Courtney 
Even in California, these last weeks have been cold. For folks NOT in California, that might sound ridiculous. But for me, seeing my breath in my kitchen come out in a puff of steam at 7am isn’t what I’m used to. I’ve switched out the quilt on the bed for a down comforter, admonished my 5 year old for wearing anything less than two layers indoors and noticed my pup Charlie creep onto the bed in the middle of the night and snuggle between the two lumps that are me and Joe under a pile of blankets. It feels like a true Winter season (yes, even in California.)
Welcoming Winter
Winter has never been a cherished season for me. Yet, in the last few years I find myself enjoying it more and more. Perhaps it’s a change in perspective, or the way one feels after 40. It might be a mental shift that happened unconsciously after reading the book Wintering by Katherine May. A book that resonated so fiercely, I had to keep myself from underlining every sentence. A book that inspired my most recent Creativebug class, Find Your Creative Rhythm: 15 Ways to Spark and Sustain Art Making, that addresses, head on, what to do when you experience your own creative winter. It could also be that there is something cozy and inviting in the idea of winter that appeals to me more and more as the world feels less safe, less friendly, less like home. Whatever the reason, I welcomed the cold and this winter with an excitement I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Suzanne and Gertrude
I had planned to write about a number of great reads for the winter season… or during your own personal winter, but instead I’m going to focus on one particular book. Even though I LOVE books more than almost any other thing, I often find myself with 5 partially read books near my bed, none of them calling to me on nights when I am tired or need to be consumed by a story to quiet my swirling mind. On just such a night last week, I picked up a book I had already read a while ago and dove in.
The quiet, slowly unfolding story of Suzanne and Gertrude was the perfect read. I finished it in a couple of evenings. When I first picked this book up, let’s be honest because there was a donkey on the cover, I had never heard of the author, Jeb Loy Nichols. In addition to writing this gem of a book, he’s also a printmaker and made all the illustrations of the donkey throughout the story. After re-reading the book, I went back to see when I had last read the book and discovered it was the same time last year (I’ve started writing my reading dates on the inside cover), and felt that perhaps this is now a winter tradition I can look forward to. I highly recommend this gentle story to anyone who feels like a quick, quiet read, a donkey, a sewing shop, a spare country landscape, and a friendship between two women.
More For Your Winter Reading List
A few more books I have on my winter reading list are:
A Winter Book by Tove Jansson, King Winter’s Birthday illustrated by Emily Sutton, A Christmas Book by Selma Lagerlof, and Nigel Slater’s A Thousand Feasts, and The Christmas Chronicles (a fav!).
xo Courtney