Take a Look at the Five and Ten

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Ori’s holidays are an endless series of elaborately awful meals cooked by her one-time stepfather Dave’s latest bride. Attended by a loose assemblage of family, Ori particularly dreads Grandma Elving—grandmother of Dave’s fourth wife—and her rhapsodizing about the Christmas she worked at Woolworth’s in the 1950s. And, of course, she hates being condescended to by beautiful, popular Sloane and her latest handsome pre-med or pre-law boyfriend. Seriously, it is novella length, so not a huge time commitment, though by the end you will have turned into the MOR NOW Monster and it is SWEET and we are technically still in the Christmas season, so you need to get this in now before it is too late for a sweet and uplifting Christmas read. What I am NOT looking for, are songs like Bowling for Soup's "1985" which are written after the date

I don’t like Christmas and I don’t read Christmas stories, but I found this novella to be completely charming. Maybe my reaction was due in part to nostalgia. By the end of the book I sure was missing Woolworth’s and snow and Christmas lights. I think the book may have damaged my brain. This is a lovely little story. I refuse to spoil this for you, other than to repeat what I have heard others say about this author and the praise is all worthy. I would have liked a BIT more showing the love interests together, BUT she does some amazing stuff with just a few scenes. But the research has shown happiness not only isn’t strong enough to produce a flashbulb moment, it doesn’t activate the amygdala or the hippocampus, it activates the limbic cortex.” I know, but I’m not talking about happiness. I’m talking about joy, which is a totally different emotion. People think of them as the same thing because they’re both positive emotions, but I don’t think they are. Happiness is a warm, pleasant, all-over kind of feeling. Joy’s nothing like that. It pierces right through you, and it’s so intense, it’s almost painful, and I think that’s the kind of experience Grandma Elving had standing there, looking out the door at the snow, a sort of…” I faltered, groping for the right word.From beloved New York Timesbestselling, multiple-award-winning author Connie Willis comes another enchanting science fictional Christmas tale and screwball comedy, Take a Look at the Five and Ten. Readers in the need for a dose of Willis’s humor and heart will want to curl up with this novella for the holidays.

Everybody has a traumatic Christmas memory, and mine was always Christmas dinner, partly because in my family (a term used veryloosely), it’s actually a series of dinners—Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner, and a New Year’s Eve buffet, and if my one-time stepfather Dave had his way, we’d also have St. Lucia’s Day and Boxing Day and Twelfth Night dinners, and who knows what else. This is exactly what I hoped for. The clarity, the heightened emotional state, the irrelevant details…” She had. She was looking at the Santa Claus collecting money for charity outside Safeway’s main door. “That Christmas I worked at Woolworth’s there was a Santa right outside the front door. He had a cotton-wool beard and a chimney you put the money in. It was made out of—” Ori dreads spending the holidays with her family. Her step-dad's latest wife and her daughter are horrible. The other issue is Grandma Elving. She worked in Woolworth's during Christmas in 1950. And loves to talk about her time there ad nauseum and in detail. Everyone dreads hearing about Woolworth's and Ori gears up for survival mode. Only this holiday is different. And yet, another gem from Connie Willlis. She provides in novella length another delightful, heart warming andSo, short, sweet, Christmas with a really adorable and lovable older woman, some mean step family members and an MC to root for. What more could you possibly want? My Boss was pushing this on me after I asked her what she was reading and she couldn't stop going on and on about how wonderful this was. I gave into peer pressure and am here to say... Like Prince's "1999" (which will not be played as much now that it's date has come and gone). These are songs for which I requested this not reading the blurb because ultimately I know it will be a good read. So imagine me surprise to find out that this was a holiday tale. I am not a holiday person and only care to pillage the baked goods. So I had a small moment of dismay about the holiday aspect. I needn't have worried. This story was lovely.