The Blog Post to End All Blog Posts Part 3: Wishes

I can’t be certain that I won’t pick this blog up again one day, but for now I will echo the sentiments of the wonderful Mr. G (who, like me, gets nostalgic when the year changes):

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

The Blog Post to End All Blog Posts Part 2: Christmas ramblings

This year as Christmas approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about the shade side of the Season. There’s a lot that I’m leaving behind at the end of this year, and a lot that I’m looking forward to in the new year, and I guess this has made me reflective. All of the media messages regarding Christmas amount to the same thing: it’s the most wonderful time of the year/you’ll have a fantastic time with your family/it brings us all together. But what if it doesn’t?


Christmas, if you push aside the commercialism and frantic rush for presents, is a time of year that keeps us honest. It can be a time for sharing and love and warmth, but the shade side is this: if you’re lonely, you feel your loneliness at Christmas; if you have trouble getting on with your family, you have to face the tension at Christmas; if you’re scared or doubtful or apprehensive about the future, the time of ‘celebration’ draws out the fear and doubt and apprehension.

I’ve been exploring these thoughts through various media. Here’s what I’ve been tuned in to:

Music: Kate Miller-Heidke’s ‘The Day After Christmas’. (I saw her live last year and she said something to the effect of: “This is a song about a time of year when you’re supposed to be happy, but if you’re not then everything sucks so much more.”)

TV: West Wing’s Christmas episodes (one from each Season). The Christmas episodes of West Wing are always poignant, exploring familial difficulties and personal setbacks.

Movie: Love Actually. I don’t think that requires explanation.

So what does this have to do with books? Only this: I haven’t yet found a book to read which explores the shade side of Christmas. The only one which springs to mind is A Christmas Carol, but Dickens and I have tried getting on before and we have Artistic Differences. So I’m putting the question out there: can anybody think of a shade-side-of-Christmas book for me to read?

The Blog Post to End All Blog Posts Part 1: Wrapping up

I learned last week that I’ve been awarded a scholarship do my Masters, beginning in January. This is wonderful news, primarily because it means philosophy will be my full-time occupation. It does mean, however, that books won’t play as large a role in my life anymore. I’ll still be an avid reader, but I won’t be a literature student and I won’t be working at the bookshop very much. I’ve decided that means it’s time to stop keeping this wonderful blog and to focus on other things.

Here’s a few parting bookish thoughts, in The Blog Post to End All Blog Posts, a Farewell in Three Parts.

Here’s some links and thoughts on some of my favourite subjects:

Neil – a wonderful interview of Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer can be found here to listen to free or download for a tiny tiny fee.

Jane – a friend recently convinced me to give Northanger Abbey another go. It’s the first Jane Austen I ever read and my least favourite. I’m beginning to realise that last time I read it (at fifteen), much of the wonderful metafiction was simply over my head.

Laura – adopt a critic. Read Laura Miller’s bookish thoughts over at Salon.