The ‘Winter’ of Our Book Content

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Misty the cat thinks these books have a BACK story. (Photo by me.)

It’s early winter in part of the world, so thoughts turn to novels with…the word “Winter” in the title. Okay, maybe most readers’ thoughts don’t turn to that, but I needed a blog topic this week. 🙂

I just finished reading Winter Street, the first of a four-book Elin Hilderbrand series that continues with Winter Stroll, Winter Storms, and Winter Solstice. The mostly Nantucket, Massachusetts-set Winter Street focuses on the Quinn family as it goes through a dramatic Christmas week that includes a marital separation, other relationship issues, an engagement, no word from a son fighting in Afghanistan, another son facing an insider-trading charge, etc. Yes, Christmas time is not always a 100% happy time. The book obviously deals with some heavy issues, yet often retains a light touch.

Another accomplished contemporary author, Kristin Hannah, wrote Winter Garden. Not on the level of her best novels such as The Nightingale, The Great Alone, The Four Winds, and Firefly Lane, but still pretty good. Winter Garden is about two very different sisters and their cold, mysterious mother — who’s originally from snowy Russia during the period of Stalin’s iron rule.

The late Rosamunde Pilcher’s final novel, Winter Solstice, is I think the second best of her many books — behind only her terrific The Shell Seekers. Winter Solstice (published before Hilderbrand’s novel of the same name) unfolds amid a cold-weather gathering of people from various generations.

Of course, there’s John Steinbeck’s also-final novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, which has the overarching theme of trying to maintain integrity in a corrupt society. It’s one of Steinbeck’s deeper books, though not as compelling as The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

Among the “Winter”-titled novels I haven’t read are Isabel Allende’s In the Midst of Winter and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter (part of The Little House on the Prairie series). I should also mention George R.R. Martin’s The Winds of Winter — the lengthy, long-delayed, not-yet-finished sixth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series that started with A Game of Thrones.

Then there are plays such as Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and James Goldman’s The Lion in Winter.

Any thoughts about, and/or examples of, this theme?

On yet another rainy winter morning, Misty the cat says: “I’d build an ark, but the lumber yard’s closed.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Misty says Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for my book features a talking cat: 🙂

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — which discusses an “F-bomb” controversy and much more via a poem co-starring Santa Claus — is here.

93 thoughts on “The ‘Winter’ of Our Book Content”

  1. Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett part of the discworld series, The Gap Of Time by Jeanette Winterson which is a modernized retelling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and short stories of winter by Isak Dinesin’s Winter’s Tales. That’s all I got so it’s going to be a very short season for me. Ha. Btw Happy New Year to you and yours. Susi

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    • Thank you, Susi! I appreciate the three excellent mentions! Terry Pratchett wrote so many books I’m not surprised one has a version of the word “winter” in its title. 🙂

      Happy New Year to you and yours, too!

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  3. Hi Dave, it is quite odd to read this will boiling in 36C weather. Winter seems very distant indeed. Novels including winter is the best I can do. Those I’ve read include Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Anton Chekov’s late 1800s The lady with the Small Dog and other short stories. The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis is set in winter as is The long winter which you mentioned. I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder as a girl.

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  4. Winter’s Tale was our A level set play, paired, mysteriously, with Hamlet.

    Arthur Ransome’s Winter Holiday was the Swallows and Amazons book I could connect with best. Those hearty sailing kids were grounded when their lake froze solid. Visiting townies , the Ds, had to teach them to skate… Mystery though – No school, for weeks on end, because one of the Amazons had mumps. No MMR ?

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  5. Pingback: Thank you 2024, Welcome 2025 – Rebecca's Reading Room

  6. Gosh, very nice books, Misty. I had a little look as well, and I haven’t heard of those big books either.

    However, I immediately thought about ‘The Long Winter’ by Laura Ingalls Wilder, like several people said as well. And yes, the wonderful Will Shakespeare’s play ‘The Winter Tale’ – who can forget that scene? ‘Exit, pursued by a bear‘…

    I can offer something from Isabel Allende. It’s called ‘In the Midst of Winter’, mostly set in Brooklyn, NYC. Excellent book – give it a go (I would say).

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  7. Hello Dave, (and Misty),

    So Misty, Dave has hogged all the Winter books I’ve read, or a least remember.

    So, not to be left out in the cold, I offer this poem by Lucy Maude Montgomery.

    A Winter Day

    I

    The air is silent save where stirs
    A bugling breeze among the firs;
    The virgin world in white array
    Waits for the bridegroom kiss of day;
    All heaven blooms rarely in the east
    Where skies are silvery and fleeced,
    And o’er the orient hills made glad
    The morning comes in wonder clad;
    Oh, ’tis a time most fit to see
    How beautiful the dawn can be!

                 II

    Wide, sparkling fields snow-vestured lie
    Beneath a blue, unshadowed sky;
    A glistening splendor crowns the woods
    And bosky, whistling solitudes;
    In hemlock glen and reedy mere
    The tang of frost is sharp and clear;
    Life hath a jollity and zest,
    A poignancy made manifest;
    Laughter and courage have their way
    At noontide of a winter’s day.

                 III

    Faint music rings in wold and dell,
    The tinkling of a distant bell,
    Where homestead lights with friendly glow
    Glimmer across the drifted snow;
    Beyond a valley dim and far
    Lit by an occidental star,
    Tall pines the marge of day beset
    Like many a slender minaret,
    Whence priest-like winds on crystal air
    Summon the reverent world to prayer.

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  9. Hi Dave and friends. I’ve missed commenting on the blog a few times because I was traveling, so nice to be back. I am a fan of Pilcher’s WINTER SOLSTICE, and I thought “The Lion in Winter” movie was excellent. A favorite children’s picture book of mine (and not just of mine, since it won a Caldecott Medal) is Ezra Jack Keats’s A SNOWY DAY. I mention it even though it doesn’t have winter in the title (I thought it did until I went to find it on my shelves!)

    As a writer of mysteries, I ought to be able to come up with several mystery titles with the word “winter” in them. However, I can only think of one: THE SECRETS OF WINTER (2020), the ninth in Nicola Upson’s series of eleven books in which real-life Golden Age mystery author Josephine Tey solves murders during the 1930s. I recommend starting with the first in the series, AN EXPERT IN MURDER.

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    • Thank you, Kim! Hope you had a great time traveling!

      Rosamunde Pilcher’s “Winter Solstice” is indeed an excellent book. Pretty impressive for an author’s final novel. (She lived another 19 years after it was published.)

      Definitely a lot of wintry books that don’t have “Winter” in the title. 🙂

      And “The Secrets of Winter” is an excellent title!

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  10. You noted Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” and there’s a novel that takes off the first word for the title of “Winter’s Tale.” It’s by Mark Helprin, and it’s a fantasy set in New York City in the late 1800s. I loved parts of the story for the magical, dream-like feel. A master thief breaks into a mansion and is surprised to meet a woman there, and he falls in love. Oh yeah, and there’s a flying horse. 🙂

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  12. Cool topic, Dave. No pun intended. It’s been a long time, but I used to read Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series every winter. (The first book started on a winter day.) I gave up the series before reading the last book because I’ve reached a personal point where I can’t handle favorite characters being killed off, and I knew he was going to be heavy handed with his executioner’s ax. I didn’t care for the ending either. LOL, yes I went looking for spoilers. Happy New Year. Hugs.

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    • Ha, Teagan! 😂 Thank you!

      Yes, favorite characters being killed off is tough to handle in a novel or series (there’s enough death in real life 😦 ), though of course we might tolerate those demises when the books are very good and the deaths make sense for the story line.

      Happy New Year to you, too!

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  13. When I think of Christmas time,a short sweet book by Fannie Flagg, Redbird Christmas ” is a fav. When I see Northern Cardinals in Winter, resplendent in the snow,I say Jack,Redbird 🎄Christmas. 🙂

    Michele

    E & P ,way back

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  14. Lol Dave. had to laugh at your opener. Sitting up here right now with wind howling round the house, you are right re not thinbking of winter! However years ago I did read the Winter King by Bernard Cornwell. You know I honestly can’t remember much about it, maybe because of what you touch on at the start. Happy New Year when it comes.

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  16. This is an interesting theme, Dave, and I learned a lot from it and the comments above.

    The most recent Winter reading I’ve done is the epic series Dead of Winter by Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene. There are 14 short books in the series. It was published as a serial in2022, and it was most enjoyable.

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  18. A perfect topic for the end of December, Dave. I am going off topic on this one and talk about winter in terms of poetic words. A couple of days ago, an e-mail sent me Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Snowflake-Flake” which happens to be one of my most favourite winter poem. I have goosebumps when I read the opening words:

    Out of the bosom of the Air,
    Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
    Over the woodlands brown and bare,
    Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
    Silent, and soft, and slow
    Descends the snow.

    Winter has long been a muse for poets, evoking imagery of snow-covered landscapes and the quiet beauty of the season. I think of Christina Rossetti and Robert Frost who beautifully capture the essence of winter in their works. Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter” reflects on the serene yet stark nature of the season, while Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” paints a vivid picture of a snowy evening’s tranquility. Poets seem to have an affinity with winter. I think of William Wordsworth with his poem “The Prelude”and John Keats’s poem” In drear nighted December”. Both poems offer a contemplative perspective on nature’s cycles.

    Thank you for an amazing year of books, discussions and connections. I think of Robert Frost’s words as we say goodbye to 2024 and welcome 2025:

    The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   
    But I have promises to keep,   
    And miles to go before I sleep,   
    And miles to go before I sleep.

    I look forward to the miles ahead!

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    • Thank you, Rebecca! Lovely comment. 🙂 Glad you went off on a (slight) tangent. Winter has indeed inspired a LOT of excellent writing — whether it’s poetry, novels, or something else. I appreciate the mentions of Christina Rossetti, Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, and John Keats…and their timeless work.

      Yes, a terrific year of discussions, thanks to you and other commenters, bloggers, podcasters, novelists, poets, and others who make a least a portion of the online world a wonderful place.

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    • Thank you, Darlene! Yes, one doesn’t hear about “A Winter’s Tale” being staged very often. And I appreciate your mention of “The Winter Vault,” which does sound very interesting from the description you linked to!

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  22. I have only read Elin Hilderbrand’s Winter Street and didn’t realize it was a series. I did read Winter in Paradise, though. Three other books I have read recently with “winter” in the title are: Eva Stachniak, The Winter Palace, JoAnn Ross, Sea Glass Winter and Maeve Binchey, A Week in Winter. Fun prompt.

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  23. Hi Dave. I was getting ready there to come up with ‘The Lion in Winter’, and then you mentioned it at the end. I’ve only ever seen the film version with Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole, but it’s a favourite with me. I haven’t studied it, but it always just strikes me as a great example of a Christmas family get-together that’s anything but the harmonious celebration of love and peace that it’s always supposed to be. The wife’s been imprisoned by the husband, who’s let her out for the festive season – not the way to guarantee marital harmony, I think. Plus the sons are arguing, plotting and siding with favourite parents, who side with their favourites in turn. On those grounds it amuses me every time. You also mention Shakespeare’s ‘The Winter’s Tale’, another favourite of mine, containing as it does Paulina, one of my favourite Shakespearean characters. As to any other winter-themed offerings, I’ll have to have a think. Thanks for another great topic, as usual. 🙂

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    • Thank you, Laura! I should watch “The Lion in Winter” sometime; I’ve never seen it. Great description by you of its rather fraught story line!

      And while my post didn’t include cold-weather novels without “Winter” in the titles, there are certainly plenty to choose from — several from Jack London alone. 🙂 Plus Maria Semple’s “Where’d You Go, Bernadette,” partly set in…Antarctica!

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  26. The theme immediately brought to mind Franz Schubert’s song cycle Die Winterreise (The Winter Journey) using poems composed by Wilhem Müller, who died young, just one year before Franz Schubert and at almost the same age (Müller 32, Schubert 31). Very much in keeping with the theme, these contemporaneous early deaths.

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  27. Very fitting blog theme! In Sweden we are very much about winter and thus many authors write winter themed books or place their action in the midst of snow, ice and that winter feel. An author English-speaking persons might be familiar with is Henning Mankell. His coming-of-age novel “When the snow fell” might not have “winter” in the title, but comes close enough with snow both in the title and on the cover 😀 Another popular writer here, is Tove Jansson from Finland. Her stories about the Mumin trolls are read by every child growing up in the north. In “The Winter Book” one can read a collection of different stories by her.

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    • Thank you, Thérèse! Totally makes sense that fiction by Scandinavian authors would have plenty of wintry elements. I appreciate hearing about the works you mentioned, by Henning Mankell and Tove Jansson. Peter Hoeg’s “Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” Fredrik Backman’s “A Man Called Ove,” and Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy are among the other books that come to mind with snowy scenes written by writers from your region.

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