It was a particularly balmy June day when I first picked up a copy of Anna Karenina in a charity shop. I carried it with me on my daily commute, crawling through it a couple of pages at a time, struggling to find purchase with the story while on a sweaty London Tube. I was only a hundred pages in when I abandoned it. Six months later, in the depths of winter in my freezing-cold flat, I pulled it back down from the shelf, and took it with me into the bath. This time I devoured it. The next day, back on the train again, I lost myself in the detailed characters, and in the epic scope – I was so distracted that I missed my stop. I flew through the book in little more than a week.
The experience reinforced my long-held belief that there is a ‘right’ time for every book on my shelf. It makes sense to revisit Cassandra Mortmain’s world in I Capture the Castle in late spring, and to join Harry, Hermione, and Ron on the train back to Hogwarts in early September. At Christmas, I read Charles Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott, and Noel Streatfeild, revelling in descriptions of houses dressed for the season, and abundant holiday meals. In the hottest summer months I want to be with talented Tom Ripley, with Gerald Durrell’s family (and their animals), and with Ferrante’s Lila and Elena, dipping a toe into the Mediterranean. And when it’s cold and bleak outside in January, I return to Narnia, to the snow-filled Russian epics, and to the strange comfort of murder mysteries, read by the fire.
The books in the pages that follow are some of my very favourites, ones I continue to return to, and find myself frequently recommending to friends. In each of them I have felt a tangible connection with a particular season, a holiday, or an annual event; I hope they provide you with similar atmosphere, insight, and inspiration.