2025 Reading Challenge discussion

This thread is to discuss Let it Snow by John Green.

Pages: 353 pages

Length: 1 Month (December)

Participants: Eirelyn, D.L..

Everyone reads at their own pace during a Buddy Read. Because participants can be at different parts of the book at different times, it is extremely important to mark spoilers so that the book is not ruined for someone who is not as far along as others!!!

Mark spoilers by placing {spoiler} before the text and {/spoiler} after the text but use the < and > instead of the { and }.


Happy Buddy Reading!

Hi! I'd like to join this buddy read :) When will you be starting this one?

I finished the first story: The Jubilee Express by Maureen Johnson.
(view spoiler)[ It was very cheesy, but also cute! I actually thought that the plot, parents in jail + stranded train, was quite original for a Christmas story. I liked this one! (hide spoiler)]

Hey, Ilona. Welcome to the buddy read! :D

I am finishing up my November read & will hopefully start this one at the beginning of December.

The second story: A Cheertastic Christmas Miracle by John Green
(view spoiler)[What a bunch of idiots! Driving a car in the middle of a blizzard to gawk at cheerleaders. The ending was cute, but during the story I was constantly annoyed by the kids foolish decisions. (hide spoiler)]

Eirelyn wrote: "Hey, Ilona. Welcome to the buddy read! :D

I am finishing up my November read & will hopefully start this one at the beginning of December."

:) It is a very easy read! I already read the first two today.

@Ilona, easy reads are great for the holidays. :D I'm excited to get started!

Ugh, I thought my hold was closer to coming in. Hopefully soon, but I am third in line.

The Paitron Saint of Pigs by Lauren Myracle:

(view spoiler)[Oh boy. I was excited when Jeb's name was mentioned on the first page and I thought this story would be about him. Little did I know it was just about Addie. Actually, it was about how it was all about Addie. This story was quite disappointing (hide spoiler)]

My hold just came through! I will probably finish my current read before starting this one, but hopefully I can crack this one open by next weekend. :D

Eirelyn wrote: "My hold just came through! I will probably finish my current read before starting this one, but hopefully I can crack this one open by next weekend. :D"

I am excited to hear your opinion on the stories! :)

I just started this one! I have only read the first chapter so far, though. XD

Jubilee's (view spoiler)[parents have just been arrested & Sam with his storm-trooper walk just informed Jubilee that she is being shipped off to Florida for the holidays!

Also, the idea of standing in line on Christmas Eve to get the rare pieces of a Christmas village is such a realistically American thing to do. XD

Personally, I've always loved Christmas villages, and I had wanted one forever but hadn't gotten one because they are far too expensive! But I found a bunch of pieces at yard sales & thrift stores the last two years and now I have loads of pieces for what just one of those huge village pieces would cost brand new. :D I just set up a mini version of the village yesterday, in fact, lol. So I was laughing while reading about Jubilee's parents & their village. (hide spoiler)]

Hi! I'd love to join, but is anyone still active here? I don't wanna talk to the void :')

Hi, Maja! Welcome! Yep, I'm still reading the book, so I'll be around. :D

Happy to hear that!

I've just finished the 9th chapter of the first story.
(view spoiler)[ I'm enjoying it so far :) The story and your previous posts made me google this whole Christmas village thing - I've never heard of that before. Quite interesting idea, although I can imagine how much dedication it would take to collect enough houses to create a decent-looking village. It immediately reminded me of one guy's parents from "Paper Towns" - they had an impressive collection of black Santas.

I'm reading it in my native language and I've already encountered a funny situation with the translation. Jubilee's name is translated to "Jubilatka", which means a person celebrating their birthday. And no, this word is not used as a name at all, doesn't remind anyone of strippers' pseudonyms and is used to describe specified celebration. Then there was eggnog, which was not translated at all, despite us having a synonym for this in my language. ...Sorry for a rant, I switched into a language freak mode ;D

Also, the fact that her parents fighting over some porcelain houses are sent to jail made me laugh so hard! :D I can't imagine them as anyone other than a pair of innocent middle-aged, but desperate hobbyists. (hide spoiler)]

I can also recommend you Jay Asher's What Light. Read that a year or two ago and still have some warm feelings when I think back of it.

That's so interesting with the translation differences! (view spoiler)["Jubilee" here is most often used as a general term for a big celebration. I've never heard it as a name either, but I could definitely see it being a stripper alias. XD I'd be interested to know if there are more translation differences like this as you read.

Her parents seem adorable, lol. I want to know more about them! I imagined them exactly as you did -- innocent, middle-aged, desperate hobbyists who got in over their heads. XD (hide spoiler)]

I finished the first story, Jubilee Express. I agree with Ilona that it was (view spoiler)[cheesy but cute. :D I thought it was shorter than it could've been. I know, since there are multiple stories, that it couldn't be super long or anything, but I wanted more. And I felt like a few things were left kind of up in the air.

Like...what ended up happening with her parents? Didn't Sam the lawyer say that the DA/judge wanted to make an example of them? If that's the case, what happened? Are they going to actually do jail time, or just pay a hefty fine? If they're doing jail time, where is Jubilee going to stay? Will she end up at her grandparents' place? Also, how are Jubilee & Stuart going to make their relationship work? She doesn't live in his town, so...what about that? Long distance until they're old enough to move someplace together? Or is this just a winter fling that will end when she leaves town? I need to know more! XD (hide spoiler)]

Also, I read What Light a few years ago & really enjoyed it. I love the warm, cozy feeling of Christmas stories, and I felt like that one had a good plot line as well. :D

Eirelyn wrote: "Also, how are Jubilee & Stuart going to make their relationship work? She doesn't live in his town, so...what about that? Long distance until they're old enough to move someplace together? Or is this just a winter fling that will end when she leaves town?"

Totally agree with this one! That was my first thought actually, after finishing Maureen Johnson's story. (view spoiler)[ What are they going to do after the Christmas ends? I doubt Jubilee is going to stay in Gracetown...

For me the biggest flaw of this story is the fact that Jubilee goes from breaking up with one boy to just kissing another one in less than a millisecond. It kinda ruined the ending for me, as the progress from being strangers to loving each other happened in a blink... definitely not realistic, not even for my stretched standards.

Some other details that caught my attention:
- Debbie is the cutest but also the most awkward mommy in this world!!
- for a moment I almost had a heart attack and thought they're gonna drown in that creek in the middle of nowhere xD
- and that's all I guess :D (hide spoiler)]

I also finished the 2nd story today!
(view spoiler)[ If I were them, I wouldn't leave the house even if you payed me, lol. Not in that weather, not for such a lame reason xD. A different thing is that those times when you're not that eager to leave the house often turn into the best adventures :P

This is the wilder one of the two stories so far, but the diversity is definitely a good thing! Personally, I just related to Jubilee more than to Tobin (cute name, though!). In this one, the whole thing seemed like some sort of crazy cross-country race in the middle of a freezing blizzard at 2:00 a.m. Sounds like a definition of a brilliant Christmas! I loved John Green's creativity here, especially the race final scene (the beer barrel!!, Waffle House as a base, Twister as a "key" <3).

Also, finally someone not being miserable about not spending Christmas with their family!! Honestly, I don't understand this obsession that everyone seems to have. Sure, I like visiting my grandparents on Christmas Eve, but I wouldn't mind spending it alone either.

To shamelessly copy from @Eirelyn... naming cars with human names is such an American thing to do xD

As always, I had some issues with the translation, but this time it's kinda hard to explain. I'll just say that they invented a new word and named a girl with a male noun that is once again not used as a name. (hide spoiler)]

Eirelyn wrote: "Also, I read What Light a few years ago & really enjoyed it. I love the warm, cozy feeling of Christmas stories, and I felt like that one had a good plot line as well. :D"

I know what I am reading next :)

Eirelyn and Maja, I agree with all your points on the first story! So many questions left unanswered!

I actually watched the movie yesterday, hoping to find some answers to the first story.. But it turned out that the movie is quite different regarding the first and third stories

Maja Izabela wrote: " If I were them, I wouldn't leave the house even if you payed me, lol. Not in that weather, not for such a lame reason xD. ."

Haha, same for me!
With the translation,. are you referring to Angie aka. the Duke?

Ilona wrote: "Maja Izabela wrote: " If I were them, I wouldn't leave the house even if you payed me, lol. Not in that weather, not for such a lame reason xD. ."

Haha, same for me!
With the translation,. are you..."

Yep, you guessed it right! Right now, when I think of it... I may have overreacted a bit. After all "duke" is a male noun and not used as a name in English as well, right? Still, I have a feeling that in Polish the rules when it comes to names are stricter.

Maja Izabela wrote: "Yep, you guessed it right! Right now, when I think of it... I may have overreacted a bit. After all "duke" is a male noun and not used as a name in English as well, right? Still, I have a feeling that in Polish the rules when it comes to names are stricter."

Wasn't the fact that she is called the male noun a thing in the story? I cannot remember the specifics.

Ilona wrote: "Maja Izabela wrote: "Yep, you guessed it right! Right now, when I think of it... I may have overreacted a bit. After all "duke" is a male noun and not used as a name in English as well, right? Stil..."

Oh, thanks for reminding me, apparently I forgot about it too. I've checked that - it was later explained, but when I was writing the first post about the 2nd story I hadn't reached it yet (pls ignore my questionable skills of using tenses :') ). Guess I should take my words back, then.

Our discussion is heating up - I like that :)

@Maja, Duke can be a male given name in the US but has never been a very common one. It's a little more common as a surname.

@Ilona, I plan to watch the movie once I finish reading the book. :D I'm interested to see the similarities/differences as well.

Eirelyn wrote: "@Maja, Duke can be a male given name in the US but has never been a very common one. It's a little more common as a surname."

That's what I thought. Clerks in Poland probably wouldn't agree to name a kid like that. I don't think we use it as a surname either. Frankly, to me "Diuk" (Polish spelling) sounds more like a name for a dog. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I finished the whole thing :) Here are some thoughts on the last story
(view spoiler)[I was surprised with who the main character is! I though it’s gonna be a completely new person. Nice framing device! I mean, Jeb “lost” his girlfriend in the first story and they got back together in the last one.

Christina, Mayzie and Dorrie acting like Addie’s “angels” and her great metamorphosis – I can smell “A Christmas Carol” here a lot and I’m not particularly keen on retellings… Just a personal preference I guess.

The ending didn’t quite satisfy me. It was chaotic and I had expected something greater to happen :< However, I like how they all turned out to be connected, somehow everyone knew each other. I relate to this feeling a lot since I’ve studied in a small school for eight years and pretty much got to know everyone around. It feels like you can talk to anyone, usually they already know your name as well. My current school has over one thousand students and I miss this feeling sometimes, but here it’s easier to blend in, I guess.

Addie… let’s say she annoyed me in some situations (see when she forgot about the pig because of a 10-minute talk with elders), but in some others I would do everything as she did. (hide spoiler)]

Time for my language rant! There were a few typos in my edition, like Stuart and Stewart in one paragraph. Thankfully, they didn’t translate the names in this story, but “Jeb” in Polish means… it’s a rather rude onomatopoeia for a sound of hitting something, usually used in teen slang. It’s not the first place where I see this name, though. In the Sims 4 there even is a townie named Jeb Harris in English but Jerry Harris in Polish xD

The question I keep asking myself since I finished reading – can pigs, even minipigs, fit in a cup? They would have to be micropgs. Or was it something different in your language version?

Generally, I agree with @Ilona. The last story was the most disappointing. The first two were pretty equal.

I don’t know how many works by John Green you've read, but I’ve read five so far (four standalone books and this story). It took me exactly this amount of books (that’s more than a half of all of his major works. Yes, I looked it up) to realize that the characters he creates somehow remain in my memory for longer than others. Just a loose thought :)

What do you think, how did the process of writing this book look like? In my opinion the three writers discussed the general things, like tinfoil man, everyone’s relationships, etc. and then everyone worked on their stories alone. Another possibility that I can think of is that someone wrote their story and handed it to the second author who wrote theirs, and then the third one. Whatever option they chose, that must have been interesting!

Maja wrote: "The question I keep asking myself since I finished reading – can pigs, even minipigs, fit in a cup? They would have to be micropgs. Or was it something different in your language version?"

I did some googling, and it looks like minipics, micropigs and teacup pigs are all the same breed: pot-bellied pigs, and only the piglets fit in a teacup. I actually read that some breeders underfeed the pot-bellied pigs to keep them small.

Maja wrote: "What do you think, how did the process of writing this book look like? In my opinion the three writers discussed the general things, like tinfoil man, everyone’s relationships, etc. and then everyone worked on their stories alone. "

I agree with this, and probably some editing after the writing to smooth out the details.

I finished the book a few days ago. :D I really liked the idea of having three different stories woven together throughout and that come together completely at the end.

I think the second story was my favorite. (view spoiler)[It felt the most complete. I liked the first story a lot too, but so much was left unanswered for me in that one. The third story was decent, but the stuff involving Addie irritated me a little bit. She could be very whiny at times, but then other times, I felt like her friends were really kind of rude & unfair to her. And then, all of a sudden, she decided she wasn't going to be whiny & was going to behave like a completely different person. It was such an abrupt change that it felt unnatural. (hide spoiler)]

Overall, the book was good. It was cute & lighthearted, which is what I like out of my Christmastime reads. :D

Ilona wrote: "Maja wrote: "I actually read that some breeders underfeed the pot-bellied pigs to keep them small."

Doubt that's ethical... :(