It’s fucking miserable outside. That’s all there is to it. And for some of us, we may be sick and tired of binge watching Netflix. So, if you still have electricity (you ought to if you’re reading this!), head over to Amazon and download one of these books to get lost in a wintery tale.
Want Not by Jonathan Miles – The story opens on what would probably be a glorious Christmas Eve if you were inside. As it is, a young dumpster diver is pilfering his Christmas Eve dinner from the frozen trash, and gets laughed at by a homeless man for coming across a condom. And a worn out English professor hits a deer on a snowy road. Miles’ description of the snow’s beauty and savagery are impeccable.
“All but one of the black trash bags, heaped curbside on East 4th Street, were tufted with fresh snow, and looked, to Talmadge, like alpine peaks in the moonlight, or at least what he, a lifetime flatlander, thought alpine peaks might look like if bathed in moonglow and (upon further reflection) composed of slabs of low-density polyethylene. Admittedly, his mental faculties were still under the vigorous sway of the half gram of Sonoma County Sour Diesel he’d smoked a half hour earlier, but still: Mountains. Definitely. When he brushed the snow off the topmost bag and untied the knot at its summit, he felt like a god disassembling the Earth.” – Want Not
Snow by Orhan Pamuk – For a book that is something of a thriller about a traveler returning to Turkey to investigate a wave of suicides among young Islamic women, and finding himself in a swirl of intrigue in a cracking blizzard, Pamuk certainly write the crap out of the serenity that accompanies snowfall. There’s something about the snow that lulls you and turns you into a child again.
“As he watched the snow fall outside his window, as slowly and silently as snow in a dream, the traveler fell into a long desired, long awaited reverie; cleansed by memories of innocence and childhood, he succumbed to optimism and dared believe himself at home in this world.” -Snow
The Snow Child By Eowyn Ivey – As I said, there’s something about snow that makes us children. This, however, is a rather grown up fairy tale. Many fairy tales start with couples who cannot have children. But instead of lingering on the magical solution (though she does that), Ivey works to flesh out the impotent couple, making them very adult characters. Set in 1920s Alaska, Jack and Mabel have moved to a farm to make themselves forget about the fact that they cannot have a child. But one day, curiously, they see a little girl running through the trees. As they come to know the child and love her, they learn that she is not as she appears, and what they learn about her is transformative. Ivey, an Alaskan native herself, describes the terrain with a loving, knowing hand, and the result is a landscape (and a novel) that is both desolate and magical.
“She emerged from the forest and stood on the bank of the frozen river. It was calm except for the occasional gust of wind that ruffled her skirt against her wool stockings and swirled silt across the ice. Farther upstream, the glacier-fed valley stretched half a mile wide with gravel bars, driftwood, and braided shallow channels, but here the river ran narrow and deep. Mabel could see the shale cliff on the far side that fell off into black ice. Below, the water would be well over her head.” – The Snow Child
And there you have it. Do you have any snowy day reads? Let me know in the comments!
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