My Santa sent me two books. One from my Amazon wishlist, and one from his homeland of Iceland.

The first book, Jar City, is a crime thriller written by an Icelandic author and set in Reykjavìk. I'm intrigued, and excited to read it. Apparently it's part of a series, which I may have to look into. Thank you so much - I love both reading and learning about new places. This was a perfect choice for me.

I have to admit that I had already purchased the other book at the beginning of the year. But much as I love the first gift, this one touched my heart in a way that you couldn't possibly have anticipated. In fact, it took about an hour for the magnitude of the emotion to really hit me.

I don't know how much you looked at my history, but it wouldn't have been hard to find out that my home was destroyed by a tornado in April - I mentioned it in a few posts. Once it was established that everyone we knew and all of our pets were safe, and despite the loss of several nostalgic, irreplaceable items, the loss that hit me hardest was the loss of my library (and I feel justified in calling it a library - six full bookcases of books). There's no way I could replace all of that, not while I'm busy trying to make our new house feel like home for my family. This hasn't been an easy task, and neither the physical damage nor the emotional damage has been easy to repair.

So you could have found out that my beloved books were gone, and that I am fascinated with linguistics. But what you couldn't have known is that The Language Instinct WAS THE VERY BOOK I WAS READING THE NIGHT BEFORE all this happened. I had only gotten a few chapters in.

The idea that I can just pick up where I left off reading... I know it's cheesy, but emotions are funny things, and it kind of makes me feel like everything is coming back together - I'm starting again where I left off. A full circle kind of thing.

Thank you, Santa. From the bottom of my heart.