Hi all! Thanks so much to Jana for asking me to be part of her Christmas event! :) I love the season!

Let me introduce myself: I’m Daisy from Between the Pages and The Broke and the Bookish, and I call Nijmegen, a city in the Netherlands my home. Which is useful information considering Jana asked me to talk about how we celebrate Christmas here ;)

We actually have two gift giving events in December here. One is Christmas and another is Sinterklaas (which another Dutch Blogger, Debby @ Snuggly Oranges, explains in this post), Sinterklaas is celebrated on December 5th every year and there are actually a lot of Dutch people who don’t exchange gifts for Christmas. But because my brother was REALLY afraid of Zwarte Piet (Sinterklaas’ helper), we’ve always celebrated Christmas and got gifts from Santa, which always sorta made us the odd one out, but I totally love it!

I actually only found out last year that you guys in the US only have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, here in The Netherlands we have the first day of Christmas and second day of Christmas and both are national holidays. Which comes in handy if more than one set of parents is expecting you for a Christmas dinner ;) I’d always thought it was the same worldwide!

I love Christmas. It’s my absolute favourite holiday and I was really annoyed when I had to work the night shift on Christmas Eve last year. I just love the feeling of sitting around with the family, exchanging gifts, having a pretty Christmas tree in the house with all the little lights and eating lots of yummy food. Cause let’s be honest, there’s always a lot of food going around. So by the end of the second day of Christmas, I’ve usually gone into a serious food coma. One thing that also happens here is that on the second day of Christmas, people go to clubs or bars after dinner to party. I’ve never really been a fan, cause after all the food and lazing around I don’t really want to stand around and put ut with drunk people, but a lot of people like it.

I’m one of those people who want everything to be special for Christmas. I can spend ages planning my outfits (I LOVE putting on a pretty dress for Christmas!) and what to eat if we’re making something (though ‘gourmetten’ is really popular in Holland as well, which is basically sitting around the table with a grill in the middle and everyone can put whatever tiny piece of meat they want to eat on it) and definitely what books to bring with me to read in between all the food and gifts and games and such! Some perfect Christmas reads for me were Anna and the French Kiss and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. I will forever link both books to Christmas and love them even more for it!

I guess that when it comes down to it, Christmas for me in the Netherlands isn’t all that different from the rest of the world: it’s filled with family time, lots of food, good books and just the Christmas spirit of being nice to each other. I love how everyone is cheerful and dressed nicely and just relaxing!

I’m getting all warm and fuzzy feelings just writing about this! I want to wish you all a very merry Christmas in advance! And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to light all the candles in my home and feel cozy and Christmas-y :)

 

Today, I have a treat for you! I’m so excited to have Kaley from Books etc. on the blog today to talk about Christmas love stories of all kinds! I LOVE Christmas romance novels and movies, so this post is right up my alley. She makes some great recommendations for titles I’ve already gone out and purchased.

I adore Christmas. To me it means family, friends, snow (I’m Canadian so Christmas isn’t Christmas without the white stuff), decorations, lots of food and gift giving, and tons of holiday themed television, movies, and books.

I like all sorts of Christmas movies and TV shows. There are the classics I like to watch every year – Ruldolph, Frosty, Miracle on 34^th Street (I own the new one but the original is delightful). I also love The Santa Clause (the first is the best but as of last year I now own the trilogy) and The Polar Express. I love Elf and thought Bad Santa was amusing. What I really love, though, are the romancey Christmas movies. I’m a sucker for them. Not surprisingly, Love Actually is my favourite with The Holiday running a close second. Then there are the really cheesy made for TV movies. I love love love these. Think movies like All She Wants for Christmas, Mrs. Miracle (which is based on a romance novel), Santa Baby (let’s not talk about the weirdness of Santa Baby 2), Eve’s Christmas, Borrowed Hearts, His and Her Christmas…I could go on and on! These movies are perfect for nights when you want to curl up with a blanket, a big mug of hot chocolate, and Christmas goodies. Bonus points if you have a fireplace, too!

Every year I try to read as many Christmas books as I can. Back when I was in university, I loved Christmas because it meant a total break from school before the second semester started in January. I used this time for pleasure reading to devour all the Christmas books my mom had picked up from the library. Since I’m the faster reader, I would fly through the anthologies and tell her which order she should actually read the stories in. These days I’m finding it harder to read a ton of Christmas books since I’m a blogger and have so many other books I need to read and review. When I can fit in a holiday book, I always go for the romances. Romances that take place in a small town are even better! I also always hope that the story will actually take place over Christmas…I’m always disappointed when I get a book I’m expecting to be all Christmas all the time and then the holiday is hardly mentioned.  I like that a lot of authors will write anthologies because they’re quick bursts of all sorts of different characters and lifestyles. One of my favourite anthologies is A Season to Remember by Sheila O’Flannagan because all the characters are staying at the same inn in Ireland over Christmas and their stories are interconnected. A favourite from last year has gotten a makeover with a new publisher this year (and a gorgeous new cover). One Sweet Christmas by Darlene Fredette was just that – sweet! Author Talli Roland has some fabulous Christmas novellas (Mistletoe in Manhattan is so fun) and Sarah Pekkanen also wrote a novella, All is Bright, that is a great atypical romantic read. I haven’t yet read any Christmas books this year but I’m hoping to change that soon!

So what makes me love the romance aspect of all these movies and books? I think it’s because I have such a romantic notion of Christmas itself. I don’t have a huge family so I don’t have the crazy logistics to worry about…all I have to do is get myself from my home to my mom’s. Bonus: the boyfriend and I are from the same town so we don’t even have that “whose family will we see when?” stress. I love all the family time I get with my bitty family. I love that my hometown is in northernish Ontario and we almost always get a white Christmas. I love that my sister will make gingerbread cookies with me even though she doesn’t like them because we have so much fun decorating them. I love our unique Christmas tree topper (it’s a penguin!) and all the baking my grandma used to do (health issues for the two of us has meant a smaller amount of goodies in the past couple of years, sadly). I like traditions when it comes to Christmas and I find that the romances play into that, even if they’re not actually traditional. There’s just something about these stories and movies that leave me feeling warm and fuzzy, which is exactly how Christmas makes me feel.

Now that I’ve shared my holiday reading and watching habits, what about you? What are your favourite Christmas movies? Do you devour Christmas stories, too?

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season filled with all of your favourite things! Merry Christmas :)

Find Kaley on her blog, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads! She’s really fun, so you definitely should.

It’s my pleasure to welcome Kayla of The Bookish Owl to the blog today to celebrate Christmas with us, Filipino style! Kayla is here to tell us all about what Christmas is like at her home in the Philippines. I absolutely love learning about Christmas traditions, especially ones from cultures and countries I am not familiar with!

A typical Filipino Christmas starts around October and ends on February of the next year. Why? Well, we don’t really celebrate Halloween. The spookiest holiday is a Western tradition and while there may be a few parties, it’s not that big of a deal in my country. By October, all the Christmas decorations are up and my wish list has been sent out to my relatives.

The best thing about Christmas in the Philippines is the food. Noche Buena (Noh-cheh-Bo-we-na) is the traditional Christmas Eve dinner, a very large event within my family. There’s ham, a staple in our Christmas diet, and round fruits like oranges and grapes as it is believed that they bring good luck to you during the coming year. It’s a family feast filled with relatives asking if you have a boyfriend and awkward conversations with that cousin you haven’t seen in months. There’s also Puto Bungbong (Poo-toh-boong-boong), a Filipino street food of steamed purple rice topped with coconut, margarine and brown sugar.

However, before the Noche Buena, we dress up in our best clothes and hear Mass. I live in a small town where my parents practically know everyone and we always have to spend at least half an hour after the Mass ends just to be able to greet all the people they know. My brothers and I are forced to mano po (Ma-noh-poh) to each and everyone of them. Most of the time, I don’t mind but it grates on your nerves when they start asking you about boyfriends. Oh, the awkwardness of family. By the way, mano po is a traditional gesture made by youngsters to the elders wherein we put the backs of their right hands to our foreheads as a sign of us receiving blessing from them. It’s a sign of respect and even though it gets tiring after a while, it feels nice to uphold Filipino beliefs and customs.

Christmas in the Philippines revolves around three things; Family, Food and Faith. These 3 F’s make up our identities as Filipinos and this won’t change even with the storm surge that occurred last November. A lot of you know about Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda that recently hit the Visayas region of our country. I’m sure you have seen the devastation it wrought; people are homeless, without food to eat and the dead are piled up because the cemeteries are destroyed. Families can’t find missing loved ones as some bodies were swept out to the sea or are covered by debris. The typhoon has killed an estimated 2500 people and the earthquake that came before that killed around 200. Philippines experience about 20 typhoons in a year that do a lot of damage to our country but even with all the calamities, the tragedies and the disasters that afflict us, I know that Filipinos will continue to smile and to rebuild their lives.

For us, that is the true essence of Christmas;
finding that one speck of happiness in a dismal world.

 

Thank you so much for sharing your Christmas with us, Kayla! And thank you for such a sweet, heartfelt post. I think you’ve taught us a wonderful lesson: the meaning of Christmas is finding happiness in a world where things might not be going the way we hoped, or they way we needed them to go. I know I appreciate the reminder, myself.

If you would like to get to know Kayla more, visit her blog, her YouTube channel, or find her on Twitter!

So, what’s Christmas like at your home?

It’s my pleasure to have author Sherry Torgent on the blog today to discuss upcoming trends in young adult fiction!

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The Next Big Trend in Young Adult Fiction
by Sherry Torgent

I was recently thinking about the concept of trending, mainly because twitter has made the term popular by providing daily trends. Then I thought, what would it be like to have trending hashtags just for young adult fiction? What would we be seeing today, n

ext month, a year from now? I decided to take a look around and see if anyone was trying to predict future trends in young adult fiction.

To say that more people disagree than agree on this topic is an understatement. Imagine a publishing agent licking a finger and putting it up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. This analogy pretty much sums up the way predicting YA trends seems to be done. In other words, they have no idea. But that doesn’t keep them from trying.

First, I decided to look at what’s on the way out. According to one article I read from a popular publishing magazine, paranormal romance, apocalyptic aftermath, and dystopian fiction, are played out, over published, and dead.

My first thought was, WOW. How did they determine that? I wanted some real, hard evidence. The article was only based on the opinions of the publishing agents they interviewed. I was going to need more than that.

So in my non-sci

entific attempt to find proof, I pulled up Amazon’s current top 100 best-selling, young adult books and looked at the categories of all 100 books (Yes, I really did look at all 100). Were the publishing agents right about paranormal and dystopian? Hmmm… After lumping some of the categories together for the sake of narrowing it down, I ended up with three top categories. And guess what? Fantasy/paranormal and Science fiction/dystopian were almost just as popular as Contemporary fiction. One commenter on the article said that saying these categories are dead is like saying women are getting tired of romance novels.

So, what about the next big YA trend? What’s it going to be?

The three new big trends that seemed to have the most support were contemporary, science fiction, and stand-alone novels (good-bye trilogies?). And it looks like they may be right about this one—sort of. Contemporary, coming-of-age, romance type fiction came out at the top of the bestsellers. Most were stand-alone novels. But was this really a new trend? Maybe it’s an old, new trend. My quest for the next big thing was slowly unraveling.

The only trend I saw that may have some clout, is the rise of science fiction. And that’s only because right off the top of my head, I was able t

o think of four movies being made from science fiction books: The Maze Runner, Ender’s Game, Divergent, and Wool, with the added bonus of two being dystopian, and two, post-apocalyptic. You know, the dead trends.

But after all this poking and prodding and researching, did I really learn anything about the next big YA trend? Not really. Sigh.

Here’s why.

The reality is, we all like what we like, and we tend to read the kind of books we like whether they’re trending or not. No matter what the predictions are for what the next big trend is in YA, readers want one thing more than anything else — a good story. Period. They want original, unpredictable, realistic romance, with characters they can really connect to. It doesn’t matter whether its romance or science fiction, as long as the writer creates a story that grabs us. That’s the kind of book that will be trending.

What YA book trends do you think need to be left behind, or what trends do you hope to see in the future? I think we can all agree that readers are the best predictors of YA trends, not publishing agents.

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Thanks for stopping by, Sherry! You’ve given us some interesting things to think about. :)

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Check out Sherry’s book, Like Ice!

Like Ice by Sherry Torgent
Published by Createspace on September 26, 2013
Genres: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Dystopia, Adventure, Clean Romance
Pages: 266
Buy the Book • Add to Goodreads

Raz Wynn is an Ice baby. Part of a human race genetically altered to colonize a cold planet where survival dictates everything. But another colony lives in the warmth of the underground. The Kommons. The unaltered humans. Abandoned by their mother country on earth, the two colonies stand at odds over who will ultimately inhabit the planet. When Raz discovers the unfathomable sacrifice her colony expects her to make in order to secure the future of her race, she does the only thing she can do. Run.