🛸🎄👽🎄🛸 Christmas is OVER!

I love rereading this every Christmas. A Lot Like Christmas by Connie Willis is a compilation of 12 short stories with a Christmas theme. Many have aliens. Beings not from Earth come to visit us, not all with benign intentions. Willis celebrates carols, Christmas letters, holiday movies, and family dinners. So good. It's a mini break to read or listen to the story, performing the many Christmas tasks that are a joy and a burden.

🛸🎄👽🎄🛸

 

    Connie Willis is one of my top authors. She excels at what appeals to me: quirky characters, humor, and well-researched. In The Road to Roswell, it is obvious that she has been to the locations she describes, in Roswell and Las Vegas. The voices of the UFO enthusiasts are earnest, knowledgeable, and slightly unhinged. She pokes fun at them, while at the same time, she has an entire book exploring the fun of aliens among us. Because it is set in the southwest, she also celebrates the heyday of Western movies. A common thread in her novels is misinformation and assumption, and she uses that deftly here. Her writing is intriguing and complex enough to enjoy rereading it. 

👽👾🛸🤠

   It's a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan was a well-crafted romance novel. I wanted something very not Christmas, but not too intense.  Its enemy-to-friend plot, set mostly in LA in August, was spot-on. Jane is a former child TV star who now works for a production company that has discovered a script she loves. She works to get it greenlit, but it's not commercial enough--no big names, no explosions. The smoldering, cinematographer who only lacks a man-bun to complete his aesthetic thwarts her efforts. Sparks fly.

I have read another book by Monaghan, Nora Goes Off Script, and liked it. Here is my review:

https://barbpruittwrites.blogspot.com/search?q=Nora+goes+off+script

🎞️☀️❤️