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Friday, December 25, 2015

Merry Christmas! My Gift to my Readers: A Christmas Day Reading Recommendation

Today is Christmas Day, so my blog entry will be brief.  During the day, if you have time to read, I’d recommend a short story.  It’s a perfect one for this day and it is a great story to read aloud.  I first heard it on CBC Radio’s The Vinyl Café, and I laughed so hard I cried.

The short story is entitled “Dave Cooks the Turkey”.  I have it in a book entitled Home from The Vinyl Cafe:  A Year of Stories by Stuart McLean, but the story has also been published in a small book all by itself.  It makes a great gift.  Its size makes it ideal for mailing.

In the story, Dave agrees “to look after the turkey” for Christmas Day dinner.  On Christmas Eve, he realizes that “meant buying it as well as putting it in the oven.”  He contemplates moving “to some deserted Newfoundland outport and [living] under an assumed name,” but decides to try and provide a turkey for his family’s festive meal.  The result is a Homeresque struggle to beat all the odds and somehow get a turkey roasted in time for Christmas dinner.  The tale is hilarious and only about 14 pages long so it’s perfect to be read to the family before or after your dinner.

Of course, you might not have a copy of this story at hand, so you can listen to this story read by Stuart McLean at https://soundcloud.com/cbc-radio-one/vinyl-cafe-dave-cooks-the. And for next year, make sure you have purchased a copy of the story and make reading it a family Christmas tradition. 


For the first time, I made a book tree for my library.  Here’s a photo: 


Merry Christmas to all my readers.
Joyeux Noël à tous mes lecteurs.
Wesołych Świąt dla wszystkich moich czytelników.
Vrolijke Kerstmis aan al mijn lezers.

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