Nothing is quite the same this Christmas.  I tried an Iced Gingerbread energy bar with a glass of cartoned egg nog for breakfast.  The bar smelled somewhat like what I remember gingerbread did, but the taste was just like any old energy bar – a little like cardboard.  The egg nog could have used some rum to perk up the flavor, and a little whipped cream on top – but I am out of both.  Substitution is the next new normal as the year grudgingly tries to finish with snow falling on the East Coast, and virtual classrooms calling for a virtual snow day.

Although I still have a few hard cover books on my shelf I have not read, I received a “skip-the-line” offer from Libby, the library’s online manager; the online library is my latest substitution. Without the availability of the hallowed halls with stacks of books and timeless opportunities for roaming, the ebook library must suffice.  With only four days left and not a lot of motivation, I’m not sure I will finish Lydia Millet’s A Children’s Bible. The editors of the New York Times Book Review chose it as one of the ten best books of 2020, so I should try.

“In Millet’s latest novel, a bevy of kids and their middle-aged parents convene for the summer at a country house in America’s Northeast. While the grown-ups indulge (pills, benders, bed-hopping), the kids, disaffected teenagers and their parentally neglected younger siblings, look on with mounting disgust. But what begins as generational comedy soon takes a darker turn, as climate collapse and societal breakdown encroach. The ensuing chaos is underscored by scenes and symbols repurposed from the Bible — a man on a blowup raft among the reeds, animals rescued from a deluge into the back of a van, a baby born in a manger. With an unfailingly light touch, Millet delivers a wry fable about climate change, imbuing foundational myths with new meaning and, finally, hope.”

The other nine on the list included only two I plan to read, when Libby sends an alert:

1. Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet
2. Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half
3. Ayad Ahktar’s Homeland Elegies
4. James McBride’s Deacon King Kong
5. Barack Obama’s A Promised Land
6. Margaret MacMillan’s War: How Conflict Shaped Us
7. James Shapiro’s Shakespeare in a Divided America
8. Robert Kolker’s Hidden Valley Road
9. Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley

Have you read any on this top ten list?