For the last few years, when the holiday season has come around, I've looked back to previous centuries for the newsworthy events of the year. Today, please join me on a whistle stop tour through 1811 ....

If you thought that 2011 was an interesting year to live through, you should try 1811!

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This year my husband and I unwittingly purchased what can only be considered a "Charlie Brown tree". If you sneeze, it loses needles. There's a gaping hole in the back that we've awkwardly pressed up against the wall, and it leans in its stand. And though I'd be the first to admit we still love it, I had to wonder if David Maybury, co-editor of Inís magazine, didn't have the right idea! He (and friends) constructed a Christmas tree entirely out of Irish picture books:

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Earlier this year, World Book Night launched in the UK with the aim of giving away one million books to light or non readers in a 24 hour period. It was a huge success and many other countries are expected to join in the fun in the coming years, starting with the USA on April 23, 2012.

The list of 30 books that will be offered on World Book Night USA has just been released. If you are a USA resident aged 16 or over and would like to give away books, go to http://www.us.worldbooknight.org and complete the form which asks, simply, which book you want to give away, where, to whom & why?

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The picture book market is in the doldrums.  Publishers report that sales are flat and disappointed booksellers must box up the brightly colored, lavishly illustrated volumes - unopened, unread, and most dispiriting of all, unloved - and send them back to the warehouses from whence they came.

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I just finished No Cheating, No Dying: I Had a Good Marriage. Then I Tried to Make It Better. (Scribner, Feb 2012) by Elizabeth Weil. It's a fun, easy read, but with depth.

I'm not a big fan of "self help" books, steering away from tomes that threaten to give me step by step improvement instructions. Instead I prefer to learn from other people's narratives (that is to say, other people's mistakes) - which is just what one can do from No Cheating, No Dying.

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What's the best Christmas present you've ever received? One lonely Christmas - stuck in New York City and unable to get home to Alabama to see her family - Harper Lee spent the holiday with friends... and received a Christmas gift that would end up being a present to the entire literary world. In the short story "Christmas to Me" (McCall's Magazine, 1961), Lee writes about her experience:

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