The Ultimate Winter Reading List
What Makes Literature 'Wintery' - and the Classics that Make the Cut
Ah, winter, the season of great paradox: the season of cold and the season of warmth, the season of calamity and the season of peace, the season of sorrow and the season of joy. If winter is all these things and more, how shall we define ‘winter literature?’ What makes a book ‘wintery?’
First there are the slow tales, bringing home the comfort of rest. They seduce us into hibernation, they sing us to sleep, and they draw us into the cosy closeness of family and friendship. Away in a manger, we tremble. The beginning of the bright, quiet tale of birth, life, death, and resurrection is whispered and then shouted throughout the land. Joy to the world! The Lord has come! And with him has come meaning for all the seasons of life. Winter is about the homecoming of God and man, on earth, in each other, and beyond.
Then there are the tales of waiting, of cruel death, of the end of things, of tyranny and desolation. There are the winters ushered in by cruel autumns, and the stories in which time passes into its end, where flowers die, where closed hands wither, where the grave is sealed. Winter literature shelters the darkest and deepest human emotions, but also unseen hope for a better season. In winter we watch the passing of dark nights into bright mornings and we await the change that is promised us. We watch eagerly for the coming green, sleeping gently beneath the bed of snow. And as we wait, it arrives. Magic and wonder return, and the piper comes calling down the fresh, green hill.
Until then, we sit and think. We rest and wait. We inspect ourselves, and we read literature that reveals us as we are in winter, but also how we will be in spring.
A List of Books for Winter
British Novels & Stories
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Hard Times by Charles Dickens
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Bleak House by Charles Dickens
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
Letters to Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
The Place of the Lion by Charles Williams
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton
The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse by Beatrix Potter
The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
Russian Literature
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
White Nights by Leo Tolstoy
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevky
Memoirs from the House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevky
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevky
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevky
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevky
Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevky
The Double by Fyodor Dostoevky
Childhood, Boyhood, Youth by Leo Tolstoy
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
A Nervous Breakdown by Anton Chekhov
Contemporary Fiction
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
The Giver by Lois Lowry
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffmann
Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
Continental European Literature
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
The Plague by Albert Camus
The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
American and Canadian Literature
Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery
Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery
A Christmas Dream and Other Stories by Louisa May Alcott
Christmas in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje
The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenmore Cooper
A Portrait of the Malefactress as a Young Woman by Karilyn Van Brugge
Classic Plays
Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
The Bacchae by Euripides
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
A Winter's Tale by Shakespeare
Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
Medea by Euripides
Thyestes by Seneca
King Lear by Shakespeare
Twelfth Night by Shakespeare
Faust (Parts I & II) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Non-fiction
The Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Luke
The Gospel of John
Phaedo by Plato
The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz
The Spirit of Christmas by G.K. Chesterton
The Book of Job
The Vinland Saga
Tremendous Trifles by G.K. Chesterton
Memoirs by Elie Wiesel
The Fall of the Roman Republic by Plutarch
The Last Days of Socrates by Plato
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
Classic Poetry
Beowulf
The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Journey of the Magi by T.S. Eliot
Works and Days by Hesiod
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
There’s a Certain Slant of Light by Emily Dickinson
Sonnet 73 – That time of year thou mayst in me behold by Shakespeare
Sonnet 97 – How like a winter hath my absence been by Shakespeare
Sonnet 104 – To me, fair friend, you never can be old by Shakespeare
The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton
A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas