Books in Cold Climates

FEATURES 12/2020

We take a look at how cold climes can make for great books, and offer some fireside winter reading inspiration . . .

I for one am not a huge fan of being outside in the colder seasons. But what I do enjoy is reading books with a distinct winter feel while cosied-up inside by the fire.

For me, there’s something about books set in a cold climate, or which use the winter months as a backdrop, that gives them special qualities; often ethereal, sometimes haunting, perhaps a little slower and frequently beautiful. And this really comes to the fore when they’re read while it’s cold outside.

There are so many fantastic books that use wintry landscapes and chilly environments to get to the heart of a story, so you won’t be lacking choice. From Peter Hoeg’s much-loved Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, with its tenacious Greenlander heroine who possesses an expert knowledge of ice, to the snowbound journey from Belfast to Sunderland in David Park’s Travelling in a Strange Land, winter abounds in great books.  

The award-winning novelist and poet Helen Dunmore is one author with a real knack for capturing the feel of winter and using it to fuel her stories. In The Greatcoat, we’re transported to the winter of 1952 for a hauntingly atmospheric ghost story that’s perfect for fireside reading, while The Siege takes us to the bitter chill of Leningrad in 1941, for a story of love, the struggle for survival, and of hope.

For a blizzard of reading inspiration, our librarian-curated Cold Climate book selection is a great place to start, and includes both fiction and non-fiction. When it comes to the latter, I’m looking forward to finding out just how many snowflakes it takes to build a snowman in ‘snow enthusiast’ Giles Whittell’s wonderfully titled The Secret Life of Snow, and who could resist Nancy Campbell’s beautifully presented Fifty Words for Snow which shares the meaning behind snow words from languages including Inupiaq, Icelandic, Hebrew and American Sign Language?

As many of these titles attest, cold climes offer their own magical qualities, but while winter can indeed be a beautiful season, I’ll be spending much of it wrapped up warm inside, reading beautiful books. . .