The post-Christmas quiet has set in, and I have my work cut out for me. That’s it pictured above: the collection of books I received as gifts.

That’s not my whole reading list, of course, nothing close to it. I also bought myself a couple new titles while I was doing my holiday shopping, and this morning I cracked open “The Worst Noel: Hellish Holiday Tales,” a collection of holiday stories I just stumbled into in my house. I’m about halfway through that, on my way to starting on the list above.

Probably.

Then again, I might get distracted once again by something that’s not currently on my radar — perhaps one of the dozen or so books on my nightstand.

Also, I need to read Willa Cather’s “Death Comes for the Archbishop” in time for my January book club meeting.

It’s a good kind of busy.

This is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season: the calm that follows the chaos, the time when I can turn attention more fully back to reading, without worrying that some important task isn’t getting done because I’m sitting in my favorite chair wth a book. Or a magazine. Or a newspaper.

For me this year there’s a one-day respite between Christmas and going back to work. Today is my day, and mine alone, and I’m spending most of it with books. I did start a crossword puzzle, and I might write some holiday cards later — a habit I haven’t actually given up but approach with woeful inconsistency; some years it doesn’t happen at all, other years I do some or most, but not all, of my list, and rarely if ever do I actually get through the full list. So if you haven’t received a card from me in a few years, rest assured that one could still be on the way. Eventually.

But for this one day, with the temperature outside in the single digits (it was in the negative single digits when I got up this morning), I’m bunkered inside with a good book and more on the horizon,

Content.

But always open to reading suggestions, so please send them my way.