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I'll get back to theme days once I find a groove of posting regularly. In the meantime, most of my posts are about some variation of books, bikes, buses, or Broadway. Plus bits about writing, nonprofits, and grief from time to time.

This blog is mostly lighthearted and pretty silly. It's not about the terrible things happening in the world, but please know that I'm not ignoring those things. I just generally don't write about them here.

18 December 2010

Politically Correct Holiday Stories

I love this book. Love, love, love, love it.

I was introduced to James Finn Garner's Politically Correct books by my junior English teacher, who told us how funny they were. She was correct.


Mr. Garner has taken five holiday stories and re-written them for the "more enlightened" time that we live in, resulting in "'Twas the Night Before Solstice", "Frosty the Persun of Snow", "The Nutcracker", "Rudolph the Nasally-Empowered Reindeer", and "A Christmas Carol."

I don't know what this book is like for people who take political correctness seriously. That is, such a person my read this book and approve, or they might read it and feel like they are being mocked. Since I don't take PC quite to this level (I spell it "person", after all), I just think it's funny. Probably not for kids, though; it's more a teen and adult kind of book.

It's hard not to like a book that begins with, "'Twas the night before solstice and all through the co-op/Not a creature was messing the calm status quo up./The children were nestled all snug in their beds,/Dreaming of lentils and warm whole-grain breads."

I've had this book for years, but a quick check of Amazon shows that it's available inexpensively, should you care to shed the stereotypes of holidays past.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like an intriguing read. Wouldn't know how I feel unless I read it, some parodies can be incredibly witty while others can sound horribly sour grapes-ish. :O)

Su said...

That's true. It happens to suit my sense of humour, but then my sense of humour is pretty warped!

Anonymous said...

I'll have to check it out from the library; we have Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, which is pretty amusing.
Grahame

Timbra said...

this sounds like something i'd like to read, eventhough, those first lines are like MY life and that of SOOOOO many of my friends here and i jest not!

Su said...

@Grahame: I love the Bedtime Stories version, too.

@Timbra: You celebrate Solstice? ;)

Felicity Grace Terry said...

We have several books in this series as well - some of which work very wel,l others of which don't. I think I'll have to see if I can get a copy of this for next year.