"[Valentine's Day] centers around the concept of love. This makes it second only to Boxing Day as the holiday least understood by most of the world."

I spent much of yesterday immersed in Penny Vincenzi’s Something Dangerous, the second in her Lytton family trilogy. It’s a huge, sprawling book, but also surprisingly straightforward. I consistently have been impressed with how skillfully she encompasses the events of two or three years at a clip, within a paragraph. For example, one chapter of the first book ends in 1912, with a huge family upheaval, resulting in Celia and Oliver Lytton’s missing their train. The next chapter begins in, say, 1914, and within the next page someone mentions how upset Celia was to have missed their train – to the dock, to board the Titanic. Nothing particularly brilliant, but a clever and well-done passage-of-time device, which all too often can be clumsy and awkward, especially in very large books like this one. There are a lot of characters, and convoluted relationships, but by and large, it’s just a direct and fun novel, perfect for reading while lying on the couch with a cup of tea balanced on my stomach and the children systematically creating chaos and cacophony throughout the house with various Christmas presents.

I paused long enough in my reading to take a long lovely nap in the afternoon, awakening from my deep sleep to find that H had manfully attempted Christmas dinner. Unfortunately he is scared of butter and so the Christmas stuffing was more like Christmas croutons, and the turkey, which he’d cooked at 300, was still, after an hour in the oven, woefully raw and wobbly inside. We dined on steamed green beans, mashed potatoes, and cranberry sauce; I supplemented the boys’ meal with microwaved chicken nuggets.

I am halfway through Neil Gaiman’s ninth Sandman volume, The Kindly Ones and am finding it tough going. I think most of the problem is that I am distracted by the artwork; the drawing is clumsy and crude, without any of the nuance or striking visuals I have become accustomed to in this series. But I lost my Sandman momentum during the whole stomach-ick week, and can’t seem to just pick it up again.

I received one book for Christmas, that I had picked out myself at the Scholastic book fair, to add to my collection of books featuring librarians: Library Lion. But I fully intend to go have a good rattle round B&N or Half-Price Books later this week. I have to gear up for the Winter Classics Challenge, and track down a few intriguing-looking Aussie authors Lazy Cow discussed in her last post, and keep an eye open for secondhand Sandman volumes.

Now I have to go grocery shopping, because while Christmas was lovely and relaxing, all the bananas and bread got eaten, and all the milk drunk, and we are completely out of dishwasher detergent which could quickly become an emergency situation in this house.