A Winter Reading List
Katherine May on wintering, Thoreau sounding a frozen pond, and 20 more books to gather for the long nights ahead.
To read any of these free, search Libby with your library card, or ask your library to order it. The public domain books link to free copies on Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive, and to LibriVox where there is a recording. An Amazon link sits beside each one for anyone who would rather own a copy.
This list goes with my newsletter, A Season of Renewal, 4 Months To A New You. Before you pick, a few questions to build your own list:
- Do you want something to read, or something to listen to while your hands are busy?
- What did you love reading as a child that you could go back to?
- Which book would you want to keep, and which would a library copy do for?
Rest and the season
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May
May treats the hard, fallow stretches of a life the way the natural world treats winter.
View on Amazon
Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, Katherine May
May on finding wonder close to home, in four parts: earth, water, fire and air.
View on Amazon
The Electricity of Every Living Thing, Katherine May
May walks England’s 630-mile South West Coast Path while coming to understand that she is autistic.
View on Amazon
Women Who Run with the Wolves, Clarissa Pinkola Estés
A Jungian analyst reads old myths and folk tales for what they say about a woman’s wild, instinctive self.
View on Amazon
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Go straight to the winter chapters, where Thoreau sounds the frozen pond for its depth and watches the foxes and owls around his cabin.
Read free on Project Gutenberg · Listen free on LibriVox · View on Amazon
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer
A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation on plants, gratitude and giving back to the land.
View on Amazon
A clear head
How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell
Taking your attention back from the attention economy, with a good deal of birdwatching along the way.
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Saving Time, Jenny Odell
Odell’s follow-up to How to Do Nothing, on who the clock was built to serve and the longer time kept by the land.
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The Lost Art of Doing Nothing: How the Dutch Unwind with Niksen, Maartje Willems
The Dutch habit of niksen, doing nothing on purpose, with illustrations by Lona Aalders.
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Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport
A thirty-day break from optional technology, then you add back only what you miss enough to want.
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The Likeability Trap, Alicia Menendez
Why women who succeed get called cold, women who are warm get called less capable, and how to get out of that bind.
View on Amazon
More structure and drive
If you want a firmer frame for the season, start with Dan Koe’s book. The rest go deeper on attention and the present moment.
The Art of Focus, Dan Koe
Dan Koe argues that focus breaks down when your sense of who you are keeps shifting.
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Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The psychologist who named it, on the state where work or play takes all of your attention.
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SuperBetter: The Power of Living Gamefully, Jane McGonigal
McGonigal turned her recovery from a concussion into a game, with allies, power-ups and quests, and the book hands you the quests to play your own.
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Stop Fixing Yourself, Anthony de Mello
Talks by the Jesuit priest on awareness, gathered in seven parts from “Now Is the Time” to “Suffering and Growth.”
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The Wisdom of Insecurity, Alan Watts
Watts in 1951 on why chasing security keeps us anxious, and why the only life you can live is the one happening now.
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Books to amaze and inspire
The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album, Kenneth Libbrecht
Real snow crystals photographed under the microscope by a Caltech physicist.
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Flora: Inside the Secret World of Plants, DK
440 pages of close-up plant photography, from the roots to the seeds.
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Art Forms in Nature, Ernst Haeckel
One hundred plates, from radiolarians and jellyfish to orchids, frogs and bats, drawn by the biologist and published between 1899 and 1904.
Free to page through on the Internet Archive · View on Amazon
Dogs Gods, Tim Flach
Studio portraits of dogs from show champions to shelter rescues, by the photographer of Equus.
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Finding Home: Shelter Dogs and Their Stories, Traer Scott
Portraits of shelter and rescue dogs with their stories, from a photographer who started out as a shelter volunteer.
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Living on Earth: Forests, Corals, Consciousness, and the Making of the World, Peter Godfrey-Smith
A philosopher of animal minds on how living things have shaped the earth, from the first forests to consciousness.
View on Amazon
Your first evening of Gathering
- Pick one title from this page.
- Tonight, place a hold in Libby, or open the free copy linked beside it.
- Write two more on your Christmas list.
Consider what a long way you’ve come today.
The White Queen, Through the Looking-Glass
Corrina
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