As you may (or may not) know, I recently began a new job at the Edgar Allan Poe Museum and I was sitting on the front desk greeting visitors and minding the shop, when a nice woman (close to me in age) came in to check out the museum. In the course of chatting with her, I learned she is holiday tv expert, Joanna Wilson and that she is on a book tour and is promoting books she has written about Christmas tv shows and also has a blog on the same subject!!!! I was delighted to learn this and asked lots of questions and mentioned that my husband and I had a (sadly neglected of late) blog on a similar theme. We chatted about assorted holiday shows and she mentioned an ep of Northern Exposure called "Seoul Mates" which was not only a Christmas episode, but also had an Edgar Allan Poe/raven theme. (Somehow I've never seen this particular ep, but Jason and I intend to remedy this asap, it is now at the top of our Netflix queue and we shall hopefully be reviewing it very soon.) I was intrigued by all of this and got info on a signing that Joanna was going to be doing at Chop Suey Books, one of our favorite local purveyors of used and new books later in the week.
Well, knowing full well that I was interested in her books and armed with the knowledge that she was doing a signing at our local book store of choice, I sent Jason on a mission this past Thursday afternoon to meet her. We acquired a signed copy of The Christmas TV Companion: A Guide To Cult Classics, Strange Specials & Outrageous Oddities and have been happily dipping in and out of it for the past couple of days. It is a fabulous compilation of some of the more off-beat Christmas offerings out there in tv land and also includes great "Make Your Own Marathon" suggestions and encouragement to try your own marathons. It also has discussions of kid-friendly selections as well as more adult oriented material and has given us LOTS of inspiration for new shows to check out as well as inspiration to get holiday film and tv special blogging again.
If you love the holidays and are a pop culture geek, this book is a wonderful resource and an extremely fun read!
Ms. Wilson also has another (just-published!) book called Tis The Season TV, which is an encyclopedia of Christmas-themed television episodes, specials and made-for-tv movies which I strongly suspect we will be picking up a copy of in the not-too-distant future.
You can get these awesome books for yourself at your local bookseller or via Amazon
or 1701 Press. You can even talk to the lovely Joanna Wilson herself on her book tour which is going on for the next couple of weeks. She's an awesome person and would love to see you at a signing!
So huzzah for renewed inspiration and huzzah for excellent Chrismas pop culture books. Be seeing more of you soon!
P.S. It turns out Joanna has given a plug to the Poe Museum and Chop Suey (and a thank you to Jason and myself) on her blog! Yay!
I'm so glad you like the book! It was a pleasure meeting you and Jason.
ReplyDelete