A winter reading list

Seven books for the dark months, chosen mostly for their length and their weather.

Some books need weather. I cannot read a sea story in July, and long Russian novels only make sense to me when it is dark by four in the afternoon. So every December I build a small pile for the winter and try, with mixed success, to stay loyal to it.

This year’s pile, in no particular order:

1. Middlemarch — a reread, and the anchor of the whole season.
2. Moby-Dick — my third attempt. I am optimistic, which is probably a mistake.
3. The Master and Margarita — because winter deserves at least one devil.
4. A Month in the Country — short, for the week between the holidays.
5. The Name of the Rose — snow, a monastery, a library. Obvious, I know.
6. A collection of Chekhov stories, to read one per evening.
7. Something I have not chosen yet, left open on purpose.

The empty slot matters more than it looks. Every year the best book of the winter is the one I did not plan for: something a friend pressed into my hands, or a spine that caught my eye in a secondhand shop. A list with no room in it turns reading into a chore.

I will report back in spring on how many of these I actually finished. Historically, the answer is about four.