How would you feel about inviting a total note taking stranger into your home to celebrate Christmas with your family?  That's exactly what Hank Steuver, writer for the Washington Post, was allowed to do as he followed the lives of three families from Frisco, TX. 

I found this book to be extremely interesting.  Although I live in McKinney, it's only a few miles from Frisco.  When my car leaves our driveway, it usually heads there, because that's the town that I work, shop, and play in.  As I read about many places that I frequent often (like the Stonebriar Shopping Centre), the radio station (KLTY) that I listen to every day, the roads that I drive, it gave me a new perspective of these things that I experience almost daily.

Although I borrowed this book from one of our Frisco High Schools, I'll be purchasing my own copy to keep in my personal library.  You won't want to miss this great read!

In Tinsel, Hank Stuever turns his unerring eye for the idiosyncrasies of modern life to Frisco, Texas—a suburb at once all-American and completely itself—to tell the story of the nation’s most over-the-top celebration: Christmas.
 

Stuever’s tale begins on the blissful easy-credit dawn of Black Friday, as he jostles for bargains among the crowds at the big-box stores. From there he follows Frisco’s true believers as they navigate through three years of holiday drama. Tammie Parnell is the proprietor of “Two Elves with a Twist,” a company that decks the halls of other people’s McMansions. Jeff and Bridgette Trykoski spend eleven months preparing the visible-from-space, awe-inspiring light display they stage on their lawn each December. And single mother Caroll Cavazos, a devout churchgoer, hopes that the life-affirming moments of the season can transcend her everyday struggles. Tinsel is a humane, revealing, and very funny portrait of one community’s quest to discover a more perfect holiday amidst the frenzied, mega-churchy, shoparific world of Christmas.