Thanksgiving is officially over (it went very well, thank you!) and I finished putting up my Christmas things on Sunday. It’s cold here – in the 40s – and I’m hoping it quits soon because I own, like, 2 sweaters that are actually warm and weren’t bought for pretty. Next weekend is when all the Christmas events start happening in my town.
There’s no way it will snow here, though. So in the absence of actual snow, I need literary snow. And for some reason, all my favorite winter books have a fantastical component. Here are three that you should read, if you like this sort of thing:
Landline: A Novel
, by Rainbow Rowell: Georgie McCool has always put her career as a scriptwriter front and center, and her husband Neil has picked up the slack. When she and best friend Seth have the chance to pitch the script of their lifetime, if they can write it in five days, Georgie knows Neil will be upset. But he’ll probably roll with Georgie’s assessment that they can’t bring the girls to his family’s house for Christmas like they planned. Georgie didn’t forsee that Neil would be more than pissed. He takes the girls to his parent’s house, leaves Georgie in California, and then is strangely unavailable. Frantic, Georgie calls Neil from an old rotary phone in her bedroom to find that she’s dialed 20 years in the past. But can she save her marriage from decades away?
Wintersmith (Tiffany Aching)
, by Terry Pratchett: Tiffany Aching accidentally joins the dark mummer’s dance, and then has to contend with Jack Frost, who thinks she’s his new girlfriend. Embarrassing snowflakes in Tiffany’s shape, a cornucopia spilling out all sorts of things you just don’t want, the Nac Mac Feegles, and relations with the human boy Tiffany has a thing with are just some of the problems she faces. But now that Tiffany has dethroned the goddess of spring, will Summer ever come again?
The Left Hand of Darkness
, by Ursula K. LeGuin: Genly Ai has agreed to go as an emissary to the planet deemed Winter to see if he can get them to join the ecumenical society of planets. It is first contact, and Genly is more than aware that he could be killed or imprisoned. Winter is a world where most humans there are genderless until they mate, and over the course of a lifetime can be both male and female. The planet is as unforgiving as it’s icy landscape, with a strange code of behavior called shifgrethor, and Genly is getting nowhere with his quest. He places his trust in Prime Minister Estraven, who is then accused of treason and cast out of the kingdom. But Genly and Estraven meet again in a work camp on the outskirts of civilization, and together they undertake a perilous journey over icy wastelands so that they can be free.
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Casey E. Hamilton 