Allow me to take a brief recess from our usual fare to tout a new Amazon Kindle essay written by my wonderful friend Joseph Bottum. Amazon has begun publishing original pieces, and the company recently asked Jody to expand his beautiful essay, Dakota Christmas, which is now available as an e-essay on Kindle. From the promotional summary:
A memoir of childhood Christmases on the South Dakota plains. By turns sweet and comic, sentimental and serious, Joseph Bottum’s “Dakota Christmas” is an instant Christmas classic. In this beautifully written account of the mad joys and wild emotions of Christmas for children, Bottum captures the universal spirit of the season even while he recounts his memories with a sharp particularity that brings them alive for readers. “Her hair was the same thin shade of gray as the weather-beaten pickets of the fence around her frozen garden,” he writes of one chance Christmas encounter. “She had a way with horses, and she was alone on Christmas Eve. There is little in my life I regret as much as that I would not stay for just one cookie, just one cup of tea.”
Anyone interested in a wonderfully nostalgic and poignant recounting of Christmases past will enjoy DC. Jody has a unique and evocative voice. And hey, the price is right: Only 99 cents.
I hope they sell a ton—because Jody is my friend, because the essay really is splendid, and frankly, because this might be the future of publishing and as a writer worried about the future of writing, I would like to see this new approach succeed. The more outlets for good writing, the better.
You have a decision to make: double or nothing.
For this week only, a generous supporter has offered to fully match all new and increased donations to First Things up to $60,000.
In other words, your gift of $50 unlocks $100 for First Things, your gift of $100 unlocks $200, and so on, up to a total of $120,000. But if you don’t give, nothing.
So what will it be, dear reader: double, or nothing?
Make your year-end gift go twice as far for First Things by giving now.
