Category: Reading

Posted in Politics, Reading, Uncategorized

Reaching for Powerful Words

Posted on by beckylevine

I’m thinking about the reading I’ve been doing since the election. For a few days, honestly, I couldn’t find anything to read. This has only happened to me a couple of times in my life, and it’s always scary. Because…not being able to pick a book? Not being able to lose myself in a story, in characters, in words? That’s absolutely terrifying.

Then one day I knew I wanted to re-read Kristen Cashore’s Bitterblue. It’s the third of her Graceling books, and–for me–it’s her best. It’s the story of a young woman who has inherited a kingdom, a kingdom full of people whom her father controlled and tortured, manipulated with his mind, forced to do terrible things. Memories are traps for everyone in her world, including herself, places of gaping holes and sudden transports into the past. Bitterblue’s need is to learn and understand as much as she can about the past, to fill in the holes, and find some way for everyone to move forward from the travesty they all lived through. While Bitterblue is active and physical and well able to defend herself, she is a hero of intelligence, of logic and code-breaking and puzzle-solving. I think I needed to seep myself in “smart,” in the power of someone to ease people’s pain through analysis and thinking and direct speaking.

Since then, I’ve stayed in fantasy–reading through several books by Cinda Williams Chima. Chima’s books are tightly written and draw me easily into the heads of characters who look head on at their own problems and at the larger problems of the world around them, who tackle those problems with force and focus, and who–after many losses–win the bigger picture.

I think what I’m craving in my reading these days, is the feeling that we can do this. That we can take on the next four years and, frankly, kick our enemies’ asses. For now, I’m finding this reassurance in fantasy, in words that don’t look a whole lot like ours, that give me some distance and escape from the crap we’re facing, even as–at the same time–they maybe give me strength to believe in the battle.

I think I’m also, though, craving words of power. Both Cashore and Chima are good writers, strong writers. Their books don’t lose me in vagueness or mushy prose–Cashore, in particular, has done an amazing thing in writing a book about mental powers that feels anything but inactive. I’m not sure I could read a literary novel right now if you paid me. I know that, at some point, I’ll step out of the fantasy world and back into reality, but when I do I think I’ll still be craving strength and energy from the story words. I rarely read poetry, never have, but I found myself thinking this morning that maybe I needed to get a collection of Adrienne Rich’s poems and read through one every day or so. For the power and the strength in her words.

What I did do was track down Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise and listen to it again. “Does my sassiness upset you?” No, it doesn’t. It expands my heart.

Has your reading been impacted by the election results? Have you noticed yourself reaching for a certain book, a certain kind of book? What books of power have you turned to? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Posted in Reading

How Has Your Reading Changed…or Not?

Posted on by beckylevine

Thirty years ago (yes, really!), I was reading 700-page novels. In high school, I fell in love with Russian novels (yes, again, really!), and then in college discovered the British Victorian writers and fell, if possible, even more deeply in love (yes, oh, whatever…). It was an extension of what I’d felt when I found fantasy writers like Tolkien and his followers–the experience of being a fast reader who could finally stay with one particular story & set of characters for more than a day or two. Those fantasy series, and these novels…kept going. And, oh, the characters.

When I went on to grad school, I knew what I was going to be reading. More Victorians. I ended up doing my orals on the Bront ës, and my thesis on Wuthering Heights. (And don’t you think, BY NOW, that a spellchecker should NOT try to change “Wuthering” to “Withering?!”) I read and read and read and…

…I burnt out.

Grad school was where I discovered that academia was not the right place for me. That while reading was as necessary as breathing to me, and that–yes–I could talk about a book for hours–all this analysis, this taking apart the author’s meaning and intent, was starting to wear thin. And those long books suddenly felt…really long.

So I switched gears. The last semester I wrote my thesis and took one course: Modern British Drama. 20-50 pages/book, with about 10 lines of text on a page. And lots of laughs.

And for reading pleasure, I picked up Barbara Pym’s novels and…mysteries. (Yes, back to books I could finish in a day-and-a-half.) I discovered Ruth Rendell and rediscovered Agatha Christie. Again…not such long books. Some might say Agatha Christie doesn’t do character–I’d disagree. But I think, in Rendell’s novels and the rest of the mysteries I read in the next few years, there was a connection between the characters in the Victorian novels I’d been reading and these new series. The characters stayed around. And, even while they were busy solving crimes, they also (especially the more modern detectives) had their own life problems–problems that also went on and on, over multiple books, not unlike the never-ending problems that carried Victorian characters over 700 pages.

I still read mysteries. They satisfy something in me that I haven’t yet identified, but probably don’t need to examine too closely–they obviously satisfy that something in a huge number of other readers, or they wouldn’t be so popular. If I’m hanging around too long in just children’s or teen books, or in just fantasy, I find myself needing a fix of someone strong and aggressive, who’s out to solve someone else’s problems, even if they can’t really work on their own in a big way yet.

And then there is the kids/teen lit. This probably makes up anywhere between 80 & 90% of my reading today. Why? Well, yes, obviously because I write it. But more than that, because there is just so much on the market that is brilliant. Honestly, if you want to go as far as possible from the dense layers of Victorian novels as you can–pick up a 200-page realistic YA novel. You’d run out of red ink if you tried to edit one of those books from the 1800s into a story for teens today. (Well, honestly, except for maybe Wuthering Heights, but I may be biased.)

But again…the characters. I think this is the core of my reading over the years. The people who all these writers have drawn onto their pages, for me to immerse myself in. You’d think I would read mysteries for the plot, but I can pick up an Agatha-Christie novel for the third time and still not figure out whodunnit. Because it’s the people she wrote about and all their quirks and attitudes and perfect dialogue that hook me in and keep me reading. It was Cathy & Heathcliff and Catherine and Hareton that made me love Wuthering Heights. It’s the scene at the end of The Hobbit, where Bilbo and Thorin meet for the last time, that brings me back for a zillionth reread and has me in tears yet again. It’s the pain of Lia in Wintergirls that wrenches at me, that makes me need to put down the book for a break and calls to me until I pick it up again.

Character. So, yes, if you look at the books on my shelves today and compare them to the ones that were there thirty years ago, they don’t look so much the same. In fact, you could probably fit three of the books today into the space of one from the past. But it seems, after all, there is a connection, a continuity, in my reading over all these decades. Obviously, it’s the quality of the writing. Most importantly, though, I think it’s the people who that wonderful writing–those writers–created.

What about you? What are you reading today that you weren’t reading years ago? Is it a total switch for you, or do you see a common thread? Drop your thoughts into the comments and share.

Posted in Reading, Recharging Your Writing, Somebody Else Says

Somebody Else Says: Nathan Bransford on Distractions

Posted on by beckylevine

Today, Nathan Bransford blogs about letting yourself be distracted from your writing, giving yourself recharge/refresh time away from the current WIP.

You can read his excellent, realistic post here.

I’ve been thinking lately about how I’ve been having at once the most relaxing summer I can remember AND managing progress on two WIPs and non-writing work stuff. It’s good, you know. And thinking about the one thing I consciously added more alloted-time to in the past year–reading. I think this has a lot to do with my productivity.  With the recharging that Nathan talks about.

If you follow my blog or my Facebook updates and tweets, you know I read a LOT. I also read fast, so it’s not as many hours as it probably seems, but still…it is the crucial distraction/escape in my life. Yes, I can justify it in other ways, because reading and writing are so interconnected, but to be honest, that’s not why I do it. It’s the one thing (after family & friends) that I do completely by choice and am unwilling/unable to give up. I realized last year that I had cut down on it and that, consequently, I was a lot more stressed. I missed the escape that I get from all the wonderful worlds other writers are creating for me.

So I read.

What’s the distraction that you know, takes you away from extra writing hours, but that there is no way–for good reasons–you’re giving up?

Posted in Blog Contest, Reading

The Gift of Writing for Kids—Bruce Coville Book Giveaway

Posted on by beckylevine

So, this past weekend, I headed up to Sacramento for the SCBWI Spring Spirit conference. Which ROCKED. I may do another post this week telling more about it, along with perhaps a few car photos from my research trip, but what I wanted to talk about this morning was Bruce Coville‘s talk. Or part of it.

The part where he talked about why we write for kids. (Hint: It’s not the money.)

Slight detour first. I am very clear, personally, on why I write for kids and teens. Yes, I hope that they’ll read and love my books; yes, I think about them as the audience while I’m writing; yes, I try and figure out the best way to make my story connect with their world. But the full truth is that I do this writing…for me. I write because I need to, because I love the way it feels when words come off my fingers onto the keyboard. I write specifically for kids and teens because those are my favorite books to read, because the “club” I most want to belong to is the one whose members are the authors whose books I devoured as a kid. I admit it–I write for very selfish reasons.

I hear so many people talk about the book that most impacted them, the book where they first recognized themselves or the one that changed the way they saw the world. Honestly, I don’t have one of those. Every book that has hit me strongly as a child, as a teen, as an adult has hit me as an author. As in, WOW–look at the characters this writer created. Look at the way they built that world. Look at how they made me cry. Look at the flow of the prose. The books that are listed in my head as the most important are the ones that just made me–even more than before–want to be a writer. While I may have loved their content, the content is not what hit my life–it was and has always been about the writing.

But Bruce said something in his keynote that made me start thinking. And the basic thread is one we’ve all heard before, but it struck a chord for me Saturday. He basically created a picture, onstage in front of us, of The Kid who has just discovered reading. The one who has found THE BOOK (whether it be about content or prose) that, for him or her, has just opened up an entirely new world–the world of stories on a page. I don’t remember what that book was for me. The story goes that my big sister came home from first grade. played School with me, and taught me to read. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know that my favorite thing in the world was to curl up with a book. I don’t remember the magic of discovering that feeling.

I do, though, know what that magic looks like on the face of another child. I know what it looked like on my son’s face; I know what it looked like on the faces of his young schoolmates, and I know what it looks like on the face of the boy or girl sitting on the floor of the bookstore or library, oblivious to everything that is going on around them.

I’m writing a picture book. I’m not sure whether or not a picture book can, by itself, create this magic–because they are so often part of cuddling with Mom and Dad, a grandparent, a teacher, an older sibling, a babysitter. I’m not sure whether or not this magic can be created with anyone else there, or if it is a simple, pure communion between a child and the book (and, yes, I think an e-reader qualifies!). What I think may be true is that there is an age-range, or reading-range, where the magic happens, and that it does fall somewhere between picture books and MG novels. Between the time the child starts to love stories and the time when they have already become book addicts and are now adding books and hours to their habit. I’m not sure if/when I will write a story that falls into that range, but I think–after this conference–that it must be a goal to think about.

I don’t know if Bruce Coville was the one who created that magic for my son. It may have been Bill Watterson, because the first time my son asked if he could read in bed before turning out the light, it was so he could lie there and “read” Calvin and Hobbes by himself. It may have been Roald Dahl. It may have been any one of the authors he loved when he was young. What I do know, and remember, is the click I heard in his reading world when he found Bruce Coville’s books. These were some of the first books I got him that were by an author I hadn’t read, didn’t know about. They were if not the first, some of the first, science-fiction stories he read. They were some of the first books that I picked up to read to myself, because my son loved them so much. My son’s favorites, and mine, were the Sixth-Grade Alien series, with Tim and Pleskitt as best friends. And then, of course, Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher, because…hey, it had a dragon. And a disappearing magic shop. And lots more.

They didn’t have any of the Pleskitt books at the conference bookstore. They did have another favorite—The Monster’s Ring, which I think has the (very brief) scariest moment I remember reading in any of Bruce Coville’s book. I bought a copy, and I asked Mr. Coville to sign it (with, I hope, a minimum of gushing). And I’m giving that book away here.

I’d like to give it away to someone with a child, or who knows a child, that hasn’t read Coville’s books yet. I’d like to send this book off somewhere to a boy or girl who might not yet have fallen in love with books, or not yet found their stories. I’m not going to ask any of you to pass a test for the giveaway, or prove that you know the perfect recipient. If you just love these books yourself and absolutely need a copy, then go for it. If your son or daughter had this book and something happened to it, or they just can’t speak at the thought of having a copy with Bruce Coville’s signature on it, I totally get that, and they should get a chance to have that! But if you think around your world, and you know a kid who needs to find their book, who wants to love reading but hasn’t quite got there yet, then–please–enter. I want this giveaway to send a little bit of that magic into the world.

So…all you have to do to enter the contest is leave a comment below. But if you’ve got a story to share about your book, the one that grabbed you as a child and made you a reader, or the one that did that for one of your own kids, a student, whoever–I’d love to hear that, too.

I’ll run this contest for a week, and I’ll draw one random winner next Monday, April 11th. Feel free to spread the word!

Posted in Reading

The Sneakiness of Book Sharing

Posted on by beckylevine

One of the happiest things in my life is having a son who is a big reader. If you’d asked me for a list of dream goals for my child, when I was pregnant, this would have been right up there at the top–along with a sense of humor (check) and enough height to get down the dishes on the next shelf, that one that I just can’t reach (check, check). Partially, I’m  happy for him, but honestly–there’s an element of selfishness in this, too. Finally, I have someone around all the time to talk about kids and YA books with! My husband reads, too, and we’re bringing him along on the you’re-not-too-old-for-this ride with authors like Eoin Colfer and JK Rowling, but he also spends a lot of time sharing gory, lost-on-the-mountaintop books with me, as well as those science articles about what my brain’s doing right now, thank you very much.  He also does read a lot of sci-fi and dystopian, which is probably my son’s favorite genre right now.

Anyway, my son is a big reader, but he doesn’t always jump right onto a new bandwagon–he does a lot of rereading, and he looks first for authors he knows and loves (Thank you, Sir Terry Pratchett, for being brilliant and prolific). He definitely responds to covers and to jacket blurbs. Or he doesn’t respond.

The bottom line is that, when I want him to try something new (one of those books that I’ve fallen in love with and want someone else to join me in fandom), I have to be a bit sneaky. I can’t just paraphrase the story as I see it, because we don’t latch onto the same things in that kind of a description. So I just share a few passages out loud, here and there, as I read the book–pieces I know he won’t be able to resist.

Here’s the one that caught him in Frances O’Roark Dowell’s Falling In:

     So, should you stop reading this book? I mean, you thought you were getting a witch, and so far all you’ve gotten is two girls and an old woman herb doctor. I don’t blame you for wanting your money back. Let’s march right back to the bookstore and demand–
     Wait a minute.
     I thought I saw something.
     Yes, I’m pretty sure I saw something over–over–over–
     There.
     It’s a piece of paper falling out of a book.
     I wonder what it says.

That’s it. Chapter end. Seriously, who could resist?

Not my son. He’s about halfway through the book and loving it–loving the language, loving Isabelle Bean, loving the way she spirals thoughts into imagery.

Personally, I think publishers should hire me to pick that line–that paragraph–the one that shows the story’s absolute irresistability, and they can print it right on the back cover. Okay, they can keep their paraphrase, too, but we know what will grab those readers. 🙂

Posted in Books, Reading

If You Write It: Eoin Colfer, AND ANOTHER THING, & More

Posted on by beckylevine

Last night, I drove my son up the peninsula to Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park. It’s a fantastic store–it used to be my bookstore when I lived further north, years ago–but I hadn’t been there in years. It’s still as great. But last night just felt extra special, and I’ll tell you why.

We were there to hear Eoin Colfer speak & buy a copy of his new book, the very unexpected 6th book in Douglas Adams Hitchhiker “trilogy”—And Another Thing. Colfer told a wonderful story (btw, if you ever get a chance to hear him, all his stories are wonderful–it’s like going to a stand-up comedy show) about hearing from his agent that Adams’ family wanted him to write the book. Talk about “the call.” He also told us how this was the book that changed his reading life when he was a teen–that showed him you could put comedy into science fiction and fantasy. Which is now what Colfer does–brilliantly.

The room was packed. True confessions: I may have been the only person in the room who hadn’t read Adams’ books, which will be remedied–for fear of the flying rotten tomatoes with which Colfer threatened any of us who qualified. The chairs were filled with many people my age and with…boys. Yes, there were a few girls, too, but to me the boys were the ones who were truly rapt with attention for this man who had written the books they wanted. Lots of Artemis Fowl fans, even more, I think, who were really happy about the idea of a possible sequel to The Supernaturalists.

When Colfer opened up time for questions, those boys raised their hands. Yes, all of them. The ones a bit younger than my son, wanting to know about the characters in Artemis Fowl, and the older ones with really deep voices asking serious questions about his writing process. And when the line formed for Colfer to sign books, those kids had STACKS of books for him to sign–some they’d bought that night, some they’s brought with them. One boy had a book Colfer had signed before & he was going to get a second signature.

I hear SO much about boys not liking books, about losing boys from reading as they get into their teens. I watch my son and, too often, see him as the exception–myself as the lucky parent who gets to keep sharing this with her son. Last night, I realized he’s not the exception and neither am I. Write for the boys, folks. They’re here, and they’re starving for more books to read, more books that show them why they want to write, too.

And for those of you Hitchhiker fans who are wondering, son hasn’t put the book down since we got home last night. 🙂

Posted in Books, Reading, Tension, Voice

Reading for Writing

Posted on by beckylevine

This week I isolated one of my worries about my current WIP–the worry that I don’t (yet!) know how to convey the tension the story needs and deserves. I’m not the most comfortable person with tension. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, books were invented for me (yes, for me) to escape life’s stresses.

And then this character came along and told me in no uncertain terms that she was a strong and powerful girl, that she had to face some very bad things to bring that power out, to see it for herself. She also told that I had to write those things.

Yes, okay. Sure. No problem.

I’ve been plotting and writing and developing my characters, and I’m definitely making progress. In the back of my head, though, has been that worry–what about the tone of the story–it’s feel. This is, I think, partially a matter of voice, and partially a matter of things like sentence length, action and pacing, how long and how intently I as a writer and Caro as a hero dip into her reactions and emotions. The one thing I’m clear on is that–I’m not yet clear on all this. 🙂

So I’m going back to the basics. I don’t know who said this first, and I don’t know what number they used, but I’m thinking of the advice about reading X quantity of books in a genre to really know it. Yes, I know there’s a before in there, too–read X books BEFORE you try and write something. Well, I’m going to cheat. I care too much about this story, want to be writing it too much to wait until I’ve read 100 or 1,000 tough, edgy, painful YA novels. So I’ll be reading and writing at the same time.

I’m going to do a little osmosis–just read and read and read and let the words of the experts seep into my brain. I’m also going to do a little analysis–pick a few favorites and read them a few more times, though, then try to actually see what they’re doing, how they’re creating that tension. How they’re writing the words that hit me in the gut.

And, yes, I know I’m running the danger of losing myself so much in their styles that I start copying those styles on my own pages. It’s happened once or twice before–when I was reading a lot of historical novels, at the start of this project, I had to back off for a while. Also–and this one was a lot more fun–when I was on a binge of reading Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries series, my 12-year-old male protagonist started talking way too much like Mia. So I’ll be watching myself for heading into derivative-land, and pulling out for a bit if I need.

But I’m going to read, and I’m going to write. And I’m going to trust in this combination that hasn’t ever let me down before.

Posted in Books, Reading

Quiet Books: Can I hear a YES?!

Posted on by beckylevine

Remember “edgy?” Okay, the word is still here. And I like it–I like edgy books. I admire the strength these authors put into their words, the sharp and almost painful voice with which their narrators tell their stories, and the power that pulls me in and keeps me turning the page, at times faster than I can really keep up with.

BUT…

I also like books that AREN’T this way. Lately, I’ve heard the word “quiet” tossed around. People are talking about it on Twitter & Facebook. Writers are trying to figure out what it means, when they hear it from publishers and agents, and they’re trying to figure out–I think–if it has to be a bad thing. Because I think there is some sense out there that it may, indeed, be something that, well…won’t help your book get picked up and sold.

Honestly, I hope that’s not true. Not only because I suspect that my own writing may be more quiet than…edgy? Loud? Whatever that other thing is? But because–if my understanding of quiet books is right–I value them so much for the reading experience they bring me that I don’t want to see them go away.

I’ve been thinking about a few authors whose books I’ve read–some recently, some not so recently–books that I think of as “quiet.” (Some of these authors have also written what I’d called edgier books that I also loved, but I’m not talking about those today.) I’m going to name these books, and I want you all to take this labeling as a STRONG recommendation to go out and read them. Because they’re all incredible, powerful writers. Just…in a different way.

All of these books, like the edgy ones, deal with teens who face problems. BIG problems. MODERN problems. The two things that seem to be different, to me, are the pacing and the voice.

These books don’t rush. I’m not sure the edgy ones do, either, but I find myself rushing through them, often, to find out what’s coming next. These “quiet” stories don’t feel slow, I just feel like I have time to sit with them, to follow the explorations the author is making into character and choices and connections and to make my own explorations at the same time.

The narrative voices in these books also give me time. Somehow, there is a strength of character in the hero (even if they’re not 1st person, we’re almost always getting the story through the hero’s perspective) that makes me feel confident and safe. I’m not saying I read their stories knowing that they’ll be okay, or expecting a predictable ending. That’s not it. It’s that somehow I believe the hero has the strength to make it through their pain and their experiences, and that strength lets me breathe a bit more slowly and read for HOW they’re going to do that–to watch their choices with curiosity, sympathy, and hope.

I’m not doing this very well–telling you what I like so much about these books, without sounding like I’m putting down the others. Honestly, I like them all. I just get sad when I hear writers worrying about whether they shouldn’t write these books. I want to stand up and shout, wave my arm frantically to get their attention, and say, “Yes! Please! Keep writing!”  I want to tell them that I crave their kind of story, and that I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Am I? 🙂

Posted in Reading

Reinstituted: Summer Reading

Posted on by beckylevine

It’s official. I will be adding in specific time this summer for reading. Not just reading, but…yes, I”ll say it: PLEASURE reading!

The last few days have been pretty jitter-buggy around here, with my writing on hold for fun family stuff. It was hard at first, but then I really saw that I’ve been applying just a bit too much pressure to myself. How do I define “too much” pressure?

  • The amount of pressure that makes you step away from productivity and cross the line back into spinning fruitlessly in your own socks.

That would be the technical explanation.

I will write and write and write this summer. My editor just sent me an email saying that The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guidewill probably be on its way to copy edits soon. (Whee!) I’m going to get that first draft of the YA done, done, done–if not by June 30th, but soon after. I’m going to play outline with another nonfiction project.

And I’m going to do research. Four more books have shown up (mysteriously!!) in my mailbox, all about Chicago history and women and garment workers and “fun.” I’ll be making my way through those.

But I am also making a commitment to myself to push all of those away for at least a short time–30 minutes or an hour–as many days as I can. I just grabbed three more books by Tamora Pierce at the library today, and I feel like my son when he discovered Terry Pratchett. Ms. Pierce can keep me in relaxed, curl-up-and-dream reading ALL summer long! When I was a kid, even a teen, that was my favorite thing about summer–all that reading time. Reading whatever books I felt like, rather than something a teacher thought I should pick up. I want that back.

Son and I are discussing going with the whole siesta thing. Our house is almost 100 years old (I think!) and insulation is not in it’s vocabulary. So, during the summer, from about 2:00-4:00, it tends to bake a bit. We use fans, and it’s tolerable, but the brain synapses don’t always fire so great. We’re talking about meeting on the couch with books and popsicles, pointing the fans straight at ourselves and declaring it READING TIME.

Okay, I’m talking about it, with strong hints that this would NOT be a good time for video game noises. But he’s listening. And nodding a bit.

Frankly, I see this as therapy. And recharging. And a recognition that the word vacation IS an important part of the summer months.

What about you? Got your summer reads picked out yet? Your nesting/escaping spot in the house, or by the pool? Fridge stocked with your favorite cold drink?

Let’s all relax together this summer…just a bit and just enough!

Posted in Books, Reading

Just for Fun: Winter Reading

Posted on by beckylevine

Hey, all–it’s only Thursday, but for some reason it’s feeling like Friday! We’re having our first cloudy, drippy day in weeks (sorry, all you Nor’easters!), and I’m actually wearing long sleeves. The warm, sunny weather has been great, but it’s boding not well for our summer water supply, so I’m actually pretty happy to have used my windshield wipers this morning.

Anyway, I’m feeling sort of lazy and snug, so I’m not going to bring out the big guns on writing theory today? Instead, how about a little conversation?

Do your reading habits change with the seasons? I always hear about beach reads (may I recommend the entire Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot?), but what about fireside reads? Couch-under-fleece-blanket reads? Let’s-not-get out-of-bed-yet-in-the-morning reads?

My son has started on the Lord of the Ring series (after I told him he could TOTALLY skip the Tom Bombadil section, because, really, everybody does!). To me, this is a perfect winter read–you’re inside, safe & sheltered, and–even if the power is out–at least you’re not headed toward Mordor. I’ve been doing my research reading with Jane Addams’ Twenty Years at Hull-House, which makes California winters, even in a stinky economy, look pretty warm and prosperous. And I just read a wonderful YA book called Need, by Carrie Jones, which is set in Maine and filled with seriously cold fingers and toes, snowshoe romance, and creepily dangerous pixies. (I fully reviewed Need on my other blog, here.) Yes, it had me looking over my shoulder into the “forest” around our house, as I read late into the night, but I was tucked safe into bed and pretty sure those were coyotes I was listening to.

When it’s cold, do you want to read about somewhere colder? Or do you hunt out palm trees and streaming sunshine, to counter the darkness inside? Share your favorite reads this winter, and let’s pass them around. We’re not done yet–remember, the groundhog saw his shadow!