'Tis the Season

I got a whole lot of Christmas shopping done today, but I'm still not finished. Daughter and I are going to Bellevue Square tomorrow morning so I hope to finish (or pretty close to it). I decided to bake mini loaves of cranberry orange bread for the neighbors, but I'll do that on Sunday. And I'll finish up the Christmas cards on Saturday night in front of the TV while I watch one of the DVDs I have from Blockbuster Online. Somewhere in there Daughter and I are going to put the tree up and decorate. Whew.

In the spirit of the season I pulled out a Christmas themed book from the TBR. I was glad I did since What She Wants For Christmas by Janice Kay Johnson was pretty good (a B+). Johnson is one of the better Harlequin SR authors IMO. Her writing flows very smoothly and so was a very fast read which is good since I've not had a lot of time for reading (or blogging either). The heroine, Teresa Burkett, is a veterinarian who has just moved her family from the big city suburbs to a small town in Washington. Joe Hughes is a logger who owns his own business but he has a big secret that makes him feel inferior and unworthy to Teresa. Usually big secrets really piss me off if they are carried on too long but in this case I found the reason for keeping his secret and his feelings of worthlessness rather believable. I shed a few tears for Joe too. Teresa's two children were also portrayed very realistically and were not annoying in any way.

The coolest part to me was all the references to the locations. The setting takes place in western Washington with mention of places I know very well. Whenever I read a book that takes place in the Pacific Northwest I really pay close attention looking for mistakes. But Johnson got everything right. Looks like she is very familiar with the area or did her research. Anyway, I'm off topic. There was one glaring problem.. even though this book was published in 1996, there was not one mention of a condom in any of the sex scenes which really bugs me. I really expect that condoms should be mentioned or a least a thought to birth control and protection from disease in books with a contemporary setting. Or am I whacked out here? What do you think?

Anyone have any recs for other good Christmas themed books?

Well, off to bed. I'm getting up early to go to aerobics class before we hit the mall.