Seasons' Readings

I love Christmas anthologies. I have my small collection. They run the gamut from SF (Christmas Stars) to classic (Dickens Christmas tales; Christmas Classics) to mystery (Crime for Christmas) to scary (Christmas Ghosts; can't find a link; it's the Hartwell/Cramer one) and Sherlock Holmes (Holmes for the Holidays). I've even got my comics covered with A DC Universe Christmas and Lee Bermejo's Batman: Noel. 

This year, I've added some cozy Christmas tales like Louise R. Innes Death at Holly Lodge, Holiday Murder by Leslie Meier, and another helping of the Andy Carpenter series by David Rosenfelt.

But when it comes to a book you can read for year, I think there is a top dog: The Big Book of Christmas Mysteries. Released in 2013, this 650-page book has something for everybody.

Agatha Christie opens and closes the book, and in between these bookends, all your favorites are here: Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Ellery Queen, Donald Westlake, Isaac Asimov, Ngaio Marsh, Rex Stout, and more.

The stories are broken out by themes such as A Modern Little Christmas, A Puzzling Little Christmas, A Pulpy Little Christmas, and A Traditional Little Christmas. If the stories don't get you, the wonderful cover painting, evoking something from the golden age, certainly will.

A collection this large cannot possibly be finished in one season. I don’t even try. Instead, I dip in for the last eight years, reading a tale here and there. 

I always enjoy making new discoveries, even if the discovery is something older.

Have y’all read through this book? If so, what are your favorite stories?

And what are some of y'all's favorite Christmas stories?

An Advent Calendar of Stories

As of today, we have only twenty days until Christmas. Shopping will definitely look different this year. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been ordering many if not most gifts online. Some of the mad rush as we count down the days until the 25th will shift.

In our entryway, we have an Advent calendar. Ours is a homemade one where each day, we get to place an ornament on the tree. There are a myriad of other Advent calendars: Legos, chocolate, wine, you name it.

One of the most unique focuses on stories. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith have, for the second year in a row, created an Advent calendar type project. Truth is, it started on Thanksgiving day and extends to New Year’s Day, but all that means is extra stories. Rusch and Smith curated lots of stories, sifting out the best ones.

After you sign up via Kickstarter at the level of your choice, you’ll get an email every day. In the email, Rusch writes an introduction and then gives you a BookFunnel link. From there, you can download the story onto the device of your choice. I use my Kobo reader and it works seamlessly.

So, if you are in the mood to get a story a day this Christmas season, head on over to the webpage and sign up. It’ll make each day of this month fly by.

Chicago Christmas (2019) - The Best Surprise of 2019

One of my greatest listening pleasures for 34 years is to listen to a new Chicago album, especially without reading the liner notes so I can guess the singer. Cracked the seal on Chicago 37 back on 13 November 2019 and was richly rewarded by a group of consummate musicians using the vocabulary and trappings of Christmas to craft a great collection of songs.

Those were the words I wrote on social media the day I first listened to this new Chicago album. I ended up listening to the new album three times that day. First time was in my car while on my morning commute. Other two times were in earbuds on my phone. Heard new things each time. Thoroughly enjoyed the experience, as I do for all new Chicago music.

The Overall Sound

But let's go ahead and address the elephant in the room: the production (or mix?) needs work. In the press release for this album, the guys mentioned how they'd practice the new tunes on the road and record in hotel rooms or on the bus. Look, I'm all for new music and if that's the way it works in 2019, fine. And I love that technology has advanced enough so this work ethic is possible.
But Chicago 36: Now didn't have this subdued quality and it was recorded in much the same way.

(Interestingly, over the month I've listened to the album, the initial sound issues I don't hear anymore. Maybe it's just repetition. Maybe I'm just used to it because when I purchased the LP yesterday--yes, I really own two versions of this album--I didn't notice the sound issue.)

So, guys in Chicago, keep making new tunes, but make sure it's the best possible sound.

The Songs

Because It's Christmas Time - Robert Lamm lead. Opening similar to White Christmas, complete with piano playing eighth notes and jingle bells. Lamm's voice is muted and buried behind the instruments. Vocal harmonies with Lou Pardini and Neil Donell are nice and tight. Great sax solo by new member Ray Herrmann, but it fades way too soon. Wanted more.

All Over the World - Neil Donell lead. This song counts as the first time I've heard Donell sing other than a few YouTube clips. Again, the vocals feel deeper in the mix, but the music is good. Love the electric piano. Really digging the first two tracks as they use the vocabulary and trappings of Christmas to craft new songs. It's certainly favoring the secular aspects of the season. This is also my first exposure to the bass playing of Brett Simons. He's really good here. Last chord is really nice and mysterious, not your typical Christmas vibe. Love how the bass mirrors the melody during the chorus. And the message is one that can be shared beyond the season.

Bring My Baby Back - Donell lead. The opening is very Christmas-y, but the bass grove as the verse starts changes the mood entirely. In a good way. Horns during chorus reminds me of earlier Christmas records, especially with the high trumpet by Lee Loughnane. More sax on the outro by Herrmann. Really digging the album so far. I made most of my notes without seeing the liner notes so it's only later when I learn Nick Lane arranged the brass parts of this song. He certainly knows the Chicago sound.

Merry Christmas, I Love You (R&B) - Lou Pardini lead. The direct sequel to Chicago XXXIII's "Merry Christmas Happy Holidays." All the feels and goofy grins on first hearing this tune on the morning commute. Cowbell back in the mix, and Keith Howland's guitar work is excellent. Pardini is a wonderful addition to the band. This is a tight band of consummate musicians performing these songs. So good. The horn work in the chorus is well done and worthy of the R&B moniker. Could easily see this song make its way on the various radio stations that play Christmas music 24/7.

What the World Needs Now - Lamm lead. Okay, so my favorite thing about listening to a new Chicago album is to let it play and not read the liner notes. Really easy when the first listen was on a morning commute. When this song started and the 70s vibe kicked in, I was so there. But by the first chord change, I actually uttered a "friggin A" in the car as I grinned ear to ear. Guessed Lamm would be the one and I was right. The vibe is pure early 70s: think Marvin Gaye "What's Going On" or Miles Davis's "Maiysha." I'm not too familiar with the Carpenters but I know this tune. Lamm's voice again is way in the back, but his clear tone shines through. James Pankow's horn arrangements are tasteful and complimentary. You can actually hear all three horns. Am I the only one who would love Chicago to do a full album of Burt Bacharach songs? Chord progressions are magical. This song will find its way onto personal playlists and not just in the Christmas season.

All is Right - Lamm and Donell and Pardini. The opening with flutes is nice, almost like Chicago is doing a Bacharach song again. Lamm opens with the verses but the lead shifts to Donell for the chorus. Goose bump moment there. So, so good. Third verse is Donell. Howland's guitar is gritty behind this easy going groove, punctuated by Ramon Yslas's nice percussion work. Pardini takes the last bridge which makes this tune one of the awesome triple-vocal songs in the entire catalog. The vibe this tune reminds me of is a 1978 Christmas TV special when the band is a guest. Again, the mysterious, minor-chord ending is surprising.

Sleigh Ride [2019 version] - Donell lead. Nice groove and horn parts, but the backing vocalists doing the "ring-a-ling" thing? Icing on top of this sweet song. They absolutely make this song. Donell's vocals are so clear. Horn breaks are short and punchy. Ending sound effects are cheesy, but I'm a cheesy guy so I'm fine with it. The chimes as the song fades out is a nice touch.

I'd Do It All Again (Christmas Moon) - Pardini lead. Bossa nova complete with shuffle drumming and piano embellishments? This song had me in the first measure. Simply a gorgeous song. Pardini's voice is perfect for this kind of song, and the horns just layer themselves with him, perfectly in the pocket with tasteful accents, especially as they re-enter after the piano solo. Goose bump song. A new jazz standard for others to hear and sing? You betcha. Not sure who plays the piano solo, but man is it good. Lots of Christmas music reminds me of childhood. This is one of those tunes where the vibe is that of adults in love. This is the song you'd have playing over scenes of a movie in which the couple frolic in the snow, fall down while ice skating, and snuggle up together in an open horse-drawn wagon in Central Park. Loughnane's muted trumpet is the icing on this song. In addition--and this doesn't happen too often in Christmas songs--this is the song you can easily see being played for senior citizens, as they look back on their lives. Only two songs this year made me emotional on first listen (and sometimes subsequent listens), and this is one of them. The other: Hello Sunshine by Bruce Springsteen.

I'm Your Santa Claus - Pardini lead. Bass notes high on the fret board opening this funky song. Donell shines through in the group chorus. Man does he blend well. Pardini's piano is sprinkled throughout this song, as is Howland's rhythm guitar...until he takes a nice, crunchy solo. Even though this tune started soft, it ends as a pretty loud rock song, especially when Howland solos again, the distortion turned up. One of my favorite parts of the entire album is the group chorus on "This gift in silver and gold." Fantastic and goose bump inducing every time.

Here We Come A Caroling - Donell lead. The timbales remind me of Chicago's version of "My Favorite Things" from Chicago XXXIII. Horn break is more complex than a typical Chicago horn riff. Can really hear Herrmann's alto sax. The sound of the horns is more "alive" than many a Chicago album. By that I mean you can all but hear the room as they record their parts, much like the horn sound of CTA is. Howland's crunchy guitar solo is a nice injection of rock and roll.

Merry Christmas, I Love You (Ballad version) - The piano intro make this song come across like a ballad from the American Songbook, circa 1958. You know what marks a good song? The ability for it to be re-imagined and still ring true. In every Christmas season, the early part of my listening is always exciting because I get to hear this wonderful music after an eleven-month absence. I play all the happy, fun songs there. But in the final week, as Christmas Day grows near, I get a little somber and reflective. This version fits squarely in this latter pocket. Herrmann's sax solo is excellent. Gave me a Stan Getz vibe. The bells mirroring Donell's vocals at the close? Perfect. As the official end of the album, it is so good.

The Verdict

After fifty-two years as a band, thirty-seven albums, and my personal thirty-four years as a fan, I experienced something unexpected when I listened to Chicago Christmas 2019: it surprised me. For better or worse, when I listened to XXXIII for the first time, I could actually guess the horn breaks and musical choices. Ditto for Chicago XXX. Some of that is in play here, but not as much.

Maybe it's my age (I'm fifty-one), maybe it's the more melancholy vibe to some of the songs, but Chicago Christmas 2019 hit me squarely in my heart. The holidays always are emotional, running the gamut from nostalgia of childhood to the more mature emotions of being a parent. Somehow, this collection of songs captures that spirit in an unexpected way.

For the past twenty-one years, I have counted Chicago 25 as one of my favorite all-time Chicago albums. The reissued version--2003's What's It Gonna Be Santa--is always the first thing I break out every single Christmas season. Chicago XXXIII: O Christmas Three was a wonderful addition.

Now comes Chicago: Christmas 2019 out of nowhere, filled with original songs and excellent music, by one of my two favorite bands of all time, that made the 2019 Christmas season so much better. Ever since June, I told everybody my favorite album of 2019 was already released. That would be Bruce Springsteen's excellent album, Western Stars. Well, while "Hello Sunshine" is still my favorite song, Chicago: Christmas 2019 is my favorite album of the year.

The Man Who Invented Christmas by Les Standiford (2017)

(In honor of the new movie that is currently showing in theaters and in honor of my birthday  today, I'm posting the following review that first was published in 2012. I've updated the first sentence to account for this being 2017 and not 2012. And. to make matters even more topical, I'm taking the day off today...and seeing the movie!

But in the five years since I wrote this review, I, too, have become like Dickens: a self-published author. The leaps of faith he took are not unlike the ones we independent writers take in 2017. It makes Dickens' accomplishments even more remarkable.)

One hundred and seventy-four years ago this month, Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol. A few years ago (2008), Les Standiford published The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. Standiford, a novelist and popular historian, fully acknowledges that much of what he has compiled in The Man Who Invented Christmas is available in other works and biographies. The beauty of this little book is the prism with which Standiford examines Dickens. It’s only about the Carol and how Dickens came to write it, the influences, where Dickens was in his life when the inspiration for Scrooge, Marley, and Tiny Tim struck his imagination, the immediate aftermath of the book’s publication, and its influence on western culture.

The book opens on 5 October 1843. Dickens, aged thirty-one, is on a Manchester stage, part of a fundraiser for the Manchester Athenaeum. He is to speak but he is distracted. His current novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, was not finding the dazzling sales figures of earlier novels like The Pickwick Papers or The Old Curiosity Shop. Not a Dickens scholar I, this fact surprised me. I just assumed Dickens’s stardom, once attained, didn’t wane during his lifetime. It was up and down for Dickens and in October 1843, Dickens was down. With sales figures dropping, his own debt rising—including his parents’ debt which he took pains to absolve—and a new child, his fifth, due early in 1844, Dickens needed to do something extraordinary in order to get back on the financial horse.

After he gave his part of the fundraiser, Dickens walked the dark streets of Manchester and the germ of an idea planted itself in his mind. With the memories of a recent trip to a “ragged school”—a school for poor kids—fresh in his mind, Dickens did something fascinating: he examined himself, as an artist, a man, a husband, and found that he could improve his position. According to Standiford, “Perhaps he [Dickens] had let his disappointment with America in particular and with human nature in general overwhelm his powers of storytelling and characterization in his recent work—perhaps he had simply taken it for granted that an adoring public would sit still for whatever he offered it.” The Chuzzlewit sales and themes proved this to be true. He tried to beat his readers over the head with his earnestness and the readers let him know they didn’t like it. He needed a different method to convey what he wanted to convey. And he needed it to be entertaining.

A Christmas Carol was the result. We all know the story so I don’t need to retell it here. But what is utterly compelling when you stop to think about it is that Dickens went through a transformation not unlike Scrooge, just without the ghosts. At a time when he could have moved to Europe, contented himself with travel writing, and cleared his debts, he chose to challenge himself. To do so, he needed to change. So he changed how he approached this book and its publication. I wonder how many of us have the courage to do that in our own lives to say nothing of something as public as a novel.

With numerous quotes from Dickens’ own writings and those of his contemporaries, Standiford shows us how excited Dickens became at his “little Carol,” how it cheered him, made his cry, and, presumably, warmed his heart as the book has done these past 174 years for the rest of us. The haggling, the negotiations, the business of writing, producing, securing the artwork, and all the other minutia needed to publish a book in 1843 is captivating. You realize that, in many ways, it’s the same then as it is now. The most paradoxical thing I learned was Dickens’ decision to publish A Christmas Carol on his own. You what that means, don’t you? A Christmas Carol was a vanity book. A self-published book.

As far as the claim that Dickens “invented” Christmas (Prince Albert also had a hand with his Christmas trees), Standiford goes into some good detail on how the celebration of Christmas had devolved to a holiday that was barely celebrated. He needs to do this and lay out for the reader where Christmas was in 1843 in order for the reader to understand the profound impact the Carol had on society. Christmas, for Dickens had the same enchanting power over him that his story has over us. That’s ironic considering the humiliation of his childhood—of having a father in debtors’ prison and being forced to leave school and work in a factory to help the family—made Christmas for Dickens not the overabundant thing it is today. The season of Christmas “accounts in large part for his development as an artist.” As Dickens himself wrote, “Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a cave which only waits for the magician, and the little fire, and the necromancy, that will make the earth shake.” There is a certain magic during this time of year and Dickens captured it between pages. It’s no wonder the story has thrived.

The Man Who Invented Christmas is a charming book, uncluttered with footnotes so it’s easy to read. (Standiford cites his sources at the back of the book.) The book contains just over 200 pages so it won’t take you many hours to read it. I recommend it for anyone with a little curiosity about how a great work of literature came about. It’ll remove the gauzy trappings that can sometimes surround a book—you know, the awe we writers and readers impose on great works of literature, how the author must’ve been touched by a literary god and the work just fell from the pen—and reveal a real man who experienced real worries but also created something special by means of his own imagination, sweat, determination, and perseverance. It’s a good lesson for all of us.

For all you writers out there, think about this. Where we you this year on 5 October? Imagine not having a word written in a new work. Imagine, now, getting that idea and you burn the midnight oil—you still have a day job, don’t forget—and finish a manuscript by the end of November and the book you just wrote is published today. Think you could do it?

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@Barrie Summy

My favorite Christmas television specials

For anyone out there actually online tonight*, my contribution to BSCReview's "Favorite Holiday Specials" is now up at BSCReview.

*Let's not discuss the fact that I'm *posting* at 6pm on Christmas Eve...