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| Book of the week | Does the crass commercialism of Christmas make you long for simpler Noel-inspired traditions? Me too.
Here’s an idea for a Christmas Eve family gathering. Pull out the flannel PJs. Brew up some marshmallow-rich cocoa. Light a flickering candle. And unveil “The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories” edited by
Tara Moore.
Volume one collects the spooky Christmas stories that were once published in Victorian-era newspapers and magazines as the holiday season approached.
Sir Walter Scott offers a tale called “The Tapestried Chamber” that features a corpse with a face upon which are “imprinted the traces of the vilest and most hideous passions” and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle contributes a story titled, “The Captain of the Pole-Star.”
The book opens with the editor’s delightful instructions on how to read a Victorian Christmas ghost story.
— Kerri Miller | MPR News |
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 | | Poet Major Jackson on writing poetry that connects |
At an event for MPR members earlier this fall, poet Major Jackson, host of APM’s daily poetry podcast The Slowdown, told host Kerri Miller that writing poetry is a physical, sometimes even violent, experience. Listen to their whole conversation. | |
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 | | Ask a Bookseller: ‘The Maniac’ |
Chris Miller of Broadway Books in Portland, Ore., recommends the novel “The Maniac” by Benjamín Labatut. Labatut takes us back to the dawn of the nuclear age in his newest novel focusing us on John von Neumann (1903-57). | |
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