Wintering 2.0
winter reads for these trying times
Merry wintertime! Is it snowing where you are? It’s snowing where I am and it won’t stop snowing and I’m writing this looking out my window at that specific kind of sunshine you get when the light is bouncing off the snow and you feel like you’re in the literal and metaphysical Appledore vaults and nothing is real and your toes are cold no matter what.
Anyway, here is a list of book recommendations for if you, like me, are feeling sort of crazed this winter (for all the obvious panopticon-adjacent reasons) and want to read something that will a) make you feel either less crazed in comparison or b) make you feel justified in your frenzied feeling.
a) maybe i’m so normal
Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
A story about fate and love—destructive, all consuming, cruel, and vengeful. Catherine and Heathcliff believe they are destined to love each other forever, but when their desires are thwarted by class and propriety, the two become relentless in manufacturing each other’s misery.
The quintessential novel about terrible people and terrible families and terrible lovers doing terrible, horrible, unforgivable things to each other across generations and planes of existence. Some of literature’s most unlikeable characters, and darkest most convoluted (non-derogatory) plot, this novel feels frenzied on every level imaginable.
Plus, this is the perfect time for a read or re-read, considering we’re less than a month out from the sure-to-be controversial Emerald Fennell “Wuthering Heights.”
Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh
A macabre psychological noir about an compulsive, constipated young woman whose obsession with her colleague at the corrections facility for teenage boys takes an exceptionally dark turn.
This is an unnerving, borderline grotesque novel that examines darkness in all its facets and is best read knowing as little as possible. It takes weird-girl-lit-fic to heights it maybe should have never gone to. The only way I can describe this novel is to say that its so horrid that after reading it you feel not quite catharsis, but cleansed somehow—and of course, very sane and sensible in comparison to doleful Eileen.
Titus Andronicus - William Shakespeare
An underrated, underperformed, and dare I say understudied masterpiece. Titus, a roman general becomes entwined in an unimaginably violent cycle of vengeance with the Queen of Goths over the murder of one of her sons.
Overflowing with death and violence, Titus Andronicus is about vengeance, fate, and loyalty. T.S. Eliot once wrote that Titus was ‘one of the stupidest and most uninspired plays ever written’ but also Goodreads reviewer Dante Luiz wrote that “In many ways but not all, Titus Andronicus was the first girldad,” so do with that information what you will.
Jokes aside, Titus Andronicus, is the kind of play that is brutal and shocking, but also brings you intimately face to face with the very real cycles of violence humans inflict on one another. Bonus, after reading you can watch Julie Taymor’s 1999 surrealist masterpiece, Titus.
b) yk what, i should be more insane
Ring Shout - P. Djèlí Clark
'What we owe this world? Why save it, when its never done a thing to save us?'
Part folklore, part horror, Ring Shout tells the story of Maryse Boudreaux, a bootlegger by day, Ku Klux hunter by night.
Set to the backdrop of 1920’s Georgia, Ring Shout is a Lovecraftian tale about the seductive powers of hate and rage and the transformative powers of community, culture, and resistance. It’s fast paced, every character is distinctive and captivating, and the genre bending is incredibly compelling. A novel that will stay with you long after you finish reading.
Fledgling - Octavia E. Butler
Fledgeling is a novel about otherness. A young, amnesiac vampire has to piece through the literal and metaphorical wreckage of her life to try and find out who she is, and who is after her.
Clever and subversive in its world building, Fledgling is a singular exploration of vampirism and desire, as well as a novel about free-will, racism, identity, and eugenics. It’s a novel about who gets to be, who gets to take up space and make the rules, and who gets to challenge them.
The novel also features relationships with strange and unnerving power dynamics, right on the edge of what you can reconcile as a reader—exactly the kind of complicated relationships that vampirism is the perfect stage for. A strange an imperfect novel, but one I think about often.
The White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
A satirical novel with a breakneck pace and an unforgiving perspective. This novel is primarily about corruption, crime, greed, and servitude culture in India. It’s not a novel with the prose of The God of Small Things, nor is it a novel as emotionally grounded as The Parcel, but within its caricatures and sometimes misguided critiques of Indian society, it’s the kind of book that makes you uncomfortable for all the right reasons.
ta da!
In case you’re feeling perfectly sane this winter, I also have Wintering, my wholesome post from last year with a fun magazine style quiz to find your winter read!