It's a Good Time to Settle in With a Book
With recommendations, if you're looking for your next read
The Winter Solstice falls on Saturday, December 21st, this year. According to the weather app on my phone, I'll see only 9 hours and 48 minutes of sunlight. The high temperature will be in the mid 40s F (about 9 C).
I have simplified my holiday rituals to the point that there will be no need for frantic running around on Saturday. There are no last-minute gifts to buy, no big feast to prepare. I can give myself the gift of a lazy weekend. But I will observe a simple solstice ritual.
On Saturday evening, I will bundle up, go outdoors, and look at the sky. I will take a moment to appreciate the darkness. I will notice the stars. I will remind myself that without the dark, we cannot see the light.
For those reading this in the Southern hemisphere, I hope you are enjoying the pure animal pleasure of basking in the warmth of the sun followed by convivial dinners in the long twilight.
Cold winter weekends are also a great time to settle in with a knitting project and a good book. I can't show you my current knitting. It is a commissioned project, and the yarn company reserves the right to reveal the design when it is published. But I'm excited to tell you about some terrific books I've recently read.
If you are in the mood for a funny and insightful rom com, you'll love Dolly Alderton's Good Material.
Andy is a 35-year-old struggling stand-up comedian in London. His live-in girlfriend, Jen, has just broken up with him. As Andy struggles to understand why his relationship ended, he deals with a career disaster, finding a new place to live, and being the lone single man in his friend group.
This book had me laughing out loud, but it does not have a typical happy ending. We see Andy flail his way through self-destructive coping strategies and tentative forays into dating. Not until the final few chapters do we hear from Jen. There are no villains here—just humans doing the best they can to live truthfully without causing too much damage to each other.
Break-up novels are usually told from the woman's point of view, not from that of the man who was left. We don't often get to see how a group of close male friends support one of their crew through an emotional crisis.
I read this book in audio. Andy is voiced by Arthur Darvill, with Vanessa Kirby coming in at the end as Jen. Both do a lovely job of conveying the emotional character of the story without ever going over the top.
If a twisty mystery in an unconventional format is more to your taste, take a look at The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett.
This book is a good choice if you're racing to finish holiday knitting over the next couple of days. There is no temptation to take a break when you're eager to find out what happens next. The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels will keep you in your chair through a solid 10½ hours of knitting.
The Alperton Angels were a cult who convinced a teenaged girl her baby was the anti-Christ. Common knowledge is that the Angels committed mass suicide, and the mother and baby disappeared 18 years ago.
Journalist and true crime author Amanda Bailey accepts an assignment to write about the case for a book planned to coincide with the long-missing baby reaching adulthood. As part of her quest to find out what really happened, she sets out to find the mother and the baby.
The story of Amanda's investigation is told through the news clippings, emails, text and WhatsApp messages, and transcripts of telephone calls and interviews which make up her research documentation. The audio version of this book is surprisingly effective, given the epistolary nature of the text. With five different narrators giving each character a distinct voice, this is a thoroughly engaging audiobook.
I was right with Amanda as she worked her sources and followed the clues. I could feel the tension mount as she realized she didn't know who she could trust. This story has more twists and turns than a tangled skein. As in all the best mysteries, I didn't see the solution coming, but it seemed entirely obvious (if mind-blowing) once revealed.
Finally, if you're in search of a Christmas book that will bolster your faith in the power of individual acts of courage and compassion, I recommend Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.
This is a compact, quiet story that packs a punch. Bill Furlong is a coal merchant in a small Irish town in 1985. While delivering fuel one December morning, he discovers that the local convent school for girls is, in fact, an abusive Magdalene asylum for "fallen women".
His wife urges him to mind his own business. After all, they have five daughters of their own. Acting against the convent would threaten their position within the community. But as Bill goes about his preparations for the Christmas holidays at work and at home, he cannot forget the frightened young girl who asked for his help.
Small Things Like These is short—128 pages in print and under 2 hours in audio. But it is a perfectly polished gem of a story. If your heart is in need of warming, here you go.
Some things that caught my eye…
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic. – Carl Sagan
I wrote a tutorial article for Farm & Fiber Knits about how to create a sloped bind-off for smoother shoulder seams on your sweaters.
What were the people, things and events that captivated us over the past year? Google compiled the greatest hits in the Year in Search video for 2024.
Santa got a glow-up courtesy of Target. Yes, please.
As always, thank you for letting me into your inbox this week. I never take it for granted.
I’m looking forward to reviewing the list of books I read in 2024. I want to make, not a 10 Best List, but a list of the 10 books I read in 2024 that have stayed with me, for whatever reason. Is there a book you read in the past year that you still think about, weeks or months later? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
For those who celebrate, I wish you a merry and magical Christmas.
Thanks for the recommendation! I just picked up Winter Solstice on Audible (neither Libby nor Hoopla had it). I remember loving Pilcher's Shell Seekers, so I'm looking forward to this one.
Enjoy Small Things Like These. And have a lovely holiday.
Thank you, Sandi and your readers, for the book recommendations. I’m still going through Donna Leon’s Venice series. I have until the end of this month to listen to these books for “free” (i.e., without using credits), and I’m going at a gallop. I’m on Book 14 and have maybe 14 to go … 😬 Have a wonderful Winter Solstice and Happy Holidays!