Your New Thanksgiving Traditions When You’re Far From Family…and Coming Up: Tips to Get Your Book Reviewed!

The Thanksgiving holiday is coming up, and with all my (and Glenn’s) gigantic extended family back in the midwest, it is up to us to come up with our own new traditions. This is especially true these days now that I am allergic to wheat, poultry, and other staples of American Thanksgiving-y cookery. I am planning a menu of roasted baby potatoes, a plate of sauteed asparagus, delicata squash stuffed with cranberries and roasted grapes, covered in maple syrup, maybe an experiment with osso bucco, and maybe a fancy maple-laced creme brulee for dessert (and if I get really ambitious, maybe sugared cranberries on top too.) Grape-juice-cranberry hot cider to drink. (Hopefully my stomach will be cooperative by Thursday…this flu has kept it in a constant state of non-hungry-nausea.) The key to celebrating is to make every place we live feel like a real home, even when we’re far away from family.

If I can keep Glenn and I from doing work the whole day of Thanksgiving, I’ll be thankful! Glenn’s been working really hard at his job lately, and I’m feeling behind on my review work, but I think it’s important to take time off once in a while. Maybe watch some beloved holiday movies? There was always a movie marathon at my house growing up at Thanksgiving…the Star Wars trilogy, Lord of the Rings, one year, a Mystery Science 3000 marathon…so that’s one tradition I’m going to try to continue. Maybe a Miyazaki marathon….

So what traditions are going to continue, and which are you going to ditch? How do you make Thanksgiving your own?

Also, coming up: as a book reviewer, I’m often asked questions about how to get one’s book reviewed. This is especially true now that book review column space has disappeared from many newspapers, and blogs have become the more dominant space for independent book reviews. So I’ll be writing a post about the things that get my attention and what motivates me to review a certain book!