The house shifted this past week in a way I have been craving for months. When the semester finally ended and the holiday days opened up, everything inside me softened. Several nights of eight full hours of sleep felt almost medicinal. The difference was immediate. My body felt clearer. My thoughts felt more spacious. I had known I needed the slowing, but the relief still surprised me.

In that gentler rhythm, my mind moved toward ritual. This time of year has always carried a threshold quality for me. Culturally, it is Advent. Personally, it is the crossing point between the intensity of fall and the quieter interior work that winter seems to invite. I have been thinking about what it means to mark that passage with intention, and to choose the voices I want beside me as I move through the season.

A winter reading ritual is not new for me, but it feels more important now that this season also marks a break from studying. Reading between semesters is not about productivity. It is a way of shaping my inner landscape when the world dims early and asks for a different kind of attention. It gives me something grounding to return to. And because I know how quickly I create busyness to manage my own anxiety, I am trying to hold this practice with honesty. I want it to nourish me rather than push me (keep this in mind when you see how long the list is… I am nothing if not self-aware).

In the middle of the list, you’ll see Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. This will be the fourth year in a row starting the year with this book, and its sequel, Parable of the Talents. The return feels necessary at this point. There is something in Butler’s world that recalibrates me. The way she writes change, danger, resilience, imagination, and community helps me pay sharper attention to my own life and the world around me. The book still feels like a prophecy, and lord knows that it gets scarier to read each year. It’s for this reason, though, that I haven’t yet chosen to change my plans. It feels worth digging into again.

Around that anchor, I gathered the rest. Theology, ecology, liberation, trauma healing, queerness, family, story, pleasure. Books that hold the questions I am carrying and the ones I want to walk toward next.

Here is the full list in the order I plan to move through it:

Gravity and Grace by Simone Weil (finished this morning!)
The Silent Cry by Dorothy Soelle (I didn’t finish this during the semester, and I can’t wait to dig back in.)
Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Life After Cars by Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek
Trauma and Repair by Judith Herman
Kin: The Future of Family by Sophie Lucido Johnson
Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
Who’s Afraid of Gender by Judith Butler
Close to Home by Thor Hanson
My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
In the Absence of the Ordinary by Frances Weller
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler
Bread of Angels by Patti Smith
Jazz by Toni Morrison
The Rainbow Ain’t Ever Been Enuf by Kaila Adia Story
Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
A Restless Truth by Freya Marske

Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune

A hundred pages a day, which has been my non-school norm, is ambitious, and I am trying to hold that ambition lightly. Winter reading gives me structure and softness at the same time. It keeps me attentive. It gives shape to a season that can otherwise slip by in a blur of days.

And if you ever want to follow along, there is always a link to my StoryGraph reading list at the end of my emails.

If you are feeling your own version of wintering, or if Advent touches something in you, maybe this is a moment to shape a small ritual of your own. Something that keeps you grounded in the dark. Something that helps you cross the threshold with a little more care.