Toast holidays with books
If you need a little Christmas this very minute, there’s Wally Lamb.
And Augusten Burroughs. And Richard Paul Evans, T.D. Jakes, Garrison Keillor.
All offer new books in small packages – 5-by 7-inch hardcovers that toast the holidays, tug at hearts or even tease out a laugh.
Sincere faith has been a specialty of Evans for more than a decade: “The Christmas Box,” “Grace” and now “The Christmas List” (Simon & Schuster, 368 pages, $19.99).
But more authors seem to be joining the Christmas brigade.
Burroughs even adds edgy humor in his “You Better Not Cry” (St. Martin’s Press, 224 pages, $21.99): The cover shows the backside of a pantsless Santa flinging open his coat, as if flashing an innocent bystander.
Between Evans and Burroughs steps Wally Lamb, whose heftier novels “She’s Come Undone” and “I Know This Much Is True” found mainstream success as early Oprah Book Club choices.
His “Wishin’ and Hopin”’ (Harper, 273 pages, $19.99) takes the middle road between naughty and nice.
The palm-size, humorous novella, set in 1964 Connecticut, features a fifth-grade Catholic schoolboy named Felix whose claim to fame is a distant cousin: perky, pretty singer-actress Annette Funicello of Mouseketeer and beach movie fame.
When his publisher first suggested a Christmas book, Lamb’s initial reaction was, “I don’t think so. All I could think of was some corny, sappy thing, and that’s just not me.
“But later that day, a friend said to me, ’You know, Wally, you write these dark, brooding books, and that’s not really who you are. You should write a nice little Christmas story,’ ” he says.
“So I think it was the double whammy of hearing it twice in the same day.”
Lamb resisted at first but after brainstorming and finding inspiration in an index card that included the name “Felix,” he got started.
He had decided that after spending 10 years working on “The Hour I First Believed,” a novel related to the Columbine shootings, he needed a reminder that life can be fun.
“Wishin’ ” turned into a nice respite. “I call it my antidote book,” Lamb says.
The nostalgic tale required only about four months to write.
“It was the first time I’ve ever delivered a book on deadline,” Lamb says with a laugh.
For the story, he culled some of his own memories, what he calls his “file cabinet of worthless information. I have a real strong sense of pop culture.”
Lamb, 59, also discovered YouTube videos online and watched “What’s My Line?” episodes with guests such as Ronald Reagan and Salvador Dali.
“I branched out to the Mouseketeers and the Beatles on ‘Ed Sullivan’ and the (John) Kennedy funeral and so forth,” he says. “It made it all come back to me, and made it easier to plant my young protagonist in that era.”
The book leads up to a familiar Christmas ritual for many families: an ambitious, nerve-wracking holiday program.
Felix’s class plans an exotic tableau, which comes off with, say, less precision than the peaceful Nativity scene executed for today’s Rockettes audiences.
“This book is more a story told for laughs, but the serious world is rearing its head,” Lamb says. “In a few years from 1964, the world will seem pretty chaotic.”
And Lamb’s already entered that world. His next project? A story about a flood based on one in his hometown of Norwich, Conn., with shades of Hurricane Katrina.