Midwinter reading

Books for the December pause

Winter really is the best time to cosy up by the fire with a good book. Most days I try to squeeze in some reading first thing in the morning with my coffee, before anyone else wakes up. But during the festive season I love how much extra reading time I seem to find!

I really try and make as few plans as possible in between christmas day and new year, so we can have some proper quiet time. We embrace slow mornings, and while my daughter watches telly in her pjs, I can usually do some reading. Over the last few months she’s also been happier to sit and read independently too, so occasionally we will sit and read together. Trying to encourage more of this!

I’m such a creature of habit with reading so as well as enjoying new books, I have certain stories I come back to time and time again at particular times of year, which feel like a key part of rooting me to the season.

Many of the books I love to read are from my childhood, that I’ve never really grown out of! I was a kid with three much older sisters, as well as a dad who taught at a teacher training college (which eventually closed and gave away all their books) and later was a university lecturer in creative writing. This meant the attic of our house was stacked full of bookcases of brilliant children’s novels, mostly from the 60s and 70s. I spent so much time reading as a kid, it was my favourite escape. When I wanted a new book to read, I’d just head up into the musty, gloomy loft and choose something new to discover.

Here are some of my favourite midwinter books - mostly those I read every year but a few I’ve readfor the first time recently too.

The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper - I love this book SO much, and have since I was a teenager (as you can tell by how battered my copy is!). Will, an eleven year old boy living in Buckinghamshire, discovers on his birthday (which also happens to be midwinter’s day) that he is one of the Old Ones, ancient beings who protect the earth from the dangerous forces of the Dark.

Susan Cooper is a master at bringing in old, often Celtic, myths and legends into her stories, blurring past and present, as well as creating atmosphere with weather - the first snow on the solstice, a big freeze for days as the power of the dark grows, and the thaw and floods as their powers begin to recede. This is one of a series, all of which are really good, but this has to be my favourite. I do not recommend the 2007 film version though, awful. However while checking the publication date, I have just discovered that BBC Sounds has a 12-part audio adaptation. How exciting - maybe I’ll listen and read this year!

Children of Green Knowe, by Lucy Boston - continuing the theme of 20th century children’s books that blur past and present, this is a brilliant children’s novel about Tolly, a young boy who over the christmas holidays goes to stay with his great grandmother in her very old manor house, Green Knowe.

He discovers old stories about the history of the house and its inhabitants, especially three children from the 17th century, whose presence echoes down the years. There’s actually a lot of weather in this book too, floods, snow and storms - as well as music and sounds, which creates a powerful atmosphere…

The Morville Hours, by Katherine Swift - this book follows the author, Katherine, as she creates a garden at Morville, a National Trust manor house in Shropshire. Through the course of the book she discovers the people who used to live in the house and commemorates them through the garden. The book is structured through the seasons of the year, beginning as the bell in the clock tower chimes midnight on a frosty new years eve (this is why it’s a winter book for me), but also follows the rough structure of a medieval ‘Book of Hours’, mapped on to the year.

There’s so much I love about this book - gardening, natural and human history, but also the author’s story of thinking back to her childhood, and putting down roots in the village where she lives. My grandparents moved from Wales to Shropshire in later life, and although I didn’t know either of them really (my grandpa died before I was born and my grandmother when I was 4) I have always felt a pull to this area and loved learning more about familiar-sounding Shropshire places through this book.

You can also visit the garden at Morville - back in 2017 I took my parents for a day trip there, and we loved looking round the garden, and chatting to the author who also runs the cafe!

A Woman in the Polar Night, by Christiane Ritter - I have just discovered this book thanks to a friend’s recommendation (thanks Caroline - you can read her fundraising focused substack here), and it is brilliant. Translated from German originally, it is the incredible story of a woman going to live with her husband in Spitzbergen in the remote Arctic for a year, back in 1934!

She is dropped off by a ship, that arranges to pick her up in exactly 12 months - with no way of communicating with the rest of the world until then. She lives in a hut with her husband and another hunter, relying on preserved food, trapping and hunting to survive. They experience the polar night, where it is dark for months on end, and she is often left alone for days while the men go off on hunting trips.

It’s a perfect read for a cold winter’s day, and is the sort of book you can’t get out of your head. I talked a lot to my daughter about it, which meant - alongside her new very fluffy winter coat - it inspired lots of games in the school playground about being arctic explorers!

The Dead of Winter, by Sarah Clegg - Another new discovery (I think it’s just come out) after I saw it recommended on Katherine May’s substack. More fact than feeling based, this book explores midwinter myths, traditions and ceremonies over the past 2,000 years or so, and how they’ve developed - with a focus on monsters, the eerie, weird and uncanny across Europe.

Women Who Run With The Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes - the main thing that roots this book to winter for me is its focus on myths, as well as storytelling, which definitely feels like a midwinter activity. Plus the fact I first read it during a snowy ‘twixmas’ period in the winter lockdown of 2020/21..

It’s definitely long, but good to read in chunks, rather than in one go. In the book, the author examines the different archetypes of women that emerge in folk tales and myths from around the world, how they overlap, and the messages for women carried through these stories, that we can still learn from today.

So, that brings us to the end of my midwinter reading round up!

I’m sure there will be more books to add - I’m really excited to read the next installment of Phillip Pullman’s Book of Dust trilogy soon as well. Do you have any great recommendations for midwinter reading?