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As the year rolls on to the pleasant months of the wintry season, a strange lethargy sets in. You do not quite feel like leaving the comfort of your well-made bed, until the sun somehow manages to peep in through the thick curtains of your room. But once you do, you smell the warmth of a day that is quite unlike the long, scorching summer days. You detect a change in the way the sun shines on you, as you finally feel convinced to leave your home and frolic your way through the streets. However, when the sun sets, I assume you get drawn back into your shell again, and sit with a cup of piping hot tea to keep yourself warm.To keep you engaged in such moments, we have curated a list of books for you to dive into.
I. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller
Author : Italo Calvino
Published in 1979 by, this book is a deeply postmodernist novel by Italo Calvino. In this novel you, the reader, goes into a bookshop and buys If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller. Sadly, you end up finding a printer’s error in your copy, because of which you take it back to the bookshop to replace it. But the replacement seems to be a totally different story. You try to track down the original book you were reading, but end up with a different narrative again. This novel takes you through many intersecting storylines, and many different novels, including a detective adventure, a romance, a satire, an erotic story, a diary and a quest. But the protagonist of the novel is you, the reader. It is an exercise in juggling through interconnected storylines, and a good brainstorming session for you winter break.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts bring with it consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it. . . .”
II. Murder on the Orient Express
Author : Agatha Christie
One of the masterpieces of the detective fiction writer, Agatha Christie, this book traces the story of the mysterious murder of a fellow companion of Hercule Poirot (the detective) in the compartment of Orient Express on its way to London. It is written in a way as to enhance the curiosity of the reader regarding the motive and the person involved in the murder. The moral dilemma and internal crisis that Hercule Poirot faces as he is on his duty of solving the murder mystery gives the story a compelling take. The novel unfolding in the snow-covered Yugoslavia makes it a wonderful winter read.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“If you confront anyone who has lied with the truth, he will usually admit it - often out of sheer surprise. It is only necessary to guess right to produce your effect.”
III. The Shining
Author : Stephen King
The Shining by Stephen King is based on the life of Jack Torrance, an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. His family, along with his young son, Danny Torrance accompany him to the job. Danny possesses ‘the shining’ or an array of psychic abilities that enable him to see the hotel’s horrific past. Eventually, a winter storm leaves them snowbound. Jack’s sanity is disturbed, apparently by the hotel’s supernatural forces. Jack leaves his wife and child in incredible danger.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“Tough old world, baby. If you’re not bolted together tightly, you’re gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty.”
IV. Rebecca
Author : Daphne Du Maurier
The novel begins in the suave city of Monte Carlo where our heroine falls in love with the dashing widower, Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. She is amazed by her luck, and anticipates some good times with her lover. However, on visiting his massive country estate, she realises how large a shadow his late wife would cast over their lives. She is threatened by her omnipresence in the house, and fears that it might render the destruction of their marriage. Be wary of spoilers as it is an out-and-out mystery thriller. You have to read it till the end to finally tie the loose ends in the novel.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.”
V. The Night Train at Deoli
Author : Ruskin Bond
It is a collection of stories from the Himalayan foothills, depicting characters who are remarkable for their quiet heroism, courage and grace, and their values of honesty and fidelity. They live simple lives touched by natural beauty as well as suffering. Bond uses his distinctive storytelling style in exploring the themes of love, loss and letting go in this collection of short stories. The mountains remain the backdrop to these stories.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“Well, it often happens that people with good eyesight fail to see what is right in front of them. They have too much to take in, I suppose. Whereas people who cannot see (or see very little) have to take in only the essentials, whatever registers most tellingly on their remaining senses.”
VI. Roads to Mussoorie
Author : Ruskin Bond
An ode to a place which had been his home for more than 40 years, Roads to Mussoorie is a novel which starts with a backward, instead of a foreword, urging the reader to read the last chapter first before deciding to go ahead with the book. He looks back at all the years he had spent in this beautiful city and the wealth of memories it had bestowed him with. In this personal account, Bond returns to the memories of himself undertaking excursions to the various hill stations in and around Mussoorie.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“I have never been a fast walker, or a conqueror of mountain peaks, but I can plod along for miles. And that’s what I’ve been doing all my life—plodding along, singing my song, telling my tales in my own unhurried way. I have lived life at my own gentle pace, and if as a result I have failed to get to the top of the mountain (or of anything else), it doesn’t matter, the long walk has brought its own sweet rewards; buttercups and butterflies along the way.”
VII. Winter Solstice
Author : Rosamunde Pilcher
Elfrida Phipps lives in a tiny cottage in a pretty Hampshire village. She lives with her pet dog, Horace, in close vicinity of her neighbour, the Blundells – especially Oscar. This sort of an arrangement ensured that her days included companionship as well as independence. However, Elfrida’s life is suddenly turned upside down with an unforeseen tragedy when Oscar’s wife and daughter are killed in a terrible car crash. Oscar becomes homeless when his stepchildren claim their dead mother’s inheritance. Read the book to find out what happens then in the lives of Oscar and Elfrida.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“Beyond the pain, life continues to be sweet. The basics are still there. Beauty, food and friendship, reservoirs of love and understanding. Later, possibly not yet, you are going to need others who will encourage you to make new beginnings. Welcome them. They will help you move on, to cherish happy memories and confront the painful ones with more than bitterness and anger.”
VIII. In the Midst of Winter
Author : Isabel Allende
Chilean-American author, Isabel Allende’s novel, In the Midst of Winter cuts across time periods and continents through the exploration of a love affair between human rights scholar, Richard Bowmaster and his tenant, Lucía Maraz. The love is suddenly felt by them at a point when they thought that they were deep into the winter of their lives. Through the exploration of love between the two people, the novel also explores the issues of human rights and the plight of immigrants and refugees.
Best buy here.
Words we Loved :
“to enjoy her remaining years of good health before she was defeated by decrepitude. She wanted to live abroad, where the daily challenges kept her mind occupied and her heart in relative calm, because in Chile she was crushed by the weight of the familiar, its routines and limitations. Back there she felt she was condemned to be a lonely old woman besieged by pointless memories; in another country, there could be surprises and opportunities.”
IX. A Christmas Carol
Author : Charles Dickens
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser, who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley, and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. The story captures the zeitgeist of the mid-Victorian revival of the Christmas holiday. A perfect winter read, it weaves a story around the foremost winter festivity of Christmas. It serves almost a symbolic role in the novella.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.”
X. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Author : Haruki Murakami
In this novel by Japanese author, Haruki Murakami, a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. Through his excursion, he encounters a psychic prostitute, a malevolent politician, a morbid 16-year old girl and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria.
Best buy here.
Words We Loved :
“I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.”
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