divine529's review

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adventurous funny lighthearted relaxing fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
I adore Tolkien. 

This book is full of letters from Father Christmas over the span of his children's childhoods. It's full of adventures and fun characters and all of the crazy happenings in the North Pole. It also adds some historical context for what was happening each year as the books went on (it covers several years of WWII for example and the Great Depression). 

It's absolutely brilliant and I think everyone should get to experience this. 

Definitely one to add to my "Yearly Christmas Reads"! 

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silver_valkyrie_reads's review against another edition

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lighthearted relaxing slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This one almost makes me more happy to know that it exists that it actually does for me to read it myself. It is completely charming that Tolkien wrote these personalized letters (along with drawing pictures) for his children, but occasionally I felt like I was missing, not exactly an inside joke, but general family culture references. 

On a related note, I appreciated the layout of the book, including images of the original letters as well as easier to read typed versions. BUT, the easier to read versions seemed to frequently leave out personal references (to family members, or sometimes to specific/personal gifts), and those were the bits I generally found most interesting! 

I did really enjoy a few of the bits about fighting goblins, and would have been happy if there were a lot more of those type of stories. 

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