To Read, or Not to Read, That is the Question
Reading is a waste of time, unless you know what you’re getting yourself into. Winter is a great time of the year to get cozy by the fire, and what better way to brave the tough, cold evenings than with a book? While everyone varies in what they like to read, the harsh season upon us often directs us to genres like mystery, fantasy, drama, dystopian, and science fiction. The snow brings about a sense of fright and magic which inspires us to brave the whirling outdoors or turn up the thermostat.
If you’d like nothing more than to curl up and hibernate through this season, then Little Women by Louisa May Alcott might be for you. A story about four sisters during the Civil War, Little Women features magnificent scenes of ice skating, charity, dancing, and coming-of-age. If you’d still like to be snug, but modern mysteries are more your speed, then Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz or The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell are right up your alley. If you’d rather a tale about traveling and a difficult choice, then How the Penguins Saved Veronica could be your favorite read of this season. But spring is still a long way off, so you might want to get into a series featuring archaeology and crime, beginning with The Crossing Places of the Ruth Galloway series by Elly Griffiths.
If your New Year's resolution is to read more, then poetry and short stories will give you a good warm up. “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry is all about holiday romance and sacrifice if you’re still in the Christmas spirit. In contrast, “To Build a Fire” by Jack London depicts pride and suspense as a man and his dog brave a harsh storm in Yukon, Canada. While these two stories move quickly, nothing gives a swifter taste of winter than poems like “The Snow Fairy” by Claude McKay and “Blizzard” by William Carlos Williams.
This is the time to get into classics like Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton, and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Each of these has something great to offer: drama from Anna Karenina, tragic romance from Ethan Frome, and lessons in morality from The Brothers Karamazov. But if you’d rather venture space on a journey to the future, then you should pick up The Martian by Andy Weir, Red Rising by Pierce Brown, or Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir.
Some astounding works of fiction have movie adaptations and none has captured the attention of our generation like The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. This is an excellent chance to start the series since the fifth book, Sunrise on the Reaping, is set to come out during March of this year, with the accompanying movie dropping in November of 2026. If you are anxiously awaiting the release of Collins’s new prequel, you may want to consider filling your time with her less popular but equally interesting series The Underland Chronicles.
If neither of those are appealing to you, but you’re still interested in dystopian fiction, you may want to consider The Giver by Lois Lowry or 1984 by George Orwell. Sticking with the same genre, but adding some cyberpunk gives you books like Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, Snow Crash by Neal Stephson, and Ramble: An Irregular Cyberpunk Journey into the Musical Heart by D.B. Goodin.
We should strive to feed our imaginations this year. If you’re snowed in or simply can’t stand the harsh season, you should consider picking up a book and being swept away by the bewildering adventures inside!
