I'm not a christian or religious in any way, but I do partake in the historically cultural aspects of christmas with a small 'c': and in doing so, I'm a sucker for all things Scrooge, Dickens and the Santa:- though in a very non-commercial sense.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to the Christmas holidays and I will be flying back to Scotland for Christmas with the family and relishing a cold, dark christmas eve tucked up in cosy socks, a nice cuppa tea and......

Now what Folio book will I be holding?

Perhaps.....On the Nature of Things

and you?

You ask difficult questions, LesMis. I am so stuck just now in the mire of the 1667 volume of Pepys's Diary that I still need at least one month to complete its reading. Then I shall read Stendhal (in French) for a change. For Christmas, I am pretty sure I shall be in the middle of Bleak House, but it is not much related to Yuletide.

Which part of Scotland are you from, if it is not too indiscreet?

>1
First, I know I'll be reading A Traveller's Christmas (at least selections therefrom) and a few things from The Folio Christmas Book. And after failing to get to it last year, I'm pretty determined to read DIckins' A Christmas Carol this year, having never read the whole thing.

Not an FS publication, but I recommend The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn. Geared towards older kids, it's a quick, fun read for someone who likes a small 'c' christmas and things Santa, as well as western history. Guinn weaves a story of St. Nick/Santa that 'explains' how he gets into the business and how he manages to keep it going so long, working in historical events and famous persons along the way.

Os.

I suspect I will be watching A Christmas Carol on DVD rather than reading it on Christmas Eve. I am rather fond of the George C. Scott version, but I enjoy most of the various renditions.

I will probably be finishing up the 6 volume set by Folio of The Arabian Nights.

Not really in the spirit of the holidays but I am determined to read it straight through.

I plan to dip into "Ghost Stories & Other Horrid Tales" for Samhain (Halloween).
Too early to start thinking about Christmas just yet.

> 2 Which part of Scotland are you from, if it is not too indiscreet?

I belong to Glasgow, dear old Glasgow town....... :-)

Couldn't possibly predict at this distance - my reading is far too whimsical for that. Quite a lot to choose from too!

Will probably not be reading on Christmas Eve, being too busy enjoying a lavish tea and opening gifts with friends. Like LesMiserables, I enjoy the cultural aspects of the winter holidays and will probably be re-reading my Folio A Christmas Carol at some point. I have a very nice book on the customs and celebrations associated with the Winter Solstice that I really should dig out, but that involves plunging headfirst into the recesses of the closet, so .... if only I could train the cats to retrieve books instead of just knocking them over and sitting on them ...

>9 - The only thing I've managed to train my cats to do is to ignore me. They're good at that, but pretty useless at everything else I've tried to teach them. Good luck training yours to be retrievers!

I don't think I can really predict what I'll be reading on Christmas Eve, but I might look into M. R. James's Collected Ghost Stories.

I too will probably be reading A Christmas Carol or another of the stories in Dickens Christmas Books. Just perfect for a cold dark evening with a glass of port beside me.

Come to think of it, I have a few hefty flights to get me back to Scotland from Australia. Long Haul Brisbane to Singapore, Singapore to Dubai (overnight in Dubai) then Dubai to Glasgow.

I'm sure I could polish off quite a bit of the History of Western Philosophy in that time alone!

Then of course there is the trip back!

If you are coming to Scotland for the festive season it would be more interesting to enquire what you will be reading on Hogmanay. In living memory in Inverness 25th December was a working day since the date was seen as having no Biblical warrant. In the Highlands it is the English influence, and the retailers in particular who have changed the culture.

> 14

I'll be hiding from the masses of drunken lunatics, who emerge to annoy the hell out of you on Hogmanay. It's no fun for us teetotallers having to put up with inebriated floppy bodies and the most insane vernacular that offers itself to the world on such a day(s).

>9 HOPEFULLY next year I will have my wood burning fireplace replaced and up and running. So NEXT christmas I want to try the traditional yule log - only a much smaller version than in many of the stories. :)

This would be a large green or waterlogged log that sits at the back of the fireplace. You lean your dry wood against it. The object of it is to keep the yule log from burning up completely for several days. After a few days and before the log is completely burned, you save a piece and use it to light next year's yuletide fire. I found different versions of the story on the internet.

In the week leading up to Christmas Eve I’ll be reading my grandchildren that best of all winter bedtime stories, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But that’ll be in Tolkien’s translation, not the inferior one in the Folio edition.
For my own pleasure I’ll be reading Aucassin and Nicolette, partly out of sentiment as it was my first Folio book, given to me as a slightly belated Christmas present in 1948 (60 pages with 44 illustrations: the Society’s not often that generous these days! Unless it’s something they’ve commissioned from the boundlessly exuberant Paul Cox). Later, if there’s time, I’ll settle down on the sofa with the Jack Daniels and a pipe-rack within reach (the latter, alas, forbidden fruit now) and lose myself in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, following Holmes and Watson on their dead goose chase through a frost-bound post-Christmas Victorian London. Mystery, humour, the innocent saved, the guilty shown mercy, and some of the best Holmesian sound-bites:
“There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallized charcoal.”
“I am Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people don’t know.”
“I am not retained by the police to supply their deficiencies.”
What more you could you ask for? Well, perhaps a new Folio edition of Sherlock Holmes with more interesting illustrations!

17,

I've not read the Tolkien translation, but I was blown away by the Armitage version and it's been praised to the heavens. Do you really think it's poor or is it just preference. I certainly can't read the ME so I can't judge the translation.

There was a long discussion of the translations of Sir Gawain on another thread. I shouldn't really comment on Armitage, as I've only read the quotes that have appeared here and in reviews, but I would have to say his version seems much too loose and slangy. I'm very familiar with Middle English literature and the poems of the "Pearl" poet in particular, and that the poet was archaic and formal for his own time. Tolkien is literal and not much of a poet, whatever his merits as a scholar (which are considerable, being the pre-eminent editor of the Gawain poem in its Middle English form).

>18, 19
I've read Merwyn's and Armitage's, and enjoyed both. It's a luxury to have more than one translation of a work to read and enjoy, and I may try to obtain Tolkien's as well. Given what I've heard about Armitage's translation, I'm glad to have read Merwyn's first, but Armitage provides a translation that is valuable for reasons other than accuracy.

All translators are faced with the conflicts between accuracy of words, accuracy of 'atmosphere' or 'feel', and the desire to attain beauty in the new language. Success depends upon what we, the reader, are looking for. Having said that, I have read some simply bad translations of some works, and wonder how they get into print (the early English translations of Verne's works, for example, which are still the most printed).

Os.

I will be dipping into both MR James Ghost Stories and the new Ambrose Bierce volume. On the other hand, perhaps I will tackle The Wooden World - oh, decisions, decisions !!!

The Christmas Carol, by Dickens, of course!

Lady19thC, I will be reading Christmas Carol also, and will have done so for forty years this year. I started the tradition when I was a child after I found a small paperback-size edition dating back to 1910 on my grandmother's bookshelf. I read that same book each year until last year when Folio came out with their version (I decided to switch editions because the first one was getting on in years). I read one stave a night starting on December 20 so I'm reading the final stave on Christmas Eve.

I'll probably be somewhere into volume 5 of Macaulay's British History. Yeah, when I rejoined I definitely jumped in with both feet!!

Well if I can bear to wait (difficult) I plan to be reading The Wooden World.

I am just starting the last book of the complete Arabian Nights. Then I am going to be reading The Seeing Stone. So right around Christmas time I should be starting in on the complete 14 volume set (+ the botanical index) of Thoreau's journals. Its not a folio set (I can only dream of a set like Pepy's for Thoreau) but it is something I have been dying to read for a long time.

I'll probably be working on Christmas Eve. But if I'm not, I'll be reading Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

I feel I am only a couple of days, perhaps three, from finishing Anna Karenina and therefore anticipate my next undertaking will be the one that I will be reading on Christmas eve.

Maybe the King James Bible or is that too obvious, maybe Ceasar instead.

I'll probably start on the Raj quartet next week so it's most likely to be that.

>29
Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's

Os.

> 31

Salad?

;

I'll be working on Christmas Eve (and Christmas Day), but I will make time to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in the massive red FS edition of Simon Armitage's translation. I have all my fingers and toes crossed that it will still be snowing!

Well it looks like I will be reading The Diary of a Village Shopkeeper by Thomas Turner on Christmas Eve.

This really is a delightful and often humorous read. (How many times can this guy resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve never ever ever to get drunk again, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve never ever ever to get drunk again, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve never ever ever to get drunk again, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve never ever ever to get drunk again, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve never ever ever to get drunk again, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve never ever ever to get drunk again, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve never ever ever to get drunk again, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve not to get drunk, break it, resolve never ever ever to get drunk again, break it: you get the idea)

Finished my Christmas reading -- Dickens' Christmas Carol with the last stave read on Christmas Eve just before bed. It was a little strange reading my Folio copy. The thing is huge compared to the book I usually read from, which is about the size of a paperback. It almost made it seem like I was reading a totally different book. I found myself stopping and checking myself (are these really the same words I've read every other year?) but it really was the same story, just a whole lot easier on the eyes with type that seemed about four times larger than what I was used to from previous years. And the illustrations are a nice bonus; my other edition didn't have any. The Folio copy is definitely going to be part of my tradition from now on.

Just for the record, I started The Jewel in the Crown at a quarter to midnight.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Message edited by its author, Dec 25, 2009, 3:23am.