Village Christmas by Miss Read, 46 pp.

Earlier this year, I read the first in this classic series, Village School, and vowed to read more. Here it is almost the end of the year, and I’m finally getting around to more Miss Read. The reason? Each holiday season, I watch countless classic holiday movies or at least classic movies with a good Christmas scene in them while knitting or otherwise stitching holiday gifts. It’s what I do. It hadn’t occurred to me that my disdain for Christmas novels (and everyone’s got one this year) was incongruous. So I’m easing my way in with a few Miss Reads to start. Maybe I’ll try Fannie Flagg’s Redbird Christmas because I do love a good Southern story, but I probably won’t make it to Patterson’s latest. Anyway, back to Miss Read: lovely. The setting is again Fairacre, an imaginary English West Country village; the main characters this time being spinster sisters Mary and Margaret Waters and their across-the-street new neighbors, the Emerys, who stir up Christmas in Fairacre like never before. Quick and sweet and loaded with Christmas charm.