In my most recent blog post, I said I would post in early December with my winter reading list. Clearly that didn’t happen, because, well…December! It’s busy! Even during a pandemic! I sincerely hope that all of you are enjoying a restful, happy, and healthy holiday season.
My goal was to create a list of atmospheric wintery reads in no specific genre – one for each of the four months, December through March. I then decided if I was going to do this, I should focus on books I already own, due to my ridiculous TBR pile (see last month’s blog post here: https://www.pageoutofmybook.ca/blog-post-5 ).
So, without further ado, here it is:
December: Appropriately, Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher. I started this one a few days ago, and am loving it: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312277710/winter-solstice
January: Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May. According to the Penguin Random House Canada website, “Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. (The author) May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/634027/wintering-by-katherine-may/9780593189481
February: The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. In this mystical debut novel by an Alaskan author, a childless couple in Alaska is visited by a mysterious child who has a red fox for a sidekick. I’ve been dying to read this for ages, although fantasy and magic realism are not my typical genre. This is the only book choice that I did not already own and purchased specifically for my winter reading list.
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-snow-child-a-novel/9780316175661-item.html
March: The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. Coincidentally, this story also takes place in Alaska. I couldn’t get into Hannah’s book, The Nightingale, at all, but I’m hopeful about this one. It is the tale of a Vietnam war vet, struggling with trauma and mental illness, seeking a new start with his wife and teenage daughter “off the grid”.
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-great-alone-a-novel/9781250229533-item.html
Bonus: Of course, there are so many wintery books to choose from, I couldn’t stick to just four, so I’ve added Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy as a bonus read. In fact, I liked the sound of this one so much, I accidentally ordered it twice! Franny, our protagonist, haunted by her troubled past, leaves everything behind except her research gear, and heads to Greenland to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. According to a book review written by Chris Rutledge in the Washington Independent Review of Books, “…Migrations is a novel of the crimes we inflict on nature, but again, such killings are not the point. Rather, McConaghy uses them to set the stage for the crimes we visit on ourselves and other humans.” (August 26, 2020)
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/migrations-a-novel/9781250774545-item.html
Feel free to join me on my journey of atmospheric winter reads, and send me your thoughts at: lisa@pageoutofmybook.ca !