Snow Reads

Every year, around the time when mercury rises and the sun starts peeking out, we’re bombarded with countless articles on the best books to read at the beach — because, of course, reading in the sand and sunshine is a great deal more pleasurable than sitting outside with a novel in January. Yet winter, especially a winter like this one, which has already featured bone chilling sub-zero temperatures across the United States, is truly the best season to burrow deep into a great book.
~Jason Diamond, "Snow Reads Are The New Beach Reads: 26 Books to Get You Through Winter"

To quote Frank Loesser's song: "Baby, it's cold outside."  The folks here at abcreads kept seeing the "Winters were made for warm blankets and large books" meme crisscrossing the internet, and then we saw an article talking about "Snow Reads", which got us thinking.  In this article, 26 randomly chosen people recommended books for winter reading - from Victorian detective novels to books that prompt "the reader to look inward" to "big hardcovers set in exotic locales that transport me to warmer places" to books unearthed from the bottom of the TBR pile and books people want to reread and revisit.  What book do you like to cozy up with under a blanket on a cold winter day?  Here are some of our suggestions:

Big Books

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Tales of the City series by Armistead Maupin

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

Wintery Tales

Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence, & Emperor Penguins by Gavin Francis

The Winter Warrior: A Novel of Medieval England by James Wilde

Iron Winter: the Northland Trilogy by Stephen Baxter

Winter Kill: A John Henry Cole Story by Bill Brooks

Age of Ice by  J. M. Sidorova   

Mystery and Adventure

The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon by Kevin Fedarko

In the Land of Oz by Howard Jacobson

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

Tell No One by Harlan Coben

The Man With a Load of Mischief by Martha Grimes


Young Adult and Humor

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls by David Sedaris


As another internet meme says, "Cold?  Check out a book!  You'll still be cold, but you'll have a book."

Links

The Guardian's Winter Reads

Goodreads' Winter Reads