All the Christmas books I’ve read to date

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by ThatArtsyReaderGirl!

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is ‘holiday freebie’, so I’ve decided to literally just list all the Christmas books I’ve read, in order of how much I liked them, because I gotta tell you, it’s fewer than ten. This doesn’t include like, picture books my parents read to me when I was little for Christmas. Chapter books, yes. Picture books, no.

So in order of least favorite to most favorite:

The Autobiography of Santa Claus as told by Jeff Guinn – This one is technically cheating, as I DNF’d the thing. I got about two thirds through it and had to put it down. It had gotten weird and basically started to pull a Bill and Ted, where Santa went around collecting people.

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans – This one I read a while ago but I remember enjoying it. It follows a widow and her family as they find this Christmas box. It’s wholesome (but then again, so are most of the ones on this list).

Santa & Pete by Christopher Moore and Pamela Johnson – My mom read this book to me when I was little, one of the few I remember her reading. Usually it was my dad that read to us and mom would do other things to spend quality time, but in this case it was her reading. This story is told through a grandpa telling his grandson a tale while driving around on a city bus. I still reread the thing every few years.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – This one’s a classic and I feel like it’s not even worth going into what it’s about. This is really nice to read, though.

The Christmas List by Richard Paul Evans – Out of the two Christmas books I’ve read by this guy, this one is my favorite. It’s a kinda-sorta Christmas Carol retelling? Kinda? It’s pretty good I think!

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson – This is my favorite Christmas book, hands down. It’s also for the youngest audience. The cover above is not the one I have, but I chose it because the one I have on Goodreads is teeny tiny and wouldn’t resize well, so pbtbt. But this is another book I’m pretty sure my mom read to me. It’s about a town trying to put on a kid’s Christmas pageant and a bunch of rambuctious “problem” children get cast as the main roles. It’s about understanding the backgrounds of other people and wanting to help them anyways. It’s really sweet and I like it. My copy is riddled with holes and all ripped up. Yes, actual holes, apparently 8 year old me at some point took a hole puncher to the thing. Bad Emily.

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And that’s it! Like I said, I didn’t have ten. I’m always on the hunt for new Christmas books though – I try to read one every year. This year I’m rereading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, but if you have any suggestions, do let me know! Happy Blogmas!