For all those who celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a lovely holiday! I certainly did. I drove up to Maine in the rain on December 23rd with my sister and brother-in-law and spent a lovely week and a half with my parents.
I ate my share of cookies, played lots of board games with the family, and on the Monday after Christmas, we took a day trip down to Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park. It was very cold but clear, which is why we had chosen that day. (Tuesday and Wednesday were forecasted – correctly – to be snowy.) The below picture is from the Wonderland trail on the “quiet side” of the island (though in the winter, the whole island is pretty quiet).
I also received quite a few books for Christmas, which was of course delightful. (It is true that I had composed my Christmas wishlist with not much else than books.)
I read all three of the above books on Christmas day:
Cat Getting Out of Bag and Other Observations: A Cat Book – by Jeffrey Brown
The Arrival – Shaun Tan
Delta Deep Down: Photographs by Jane Rule Burdine
The 40s: The Story of a Decade – a compilation of works written for the New Yorker in the 40s
The Wilderness Reader – compilation of twenty-six writings by conservationists, edited by Frank Bergon (gift from my uncle, who is a retired interpreter from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service.)
Spice & Wolf Vol. 1 by Isuna Hasekura
kira-kira by Cynthia Kadohata
While in Maine, we stopped in a Goodwill store and I found a few books that caught my eye:
Every Man Dies Alone – Hans Fallada (in very good condition)
Two Under the Indian Sun – Jon and Rumer Godden
Moonraker’s Bride – Madeleine Brent (While living with my aunt one summer as a teenager, I devoured several of Brent’s gothic romances. This book and another were my favorites at the time. It will be interesting to see how it holds up. In the intervening years, I discovered that Brent was actually a pseudonym for an author named Peter O’Donnell)
A Good Stopping Point 
I bought a copy of Two Under the Indian Sun just last month, but in an Edinburgh charity shop. I’m hoping to get around to reading it soon-ish.
I got it in my head that Rumer Godden is harder to find over here in the States. When I bought The Greengage Summer from a Amazon’s used book marketplace seller this past summer, the book was shipped from the UK. So I was surprised to see this one in the thrift shop.
Sounds like a lovely holiday break. I’ve been to Acadia many times and would love the chance to see it in the winter someday.
It’s a different side of Acadia, for sure, with its own pleasures. What is your favorite part of Acadia?
Ooh, Jenny put Every Man Dies Alone on my list of books to read this year. Perhaps we should read it together!
We should! I’m very curious about it, though I have a feeling that I would postpone due to its expected sad nature – so a readalong approach would work very well.
Many good things! I am ashamed to say I’ve had Two under the Indian Sun lying around my bookshelves for years now without reading it. Maybe when you read it, it will be the spur that finally gets me to, too!