Cold.

These books make me think of winter, pain, cold, and humanity.  Also, these are all books I read for the first time in the first half of this year.  Despite the saying "Don't judge a book by its cover", these covers do a good job representing the kind of story within-- note the lively color palette employed (Kidding, of course).

The Giver by Lois Lowry.

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I know, it's a children's classic! I had chances to read it in elementary school, and my favorite middle school English teacher recommended it to me, but I didn't read it until this year, I know.  It's shocking, to read a children/preteen book as a non-child/non-preteen.  The controversial topics that are brought up within its pages!  And the slight science-ficiton twist/quirk/turn of this story make it particularly creepy.  It's not winter througout the story but snow falls heavily and plays a big part in the story at the end.  A great read, not too long but not light fare, not by any means.  There's so much to discuss and an added factor when given repeated readings as one gets older.






Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

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I think the title says it all: 'winter' and 'bone'.  Protagonist Ree Dolly is gritty, tenacious, a no-nonsense kind of girl because she has to be and has no other choice.  Set in the wet, wooded Appalachia area, you get a sense of hopelessness and inertia, which makes our heroine's efforts all the more remarkable.  Comments have been made about this story as a modern day Antigone, and having read that play this year I can readily make out the parallels.  Ree has to find her crank-cooker father before it's too late, and the cards are really stacked against her.  The story is simply and well-told, with fairly short chapters that are neither titled nor numbered. 







The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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This book, too, has chapters that have no title or number, but they almost aren't even chapters.  The dialogue bits don't even have quotation marks around them, that's how bleak this book is.  Does that make sense?  Eh, well if you've read the book it makes sense.  Each book in this list is more haunting, cold, and bleak than the last, and The Road really takes the cake.  You don't even learn the names of the main characters, a father and son, who make slow and sometimes steady progress through the landscape of a post-apocalyptic United States.  You don't even really get a good background as to all this happened and how our characters ended up on this journey, but that adds to the whole aspect of these two survivors just trying to stay alive.  This book made me shiver.  This is not the kind of book to warm up to after a long day slogging through snow, not the kind of book that I would read by the fire with a mug of cocoa or tea, because no amount of heat will really thaw the bitter frost that this book exudes.  Devastating, this is, and a very good read.  Author Cormac McCarthy also wrote No Country for Old Men.