Dear Livingston Library Community,

As you know, here at the Library, we tend to look for the literary angle on everything and holidays are no exception.  At this time of year, some people love to re-read A Christmas Carol, but I’m more inclined toward David Sedaris’s Holiday on Ice, which is simply studded with gems like “The woman at Macy’s asked, ‘Would you be interested in full-time elf or part-time elf?’  I said ‘Full-time elf’.”

So if you’re looking for the lighter side, I highly recommend a bookish break. Along with Sedaris, I like Barbara Robinson’s classic The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, starring the cigar-smoking, larcenous but ultimately wise Herdman kids.  Or possibly Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods by Michael Wex, best summed up in the following quote: “If the Stones’s ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” had been written in Yiddish, it would have been called ‘(I Love to Keep Telling You that I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (Because Telling You that I’m Not Satisfied Is All that Can Satisfy Me).'”  Or find one of your own old favorite books and re-read it for a good belly laugh.

Your family and friends may thank you later. Because as Dickens actually did write in A Christmas Carol, “There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”  Here’s to more of that, now and the whole year round too.

Happy holidays!

All the best,

Amy

Director – Livingston Library