day / Armistice Day) and
No. 15 (Newtonmas & St. Stephen’s Day / Boxing Day)
Square for which the highest number of participants read at least 1 book: No. 1 (All Saints Day / Día de los Muertos & Calan Gaeaf) — 17 participants
Square for which the highest number of participants read a 2nd book: No. 3 (St. Martin’s Day & Veterans’ Day / Armistice Day) — 7 participants
Square for which the highest number of participants completed at least 1 non-book task: No. 4 (Penance Day & Thanksgiving) — 20 participants
b]Square for which the highest number of participants completed a 2nd non-book task:[/b] No. 2 (Guy Fawkes Night & Bon Om Touk) — 8 participants
Bonus points scored via bonus books / tasks referring to individual squares: 17 total
Most bonus points scored via square-specific books / tasks for: No. 5 (Advent) — 6 bonus points total
Bonus points scored via Surprise, Surprise Jokers: 15 total
Points scored via Holiday and Light Jokers: 8 total
Congratulations, everybody, and thank you all so much again!
Original post:
ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1632316/16-tasks-of-the-festive-season-thank-you-and-final-tally
Stack of Books: Books read
Red Bows and Ribbons: Other Tasks completed
Joker cards used:
Square 1: November 1st: All Saints Day / Día de los Muertos & Calan Gaeaf
Book themes for Día de Muertos and All Saint’s Day: A book that has a primarily black and white cover, or one that has all the colours (ROYGBIV) together on the cover.
=> Murder on Christmas Eve (anthology)
1 point
Book themes for Calan Gaeaf:
Read any of your planned Halloween Bingo books that you didn’t end up reading after all, involving witches, hags, or various types of witchcraft –OR– read a book with ivy or roses on the cover, or a character’s name/title of book is / has Rose or Ivy in it.
=> Terry Pratchett: Carpe Jugulum
1 point.
Tasks for Día de Muertos and All Saint’s Day: create a short poem, or an epitaph for your most hated book ever.
=> Epitaph for 50 Shades of Grey and Twilight
1 point.
Tasks for Calan Gaeaf: If you’re superstition-proof, inscribe your name on a rock, toss it in a fire and take a picture to post –OR– Make a cozy wintertime dish involving leeks (the national plant of Wales) and post the recipe and pictures with your thoughts about how it turned out.
=> Bami Goreng
1 point.
Square 2: November 5th: Guy Fawkes Night & Bon Om Touk
Book themes for Guy Fawkes Night: Any book about the English monarchy (any genre), political treason, political thrillers, or where fire is a major theme, or fire is on the cover.
=> S.J. Parris: Heresy
1 point.
Book themes for Bon Om Touk: Read a book that takes place on the sea, near the sea, or on a lake or a river, or read a book that has water on the cover.
=> P.D. James: The Lighthouse
1 point.
Tasks for Guy Fawkes Night: Post pictures of past or present bonfires, fireworks (IF THEY’RE LEGAL) or sparklers. Or: Host a traditional English tea party, or make yourself a nice cup of tea and settle down with a good book to read. Which kind of tea is your favorite? Tell us why.
=> Tea and book
1 point.
Tasks for Bon Om Touk: Post a picture from your most recent or favorite vacation on the sea (or a lake, river, or any other body of water larger than a puddle), or if you’re living on the sea or on a lake or a river, post a picture of your favorite spot on the shore / banks / beach / at the nearest harbour.
=> Norfolk Coast / Rhine Valley at and near Bonn
1 point.
Square 3: November 11th: St. Martin’s Day & Veterans’ Day / Armistice Day
Book themes for St. Martin’s Day: Read a book set on a vineyard, or in a rural setting, –OR– a story where the MC searches for/gets a new job. –OR– A book with a lantern on the cover, or books set before the age of electricity. –OR– A story dealing with an act of selfless generosity (like St. Martin sharing his cloak with a beggar).
=> Kazuo Ishiguro: An Artist of the Floating World
1 point.
Book themes for Veteran’s Day / Armistice Day: Read a book involving veterans of any war, books about WWI or WWII (fiction or non-fiction). –OR– Read a book with poppies on the cover.
=> Victor Gunn: Death in December
1 point.
Tasks for St. Martin’s Day: Write a Mother Goose-style rhyme or a limerick; the funnier the better. –OR– Take a picture of the book you’re currently reading, next to a glass of wine, or the drink of your choice, with or without a fire in the background. –OR– Bake a Weckmann; if you’re not a dab hand with yeast baking, make a batch of gingerbread men, or something else that’s typical of this time of the year where you live. Post pics of the results and the recipe if you’d like to share it.
=> White hot chocolate, book, and Christmas candles.
1 point.
Tasks for Veteran’s Day / Armistice Day: Make, or draw a red poppy and show us a pic of your red poppy or other symbol of remembrance –OR– post a quote or a piece of poetry about the ravages of war.
=> Quotes and poppies.
1 point.
Square 4: November 22nd and 23rd: Penance Day (22nd) & Thanksgiving (23rd)
Book themes for Penance Day: Read a book that has a monk, nun, pastor / preacher, priest or other representative of the organized church as a protagonist, or where someone is struggling with feelings of guilt or with their conscience (regardless over what).
=> Anne Meredith: Portrait of a Murderer
1 point.
Book themes for Thanksgiving Day: Books with a theme of coming together to help a community or family in need. –OR– Books with a turkey or pumpkin on the cover.
=> Holiday Book Joker: Truman Capote: A Christmas Memory / On Christmas / A Thanksgiving Visitor
1 point.
Tasks for Penance Day: Tell us – what has recently made you stop in your tracks and think? –OR– What was a big turning point in your life? –OR– Penance Day is a holiday of the Protestant church, which dates its origins, in large parts, to Martin Luther, who published his “95 Theses” exactly 500 years ago this year. Compile a catalogue of theses (it needn’t be 95) about book blogging! What suggestions or ideas would you propose to improve the experience of book blogging?
=> Recommendations for book blogging.
1 point.
Tasks for Thanksgiving Day: List of 5 things you’re grateful for –OR– a picture of your thanksgiving feast; post your favourite turkey-day recipe. –OR– Be thankful for yourself and treat yourself to a new book – post a picture of it.
=> 5 things to be grateful for.
1 point.
Square 5: December 3rd and following 3 Sundays: Advent
Book themes for Advent: Read a book with a wreath or with pines or fir trees on the cover –OR– Read the 4th book from a favorite series, or a book featuring 4 siblings.
=> Martin Edwards (ed.), Various Authors: Silent Nights (anthology)
1 point.
Tasks for Advent: Post a pic of your advent calendar. (Festive cat, dog, hamster or other suitable pet background expressly encouraged.) –OR– “Advent” means “he is coming.” Tell us: What in the immediate or near future are you most looking forward to? (This can be a book release, or a tech gadget, or an event … whatever you next expect to make you really happy.)
=> TA’s Advent calendar.
1 point.
Bonus task: make your own advent calendar and post it.
Square 6: December 5th-6th and 8th: Sinterklaas / Krampusnacht (5th) / St. Nicholas Day (6th) & Bodhi Day (8th)
Book themes for Sinterklaas / St. Nicholas’s Day / Krampusnacht: A story involving children or a young adult book, or a book with oranges on the cover, or whose cover is primarily orange (for the Dutch House of Orange) –OR– with tangerines, walnuts, chocolates, or cookies on the cover.
=> Frances Hodgson Burnett: Little Lord Fauntleroy
1 point.
Book themes for Bodhi Day: Read a book set in Nepal, India or Tibet, –OR– which involves animal rescue. (Buddhism calls for a vegetarian lifestyle.)
=> Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger
1 point.
Tasks for Sinterklaas / St. Nicholas’s Day / Krampusnacht: Write a witty or humorous poem to St. Nicholas –OR– If you have kids, leave coins or treats, like tangerines, walnuts, chocolate(s) and cookies in their shoes to find the next morning and then post about their reactions / bewilderment. 😉 If you don’t have kids, do the same for another family member / loved one or a friend.
Tasks for Bodhi Day: Perform a random act of kindness. Feed the birds, adopt a pet, hold the door open for someone with a smile, or stop to pet a dog (that you know to be friendly); cull your books and donate them to a charity, etc. (And, in a complete break with the Buddha’s teachings, tell us about it.) –OR– Post a picture of your pet, your garden, or your favourite, most peaceful place in the world.
=> Pet & peaceful garden
1 point.
Square 7: December 10th & 13th: International Human Rights Day (10th) & St. Lucia’s Day (13th)
Book themes for International Human Rights Day: Read a book originally written in another language (i.e., not in English and not in your mother tongue), –OR– a book written by anyone not Anglo-Saxon, –OR– any story revolving around the rights of others either being defended or abused.
–OR– Read a book set in New York City, or The Netherlands (home of the U.N. and U.N. World Court respectively).
=> Patrick Senécal: Le vide, part 1 – Vivre au Max
1 point.
Book themes for Saint Lucia’s Day: Read a book set in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Sweden and Finland for the purposes of this game) or a book where ice and snow are an important feature.
=> J. Jefferson Farjeon: Mystery in White
1 point.
Tasks for International Human Rights Day: Post a picture of yourself next to a war memorial or other memorial to an event pertaining to Human Rights. (Pictures of just the memorial are ok too.) –OR– Cook a dish from a foreign culture or something involving apples (NYC = Big Apple) or oranges (The Netherlands); post recipe and pics.
=> Andartis WWII resistance fighter memorial (Anógia, Crete / Greece).
1 point.
Tasks for Saint Lucia’s Day: Get your Hygge on — light a few candles if you’ve got them, pour yourself a glass of wine or hot chocolate/toddy, roast a marshmallow or toast a crumpet, and take a picture of your cosiest reading place.
=> Hygge!
1 point.
Bonus task: Make the Danish paper hearts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jur29ViLEhk
Square 8: December 12th – 24th: Hanukkah (begins 12th, ends 20th) & Las Posadas (begins 16th, ends 24th)
Book themes for Hanukkah: Any book whose main character is Jewish, any story about the Jewish people –OR– where the miracle of light plays a significant part in the stories plot.
=> C.H.B. Kitchin: Crime at Christmas
1 point.
Book themes for Las Posadas: Read a book dealing with visits by family or friends, or set in Mexico, –OR– with a poinsettia on the cover. –OR– a story where the main character is stranded without a place to stay, or find themselves in a ‘no room at the Inn’ situation.
=> Francis Duncan: Murder at Christmas
1 point.
Tasks for Hanukkah: Light nine candles around the room (SAFELY) and post a picture. –OR– Play the Dreidel game to pick the next book you read.
Assign a book from your TBR to each of the four sides of the dreidel:
נ (Nun)
ג (Gimel)
ה (He)
ש (Shin)
Spin a virtual dreidel: http://www.torahtots.com/holidays/chanuka/dreidel.htm
– then tell us which book the dreidel picked.
=> Dreidel pick: ה (He) – Kazuo Ishiguro: An Artist of the Floating World
1 point.
–OR–
Make your own dreidel: https://www.activityvillage.co.uk/make-a-dreidel, –OR–
Play the game at home, or play online: http://www.jewfaq.org/dreidel/play.htm and tell us about the experience.–OR– Give some Gelt: Continue a Hanukkah tradition and purchase some chocolate coins, or gelt. Post a picture of your chocolate coins, and then pass them out amongst friends and family!
Tasks for Las Posadas: Which was your favorite / worst / most memorable hotel / inn / vacation home stay ever? Tell us all about it! –OR– If you went caroling as a kid: Which are your best / worst / most unfortettable caroling memories?
=> Favorite hotels.
1 point.
Bonus task: Make a piñata (https://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Pi%C3%B1ata), hang it from a tree, post, basketball hoop, clothesline or similarly suitable holder and let your neighborhood kids have a go at breaking it.
Square 9: December 21st: Winter Solstice / Mōdraniht / Yuletide & Yaldā Night
Book themes for Winter Solstice and Yaldā Night: Read a book of poetry, or a book where the events all take place during the course of one night, or where the cover is a night-time scene.
=> Christina Rossetti: The Poetry
1 point.
Holiday Book Bonus Joker for Winter Solstice:
=> Ngaio Marsh: Colour Scheme
1 point.
Book themes for Mōdraniht: Read any book where the MC is actively raising young children or teens.
Book themes for Yuletide: Read a book set in the midst of a snowy or icy winter, –OR– set in the Arctic or Antartica.
=> Anne Perry: A Christmas Visitor
1 point.
Tasks for Winter Solstice and Yaldā Night: Read a book in one night – in the S. Hemisphere, read a book in a day. –OR– Grab one of your thickest books off the shelf. Ask a question and then turn to page 40 and read the 9th line of text on that page. Post your results. –OR– Eat a watermelon or pomegranate for good luck and health in the coming year, but post a pic first!
=> Bibliomancy: William Shakespeare’s answer (9th line of p. 40 of the Complete Works, Illustrated Stratford Edition)
1 point.
Bonus task: Read a book in one night.
=> Anne Perry: A Christmas Homecoming
1 point.
Tasks for Mōdraniht: Tell us your favourite memory about your mom, grandma, or the woman who had the greatest impact on your childhood. –OR– Post a picture of you and your mom, or if comfortable, you and your kids.
=> My grandmothers.
1 point.
Bonus task: Post 3 things you love about your mother-in-law (if you have one), otherwise your grandma.
=> My grandmothers.
1 point.
Tasks for Yuletide: Make a Yule log cake — post a pic and the recipe for us to drool over.
Square 10: December 21st: World Peace Day & Pancha Ganapati begins (ends 25th)
Book themes for World Peace Day: Read a book by or about a Nobel Peace Prize winner, or about a protagonist (fictional or nonfictional) who has a reputation as a peacemaker.
=> The Dalai Lama: The Power of Compassion
1 point.
Book themes for Pancha Ganapati: Read anything involving a need for forgiveness in the story line; a story about redemption –OR– Read a book whose cover has one of the 5 colors of the holiday: red, blue, green, orange, or yellow –OR– Read a book involving elephants.
=> Henry Wade: Lonely Magdalen
1 point.
Tasks for World Peace Day: Cook something involving olives or olive oil. Share the results and/or recipe with us. –OR– Tell us: If you had wings (like a dove), where would you want to fly?
=> Spaghetti and tomato sauce
1 point.
Tasks for Pancha Ganapati: Post about your 5 favourite books this year and why you appreciated them so much. –OR– Take a shelfie / stack picture of the above-mentioned 5 favorite books. (Feel free to combine these tasks into 1!
=> Most and least favorite books of 2017.
1 point.
Square 11: December 21st-22nd: Soyal (21st) & Dōngzhì Festival (22nd)
Book themes for Soyal: Read a book set in the American Southwest / the Four Corners States (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah), –OR– a book that has a Native American protagonist.
Book themes for Dōngzhì Festival: Read a book set in China or written by a Chinese author / an author of Chinese origin; or read a book that has a pink or white cover.
=> Anne Perry: A Christmas Journey
1 point.
Tasks for Soyal: Like many Native American festivities, Soyal involves rituals such as dances. What local / religious / folk traditions or customs exist where you live? Tell us about one of them. (If you can, post pictures for illustration.) –OR– Share a picture you’ve taken of a harvest setting or autumnal leaf color.
=> Carneval in the Rhine Valley — 11/11, 11:11 AM Kick off
1 point.
Tasks for Dōngzhì Festival: If you like Chinese food, tell us your favorite dish – otherwise, tell us your favorite desert. (Recipes, as always, welcome.)
=> Chinese recipes and favorite dessert.
1 point.
Square 12: December 23rd Festivus & Saturnalia ends (begins 17th)
Book themes for Festivus: Read anything comedic; a parody, satire, etc. Books with hilariously dysfunctional families (must be funny dysfunctional, not tragic dysfunctional). Anything that makes you laugh (or hope it does).
=> Dr. Seuss: How the Grinch Stole Christmas
1 point.
Book themes for Saturnalia: The god Saturn has a planet named after him; read any work of science fiction that takes place in space. –OR– Read a book celebrating free speech. –OR– A book revolving around a very large party, or ball, or festival, –OR– a book with a mask or masks on the cover. –OR– a story where roles are reversed.
=> Dorothy L. Sayers: Murder Must Advertise
1 point.
Tasks for Festivus: Post your personal list of 3 Festivus Miracles –OR– post a picture of your Festivus pole (NOTHING pornographic, please!), –OR– Perform the Airing of Grievances: name 5 books you’ve read this year that have disappointed you – tell us in tongue-lashing detail why and how they failed to live up to expectations.
=> Most and least favorite books of 2017.
1 point.
Tasks for Saturnalia: Wear a mask, take a picture and post it. Leave a small gift for someone you know anonymously – a small bit of chocolate or apple, a funny poem or joke. Tell us about it in a post. –OR– Tell us: If you could time-travel back to ancient Rome, where would you want to go and whom (both fictional and / or nonfictional persons) would you like to meet?
=> Wished-for meetings in Ancient Rome.
1 point.
Square 13: December 25th Christmas & Hogswatch
Book themes for Christmas: Read a book whose protagonist is called Mary, Joseph (or Jesus, if that’s a commonly used name in your culture) or any variations of those names (e.g., Maria or Pepe).
=> Georgette Heyer: Envious Casca (aka A Christmas Party)
1 point.
Holiday Book Bonus Joker for Christmas:
=> Mavis Doriel Hay: The Santa Klaus Murder
1 point.
Book themes for Hogswatch Night: Of course – read Hogfather! Or any Discworld book (or anything by Terry Pratchett)
=> Terry Pratchett: Hogfather (buddy read)
1 point.
Tasks for Christmas: Post a picture of your stockings hung from the chimney with care, –OR– a picture of Santa’s ‘treat’ waiting for him. –OR– Share with us your family Christmas traditions involving gift-giving, or Santa’s visit. Did you write letters to Santa as a kid (and if so, did he write back, as J.R.R. Tolkien did “as Santa Claus” to his kids)? If so, what did you wish for? A teddy bear or a doll? Other toys – or practical things? And did Santa always bring what you asked for?
=> Family Christmas traditions.
1 point.
Tasks for Hogswatch Night: Make your favourite sausage dish (if you’re vegan or vegetarian, use your favorite sausage or meat substitute), post and share recipe.
=> Wieners and potato salad.
1 point.
Square 14: December 25th Dies Natalis Solis Invicti & Quaid-e-Azam’s Day
Book themes for Dies Natalis Solis Invicti: Celebrate the sun and read a book that has a beach or seaside setting. –OR– a book set during summertime. –OR– set in the Southern Hemisphere.
=> Ian Fleming: The Man With the Golden Gun
1 point.
Book themes for Quaid-e-Azam: Pakistan became an independent nation when the British Raj ended on August 14, 1947. Read a book set in Pakistan or in any other country that attained sovereign statehood between August 14, 1947 and today (regardless in what part of the world).
=> Light Book Joker Replacement: John Mortimer: Rumpole at Christmas
1 point.
Tasks for Dies Natalis Solis Invicti: Find the sunniest spot in your home, that’s warm and comfy and read your book. –OR– Take a picture of your garden, or a local garden/green space in the sun (even if the ground is under snow). If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, take a picture of your local scenic spot, park, or beach, on a sunny day. –OR– The Romans believed that the sun god rode across the sky in a chariot drawn by fiery steeds. Have you ever been horseback riding, or did you otherwise have significant encounters with horses? As a child, which were your favorite books involving horses?
=> Horse riding adventures and favorite books.
1 point.
Tasks for Quaid-e-Azam: Pakistan’s first leader – Muhammad Ali Jinnah – was a man, but both Pakistan and neighboring India were governed by women (Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi respectively) before many of the major Western countries. Tell us: Who are the present-day or historic women that you most respect, and why? (These can be any women of great achievement, not just political leaders.)
=> Most admired women.
1 point
Square 15: December 25th-26th: Newtonmas (25th) & St. Stephen’s Day / Boxing Day (26th)
Book themes for Newtonmas: Any science book. Any book about alchemy. Any book where science, astronomy, or chemistry play a significant part in the plot. (For members of the Flat Book Society: The “Forensics” November group read counts.)
=> Provisorially: Val McDermid: Forensics
Replaced by: Terry Pratchett / Ian Stewart / Jack Cohen: The Science of Discworld
1 point.
Book themes for Boxing Day/St. Stephen’s Day: Read anything where the main character has servants (paid servants count, NOT unpaid) or is working as a servant him-/ herself.
=> Ngaio Marsh: Tied up in Tinsel
1 point.
Tasks for Newtonmas: Take a moment to appreciate gravity and the laws of motion. If there’s snow outside, have a snowball fight with a friend or a member of your family. –OR– Take some time out to enjoy the alchemical goodness of a hot toddy or chocolate or any drink that relies on basic chemistry/alchemy (coffee with cream or sugar / tea with milk or sugar or lemon, etc.). Post a picture of your libations and the recipe if it’s unique and you’re ok with sharing it.
=> White hot chocolate, book, and Christmas candles.
1 point.
Tasks for St. Stephen’s Day / Boxing Day: Show us your boxes of books! –OR– If you have a cat, post a picture of your cat in a box. (your dog in a box works too, if your dog likes boxes) — or any pet good-natured enough to pose in a box long enough for you to snap a picture.
=> Cats in (and on) boxes.
1 point.
BONUS task: box up all the Christmas detritus, decorations, or box up that stuff you’ve been meaning to get rid of, or donate, etc. and take a picture and post it.
=> Boxed-up Christmas decorations and wrapping paper.
1 point.
Square 16: December 26th-31st: Kwanzaa (begins 26th, ends 31st) & New Year’s Eve / St. Sylvester’s Day
Book themes for Kwanzaa: Read a book written by an author of African descent or a book set in Africa, or whose cover is primarily red, green or black.
=> Margery Allingham: Traitor’s Purse
1 point.
Book themes for Hogmanay / New Year’s Eve / Watch Night / St. Sylvester’s Day: a book about starting over, rebuilding, new beginnings, etc. –OR– Read anything set in medieval times. –OR– A book about the papacy –OR– where miracles of any sort are performed (the unexplainable – but good – kind).
=> The Medieval Murderers: The Sacred Stone
1 point.
New Year’s Eve Holiday Book Bonus Joker: Charles Dickens: The Chimes
1 point.
Tasks for Kwanzaa: Create a stack of books in the Kwanzaa color scheme using red, black and green and post your creation and post a photo (or post a photo of a shelfie where black, red and green predominate).
=> Stack of books, star shape and reader sitting on chair.
1 point.
BONUS task: Create something with your stack of books: a christmas tree or other easily identifiable object.
=> Stack of books, star shape and reader sitting on chair.
1 point.
Tasks for Hogmanay / New Year’s Eve / Watch Night / St. Sylvester’s Day: Make a batch of shortbread for yourself, family or friends. Post pics and recipe. –OR– Light some sparklers (if legal) and take a picture – or have a friend take a picture of your “writing” in the sky with the sparkler. –OR– Get yourself a steak pie (any veggie/vegan substitutions are fine) and read yourself a story – but take a pic of both before you start, and post it.–OR– make whatever New Year’s Eve / Day good luck dish there is in your family or in the area where you live or where you grew up; tell us about it, and if it’s not a secret recipe, we hope you’ll share it with us.
MASSIVE HUGE BONUS POINTS if you post a picture of yourself walking a pig on a leash. (Done to ensure good fortune of the coming year.)
Surprise Bonus Jokers:Surprise, Surprise 1: Melbourne Cup
My “ponies”:
1. Marmelo
2. Almandin
3. Johannes Vermeer
2 bonus points (Johannes Vermeer)
68 points.
Original post:
ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1615040/16-tasks-of-the-festive-season-final-tally
Tasks for Hogswatch Night: Make your favourite sausage dish.
As it so happens, wieners and potato salad are my mom’s and my traditional Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve food. This year we cheated (store-bought instead of homemade potato salad), so no recipe to post, but anyway … here we go!
Original post:
ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1628312/16-tasks-of-the-festive-season-square-16-new-year-s-eve-st-sylvester-s-day
Tasks for Las Posadas: Which was your favorite / worst / most memorable hotel / inn / vacation home stay ever? Tell us all about it!
I think I am going to divide the honors three ways here — and very fittingly, two of the three hotel stays in question were in Spanish speaking countries.
1.) Hacienda Cocoyoc near Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico
My mom, my BFF, a cousin (of sorts — the brother of my eldest cousin’s husband) and I spent a few weeks in Mexico and Guatemala over Christmas and New Year’s some 20+ years ago. This was in the days when even fax machines were still a relatively new thing (and home faxes — which I had — were even less common), and the internet wasn’t a household commodity by any stretch of the term, so I organized the whole trip by telephone, fax, and good old mail, based on hotel recommendations from a number of trusted travel guides. And fortunately, I totally struck gold with the place where I decided we were going to spend New Year’s Eve:
Hacienda Cocoyoc, as the name implies, a converted large, traditionally-built ranch with guest bungalows (new, but also in the traditional style) spread out over the estate near the main building, lush, tropical vegetation all over the place … and the most generous, mouth-watering breakfast buffet I’ve ever come across, featuring everything from authentic Mexican dishes, American and English breakfast, and Continental European breakfast. (Oh yeah, and we had fun on New Year’s as well).
2.) Paradores
In the year after that trip to Mexico and Guatemala, my mom and I visited Spain. Having by that time discovered a great travel agency not far from where I was living, this time around I chose to call on them for advice — and boy, did they ever deliver. The single greatest suggestion they made was for us to stay at Paradores — hotels belonging to a (then) state-run chain and created in authentic historic buildings, such as medieval and renaissance palaces and monasteries (and even where we didn’t stay at a Parador, they found hotels for us that were similarly converted historic buildings run privately as hotels).
Parador de Granada, a converted 15th century monastery
(not my own photos — alas, virtually all of my photos from that trip were drowned in a basement flooded by a leaking pipe)
3.) Torridon Hotel, Western Ross., Scotland
Some twelve or thirteen years ago, a colleague told me he was planning to spend a few days in November in the western Scottish highlands with his girlfriend. “Western Scotland — in November? You’re kidding me, right?” was my response. Then he showed me the website of the hotel where he was staying … and by the time I made plans to travel to Scotland myself a year later, he’d sung the praises of that hotel so thoroughly that I decided to check it out for myself. Since then, I’ve made a point of including a stay there (even if only overnight) in pretty much every trip to Scotland taking me at least arguably in that vicinity. For one thing, this part of the western highlands is among the most dramatic that all of Scotland has to offer, and there’s things aplenty to do and see, and for another thing … talk about getting pampered!
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Tasks for Quaid-e-Azam: Pakistan’s first leader – Muhammad Ali Jinnah – was a man, but both Pakistan and neighboring India were governed by women (Benazir Bhutto and Indira Gandhi respectively) before many of the major Western countries. Tell us: Who are the present-day or historic women that you most respect, and why? (These can be any women of great achievement, not just political leaders.)
After having sung the praises of my mom and my grandmothers not so long ago, it’s probably abundantly clear that these are the women of my personal acquaintance who will always hold my greatest love and respect — along with my BFF Gaby and my very first chairwoman in the Berlin judiciary, Presiding Judge Wiltrud-Irene Krakau. Due to a birth defect (a disfigurement of her spine) she was walking bowed long before reaching retirement age, but this did not keep her from investing all her vigour, energy and considerable intellect into her job, which involved chairing a three-judge panel handling both trial level and appellate cases. I learned from her that great leadership involves empathy, diligence, courtesy, and leading by setting an example — and that respect is never a one way street, nor is it anything that automatically attaches to a person of authority and can ever be taken for granted. It is always something to be earned, and it will be earned all the easier the more genuinely it is reciprocated. Judge Krakau was instrumental in fostering my early career, and although we unfortunately lost contact when she retired from the judiciary and I moved to the U.S., she will always remain one of the persons who have meant the most to me in my entire life.
There are plenty of women of public notice I respect as well — most of them, for standing (or having stood) their ground in what has been, for the last 2 1/2 millennia or so, fairly thoroughly a man’s world. But except for the last century (or at best, century and a half), the reason that we know about these women at all is, more likely than not, that they were born into an exalted position or attained it by marriage — a princess who became queen because there were no male heirs to be given preference to her, a dowager queen, countess or other noblewoman who governed in her deceased husband’s stead, etc. While that doesn’t minimize their achievements, I have even more respect for women who didn’t start with this kind of (albeit questionable) advantage; not least, women writers, particularly the very early female writing pioneers, many of whom had to fight anti-women-writer predjudice (and anti-working-woman prejudice) over, above and in addition to their respective age’s ordinary level of mysogyny (not to mention standing up to male competition):
“When […] one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Brontë who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.”
Virginia Woolf: A Room of One’s Own“[I]f you seek in every way to minimise my firm beliefs by your anti-feminist attacks, please recall that a small dagger or knife point can pierce a great, bulging sack and that a small fly can attack a great lion and speedily put him to flight”
— and —
“[S]ince you are angry at me without reason, you attack me harshly with, “Oh outrageous presumption! Oh excessively foolish pride! Oh opinion uttered too quickly and thoughtlessly by the mouth of a woman! A woman who condemns a man of high understanding and dedicated study, a man who, by great labour and mature deliberation, has made the very noble book of the Rose, which surpasses all others that were ever written in French. When you have read this book a hundred times, provided you have understood the greater part of it, you will discover that you could never have put your time and intellect to better use!”
My answer: Oh man deceived by willful opinion! I could assuredly answer but I prefer not to do it with insult, although, groundlessly, you yourself slander me with ugly accusations. Oh darkened understanding! Oh perverted knowledge … A simple little housewife sustained by the doctrine of Holy Church could criticise your error!”
Christine de Pizan, Le débat sur le Roman de la rose
So, here’s to women writers dead and alive!
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ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1628264/16-tasks-of-the-festive-season-square-14-quaid-e-azam
This novella by Victor Gunn (one of several pseudonyms of Edwy Searles Brooks) also forms the centerpiece of the second British Library Christmas mystery short fiction anthologies edited by Martin Edwards that I read this month (Crimson Snow), but I listened to it in the audio version narrated by Gordon Griffin, who is fast becoming one of my favorite narrators of classic / Golden Age British mysteries.
The story concerns a Christmas visit to Cloon Castle in Derbyshire, the home of Johnny Lister, sergeant to Chief Inspector Bill “Ironsides” Cromwell, Gunn’s gruffly iconic series detective. And the two policemen haven’t even arrived ante portas yet when they’re running into their first mysterious appearance: a figure that seems to be walking in the snow at some distance; without, however, leaving so much as a single footprint. When they are assembled around the fireplace after dinner with the other guests, the afternoon’s strange encounter is duly followed by the legend of the castle ghost and by a visit to the “ghost chamber”, but things take a serious turn when one of the guests engages to spend the night in the “ghost chamber” to disprove the legend once and for all, only to be found injured and of obviously disturbed mind hours later — and when not long thereafter, a stranger’s corpse is found in one of the graves in the family crypt abutting the “ghost chamber.” The solution, when ultimately revealed by “Ironsides”, is very much down to earth and rather ugly, but there’s plenty of derring-do to be had along the way, including a rather fiendish attempt on the Chief Inspector’s life and much fine detection work (and enjoyable writing).
Since Johnny Lister’s father, the host of this story’s countryside Christmas gathering, is a retired general who has duly earned himself a DSO (I’m assuming in WWI — the story was first published in the early 1940s, but it sounds like the general’s retirement isn’t a recent one, and retiring in the midst of WWII doesn’t sound likely to begin with), I’m using this as my Veterans’ Day / Armistice Day read in the context of the 16 Festive Tasks.
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Turns out I already knew five of the ten stories in this anthology:
Ellis Peters’s The Trinity Cat
Julian Symons’s The Santa Claus Club
Ian Rankin’s No Sanity Clause
G.K. Chesterton’s The Dagger With Wings
and Marjorie Bowen’s Cambric Tea.
So I skipped those (though I do really like the stories by Ellis Peters, Julian Symons and Ian Rankin — care somewhat less for the other two, though) and just read the remaining five entries:
Michael Innes: The Four Seasons
John Dickson Carr: The Footprint in the Sky
Val McDermid: A Wife in a Million
Lawrence Block: As Dark as Christmas Gets
and Marjorie Allingham: On Christmas Day in the Morning
Of these, far and away my favorites were the stories by Michael Innes and Lawrence Block (Marjorie Allingham’s On Christmas Day in the Morning came somewhat close because of its bittersweet solution): Innes’s The Four Seasons is a variation on the country house mystery set in the Fen Country and centering on a painting — actually, it’s a country house story within a country house story, because the actual story is being told by a guest at a country house holiday party in turn –; and Block’s As Dark as Christmas Gets is an extremely cleverly conceived hommage to Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe mysteries, in everything from tone to characters, setting, plot, book title name checking, and even solution.
Since this book has a(n, umm, mostly) black and white cover, for 16 Festive Tasks purposes I’ll be using it as my read for All Saints’ Day.
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ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1628233/a-cornucopia-of-holiday-stories
Truman Capote’s charming, magical memories of his childhood Christmas and Thanksgiving with his mother’s Monroeville, Alabama family — particularly his much elder and much-beloved cousin Miiss Sook, who thanks to her own child-like nature was mother, grandmother and elder sister to him simultaneously; but, most importantly, the greatest source of warmth, love and compassion of his entire childhood.
In the book’s second (individually, last-published) entry the Monroeville experience is contrasted with the one (sadly failed) attempt by Capote’s father to make up for years of non-parenting, and seeing all three stories published together, the contrast — and the boundless warmth of Capote’s Monroeville home, and of Miss Sook — is brought out in an even brighter light, (As an aside, it is easy, too, to recognize the place, and the traits of individual personalities, in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which was inspired by the same community.)
Since this book doesn’t merely include two Christmas but also a Thanksgiving memory, for 16 Festive Tasks purposes I’m going to use it as my book for the Thanksgiving holiday book joker.
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ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1628201/southern-holidays
Well, well — nothing like ringing in the New Year (albeit a day early) with Charles Dickens: What he did for Christmas in the story about the old miser Scrooge, he did again a year later for New Year’s Eve with this story; which is, however, quite a bit darker than A Christmas Carol. Once again, a man is swept away to see the future; this time, however, it’s not a miserly rich man but a member of the working classes, a porter named Toby (nicknamed Trotty) Veck eeking out a living near a church whose migihty bells ring out the rhythm of his life — as if Dickens had wanted to remind his audience that the moral of A Christmas Carol doesn’t only apply to the rich but, indeed, to everyone. Along the way, the high, mighty and greedy are duly pilloried — in this, The Chimes is decidedly closer to Hard Times, Our Mutual Friend, A Tale of Two Cities, and Bleak House than it is to A Christmas Carol — and there are more than a minor number of anxious moments to be had before we’re reaching the story’s conclusion (which, in turn, however, sweeps in like a cross breed of those of Oliver Twist and Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest).
Richard Armitage’s reading is phantastic: at times, there are overtones of John Thornton from the TV adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, (or in fact, both John Thornton and Nicholas Higgins) which matches the spirit of the story very well, however, since workers’ rights and exploitation are explicitly addressed here, too, even if this story is ostensibly set in London, not in Manchester.
In the context of the 16 Festive Tasks, The Chimes is an obvious choice for the New Year’s Eve holiday book joker, so that it is going to be.
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