(Book #48) Gene Shepherd - A Christmas Story

I can't even count how many times I have seen 'A Christmas Story', so when I received the book, by Gene Shepherd a few years back as a gift, I wasn't exactly in a rush to read it. Every year it would come out and sit on the table, and just beg me to read it, but it never happened, until now. It's a handful of short stories that were not just about Christmas, but were a of quirky tales of childhood that would eventually be twined together to form the classic movie many of us watch year after year. most of them did not actually take place around the same time. Much like the movie, they showed childhood in the depression era, and Shepherd somehow allows us to peek behind the veil of nostalgia to reveal "kiddom" in all its horror and glory. The tone is much the same as the movie and some passages in the book are used as the narration for the movie, verbatim, and read aloud by Shepherd himself. A "bonus" story in this book offered a taste of other Midwestern shenanigans that is just as bizarre, humorous and entertaining as the rest. Overall an enjoyable book and another good warm up for the rapidly approaching holiday.