Wednesday 1 December 2010

Snowy books


There's six inches of snow outside and more falling. I've filled the log baskets, reinsulated the doors, and checked my emails. There's nothing to do but read - bliss. So which books are the snowiest reads?

They have to be on my shelves. No chance of getting to the library or Waterstones - and Amazon won't get through either - so here's the perfect chance to reread books I haven't opened for years.

First off, a cheat, David Vann's 'Legend of a Suicide' - a cheat because I only read it two months ago, and it's still swirling round my head like a blizzard. It's shocking and beautiful and you'll never want to hole up in a hunting cabin in midwinter in Canada when you've read it. Especially not with a suicidal father.


How about Isabella Bird's 'A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains'? Here she is in November 1873:

'Thanksgiving Day. The thing dreaded has come at last, a snowstorm, with a north-east wind. It ceased around midnight, but not till it had covered my bed. Then the mercury fell below zero, and everything froze. I melted a tin of water for washing by the fire, but it was hard frozen before I could use it. My hair, which was thoroughly wet with the thawed snow of yesterday, is hard frozen in plaits. The milk and treacle are like rock, the eggs have to be kept on the coolest part of the stove to keep them fluid. Two calves in the shed were frozen to death ...'

Glad I'm in East Sussex and my walls are made of brick rather than ill-fitting planks of wood!

Here's another one, 'Peace' by Richard Bausch. It's set in Italy at the end of the second world war as a patrol of young American soldiers climbs a mountain on reconnaissance. The mounting snow is both beautiful and potentially lethal.

Perhaps I'll wrap up with something more heartwarming, 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'. Dylan Thomas's wonderful piece of prose poetry. Here's a taste, but even better, Spoken Ink have just made a recording of it for only 99p.http://www.spokenink.co.uk/

'Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards.'

Time to go and tuck up with a book under the duvet.

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