Article Contributed on: 12/4/2006 11:25:48 AM
Winter is best time for reading. Now that we've had our first deep freeze and the snow frosts our mountains, the fireside draws us towards the books we have gathered in warmer months. Like an autumn harvest, these books beckon us. It is time to let them warm our souls through long winter nights. A cup of cocoa, a book, a warm fire - perfection. I am a winter person. I love the crisp beauty of winter and have been drawn to winter survival stories since I was a kid, when I first read "Shackleton's Valiant Voyage," by Alfred Lansing.
Winter demands much of us, forcing us to dig deeper for comfort, even survival. Then, if we have prepared well, it rewards us with a sense of contentment as we enjoy the warmth and security of home and family. As you consider titles for your winter reading, I offer the following books. First, they are compelling novels, but also because of their perfect descriptions of winter. These passages speak for themselves:
"Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring...The variegated fields are all one color now; the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray...It is like an iron country, and the spirit is oppressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe that in the dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever." - From "O Pioneers!" by Willa Cather.
"The pale cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify - it was like the light of truth itself...as if it said, "This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth." It was as if we were being punished for loving the loveliness of summer." From "My Antonia," by Willa Cather.
Willa Cather, who grew up in Red Cloud, Nebraska, loved the prairie and made it a central part of all her Nebraska novels. The land is at the core of her writing and her characters triumph, in spite of, and because of the land they inhabit. Her winter scenes set the stage for these struggles and triumphs.
In "One Thousand White Women," by Jim Fergus, this winter scene near the end of the book, is from the journal entries of May Dodd, a woman who lived among the Cheyenne as one of them. The book is based on an historical event in 1854 when a prominent Northern Cheyenne chief requested the U.S. Army gift one thousand white women as brides for his young warriors. He reasoned this was a means of assimilation into the white man's world. While the event never happened, Fergus wrote the novel as if it did happen.
"A frigid wind blew down from the north and for an entire day before delivering the full brunt of the blizzard. And then the snows marched across the plains like an approaching army, blowing horizontally, at first lightly but soon so thickly that even going outside to do one's business was to risk becoming disoriented and lost in the maelstrom...The mercury plunged and the stars in the sky glittered coldly off the fresh snow, which had drifted in huge sculpted mounds across the rolling prairie so that it appeared as if the earth itself had shifted, reformed itself with the storm."
And finally, David Guterson, in "Snow Falling on Cedars," describes a winter snowfall through the eyes of Kabuo Miyamoto, on trial for murder. He has been confined to a windowless cell for several months and now, in the courtroom, finds the beauty of the snowstorm mesmerizes him.
"Snow fell that morning outside the courthouse windows, four tall, narrow arches of leaded glass that yielded a great quantity of weak December light. A wind from the sea lofted snowflakes against the windowpanes, where they melted and ran toward the casements...The sea wind drove snowflakes steadily inland, hurling them against the fragrant trees, and the snow began to settle on the highest branches with a gentle implacability...The snowfall, which he witnessed out of the corners of his eyes - furious, wind-whipped flakes against the windows - struck him as infinitely beautiful."
Perfectly written passages stay with us over time, and rereading them, in their season, is one of the great joys of a well-stocked library. These are just a few of my favorites. Let me know which books you think I should be reading this winter season.