December Book Club Selection - Holiday Edition!: The Christmas Sweater

Guess what everybody?!
The Book Club is making a comeback this month for a very special Holiday Edition!

For this month, we'll be reading The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck. I received this book as a Christmas gift a few years ago, but I have a personal rule that all things Christmas related must be kept between December 1st and December 25th. At the very least, until after the Thanksgiving turkey is consumed! I miss the days where Santa in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was the first thing Christmas related you saw each year...

I'm getting off topic.

Long story short, I haven't read it yet, and it's been staring at me from my bookshelf for a couple years, so what better time than now to check it out? (And it's also one of my December Goals, so killing two birds with one stone! #win)

When Eddie was twelve years old, all he wanted for Christmas was a bike. Although his life had gotten harder — and money tighter — since his father died and the family bakery closed…Eddie dreamed that somehow his mother would find a way to have his dream bike gleaming beside their modest Christmas tree that magical morning. 

What he got from her instead was a sweater. “A stupid, handmade, ugly sweater” that young Eddie left in a crumpled ball in the corner of his room.Scarred deeply by the realization that kids don’t always get what they want, and too young to understand that he already owned life’s most valuable treasures, that Christmas morning was the beginning of Eddie’s dark and painful journey on the road to manhood. 

It will take wrestling with himself, his faith, and his family — and the guidance of a mysterious neighbor named Russell — to help Eddie find his path through the storm clouds of life and finally see the real significance of that simple gift his mother had crafted by hand with love in her heart.

Let's be real here. I'm not expecting this to be a great book, I'm not expecting to tear up with every turn of the page, and I'm not expecting to recommend this book to everyone I know. I'm expecting a cheesy, sappy, Christmas story that would be completely inappropriate any other time of the year, and I'm sure that's exactly what I'm going to get! And I couldn't be happier about it ;)

If this doesn't seem like something that's up your ally, but you're still looking for a holiday themed read, check out Let It Snow - a collection of short stories by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle. I read it last year around the holidays and really enjoyed it! Check out this review to get an idea of what it's about. :)

Do you have any favorite holiday novels?