Winter 2021 Reading List

hello hello december 21st is the official start of winter so i've taken out from the top of my cupboard my warmest winter jumper and put it on and i i wear this every year on a video and every year this sweater gets more comments than the books that i end up talking about which is totally fine because it is a wonderful cozy uh jumper that i just i love so much and and so i love being able to take it down and put it on when the weather outside gets cold enough but i've also picked out 12 books that i'm hoping to read over the winter months a lot of these books are do have a kind of wintry theme or give winter vibes or they might just be books that i really fancy reading and you know it may just be the cover that sort of gives me that that wintery kind of feeling uh so i'm gonna start off talking about them uh the very first one is very topical for the season it's called the snowball by bridget brophy and this was originally published in the 1960s and it caused a bit of a scandal at the time but this is a reprinted edition that comes with an introduction by ellie williams who's a fantastic writer and so this is the the story of a woman that goes to a glamorous masquerade ball on new year's eve and she in london and she has an encounter there with another masked person um who she starts dancing with and um and strikes up an affair with uh but and so it's all quite glamorous and and exciting but there is darkness beneath the glitter and i'm really intrigued to to see what happens with this and uh but also yeah it just feels like a book that evokes the the spirit of the season a new novel which gives off such dickensian vibes is lily by rose tremaine which is subtitled a tale of revenge and the description of the story um sounds like it is a kind of like dickensian type story because it's about a baby girl that's abandoned at the entrance of a park in london in 1850 and uh she's uh taken she's rescued by a policeman and and taken to an orphanage and adopted by a family and taken out to uh grow up on a rural farm in suffolk but then she gets into some trouble and returns to london and becomes an apprentice to a wig maker but she has a slightly dark past to her story and she meets again the police officer that rescued her and and so it's about their relationship but also the mystery of of her past and sounds like such an intriguing story i i love rose tremaine's writing um she's written a lot of books um but i i love i've loved her novel the gustav sonata and her short story collection um the american lover and uh so yeah she's she's an excellent writer that that can seems to write in many different genres and and styles um but this you know really seems to um capture that dickensian vibe and you know and that's the kind of thing that i want to read around winter time lean fall stand by john mcgregor and this is a novel which i've been saving to read for the the winter time because you know there are some books which we sort of save to to read over certain seasons because obviously you can read a book at any time of the year and it doesn't really matter and i know some people on on booktube have objected to books you know being reserved for certain seasons uh but you know when you do read in a particular season a particular kind of story um it can add to the atmosphere and the the feeling of and experience of reading a story and uh and so yeah i've been saving this um because it begins with an antarctic adventure um that goes ron an antarctic expedition um that that goes wrong and that has many consequences and the story follows um those many consequences so i think the the antarctic part is is only just part of the story but um and i find john mcgregor's writing really intriguing and uh and insightful and and interesting both his style of writing and the subject matters that he writes about um i think are so original and that i'm really intrigued to see where this story goes now i also want some books that give me a bit of comfort over this time because there the world is still very troubled and uh so one book um that i think is gonna give me some great like small pleasures is this book called the joy of small things by hannah jane parkinson and in this book she makes a lot of observations about small things in everyday life that give her a lot of pleasure and uh and i i think that it'll just be like such a a joy to read about um nigella lawson um gives a quote for it where she says uh not so small joy in itself and i sort of trust nigel lawson's judgment um because i went to see her talk at the south bank center recently and it was such a pleasurable event she um just sort of got on stage and was talking about her theories about uh cooking and eating and uh but also like everyday life and um yeah and the and she's somebody i think that you know really finds joy in these sort of small things that we we find in our everyday life and and i think this book is going to reflect that and just be a kind of pleasure to read something that gives me joy in my everyday life is drinking tea i'm a really heavy tea drinker so i've got my big mug here my big golden girls mug which i love to show off every once in a while and i love that the golden girls has been going through a kind of revival recently um because it's been on the the subscription channel disney plus and um the all of the series are there and um so i've been enjoying so much going through and re-watching a lot of this series i mean i always re-watch them recently but it's just great to have the convenience of it there on a digital service to to be accessing so yeah i've been loving that but there's also a novel called wild marjoram tea by sylvia littlegood briggs and uh this is a novel i've been wanting to to get to um because it is slightly about tea and you can uh there there's a quote in here from a man that says my tea goes through 16 fortifications and uh but also comments that the tea opens up the interior like all humans you're filled with closed rooms and i i like the sound of that but it's also a kind of fable like story about two teenagers that go into the woods and disappear forever and um and so it's sort of the the story of that and and invokes this fable-like feel and i i think that's the the kind of story and um you know the kind of genre of story that i want over the winter time the weak spot by lucy elvin and this is a short novel um which gives me wintery vibes because it's set on a mountaintop in europe that's only accessed by a funicular and whenever i think of a funicular i just think of yeah big mountains and like snowy cliffsides and uh and it's so it's it's a very remote town and in the there's a small pharmacy in this town where people go to divulge the secrets of their lives and it's about a woman that goes to become an apprentice at this pharmacy and uh and she finds the pharmacist there um over time he begins to get more power in this town he becomes mayor of the town partly through all of the secrets he knows about the the people in this township and so there's something slightly sinister going on in this this town and the the story follows that and um yeah so it sounds really intriguing and uh yeah the right kind of atmosphere for this time of year a more recent newer novel that's also happens to be set in a remote european uh mountainous town is what happens at night by peter cameron and this story is about an american couple that wants to adopt a child um so they they come to this european town and they worry that their chances of adopting the child will be hindered because the the wife is suffering from cancer and uh but they spend time in this city trying to adopt this child and have a number of encounters with the locals that are both positive and negative and um and it describes uh at the end of this that nothing is as it seems in this mysterious frozen world and the longer the couple endure the punishing colds the less they seem to know about their marriage themselves and life itself and i find peter cameron's writing really intriguing and um so i've been wanting to read more of his work and um yeah really excited to get to this new novel i've also been wanting to read some more non-fiction that is more biographical and sort of reflecting on particular lives so i'd like to read exteriors by annie or no which is a collection of journal entries that erno wrote over a seven year period and are concentrating on the sort of peripheral things that make up our everyday lives and uh so it sounds slightly similar to the joy of small things but i think uh takes some slightly more like philosophical and sociological stance on it um i love annie or knows writing it she's so insightful about uh how our lives interact with the larger society and and so yeah i think there's going to be a lot of insight in in these small entries that she makes black teacher by beryl gilroy which was first published in 1976 but it was just republished recently with a forward by bernardine evaristo and this is uh the story of beryl gilroy who left her home in british guyana in 1952 and moved to london as as part of the windrush generation and uh here she encountered a lot of the racism in uh post-world war ii uh england uh but she also made a new life for herself and started this revolutionary career in in education and uh you see some photographs of of her with the pupils she's taught so i'm really intrigued to find out more about her story and i i think it's one that'll be newly relatable um as a lot of people are experiencing that they have had big changes in their careers or had to find new careers um during the the past two years and uh so so yeah this sounds like an excellent book a new non-fiction book which i think will be slightly more indulgent is the woman of rothschilds by natalie livingstone and so the rothschild family this famous european banking dynasty uh the the rothschild name is just synonymous i think with power and privilege and wealth and a lot has been written about the rothschilds men uh but not so much has been written about the women in this family and so natalie livingstone writes about the the women of this family uh over the generations and uh their accomplishments the the difficulty they faced as uh coming from this jewish family in largely christian communities and the the people they encountered and the achievements they they made in themselves um alongside the men in this family and uh so yeah i think this will just be like such a pleasure to read i'd also like to read some poetry over the winter months and so there's this beautiful new edition of the duono elegies by rainer maria rilke which is like blue and white and so gives off this kind of wintery vibes but also the poems i think will uh be really meaningful to read because rilke was considered one of the the greatest writers of his time in the late 19th and early 20th century and uh these these poems um are they they invoke a lot of kind of spiritual imagery but take a a slightly different stance um from what is normally written about because rilke is someone that that suffered from depression and so wrestled with a lot of like existential angst and um and so these poems really address that and finally i have a book of short stories um because like i talk about often i i like to read short stories aloud to my partner and i think it'll just be a wonderful thing to do together um over the winter months and um and something that can also be done over video calls um if you're still not able to to meet people in person um so i also have the selected stories of elizabeth bowen um who was an irish writer of uh the early 20th century and um so these are a section of her stories and i i've read some of them um already and think they're so excellent they're really psychologically insightful uh and also finely detailed and just like such a pleasure to read and she she gets at the real uh caddiness of some human relationships in a way that's that's really pleasurable um but uh but yeah is is also wonderfully uh emotional and uh so yeah and and also the the spine of this and some of the colors of this like light blue and white give me slight wintry vibes um so yeah i think they'll be good short stories to read over the winter months over a cup of tea or a mug of hot chocolate so so those are the books that i'm hoping to read over the winter months i'd love to know if you've read any of these or if you have other books that you're planning to read over the winter months please let me know about them in the comments below but i hope you're doing well and staying warm inside and i will speak to you again soon bye-bye

Channel: Eric Karl Anderson

Views: 482

Keywords: booktube, winter reading, comfy reads, winter reading list, winter books, book reviews, The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy, Lily by Rose Tremain, Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor, The Joy of Small Things by Hannah Jane Parkinson, Wild Marjoram Tea by Sylvia Littlegood-Briggs, The Weak Spot by Lucie Elven, What Happens at Night by Peter Cameron, Exteriors by Annie Ernaux, Black Teacher by Beryl Gilroy, The Women of Rothschild by Natalie Livingstone, Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke

Id: 7_-90_4IoiU

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 19 2021