Question of the Week: What is your favorite winter read?

As much of the country continues to be impacted by snow, I can't help but think about winter reads and tales of epic snow and feezing temperatures and survival. Here are two of my favorite books to curl up with (preferably in front of a fire with a cup of cocoa).

Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child: a novel is one of my favorite winter tales. Childless couple Jack and Mabel are homesteading in Alaska in 1920. Their first winter is a lonely and brutal one and they decide to combat it by building a snow child. The next morning the snow child is gone and in her place is a young girl with blonde hair who calls herself Faina. She is a child of the woods and prefers to live in the wilderness with a fox by her side. Each winter she reappears and Jack and Mabel begin to love her like she was their own daughter. This is a charming fairy tale that will warm your heart.

Frozen in Time: an epic story of survival and a modern quest for lost heroes of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff is a great work of narrative nonfiction. It is has two stories: one of a U.S. cargo plane that crashed in Greenland in 1942 (and the B-17 rescue plane that suffered the same fate) and one of a 2012 mission to find the wreckage. The nine men aboard the B-17 spent 148 days trapped in snow and ice as they waited to be rescued. This is an incredible story of survival and tenacity that reads like a thriller.

Now it's your turn. What is your favorite winter read?

Question of the Week: What nonfiction book made you think you were reading a novel?

I'm not much of a nonfiction reader.  I'll read cookery, craft, and the occasional gardening book.  I enjoy reading these for the sake of thinking about the projects and recipes rather than actually engaging in any related activities.  I take a cerebral rather than active approach to such things.

Every now and then, I pick up something that is far different from my typical reading material, usually drawn by the cover art.  Oddly enough, I've always been pleasantly surprised by these spur-of-the-moment choices.   Variety is, after all, the spice of life.  Here are a few gems I've discovered in the unplumbed depths of the nonfiction shelves.

A Curious Man:  The Strange & Brilliant Life of Robert "Believe it or Not" Ripley

Robert L. Ripley is known best for his Believe it or Not franchise.  While growing up, he was teased due to a speech impediment related to his buck-toothed grin, and he was painfully shy as a result.  Ripley began his professional life as a cartoonist in the most serendipitous way, and luck seemed to be with him in every endeavor.  He was highly creative and considered an innovator; I was surprised to learn of some things that were attributed to him.  The story of Ripley's rise to fame and fortune is proof that fact is sometimes stranger than fiction. 

American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, Movie-making, & the Crime of the Century
This reads more like a mystery than a book about history.  I found myself surprisingly riveted by the facts presented about the rise of the film industry (did you know the major studios were in Chicago?), the Pinkertons, Clarence Darrow, and the story of the bombing of the Los Angeles Times Building in 1910. Highly recommended to anyone who thinks history is boring.

A Walk in the Woods:  Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
I think any of Bill Bryson's work could be included in this list, but I will include just one.  In this book, Bryson relates his experience of hiking the Appalachian Trail, basically on his own.  His description of preparing for and contemplating a bear attack will have you laughing out loud.  The information about our national parks in general, and the Appalachian Trail in particular, was very interesting. 

What nonfiction book made you think you were reading fiction?