Book Club #3: December
snerdlereads for short days and long nights
Shortness of the days; darkness, coldness of winter.
It is in our blood and bones; it is in our history.
It takes genius to forget these things.- from 'Solstice' by Louise Glück
In Iceland, there is a Christmas tradition of Jólabókaflóðið, or Yule Book Flood, in which everyone gifts everyone books for Christmas. As the solstice creeps closer we can but cross our fingers and hope for a book flood of our own. We do have a book tree by Hatchards at nearby St Pancras. Hatchards appears in an article I wrote recently for travel magazine SilverKris on 10 must-visit bookstores in London, should you need any spots for last-minute book flood prep.
What's up
What's on
Histories & Hauntings, an exhibition by Iain Sinclair, Renchi Bicknell and the late Brian Catling (Swedenborg House, till Dec 22)
Susanna Clarke and Alan Moore in conversation (Online, Jan 11)
Our Mutual Friend exhibition (Charles Dickens Museum, till Feb 25)
Shakespeare's First Folio 400th anniversary exhibition (Senate House Library, till Feb 29 - if you want to see the First Folio itself, check for specific dates)
Snerdlereads
December's never a big month for new releases so we're doing snerdlereads instead. 'Snerdle', according to lexicographer Susie Dent, is an 18th-century dialect word that means 'to wrap up cosily beneath the covers and hold off the day for a little longer'.
My go-to snerdleread is Winter by Ali Smith, from her Brexit seasonal quartet, a luminous read in which two ageing sisters and two millennials - one a blogger, the other a homeless immigrant - sit down for a tense Christmas lunch. I recommend this entire quartet for all seasons.
For something chillier, there's Ursula K. Le Guin's sci-fi classic The Left Hand Of Darkness, set on a planet called Winter. Nothing like a sexually tense glacial transverse to make you feel better about your own circumstances.
My top snerdle pick from this year's releases would be Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett, in which a curmudgeonly professor heads to the frozen north to do fieldwork on the local faeries, only for her academic rival to show up. Sarcastic footnotes, rants about grant applications, debating theory while faeries try to kill you - light academia at its most delightful.
Book club will reconvene in the new year! in the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful winter break, and that this season may see peace on earth and an end to war.
Olivia
(I'm on Instagram with more book reviews - @ohomatopoeia)