These are the best books to read this winter

Elle Griffin
8 min readDec 13, 2020

This will be my sixth year living in a place with winter, and I now know what I didn’t at first: that something about my biology doesn’t enjoy the cold. That the happiness that comes with ease during the warm summer months is harder won during the colder winter ones. That the anxiety and depression I so thoroughly removed from myself long ago tries to seep back in once the snow settles in.

Every year I get stronger. I have gathered the tools I need to survive—the almond oil that drenches my bath every morning, the stair-stepper that keeps me active when it's too cold to go out on a weeknight, the handheld steam room that keeps my lungs warm and moisturized, the down coat that goes down to my toes and the cashmere socks that go up to my thighs — and I have learned to find refuge in our coldest season.

Two years ago, my husband and I skied-in to a hut outside of Telluride for the Christmas weekend. The Patagonia-down-jacket-clad guests congregated around the fire, laughing at the enormous sweater and scarf I had backpacked-in to wear at the cabin. “You seem like someone who likes to be cozy,” one of them ventured to guess, my scarf so large it nearly enveloped my head.

My husband laughed hard — as though it were the most accurate thing anyone has ever said about me — and now he repeats that phrase as if it were my…

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Elle Griffin

Writing a utopian novel and essays imagining a more beautiful future. ellegriffin.substack.com.