Cold.
Rain.
Dark.
The only thing to get us out this fix is books. Lots of books about things that have nothing to do with cold rainy dark winter days.
We’re not aiming to make anyone a better person. We just want to escape for a bit. Get away and forget about what’s pouring down on the other side of the window.
The below books are going to nail that on the head. Read on for our guaranteed reads to keep you warm and fuzzy this winter.
The Women in Black by Madeleine St John. We tout this book a lot at Text and there are many good reasons for it.
It’s fun, it’s moving, and it’s set in summer in Sydney.
At the very end of the Ladies’ Frocks Departments, past Cocktail Frocks, there was something very special, something quite, quite wonderful; but it wasn’t for everybody: that was the point. Because there, at the very end, there was a lovely arch, on which was written in curly letters Model Gowns.
Written by a superb novelist of contemporary manners, The Women in Black is a fairytale which illuminates the extraordinariness of ordinary lives. The women in black are run off their feet, what with the Christmas rush and the summer sales that follow. But it’s Sydney in the 1950s, and there’s still just enough time left on a hot and frantic day to dream and scheme…
‘Seductive, hilarious, brilliantly observed, this novel shimmers with wit and tenderness.’ Helen Garner
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Have you heard of this book? It’s getting to be rather well known.
If you haven’t read this exquisite portrait of two friends, then you need to. It’s set in Naples where it’s hot and dry and this fiery tale of rivalry and love and friendship will set you alight with warm feelings.
The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. They learn to rely on each other and discover that their destinies are bound up in the intensity of their relationship.
Elena Ferrante’s piercingly honest portrait of two girls’ path into womanhood is also the story of a nation and a meditation on the nature of friendship itself.
‘Elena Ferrante: the best angry woman writer ever!’ John Waters
The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. This book is, quite simply, hilarious and heartwarming.
It’s also quirky, funny, touching and we’ll take some time out to let the Sunday Times UK describe it:
‘Imagine the literary equivalent of one of those lamps prescribed for sufferers of seasonal affective disorder – a book that found the crack in our seemingly interminable winter to let laughter and light flood in.’ Sunday Times UK
Don Tillman is getting married. He just doesn’t know who to yet.
But he has designed the Wife Project, using a sixteen-page questionnaire to help him find the perfect partner. She will most definitely not be a barmaid, a smoker, a drinker, or a late-arriver.
Rosie Jarman is all these things. She is also fiery and intelligent and beautiful. And on a quest of her own to find her biological father – a search that Don, a professor of genetics, might just be able to help her with.
The Wife Project teaches Don some unexpected things. Why earlobe length is an inadequate predictor of sexual attraction. Why quick-dry clothes aren’t appropriate attire in New York. Why he’s never been on a second date. And why, despite your best scientific efforts, you don’t find love: love finds you.
If you haven’t read The Rosie Project yet, then get a copy any way you can, because the sequel, The Rosie Effect, is just as good.
The Idea of Pefection by Kate Grenville. An endearing, matter-of-fact and delightful novel about accepting yourself and that love can be wonderfully unexpected.
A man, a woman, a dog, a bridge and a tentative attempt at companionship. This is one of those stories that make you sit back and savour the way Kate Grenville puts words together. It didn’t win the Orange prize for nothing!
The Idea of Perfection is the story of the small town of Karakarook, and of Douglas Cheeseman and Harvey Savage – two people who seem the least likely in the world to fall in love. Unlike Felicity Porcelline, a woman dangerously haunted by the idea of perfection, they come to understand that what looks like weakness can be the best kind of strength.
‘Each word, each sentence, each paragraph shines and gleams.’ West Australian
My Relations: by Robin Ann Eakin, aged 8, 1929, Robin Dalton is a quick, delightful read that will warm the very cockles of your freezing heart. Just look at that cover:
In 1929 an eight-year-old child, who had very few relations, imagined an assortment of eccentric aunts, uncles and cousins. She wrote and illustrated a little book about them, which her grandmother kept.
This is it.
Before writing My Relations, Robin Dalton’s 1965 account of her childhood in Kings Cross, Aunts Up the Cross, was an Australian classic. It’s worth reading these two together to get the full effect of this incredible woman’s glorious and fascinating account of her childhood.
I Own the Racecourse! by Patricia Wrightson is a book enjoyed and adored by young and old; an absolute classic of literature that will lift your spirits.
Andy Hoddel was different from other boys. He never really understood the game they played, in which they ‘owned’ the factories, the library and the police station in their town, but he longed to tell them he owned something too.
Then he met an old tramp and paid him three dollars for Beecham Park Racecourse.
When Andy’s friends find out they are horrified. Andy would have to be told he’d been taken for a ride – but how could they tell him without breaking his heart, especially when all the staff at the racecourse were calling him the ‘owner’? How could anyone take away his racecourse?
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. If you’re a fan of those book things – because we’ve heard that some people are – then you’ll fall in love with this book. We were physically unable to put this one down once we started reading.
A charming and hilarious adventure that has it all: secret societies, unbreakable codes, underground lairs, cutting-edge technology, the googleplex…and lots of books!
Clay Jannon, twenty-six and unemployed, reads books about vampire policemen and teenage wizards. Familiar, predictable books. Books that fit neatly into a section at the bookstore.But he is about to encounter a new species of book entirely: secret, strange, and frantically sought-after.
These books will introduce him to the strangest, smartest girl he’s ever met. They will lead him across the country, through the shadowed spaces where old words hide. They will set him on a quest to unlock a secret held tight since the time of Gutenberg – a secret that touches us all.
But before that, these books will get him a job.
‘Robin Sloan’s delightful first novel articulates, in fun style, the collision of paper books and e-books. The protagonist is a tech nerd, but he’s also a book nerd, so both those who crave shiny new technologies and those who relish the scent of paper will find room in these pages.’ Washington Post
First Impressions by Charlie Lovett. From the author of The Bookman’s Tale comes a brilliant and delicious mystery about Jane Austen and books.
Book lover and Austen enthusiast Sophie Collingwood has recently taken a job at an antiquarian bookshop in London when two different customers request a copy of the same obscure book: the second edition of Little Book of Allegories by Richard Mansfield. Their queries draw Sophie into a mystery that will cast doubt on the true authorship of Pride and Prejudice – and ultimately threaten Sophie’s life.
In a dual narrative that alternates between Sophie’s quest to uncover the truth – while choosing between two suitors – and a young Jane Austen’s touching friendship with the ageing cleric Richard Mansfield, Lovett weaves a romantic, suspenseful and utterly compelling novel about love in all its forms and the joys of a life lived in books.
These are the books you’re looking for. They’ll solve all your winter afternoon woes and get you through the coming freeze.
Until next time,
Keep reading,
The Texters
