Every Christmas people give me books—sometimes many books, sometimes not so many. This year, through some fluke of miscommunication, I received only three: Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, stories by Wells Tower; George Magoon and the Down East Game War: History, Folklore, and the Law by Edward D. Ives; and Talking about Detective Fiction by P.D. James. Kind of an odd assortment, but somehow representative of my interests and tastes at the moment. It's a little disconcerting to see your personality distilled down to a few books that way.