My interest in Laxness brought me here earlier this year. This is a great and insightful channel and I highly appreciate your efforts and dedication. Thank you very much and Season's Greetings from a not so wintry Switzerland😀
I just want to mention one more short story/novella named THE COUNTRY DOCTOR by Franz Kafka. The thing I loved in that is that the depiction of coldness as not only the weather or physical environment but also the emotional coldness, as everyone in that story seems to be isolated or indifferent from there surroundings. I don't think I am able to describe clearly but yeah, the story could be a good one to read in Winter.
Ohh, that's a great one that I completely forgot about! I'll need to dig out my copy of Kafka's collected stories and reread that one. Thanks for the recommendation!
Nice winter sweater! ❄ Kafka at the DMV! 🤣 I like to read Hemingway while sorting my recycling. Great suggestions! 📚 'The Dead' is really a perfect, beautifully written short story - especially for winter, as you say. Great quote! I just heard about someone else talking about Kavan's novel recently and I'm so eager to read it. There aren't any particular books I read during the first snowfall, but I think that's a lovely tradition. I love Sjon's "Moonstone". Orstavik's "Love" haunts me. Brilliant novel! And "The North Water" is incredible - though I've not read "Blood Meridian" so wasn't bothered by any evident influence. Thanks so much for speaking so eloquently about some favourites and introducing me to some others I need to read. I'd like to recommend to you the short story collection "London Under Snow" by the Spanish author Jordi Llavina (translated by Douglas Shuttle) which are all set during winter and which probe issues to do with memory and loss so beautifully.
Thanks, Eric! The Dead is about as close to perfection as any short story I've read has gotten, that's for sure. Kavan's Ice really is a little masterpiece - I put off reading it for way too long. It felt more relevant today in the age of climate change awareness than it was when it was first published over 50 years ago. I'm pretty sure I picked up The North Water on your recommendation years ago. I may have been too negative here - I did really enjoyed it, but just thought that it was, at times, trying to be too similar to these kinds of "epic American" books, though that very well could have been a me problem. I've been meaning to read his other books for years too. That short story collection sounds wonderful! Fum d'Estampa Press has been publishing so much interesting Spanish and Catalan lit. I'll pick it up for sure. Happy holidays, Eric!
@@travelthroughstories It's amazing when a book written long ago can come to feel so prescient like that. And I love those new(ish) editions of Penguin sci-fi classics. It makes me very happy to think it might have been me who enticed you to read The North Water. I've been meaning to read more by McGuire as well. And yeah, Fum d'estampa are great. I keep meaning to read more of their publications. Happy holidays to you!
Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow, Thomas Bernhard’s Frost, Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country and Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale would be my additions to a list that really was more than enough!
Thanks, Ryan! I almost had Drive Your Plow on this list, actually! It's a great wintry read even though I didn't love it as much as I was expecting to. Snow Country is one I've been meaning to read for years - maybe I'll try to find a copy this winter. I always want to read more Japanese literature and I imagine that there is plenty of wintry Japan lit. I haven't heard of Helprin's book, but I'll look into. Thanks for your suggestions/recommendations! Happy holidays!
It’s Summer-time in Antarctica. “As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston Harbour on September 2, 1930; taking a leisurely course down the coast and through the Panama Canal, and stopping at Samoa and Hobart, Tasmania, at which latter place we took on final supplies. None of our exploring party had ever been in the polar regions before, hence we all relied greatly on our ship captains-J. B. Douglas, commanding the brig Arkham, and serving as commander of the sea party, and Georg Thorfinnssen, commanding the barque Miskatonic-both veteran whalers in Antarctic waters. As we left the inhabited world behind the sun sank lower and lower in the north, and stayed longer and longer above the horizon each day. At about 62° South Latitude we sighted our first icebergs-table-like objects with vertical sides-and just before reaching the Antarctic Circle, which we crossed on October 20 with appropriately quaint ceremonies, we were considerably troubled with field ice. The falling temperature bothered me considerably after our long voyage through the tropics, but I tried to brace up for the worse rigours to come. On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; these including a strikingly vivid mirage-the first I had ever seen-in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles. Pushing through the ice, which was fortunately neither extensive nor thickly packed, we regained open water at South Latitude 67°, East Longitude 175°. On the morning of October 26 a strong “land blink” appeared on the south, and before noon we all felt a thrill of excitement at beholding a vast, lofty, and snow-clad mountain chain which opened out and covered the whole vista ahead. At last we had encountered an outpost of the great unknown continent and its cryptic world of frozen death. These peaks were obviously the Admiralty Range discovered by Ross, and it would now be our task to round Cape Adare and sail down the east coast of Victoria Land to our contemplated base on the shore of McMurdo Sound at the foot of the volcano Erebus in South Latitude 77° 9′. The last lap of the voyage was vivid and fancy-stirring, great barren peaks of mystery looming up constantly against the west as the low northern sun of noon or the still lower horizon-grazing southern sun of midnight poured its hazy reddish rays over the white snow, bluish ice and water lanes, and black bits of exposed granite slope. Through the desolate summits swept raging intermittent gusts of the terrible Antarctic wind; whose cadences sometimes held vague suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping, with notes extending over a wide range, and which for some subconscious mnemonic reason seemed to me disquieting and even dimly terrible. Something about the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich, and of the still stranger and more disturbing descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng which occur in the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. I was rather sorry, later on, that I had ever looked into that monstrous book at the college library. On the seventh of November, sight of the westward range having been temporarily lost, we passed Franklin Island; and the next day descried the cones of Mts. Erebus and Terror on Ross Island ahead, with the long line of the Parry Mountains beyond. There now stretched off to the east the low, white line of the great ice barrier; rising perpendicularly to a height of 200 feet like the rocky cliffs of Quebec, and marking the end of southward navigation. In the afternoon we entered McMurdo Sound and stood off the coast in the lee of smoking Mt. Erebus. The scoriac peak towered up some 12,700 feet against the eastern sky, like a Japanese print of the sacred Fujiyama; while beyond it rose the white, ghost-like height of Mt. Terror, 10,900 feet in altitude, and now extinct as a volcano. Puffs of smoke from Erebus came intermittently, and one of the graduate assistants-a brilliant young fellow named Danforth-pointed out what looked like lava on the snowy slope; remarking that this mountain, discovered in 1840, had undoubtedly been the source of Poe’s image when he wrote seven years later of: -the lavas that restlessly roll Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek In the ultimate climes of the pole- That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek In the realms of the boreal pole.” -H.P. Lovecraft
This is such a great list - so many books added to my TBR. I've always been intimidated by Joyce but you've more than convinced me to pick up Dubliners.
i agree - septology is such a perfect winter read. ideal for the last week of the year!!! def gonna have to check out the rest of the books you recommended :)
Thank you for all of these recommendations. I'm especially excited to read Heaven and Hell & The Ice Palace. Now I also have to check out Öræfi... you had me at the intersection of etymology, topography, & mythology!
Thanks for watching. All three of those are wonderful, I think. Öræfi is structurally challenging, but I think it's really smart and fun. I hope you enjoy any of the ones you decide to read!
I want to read all these books now. Another good book set in winter, and where the winteriness is a major component, is Clare Keegan's Small Things Like These, set in 1985 Ireland. Short-listed for the Booker this year.
I've heard many good things about Keegan's book and I've been meaning to get to it since it was longlisted. I'll bump it up the tbr though and try to find a copy. Thanks for the rec!
I've added so many interesting-looking books since discovering your channel! This video gave me flashbacks of when I slipped on some ice and almost fell into Gullfoss 😅
Thank you for your recommendations. My favourite reading of 2022 is the trilogy by Jon Kalman Stefansson which I discovered thanks to you. I really appreciate your "biases" as well as such a gender balanced list. I will definetely read some of these. Merry Christmas, Sean!
Loved this list!! I’m also a very mood reader and like to read precisely this kind of books during winter! I have Normal people and Heaven and Hell ready to read during this Christmas holidays thanks to your recommendations!! Also loved Ice and the Ice palace and the dead. Thank you!! Love your channel!! Happy winter ❄️❄️
Great! Glad I'm not alone in really enjoying these types of books. I really hope you enjoy Heaven and Hell - that one has been a personal favorite of mine for years, but I've never actually spoken to anyone else who has read it. Thanks for the kind words! Happy winter!
Hah! Christmas is a great time to begin reading Knasugaard and his A Time for Everything is probably my favorite of his. I'm eager to hear what you make of it!
@@travelthroughstories litterature from Quebec doesn't often cross the border ;) But it's a very vivid depiction of the grime of winter in the city, the dark, the cold.
Great list! I bought The Dead to fill either of my two reading goals of the year, Irish literature or novellas for each month and then I didn’t read it and I have been feeling bad about that. But I usually like to read a novella for New Years Day, and an excellent one at that, so it might fill that niche perfectly. Speaking of Ireland & winter, Small Things Like These is going to become an annual Christmas Day read for me and fits this list perfectly. The other book I’ve reread the most in my life, The Golden Compass (In UK Northern Lights) has a last third all set in the icy North with arctic landscapes, armored polar bears, and the mentioned Northern Lights. Of all the other titles you offer up I think Bear Woman goes to the top of my list. It makes me think of another Irish title from this year, A Ghost in the Throat.
The Dead would be absolutely perfect for New Years Day. It really is about as close to a perfect short story as one can get, I think. I really need to get to Small Things Like These! I've also read The Golden Compass years ago and loved it - that would be a perfect one for a list like this. I remember that book being super atmospheric as well. Thanks for sharing some titles. Happy holidays, Michael!
@@travelthroughstories Enjoy your break and holidays as well! If your library has access to Hoopla, the audiobook for Small Things Like These is always available and they’ve added Keegan’s Foster, which was finally just published in the US as well. That second Keegan was my original choice for New Years Day, it’s a 90minute listen and has had stunning and glowing reviews, but I’ll make it a twofer with The Dead! I’ll start the year with two books read and be off and running!
@@bookofdust Ohh, that's great to know. I'll look into that. I really like the idea of spending the day reading a short story or a novella - I might join you with reading Keegan's Foster!
My intuition sent me to my bookshelf for "Man in the Holocene" by Max Frisch. I read it many years ago, but it's stayed with me, and I think it fits this criteria, and you might like it.
Interesting pick! I've been interested in picking up Frisch's Homo Faber for some time. I haven't heard of Man in the Holocene - I'll look into it. Thanks for the recommendation, Nancy!
Excellent list for a cold Canadian winter. Im hoping to check out a few of them. If you could only pick three, which ones would you pick? Have you read the Terrors of Ice and Darkness by Christoph Ransmayr? That’s a good winter one. Also The Discovery of Slowness by Sten Nadolny. Thanks for all the great videos!
Thanks! I'd say my three favorites on the list are Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Septology by Jon Fosse, and The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas (though Ice by Anna Kavan is up there even though I only read it a few weeks ago. It's one that I would really recommend, especially if you like post-apocalyptic fiction). I haven't read either of the ones you mentioned, but I just looked them up and they sound wonderful! I'll try to track down copies. Thanks for the recommendations!
Thanks for another great list! I just bought a copy of the Ice Palace, and have the Icelandic Sagas (the Penguin version) on hold in my Overdrive, so hope to get to both of those while it's still winter! I am still intimidated by James Joyce, but dipping my toe in with a short story would be a great idea! I've read The Blue Fox and Independent People in earlier winters - both excellent; need to read more by those authors. A Norwegian one I'd like to get to this winter is The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting - it's been on my shelf for a while, and winter seems a good time. Going to be adding a bunch more of your suggestions to my TBR! Some other really great wintery books I read in winters past were One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead by Clare Dudman (about Alfred Wegener), A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter (a memoir of a winter in Svalbard with her husband in a hunting hut) and Endurance by Lansing, about Shackleton.
Thanks, Erin! It looks like you have a lovely winter ahead of you then. I completely understand being intimidated by James Joyce, but (and I know how annoying this sounds) don't be! He's great fun and really readable (most of the time). The Dead is a really "easy" read in that the prose isn't overly complex as Joyce can be in his other works, but it's simply incredible. I recommend listening to the audio version of The Dead while reading along if you're worried (there's a version available on youtube that is quite good). I'll need to look into The Bell in the Lake! I've heard of Mytting, but I've never read anything by him. I likewise haven't heard of any of the other ones you recommended, but I'll look into them now. Thanks for all the recs!
@@travelthroughstories Thank you for the suggestion for the audio version of The Dead, and suggesting looking on RUclips - I'd never thought of looking for audio narrations there (I always use Overdrive for audio, but they don't usually have single short stories). When I did a search, there are actually a lot of versions - I think I found a couple with decent narrators (I prefer Irish accented in this case 😉) A good or bad narrator makes a huge difference! Which is the one you'd suggest, if you have one in mind?
@@erinh7450 Agreed concerning the narrator! The one I liked was called "Short Story | The Dead by Jame Joyce Audiobook" by the channel ChapterVox. The narrator has a lovely Irish accent and he annuciates well.
Yes, that's the same one I found! There's another Irish accented one by the appropriately named channel "Free audiobooks" that seems pretty good too. There were also a couple others I clicked on that made me *cringe*... 😅
I read Codex 1962 (and all of Sjón's other books) back in 2017 or so, but I've actually been thinking of rereading Codex 1962 at some point as I think that's one that would really benefit from a reread. Perhaps I'll pull it down off the shelf and try to reread it sometime in 2023!
@@bibliomanicpanic I likewise really enjoyed it when I read it! It's nice to read a "big book" by Sjón as all of his other books are so short. I think you've convinced me to revisit it though!
your channel is so good and so underrated. i can’t wait to see you blow up
That's very kind of you to say, Martin. Thank you!
The Ice Palace is one of my favorite books. I read it for a literature class, but the book has stayed with me. It is amazing.
Fantastic list! Thank you!
My interest in Laxness brought me here earlier this year. This is a great and insightful channel and I highly appreciate your efforts and dedication. Thank you very much and Season's Greetings from a not so wintry Switzerland😀
I'm glad that we agree that Laxness deserves more love! Thanks for the kinds words. I'm sure Switzerland is beautiful this time of year wintry or not!
I just want to mention one more short story/novella named THE COUNTRY DOCTOR by Franz Kafka. The thing I loved in that is that the depiction of coldness as not only the weather or physical environment but also the emotional coldness, as everyone in that story seems to be isolated or indifferent from there surroundings. I don't think I am able to describe clearly but yeah, the story could be a good one to read in Winter.
Ohh, that's a great one that I completely forgot about! I'll need to dig out my copy of Kafka's collected stories and reread that one. Thanks for the recommendation!
Nice winter sweater! ❄ Kafka at the DMV! 🤣 I like to read Hemingway while sorting my recycling.
Great suggestions! 📚 'The Dead' is really a perfect, beautifully written short story - especially for winter, as you say. Great quote!
I just heard about someone else talking about Kavan's novel recently and I'm so eager to read it.
There aren't any particular books I read during the first snowfall, but I think that's a lovely tradition. I love Sjon's "Moonstone".
Orstavik's "Love" haunts me. Brilliant novel! And "The North Water" is incredible - though I've not read "Blood Meridian" so wasn't bothered by any evident influence.
Thanks so much for speaking so eloquently about some favourites and introducing me to some others I need to read. I'd like to recommend to you the short story collection "London Under Snow" by the Spanish author Jordi Llavina (translated by Douglas Shuttle) which are all set during winter and which probe issues to do with memory and loss so beautifully.
Thanks, Eric! The Dead is about as close to perfection as any short story I've read has gotten, that's for sure. Kavan's Ice really is a little masterpiece - I put off reading it for way too long. It felt more relevant today in the age of climate change awareness than it was when it was first published over 50 years ago.
I'm pretty sure I picked up The North Water on your recommendation years ago. I may have been too negative here - I did really enjoyed it, but just thought that it was, at times, trying to be too similar to these kinds of "epic American" books, though that very well could have been a me problem. I've been meaning to read his other books for years too.
That short story collection sounds wonderful! Fum d'Estampa Press has been publishing so much interesting Spanish and Catalan lit. I'll pick it up for sure. Happy holidays, Eric!
@@travelthroughstories It's amazing when a book written long ago can come to feel so prescient like that. And I love those new(ish) editions of Penguin sci-fi classics.
It makes me very happy to think it might have been me who enticed you to read The North Water. I've been meaning to read more by McGuire as well.
And yeah, Fum d'estampa are great. I keep meaning to read more of their publications.
Happy holidays to you!
This was a highly engaging and sublime post. I loved the particular thematic unity of this list, and its tangibility.
Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow, Thomas Bernhard’s Frost, Kawabata Yasunari’s Snow Country and Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale would be my additions to a list that really was more than enough!
Thanks, Ryan! I almost had Drive Your Plow on this list, actually! It's a great wintry read even though I didn't love it as much as I was expecting to. Snow Country is one I've been meaning to read for years - maybe I'll try to find a copy this winter. I always want to read more Japanese literature and I imagine that there is plenty of wintry Japan lit. I haven't heard of Helprin's book, but I'll look into. Thanks for your suggestions/recommendations! Happy holidays!
Oooo and my Septology did finally just arrive… tempting ~~ great stuff!
Yess! I hope you have time to get to it soon - I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it.
It’s Summer-time in Antarctica.
“As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston Harbour on September 2, 1930; taking a leisurely course down the coast and through the Panama Canal, and stopping at Samoa and Hobart, Tasmania, at which latter place we took on final supplies. None of our exploring party had ever been in the polar regions before, hence we all relied greatly on our ship captains-J. B. Douglas, commanding the brig Arkham, and serving as commander of the sea party, and Georg Thorfinnssen, commanding the barque Miskatonic-both veteran whalers in Antarctic waters. As we left the inhabited world behind the sun sank lower and lower in the north, and stayed longer and longer above the horizon each day. At about 62° South Latitude we sighted our first icebergs-table-like objects with vertical sides-and just before reaching the Antarctic Circle, which we crossed on October 20 with appropriately quaint ceremonies, we were considerably troubled with field ice. The falling temperature bothered me considerably after our long voyage through the tropics, but I tried to brace up for the worse rigours to come. On many occasions the curious atmospheric effects enchanted me vastly; these including a strikingly vivid mirage-the first I had ever seen-in which distant bergs became the battlements of unimaginable cosmic castles.
Pushing through the ice, which was fortunately neither extensive nor thickly packed, we regained open water at South Latitude 67°, East Longitude 175°. On the morning of October 26 a strong “land blink” appeared on the south, and before noon we all felt a thrill of excitement at beholding a vast, lofty, and snow-clad mountain chain which opened out and covered the whole vista ahead. At last we had encountered an outpost of the great unknown continent and its cryptic world of frozen death. These peaks were obviously the Admiralty Range discovered by Ross, and it would now be our task to round Cape Adare and sail down the east coast of Victoria Land to our contemplated base on the shore of McMurdo Sound at the foot of the volcano Erebus in South Latitude 77° 9′.
The last lap of the voyage was vivid and fancy-stirring, great barren peaks of mystery looming up constantly against the west as the low northern sun of noon or the still lower horizon-grazing southern sun of midnight poured its hazy reddish rays over the white snow, bluish ice and water lanes, and black bits of exposed granite slope. Through the desolate summits swept raging intermittent gusts of the terrible Antarctic wind; whose cadences sometimes held vague suggestions of a wild and half-sentient musical piping, with notes extending over a wide range, and which for some subconscious mnemonic reason seemed to me disquieting and even dimly terrible. Something about the scene reminded me of the strange and disturbing Asian paintings of Nicholas Roerich, and of the still stranger and more disturbing descriptions of the evilly fabled plateau of Leng which occur in the dreaded Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred. I was rather sorry, later on, that I had ever looked into that monstrous book at the college library.
On the seventh of November, sight of the westward range having been temporarily lost, we passed Franklin Island; and the next day descried the cones of Mts. Erebus and Terror on Ross Island ahead, with the long line of the Parry Mountains beyond. There now stretched off to the east the low, white line of the great ice barrier; rising perpendicularly to a height of 200 feet like the rocky cliffs of Quebec, and marking the end of southward navigation. In the afternoon we entered McMurdo Sound and stood off the coast in the lee of smoking Mt. Erebus. The scoriac peak towered up some 12,700 feet against the eastern sky, like a Japanese print of the sacred Fujiyama; while beyond it rose the white, ghost-like height of Mt. Terror, 10,900 feet in altitude, and now extinct as a volcano. Puffs of smoke from Erebus came intermittently, and one of the graduate assistants-a brilliant young fellow named Danforth-pointed out what looked like lava on the snowy slope; remarking that this mountain, discovered in 1840, had undoubtedly been the source of Poe’s image when he wrote seven years later of:
-the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole-
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.”
-H.P. Lovecraft
Thanks so much. I can’t wait to read some of these authors
The Blizzard was fantastic. Read Osebol recently aswell, that was also great. Thanks for the recommendations!
This is such a great list - so many books added to my TBR. I've always been intimidated by Joyce but you've more than convinced me to pick up Dubliners.
Dubliners is a great place to start with Joyce as it's his most straightforward, I think - don't let his reputation scare you away!
I love Anna Kavan's Ice and Vesaas' The Ice Palace, will look into the others too.
My wintery rec is God's Children by Mabli Roberts
Both epics in miniature, I think! Thanks for watching.
i agree - septology is such a perfect winter read. ideal for the last week of the year!!! def gonna have to check out the rest of the books you recommended :)
Thank you for all of these recommendations. I'm especially excited to read Heaven and Hell & The Ice Palace. Now I also have to check out Öræfi... you had me at the intersection of etymology, topography, & mythology!
Thanks for watching. All three of those are wonderful, I think. Öræfi is structurally challenging, but I think it's really smart and fun. I hope you enjoy any of the ones you decide to read!
Thanks again Sean….you are a great guide to reading choices, and I appreciate the candid style and contextualisation, especially including paintings
I'm going to pick up a copy of LOVE on my lunch break. Great recommendations, per usual.
Great! I hope you enjoy it. It's a short read, but it's one that *really* packs a punch. I'd be interested to hear what you make of it.
I want to read all these books now. Another good book set in winter, and where the winteriness is a major component, is Clare Keegan's Small Things Like These, set in 1985 Ireland. Short-listed for the Booker this year.
I've heard many good things about Keegan's book and I've been meaning to get to it since it was longlisted. I'll bump it up the tbr though and try to find a copy. Thanks for the rec!
DMV/Kafka joke is wonderful. What a list, man, still listening, but adding lots of these.
Hah. Kafka and the DMV are like peanut butter and jelly. I'm glad I could help put a few books on your radar!
I've added so many interesting-looking books since discovering your channel! This video gave me flashbacks of when I slipped on some ice and almost fell into Gullfoss 😅
Hah! That's not a waterfall I'd like to fall into, though it was incredibly beautiful. Thanks for watching!
Thank you for your recommendations. My favourite reading of 2022 is the trilogy by Jon Kalman Stefansson which I discovered thanks to you.
I really appreciate your "biases" as well as such a gender balanced list. I will definetely read some of these. Merry Christmas, Sean!
I'm so glad you enjoyed Jón Kalman!! Not enough readers have read him. Merry Christmas, Clarissa!
Loved this list!! I’m also a very mood reader and like to read precisely this kind of books during winter! I have Normal people and Heaven and Hell ready to read during this Christmas holidays thanks to your recommendations!! Also loved Ice and the Ice palace and the dead. Thank you!! Love your channel!! Happy winter ❄️❄️
Great! Glad I'm not alone in really enjoying these types of books. I really hope you enjoy Heaven and Hell - that one has been a personal favorite of mine for years, but I've never actually spoken to anyone else who has read it. Thanks for the kind words! Happy winter!
Have to recommend Snow country by Kawabata if you haven’t read it yet, I think you’ll enjoy it! 🤗
Ahh, I've been meaning to get to that one! It looks wonderful - I'm going to order a used copy now. Thanks for the rec!
I just put the majority of these books on my to read list! These all sound great! Love your videos
Thank you! I'm glad some of them sounded interesting to you!
Great video, appreciate your approach to this kind of thematically associative list. Best wishes from a warm room in dark, wintery Dublin.
Thank you! Dublin this time of year sounds gorgeous. Happy holidays!
Great list and 15 new books to add to my tbr 😅!
I'll be reading Knausgaard's a time for everything this Christmas.
Hah! Christmas is a great time to begin reading Knasugaard and his A Time for Everything is probably my favorite of his. I'm eager to hear what you make of it!
@@travelthroughstories I would also strongly recommend the dishwasher, by Stéphane Larue, if you're into dirty urban winters.
@@thegenesis0 I hadn't heard of that one, but I just looked it up and it sounds really good. I'll keep an eye out for a copy. Thanks, Valérie!
@@travelthroughstories litterature from Quebec doesn't often cross the border ;) But it's a very vivid depiction of the grime of winter in the city, the dark, the cold.
Thanks for another great video! The TBR keeps growing 😅
Haha, I'm glad I'm not the only one with a never-ending tbr...!
I love your videos! Thank you
Thanks for watching and for the kind words!
Great list! I bought The Dead to fill either of my two reading goals of the year, Irish literature or novellas for each month and then I didn’t read it and I have been feeling bad about that. But I usually like to read a novella for New Years Day, and an excellent one at that, so it might fill that niche perfectly.
Speaking of Ireland & winter, Small Things Like These is going to become an annual Christmas Day read for me and fits this list perfectly. The other book I’ve reread the most in my life, The Golden Compass (In UK Northern Lights) has a last third all set in the icy North with arctic landscapes, armored polar bears, and the mentioned Northern Lights.
Of all the other titles you offer up I think Bear Woman goes to the top of my list. It makes me think of another Irish title from this year, A Ghost in the Throat.
The Dead would be absolutely perfect for New Years Day. It really is about as close to a perfect short story as one can get, I think.
I really need to get to Small Things Like These! I've also read The Golden Compass years ago and loved it - that would be a perfect one for a list like this. I remember that book being super atmospheric as well. Thanks for sharing some titles. Happy holidays, Michael!
@@travelthroughstories Enjoy your break and holidays as well! If your library has access to Hoopla, the audiobook for Small Things Like These is always available and they’ve added Keegan’s Foster, which was finally just published in the US as well. That second Keegan was my original choice for New Years Day, it’s a 90minute listen and has had stunning and glowing reviews, but I’ll make it a twofer with The Dead! I’ll start the year with two books read and be off and running!
@@bookofdust Ohh, that's great to know. I'll look into that. I really like the idea of spending the day reading a short story or a novella - I might join you with reading Keegan's Foster!
My intuition sent me to my bookshelf for "Man in the Holocene" by Max Frisch. I read it many years ago, but it's stayed with me, and I think it fits this criteria, and you might like it.
Interesting pick! I've been interested in picking up Frisch's Homo Faber for some time. I haven't heard of Man in the Holocene - I'll look into it. Thanks for the recommendation, Nancy!
Great list!
Cheers, Brian!
Excellent list for a cold Canadian winter. Im hoping to check out a few of them. If you could only pick three, which ones would you pick? Have you read the Terrors of Ice and Darkness by Christoph Ransmayr? That’s a good winter one. Also The Discovery of Slowness by Sten Nadolny. Thanks for all the great videos!
Thanks! I'd say my three favorites on the list are Heaven and Hell by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, Septology by Jon Fosse, and The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas (though Ice by Anna Kavan is up there even though I only read it a few weeks ago. It's one that I would really recommend, especially if you like post-apocalyptic fiction). I haven't read either of the ones you mentioned, but I just looked them up and they sound wonderful! I'll try to track down copies. Thanks for the recommendations!
Yes, time to reread "Ice"!
It really is an incredible little book and one that I think would benefit greatly from a reread or two!
Thanks for another great list! I just bought a copy of the Ice Palace, and have the Icelandic Sagas (the Penguin version) on hold in my Overdrive, so hope to get to both of those while it's still winter! I am still intimidated by James Joyce, but dipping my toe in with a short story would be a great idea! I've read The Blue Fox and Independent People in earlier winters - both excellent; need to read more by those authors. A Norwegian one I'd like to get to this winter is The Bell in the Lake by Lars Mytting - it's been on my shelf for a while, and winter seems a good time. Going to be adding a bunch more of your suggestions to my TBR! Some other really great wintery books I read in winters past were One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead by Clare Dudman (about Alfred Wegener), A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter (a memoir of a winter in Svalbard with her husband in a hunting hut) and Endurance by Lansing, about Shackleton.
Thanks, Erin! It looks like you have a lovely winter ahead of you then. I completely understand being intimidated by James Joyce, but (and I know how annoying this sounds) don't be! He's great fun and really readable (most of the time). The Dead is a really "easy" read in that the prose isn't overly complex as Joyce can be in his other works, but it's simply incredible. I recommend listening to the audio version of The Dead while reading along if you're worried (there's a version available on youtube that is quite good).
I'll need to look into The Bell in the Lake! I've heard of Mytting, but I've never read anything by him. I likewise haven't heard of any of the other ones you recommended, but I'll look into them now. Thanks for all the recs!
@@travelthroughstories Thank you for the suggestion for the audio version of The Dead, and suggesting looking on RUclips - I'd never thought of looking for audio narrations there (I always use Overdrive for audio, but they don't usually have single short stories). When I did a search, there are actually a lot of versions - I think I found a couple with decent narrators (I prefer Irish accented in this case 😉) A good or bad narrator makes a huge difference! Which is the one you'd suggest, if you have one in mind?
@@erinh7450 Agreed concerning the narrator! The one I liked was called "Short Story | The Dead by Jame Joyce Audiobook" by the channel ChapterVox. The narrator has a lovely Irish accent and he annuciates well.
Yes, that's the same one I found! There's another Irish accented one by the appropriately named channel "Free audiobooks" that seems pretty good too. There were also a couple others I clicked on that made me *cringe*... 😅
@@erinh7450 Haha, I can imagine. Free audiobooks are really hit or miss.
He did say Cărtărescu! 0:33
I know you like Sjon and The Blue Fox. Do you think you'll ever make a review of Codex 1962?
I read Codex 1962 (and all of Sjón's other books) back in 2017 or so, but I've actually been thinking of rereading Codex 1962 at some point as I think that's one that would really benefit from a reread. Perhaps I'll pull it down off the shelf and try to reread it sometime in 2023!
@@travelthroughstories I've spend the last three months reading it and it's fantastic, I'll keep an eye out incase you decided to make that video
@@bibliomanicpanic I likewise really enjoyed it when I read it! It's nice to read a "big book" by Sjón as all of his other books are so short. I think you've convinced me to revisit it though!
So many books so little time...
'Promosm'