Rudolph Day, March 2015: Vermont Holiday

A Vermont Christmas, Richard Brown and Jay Parini
This is a nifty coffee-table book of mostly photographs—with a difference. Most of the books of this sort are a confection of beautiful decorations, breathtaking scenery, and warm celebrations. There are many photos of scenery in this volume, but most of the photos are of the more "homely" (as the British say) sort: a cow next to an old barn, a minister ready to go before his congregation, a child before an old stove, a man shoveling snow from his roof, sheep in the snow. Some local recipes using maple syrup are included, but most of the text is nostalgic, including a wonderful essay by a woman who lived on a Vermont farm in the 1920s and an excerpt from The Lone Winter from 1923. A book for a cold afternoon, to partake by the fire and/or with a cup of cocoa.