On Christmas: A Seasonal Anthology by Gyles Brandreth, 166 pages

 A seasonal anthology of Christmas-themed writings to savour during the highs and lows of Christmas Day.

This delightful anthology—described in Gyles Brandreth’s introduction as “a plum pudding stuffed with good things”—offers an array of writers, both old and new, who have expressed their thoughts about Christmas with joy, nostalgia, grumpiness, and wit. Devour in one sitting, or savor at your leisure through the long winter nights.

On Christmas includes selections from Charles Dickens, William Sandys, Deborah Bull, C.S. Lewis, Saint Bonaventure, Clement A. Miles, Robert Benchley, Quentin Crisp, the Koran, Queen Victoria, Anthony Trollope, Francis Kilvert, Samuel Pepys, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Jerome K. Jerome, Edmond de Goncourt, Mrs Beeton, Kathy Lette, Paul Fournier, Anton Chekhov, Charles Dudley Warner, Sue Townsend, O. Henry, Suhel Seth, Saki, Ali Smith, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry Lawson, Guy de Maupassant, Will Self, and P.G. Wodehouse.

The Wicked Godmother by Marion Chesney, 166 pages

 With Each London Season, an Enchanting Romance Moves into the Fashionable Town House at number 67 Clarges Street. And There Below Stairs the Staff Has a Special Mission--to Arrange a Match...to Hatch a Scheme ... to Bring Love Home to

A HOUSE FOR THE SEASON

Lovely but penniless Harriet Metcalf is aghast when a nobleman's will names her guardian of his snobbish twin daughters when they come out during the next London Season! But is innocent Harriet wily enough for the intrigues of the ton-or its two most eligible bachelors, the Marquess of Huntingdon and Lord Vere? Harriet sees them as suitors for the twins, while the gentlemen see only Harriet's charms. Soon she is falling in love with one of the dashing rakes... but a cruel betrayal will be her ruin unless the Clarges Street servants can save a lady's honor when she loses her heart.

A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay & Julian Eltinge by Dabid Hajdu & John Carey, 166 pages

 Bert Williams--a Black man forced to perform in blackface who challenged the stereotypes of minstrelsy. Eva Tanguay--an entertainer with the signature song "I Don't Care" who flouted the rules of propriety to redefine womanhood for the modern age. Julian Eltinge--a female impersonator who entranced and unnerved audiences by embodying the feminine ideal Tanguay rejected. At the turn of the twentieth century, they became three of the most provocative and popular performers in vaudeville, the form in which American mass entertainment first took shape.

A Revolution in Three Acts explores how these vaudeville stars defied the standards of their time to change how their audiences thought about what it meant to be American, to be Black, to be a woman or a man. The writer David Hajdu and the artist John Carey collaborate in this work of graphic nonfiction, crafting powerful portrayals of Williams, Tanguay, and Eltinge to show how they transformed American culture. Hand-drawn images give vivid visual form to the lives and work of the book's subjects and their world.

This book is at once a deft telling of three intricately entwined stories, a lush evocation of a performance milieu with unabashed entertainment value, and an eye-opening account of a key moment in American cultural history with striking parallels to present-day questions of race, gender, and sexual identity.

The Intimate Thoughts of John Baxter, Bookseller by Augustus Muir, 166 pages

 Although Muir attempted to pass this off as a genuine diary, it quickly becomes obvious from reading it that this is a work of fiction, and Baxter — charming, knowledgeable, frustrated, and vaguely incompetent — is Muir’s parody of the booksellers he encountered in Edinburgh at the time in which he wrote it.

This is one of my favorite books of the year so far.

Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science by Marc Aronson & Marina Budhos, 166 pages

 When this award-winning husband-and-wife team discovered that they each had sugar in their family history, they were inspired to trace the globe-spanning story of the sweet substance and to seek out the voices of those who led bitter sugar lives. The trail ran like a bright band from religious ceremonies in India to Europe’s Middle Ages, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas. Sugar was the substance that drove the bloody slave trade and caused the loss of countless lives but it also planted the seeds of revolution that led to freedom in the American colonies, Haiti, and France. With songs, oral histories, maps, and over 80 archival illustrations, here is the story of how one product allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways.

Mrs. Pringle of Fairacre by Miss Read, 166 pages

Through the eyes of many Fairacre friends, we trace Mrs. Pringle’s life and her stormy standing as the redoubtable cleaner of the town’s school. However maddening she is, life at Fairacre would be poorer without her.

Shirley, I Jest! by Cindy Williams with Dave Smitherman, 166 pages

I've loved Laverne & Shirley since I was small, I even dressed up as Laverne in 6th grade for Halloween. I'd read Penny Marshall's bio, so there was no way I wasn't going to read Cindy Williams. I really wanted to hear her side of the story about the last season. She came across pretty nice, very much Shirley-like, so I wasn't shocked to get much gossip or negative talk. It was a nice look at an actress in a beloved show.

Fables: Snow White, Volume 19, 166 pages

I can't believe it's been 19 volumes and I still devour each new graphic novel. This series has gotten darker and darker. While this wasn't as heart wrenching as the last one it was still pretty sad. I finished this on my break and felt like I needed to go home afterwards instead of back to work because I was too traumatized to finish my shift, lol.