(courtesy Hachette Australia) Realising a dream is one thing, sustaining it is quite another. That is the stark reality of things for Carmen in Jenny Colgan’s Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop, the follow-up to The Christmas Bookshop, when the old, hitherto ill-tended second hand bookstore she was instrumental in saving, Continue Reading
Christmas 2023
The short and the Christmas short of it: Gordon Goose – Christmas Tree
(courtesy YouTube) Gordon Goose, so his official page says, is a “typical corpo goose with atypical life” with a work life that is, we’re assured, even worse than the one you’re enduring. Still, even with all that corporate existential angst drilling a great big hole into his soul, Gordon finds Continue Reading
On 3rd day of Christmas … I watched Claus Family 3
(courtesy IMDb (c) Netflix) In the third instalment of the Dutch Christmas film series – read reviews of Claus Family 1 and Claus Family 2 – it becomes increasingly apparent that, rather joyfully the grief that marked the first entry in the series and its lingering effects in movie number Continue Reading
Festive book review: From Shetland, with love at Christmas by Erin Green
(courtesy Hachette Australia) Dreams are supposed to come true at Christmas. Or Christmas adjacent, at the very least; that is the idea behind many a Christmas-based novel and it’s very much the case with Erin Green’s From Shetland, With Love at Christmas which is infused to its tree-topping star with Continue Reading
On 2nd day of Christmas … I listened to Seth MacFarlane & Liz Gillies’ We Wish You the Merriest
(courtesy Verve Records/Republic Records) Granted it’s not a hard and fast rule, but like so much else when it comes to Christmas, the music of the season is supposed to have buoyant joyfulness to it, as if all the weight of the past year, soaked in banality and adulthood and Continue Reading
Songs, songs and more songs #100 – Christmas 2023 singles – Andrea + Virginia Bocelli, Michael Bolton + Mickey Guyton, One Republic, ASTN + DITA + Ingrid Andress … plus new Ingrid Michaelson song
(via Shutterstock) There are Christmas albums without number, and while it’s fun to listen to a whole roster of songs from one artist which bring the season musically alive, there’s also something rather wonderful about a song here or there which give a few minutes of magical joy before they Continue Reading
On 1st day of Christmas … I put 15 new pop culture ornaments on my tree incl. Ted Lasso, Schitt’s Creek, Shazam, Peter Pan, Peanuts … and more!
(via Shutterstock) Take one look at this blog and you realise I love pop culture. LOVE IT! So while the first ornaments I bought for my own grown-up tree in 1992 were relatively standard baubles and department store trinkets, soon followed by Hallmark ornaments by the metric ton, I soon Continue Reading
Festive movie review: The Naughty Nine
(courtesy Twitter / X) If there’s one trend emerging in this year’s crop of streaming Christmas releases – this is quite apart from the usual Hallmark etc romcoms which exist in blissfully trope-heavy world of their own – it’s that the writers and producers have taken a look at what’s Continue Reading
Book review: Last Christmas by Julia Williams
Miracles are, by and large in short supply in our humdrum, bread-and-butter world. We long for them, we hail the extraordinary moments that do occasionally thwart the drab banality of life as “miracle” and we love stories that embody them because, even if it is only fictional, here’s a chance Continue Reading
Christmas movie review: Candy Cane Lane
(courtesy First Showing) Decorating for Christmas is supposed to be one of life’s sparkly, pretty quiet joys. Throw some lights onto your house and thread them through the trees and bushes of your front garden, put up a few figures or two of Santa and his sleigh or some elves Continue Reading