Virtual Advent Tour 2013: Day 17 Christmas in NYC!!

Virtual Advent Tour 2013: Day 17

This is a fun and festive blog tour hosted by Kelly and Marg.  Visit their beautiful blog, Virtual Advent Tour, to see the other terrific blog participants and their holiday posts!

Christmas in NYC

When I was growing up on Long Island, a suburb of NYC, my parents would take my sister and I to the city for a weekend.  It was the start of the Christmas season for us.  My father’s firm had an apt for clients to use when they were in from out of town.  My dad would make sure, really early in the year, that we could stay there one weekend after Thanksgiving. 

Friday night was always casual and relaxing.  We’d usually go someplace super casual, like a pub for burgers.  After a leisurely dinner we would walk back to the apartment passing Lord & Taylor’s department store to see their window display.  
Every year their windows are decorated in some type of Christmas theme with each window telling part of a story.  Some other stores do this, too, but L & T’s have always been the best.

Saturday was always a shopping day for my mom, sister and me.  My dad usually went to his office for a few hours to get some work done.  My sister and I would meet him at a store later in the afternoon, usually Tiffany’s and from there we’d go to Rizzoli’s bookstore, to help him Christmas shop for my mom.  

We always walked past the NY Public Library, too to see their stately lion and their tree

On Saturday night, we usually saw The Nutcracker Ballet, a favorite of my sister and I, at Lincoln Center. 

Although, after several years of The Nutcracker, if there was a Broadway show we were interested in or Radio City Hall’s show enticed us, we might see that instead.  It didn't matter.  Anything we saw we enjoyed and the night was always magical. 

This was particularly true after the ballet or show because we would go over to Rockefeller Center to see the huge Christmas Tree there.  Even late at night, there are a lot of people around, but fortunately not the crowds there during the day. And we always stopped at St. Patrick's Cathedral across the street.

Sunday was always brunch and a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see their tree and many other exhibits.  This was an especially good day because my dad spent the entire day with us…no work!

One fun place to visit, which we didn't get to every year, is the greatest toy store around -

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of you and yours!!

~ Persephone Secret Santa Gift ~

Today is the day we reveal the gift we received from our Persephone Secret Santa. I opened my gift this morning - it's been sitting on the shelf tormenting me!

Christy from the blog, A Good Stopping Point, sent me The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I'm thrilled! Thank you you Christy! I have wanted to read this book for a long time.

This is the picture on the front of the Classic Persephone, my copy is the beautiful Persephone dove-grey and from the website:

Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) and The Secret Garden (1911) are enduring bestsellers, but this 1901 novel is many people's favourite: Nancy Mitford and Marghanita Laski loved it, and some US college courses teach it alongside Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre.


Part I, the original Marchioness, is in the Cinderella (and Miss Pettigrew) tradition, while Part II, called The Methods of Lady Walderhurst, is an absorbing melodrama; most novels end 'and they lived happily ever after' but this one develops into a realistic commentary on late-Victorian marriage. 'Delightful... A sparky sense of humour combined with lively social commentary make this a joy to read' wrote the Bookseller. Kate Saunders told Open Book listeners that she was up until two in the morning finishing this 'wildly romantic tale whose 'hero and heroine are totally unromantic' (Daily Telegraph); the Guardian referred to 'a touch of Edith Wharton's stern unsentimentality'; the Spectator wrote about the novel's 'singular charm'; and the Daily Mail stressed the 'sharp observations in this charming tale.'

My book is lined with this beautiful tulip print and came with a matching bookmark!

Sunday Salon - A week off...sort of!

Around this time of year, I tend to feel like I blinked and lost a month or something because it always surprises me when Thanksgiving is almost here and Christmas is less than two months away. It sneaks up on me! I realized how close Christmas is when I watched a segment on the Today Show recently, about the tree - where it came from and how it was found - that will soon be put up in Rockefeller Center and lit on November 30th.


Macy's is unveiling their Christmas windows this Thursday the 17th!  Personally, I think Macy's should wait another week. I hate when retailers rush the season. I prefer to make December all about Christmas rather than starting all kinds of Christmas-related things in November or earlier. Of course Macys is trying to encourage people to come to the store in hopes they'll go inside and shop after viewing the decorated windows. I stay as far from the stores as possible in the weeks before Christmas - on-line and mail order shopping works just fine for me! I don't mind going to some stores to walk around and browse but I prefer not to be shopping for anything, it adds pressure and stress and the lines are so long! My favorite time to see the holiday-themestore windows in NYC is late at night: 9 or 10 p.m., even later if they're still lit up.  It's not crowded and for some reason it's more exciting, almost magical!


I didn't get a lot of reading done this week. Everyday it seemed like little things kept coming up that had to be taken care of...little things that take a lot of I had to work on, too. So I'm still reading The Lotus Reader by Tajana Soli. I could have rushed through it just to finish it but I decided I didn't want to do that because it's too good a book. I was only able to read a little bit of it this past week. I'm hoping this week I'll get a chance to sit down and really put some time into it! I'm really enjoying The Easter Parade by Richard Yates. His writing is phenomenal. It's one of those books that feels a little weird to say I'm enjoying it because it's not a happy book but it's so very good. I'm also reading Volt by Alan Heathcock. This book is a collection of short stories involving themes such as civilization vs. wilderness, grief, tragedy, remorse, law and lawlessness, forgiveness, judgment and loyalty. Some of the stories are intense and very emotional. They're all intriging so far.

This week I'm participating in Reclaim You Reader, an idea Molly of The Bumbles Blog came up with. Molly came up with this idea due to her frustration with not having the time to both write posts on her blog and visit other blogs to read the posts of other bloggers. This week is, therefore, dedicated to visiting other blogs and commenting on posts! I'm looking forward to the chance to catch up on many of the blogs that I don't often have the opportunity to read as often as I'd like! For all of you who entered The Winters in Bloom giveaway, I will be announcing the winners on Saturday the 19th!


Tonight the Jets are playing the New England Patriots...again. I'm hoping for a different outcome this game!


I hope you're having a wonderful Sunday and have a great week!
Happy Reading!

Chronicle Books Happy Haul-idays Contest!

Chronicle Books is running a fantastic contest this holiday season called Happy Haul-idays.
Participating bloggers choose up to $500 worth of books and book-related items from the Chronicle Books website and post about them. Then, the blogger and one of the readers who comments on that blogger's Haul-idays post (that could be you!) have a chance to win the entire list! All you have to do to be entered is to leave a comment on this post or the post of other participating bloggers.

Chronicle Books has a lot of wonderful items to choose from! Here are the books and things I would choose if I won $500 worth of books and book-related items from Chronicle Books. If you'd like to win these items as well, just leave a comment! Good Luck to us!

Cookbooks
Soup's On by Leslie Jonath & Frankie Frankeny (Paperback) $19.95

Time for Dinner by Pilar Guzmán, Alanna Stang, & Jenny Rosentrach (Hardcover) $24.95

The Commonsense Kitchen By Tom Hudgens (Hardcover) $35.00


Cats
Ernie by Tony Mendoza (Hardcover) $12.95

Curious Cats by Mitsuaki Iwago (Hardcover) $16.95

Sports
B is for Baseball (Hardcover) $15.99

Obsessed with Baseball by The Baseball Guys (Hardcover) $24.95

Music
Six-String Heroes: Photographs of Great Guitarists by Neil Zlozower (Hardcover) $35.00

Miscellaneous
The Exquisite Book: 100 Artists Play a Collaborative Game by Julia Rothman, Jenny Volvovski, & Matt Lamothe Foreword by Dave Eggers (Hardcover) $29.95

Beaches by Gideon Bosker & Lena Lencek (Hardcover) $24.95

This is NPR by Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, Noah Adams, John Ydstie, Renee Montagne, Ari Shapiro, & David Folkenflik (Hardcover) $29.95

Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights Quirk Books by Robert Schnakenberg (Paperback) $16.95
Art of McSweeney's by the Editors of McSweeney (Hardcover) $45.00

Literature
The Gravedigger by Peter Grandbois (Paperback) $13.95

Any Bitter Thing by Monica Wood (Hardcover) $23.95

The Punch by Noah Hawley (Hardcover) $23.95


Paper and Book-related Items
Paper & Craft: 25 Charming Gifts, Accents, and Accessories to Make from Paper
by Minhee and Truman Cho with Randi Brookman Harris (Paperback) $19.95

Reprodepot Notepad Set by Djerba Goldfinger $12.95

Sunblooms Bound Journal by Amy Butler $9.95

Garden Blossoms Notecard Book by Yana Beylinson $15.95

Animal Kisses Deluxe Notecards by Wolf Erlbruch $14.96

Moleskin
Large Ruled Moleskine Red Notebook $17.95

Large Ruled Moleskine Volant Notebook/Pink (set of 2) $12.00