register |  login
› CENTENNIAL
Loading Ad
Visit Other Hubs:
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Tower
Blog
Blog Entry 10 of 17 It's keeping me awake
Sometimes the great books keep me up half the night; sometimes it's the best sellers. Lately, it's the politics.

Blog Url: http://denver.yourhub.com/~somanybooks

For the love of winter...

Contributed by: Irma Sturgell   on 12/4/2006

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.


SUBMIT COMMENT

Rate the above blog



Current Rating
Based on 1 user ratings.

Talk Back : submit comments to the blog

*Note: you need to log-in to add a comment or rating.

Showing 1 of 1 comments
Submitted By: Brendan Leonard
posted on 12/8/2006 @ 2:39:30 PM
Rated Blog Entry
This isn't a literary masterpiece like the ones you've mentioned, Irma, but when I think of cold weather and snow, I think of Touching the Void, by Joe Simpson, a climber who broke his leg in a remote mountain range in Argentina, then fell into a crevasse in a glacier. His climbing partner thought for sure he was dead, and left him, but ...
[Report as objectionable]
Showing 1 of 1 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Irma Sturgell

Centennial , CO

Irma Sturgell has posted 17 blog entries and 2 comments since joining on 4/13/2006. Irma Sturgell 's average blog rating is 5.
SAVE AND SHARE THIS BLOG ENTRY
BLOG ENTRY RSS FEEDS
BLOG LIST
WANT TO WRITE FOR YOURHUB.COM?
Want to see the stories you write and the photos you shoot featured in the YourHub.com Thursday print section available all over the Front Range and with home subscriptions of the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post? All you have to do is  register,  then post a story or column, start a blog or tell everyonewhat events are happening in town. We will print the best stories, columns, event listings, photos and blog entries in our print sections.

ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

Loading Ad
ADVERTISEMENT
Loading Ad

This YourHub.com community is produced by The Denver Newspaper Agency
Web Development and Channel Analytics provided by Indigio

terms of use //  privacy policy
the staff //  advertise //  help & faq
buy photos