Winter is HERE!

by Leigh Perry/ Toni L.P. Kelner

Ned Stark from Game of Thrones was right. Winter was coming, and now it's here. As you read this, you may very well be warming your hands by the slight extra heat from your phone, tablet, or computer screen because this week in the US, we can use every bit of heat we can get.

Not that I hate winter. Generally speaking, I'd rather have a little brisk, cool air than hot and humid weather. The older I've gotten, and the further north I've moved, the happier I am with colder days. But with this month's second batch of single digit temperatures in the forecast, I'm really starting to feel this is too much of a good thing. Given the choice, I'll be staying in and reading until the outside warms up a little.

Which brings me to a question. When it's cold outside, does it comfort you more to read about really cold weather? Something like J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring on that snowy mountain, Vicky Bliss from Elizabeth Peter's The Trojan Gold escaping an avalanche to shelter in an old church with the intriguing art thief John Smythe, an Alaskan mystery from Sue Henry or Dana Stabenow, Jack London's nameless protagonist trying to save his life in "To Build a Fire," or even a harrowing history of the snow-bound Donner party?

Sometimes I pick my stories that way, figuring that no matter how cold I am, at least I'm not dealing with an avalanche or waist-deep snow.

Then there are the times I want to read about something that will warm me up. That's when I turn to the Egyptian settings of Elizabeth Peter's Amelia Peabody series, Frank Herbert's desert planet Dune, the sultry summer days in Bon Temps in Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books, Florida settings from Elaine Viets and Jeff Lindsay, or Tony Hillerman's Navajo mysteries.

Then I feel lucky to be out of the sun and to have plenty of drinking water--or at least hot chocolate.

There's a truism for writers: Never start with the weather. It's not bad advice, but for readers, sometimes it's the weather that helps us pick what we're going to read.

So what about you? What do you read to escape the polar vortex?

 

 

 

Comments

[Mark]

I don't know that I read to avoid the weather. Although sometimes it is too hard to read something warm when I'm cold or vice versa.

[Cath from Australia]

I ha e the opposite problem. Here in rural New South Wales (Australia) it has been over 35 degrees Celsius (95 F) since Boxing Day. We are drinking lots of iced tea and eating salads. Reading about the super-cold weather in the USA is almost surreal.

[Marcia Talley]

I probably shouldn't comment as we are wintering in the Bahamas where a 'cold snap' means 69 degrees. At present, I'm reading a draft of Deborah Crombie's next mystery and feeling lucky to have mystery writers as friends!