And a very happy December to you, beloved patrons!  There is a lot going on this month, and we will be here with some suggestions to to make your holidays more delicious, more bearable, funnier, calmer…whatever you need them to be.

And today, I also wanted to share with you some other December holidays that may not show up on your standard calendar, but are worth celebrating nonetheless:

December 8: Pretend To Be A Time-Traveler Day

This is not a joke.  This day was started in 2007 on a blog, which you can see here.  There are rules, and endless possibilities, and I, for one, am a little giddy with excitement.

December 10: Dewey Decimal System Day

I admit, I have weirded a few people out in my time with my love of the Dewey Decimal System, and all its intricate beauty.  Developed  by Melvil Dewey in 1873 and first published in 1876, the Dewey Decimal System is based on the principal that all knowledge can be classified, and therefore, contained in a Library.  We’ll talk more about this as the day draws nigh, but on Dewey’s birthday (Dec. 10), let’s take a second to thank him for giving us all that can be known.

December 17: National Maple Syrup Day

If I had my way, every day would be national maple syrup day.  If you’re looking to learn more about this phenomenal, delicious delicacy, the Boston Globe wrote a really interesting article a few years ago in honor of this special day.  And while I know many of you are none too pleased with the onset of Winter, allow me to remind you that cold days lead to more maple syrup, in the end.  There’s always a bright side.

December 21: National Crossword Puzzle Day

While crossword puzzles had been published in England as part of children’s books, the first modern newspaper crossword puzzle was printed in the New York World on December 21, 1913, and was developed by journalist Arthur Wynne from Liverpool.  This day is for people like my father, who can do crossword puzzles.  In ink.  And for people like me, who…don’t.

December 27: National Fruitcake Day

Whether you love them or hate them, fruitcake has entered the vernacular, not only as a holiday treat, but as a way to describe someone who is…well…the phrase was coined in 1935 by Southern Bakeries, who had access to cheap nuts, and therefore loaded them into their fruitcakes.  The first mail order fruitcakes were dispatched in the US in 1913.  So have some fruitcake today, or give some away (to a friend or enemy, we won’t tell), and keep the merriment going a the whole month long!

And do you know what is always worth celebrating?  New Books!  Check out some of the ones that have ambled up onto our shelves this week:

A Wretched and Precarious Situation : In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier: I’ve personally been on a big Arctic fiction binge lately, about which more later, but I was thrilled to see David Welky’s new history has arrived.  In 1906, while in standing on Cape Colgate in northern-most Greenland, Commander Robert E. Peary saw in the distance a line of mountains that he named “Crocker Land”, after one of the bankers who had financed his expedition.  In 1913,  Donald MacMillan headed an expedition to Crocker Land to settle disputes as to whether it existed or not.  The expedition itself was a series of disasters, mistakes, tragedies, and discoveries that Welky skillfully discusses in this quick-paced and well-researched true-life adventure story.  Filled with plenty of illustrations and photos that will make you very grateful for the Library’s central heating, this is a book that earned a starred review from Kirkus, who said “Making magnificent use of documents and recreating the years-long Arctic sojourn with the drama and immediacy of a tension-filled adventure novel, [Welky] conjures a romantic quest emblematic of the rugged manliness of the time…. vastly entertaining.”

Serious Sweet: This Booker Prize long-listed novel by A.L. Kennedy is a fascinating, genre-bending novel that takes place within the course of a single day in London, as seen through the eyes of Meg and Jon.  Jon, a recently divorced civil servant, has lost nearly everything–including his love for his country after years of covering up government secrets.  He has recently taken out an ad offering to send letters to a discerning woman–which brought Meg into his life. Today was the day they had arranged to meet…but Jon’s life is literally imploding before his eyes, and he hourly postpones the meeting, all the while losing faith in their tentative romance.  There are a number of big ideas in this book, but it’s the tiny moments–of holding another person’s hand, hearing their voice–that make this book so impactful.  The Guardian agrees, saying, in their review: “More than any of AL Kennedy’s previous books, this is a novel for our times…The London that emerges is a place that can be loved only in its dingier corners…It’s appropriate that the disconnected city should be partially redeemed through the love story of two middle-aged and broken lovers. It also seems fitting that their redemption should occur not through sex but through hesitant moments of touch.”

Swing Time: Probably one of the biggest releases this year is multiple-award-winning author Zadie Smith’s newest novel, which deals with issues of race, class, gender, dance, friendship, celebrity, and talent in a wholly unique and beautiful way.  As young girls, Aimee and Tracey dream of growing up to be dancers–but only Tracey has talent.  Aimee is, instead, full of ideas about what makes a life and a tribe, and how to change the world.  As grown-ups, Tracey struggles in a chorus line, while Aimee travels the world as a singer’s assistant, eventually bringing her to West Africa with a huge philanthropic ambition.  Smith creates worlds with her books, and both of the worlds here, North London and West Africa are whole and real, and serve a perfect counterpoints to each other in a story that The New Yorker calls “Smith’s most affecting novel in a decade, one that brings a piercing focus to her favorite theme: the struggle to weave disparate threads of experience into a coherent story of a self…The novel’s structure feels true to the effect of memory, the way we use the past as ballast for the present. And it feels true, too, to the mutable structure of identity, that complex, composite ‘we,’ liable to shift and break and reshape itself as we recall certain pieces of our earlier lives and suppress others.”

The Mayakovsky Tapes: Robert Littell is a master of the Cold Way spy novel, but this latest work goes beyond the intrigue and clandestine dangers of the Cold War, and instead probes more deeply into what it meant to live, to live, and to create, in a world marked by Stalin’s oppressive, deadly regime.  Set in March 1953, the book centers around the tales of four women, each of whom had some kind of relationship to the now-deceased poet, who is being upheld as a her of Soviet arts.  Their tales trace Mayakovsky’s life from the idealism of the Russian Revolution and the heady days of the Futurist movement to the desperate existence he was forced to live as Stalin’s repressions began to take effect.  The whole story is one for art lovers, historians, and wordsmiths alike, as a real, human figure, flaws and all, emerges from a time period that still remains for many notorious and deeply misunderstood.  Booklist called this book a “vivid picture of a gifted poet, a tireless womanizer, and a man beset by wild mood swings. The ladies’ narration is both raunchy and often hilarious. It also illuminates a tumultuous period of Russian history.”

Butter: A Rich History: Do I really need to sell you on a history of butter?  I didn’t think so.  But, regardless of your level of affection for the stuff, Elaine Khosrova’s work is a fascinating study of food, culture, class, taste, and marketing in modern history, as well as a deeply personal study of her (and our) relationships with food and family.  As if that wasn’t enough, there are recipes–that, obviously, feature butter.  Need I say more?