The writer’s year: December, Susan Hill
As the weather turns colder, Susan Hill discusses the effect winter can have on your reading habits and tackling difficult books.
A long tale’s best for winter
“When icicles hang by the wall.” Snow. If you’re cut off by soft goosedown drifts, snuggle under a goosedown quilt of another kind. “Cold room, warm bed, good book.” Or bank the fire until it roars up the chimney, pull up an armchair.
Glass of something, warming malt whisky, steaming chocolate. Cup of spicy tea. And read. Of course you can read in summer. A book’s as good in a hammock or a deckchair, a treehouse, on a rug by the river.
Winter’s for a different sort of book. “A sad tale’s best for winter” ? Yes. A deep tale. A long tale. A dense, rich tale. Bleak House – even the title is best for winter. Or Miss Smilla’s feeling for snow. The Snow Queen, best winter fairytale. Moominland Midwinter when all small creatures sleep in deep draughts. Narnia – “Always winter but never Christmas.” That sets a sliver of ice in the heart.
I like a Dickens for winter, and a Trollope. Start on the Barchester novels with The Warden and you will finish with the Last Chronicle of Barset by the time the crocuses are showing through.
Go to the sun if you like. You can stay in your fireside chair and take a magic carpet to India with Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet, The Jewel in the Crown. A trilogy is as good as a hot bath to sink into in cold weather. Olivia Manning will take you to the Balkans or the Levant with hers, and the jewel studded, rococo language of Lawrence Durrell runs to four enchanting books, with the Alexandria Quartet. Let’s sail from there to the magic sunlit isle of Corfu and meet his brother, Gerald’s Family and Other Animals. If winter weather fails to cheer you, Durrell will make you beam, smile and laugh with happiness. It is a book that never, ever fails.
Deep difficult reading works in winter. Have you forgotten all the French you ever knew, or even better, the Latin and the Greek? Try St Exupery’s Le Petit Prince in the original. Yes you can, and after that, if you don’t feel confident enough to Balzac in the French, Tintin is easy and the pictures help.
Latin and Greek, Bubble and Squeak. Once, I could read Tacitus and Ovid. Now? The Iliad and The Odyssey - Seamus Heaney’s translation. Brush up your Latin ? Winter’s the time and there’s a mouse called Minimus who will help, even if his primers are meant for children. If you’re ashamed to be seen with a Minimus, go about it more solemnly with The Cambridge Latin Course. Tea and toasted muffins, butter and jam and in a winter week or so you’ll be ready to tackle Winnie the Pooh and Fabula de Petro Cuniculo. If it’s cold and snowy, make it even more so. Shackleton’s SOUTH, the 1914–1917 expedition, or Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World take you to Antarctica wrapped in your goosedown duvet.
Susan Hill for Waterstones.com/blog
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