Help Us Make A Winter Reading List!

Bookish
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Friends! I need your help.

We want to put out another seasonal reading list focusing on cozy, wintry books that you can grab a mug of hot chocolate and curl up with during the colder months, but I need help!

Winter is actually a really slow reading time for me, as I’m usually home and busy with my family for the holidays, so I feel like I don’t have as much of a feel for what people are reading and vibing with this time of year.

So! I have a few ideas so far, but I’d love your guys’ input on what else to include for this list! Could be what you’re reading now, what you’ve read in winters past, or anything you love and could see someone cozying up with on a snowy day.

Here’s my list so far! It’s a mix of a bunch of genres/age categories:

  1. Greenglass House – Kate Milford
  2. The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern
  3. Spinning Silver – Naomi Novik
  4. Murder on the Orient Express – Agatha Christie
  5. The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin
  6. Winter – Ali Smith
  7. All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
  8. The Bear and the Nightingale – Katherine Arden
  9. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis
  10. The Snow Child – Eowyn Ivey

Let me know your thoughts and suggestions! Too obvious? Not obvious enough? Overdone? Underdone? Some of these have overlapped on other lists so far, and could definitely be taken off the table too, so let me know if you’ve got strong feelings one way or another. I’d also love to feature more BIPOC authors of wintry tales on here, so would especially love some recommendations there! I’ve got my hot chocolate waiting and I’m all ears!

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Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw is pretty winter vibes (set in a big snowstorm in the mountains)! A little bit mystery, a little bit magic forest/lineage of witches, very atmospheric!

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I would be remiss not to suggest Susan Cooper’s Midwinter classic The Dark is Rising.

There is another that I can’t remember. It takes place in winter and I always confuse it with Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale, but it isn’t that. It takes place in Montreal, I’m pretty sure, and revolves around a huge mystical house. The main character meets/befriends small First Peoples versions of the Wee Folk who draw magic from the quiet within, the taw. There are game pieces involved, thin carved ivory discs. The climactic battle is a siege of the house/mansion.

I can remember all of that, but not the title or author. :roll_eyes:

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Is it this?

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Screenshot_20201214-211730_Chrome720×1280 178 KB

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Yup! That’s it exactly. Thank you!

The cover doesn’t look very wintry, but I still make that association because if the link to snowy Canada, I think.

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Tales of the Otori by Lian Hearn?
Loosely based in feudal Japan, where the seasons are a major consideration in the movement of plot.

Witch Child by Celia Rees
Fleeing England for America, and trying to survive the trials of a new land and being a witch.

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These are awesome!! Keep them coming!!

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The Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden
Legend of the Wolf trilogy by Alice Borchardt (sister of Anne Rice)
The Neverending Story
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Persuasion by Jane Austen
There are more I want to recommend, but they’re all out of print at this point.

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