The cold months are my favourite – the bare trees, the ice cold prickle of a light wind against my face, the frost on windows creating intricate snowflakes in the sunlight, and the quiet that comes with Winter days. In the North, the sky is often grey, the lakes freeze over, and a light dusting of snow quickly accumulates to cover everything on the horizon in a blanket of white. There is something so refreshing about coming home after a Winter walk, the moment you step inside, you can feel your cheeks turn rosy, you hang your mittens on a chair in the kitchen, drape your scarf over another and leave your snow-covered boots on a mat by the front door. The change in temperature is stark, you can feel it on your thighs as they almost begin to thaw next to the warmth of a radiator. It is a time when lighter throws are rolled up into a drawer and wool blankets are pulled from their resting place in the warm months. When tea, coffee, and hot chocolate taste warmer, stronger, and essential on those subzero days. It is a time when evening walks are marked by the distinct smell of wood-burning fires, you can almost feel the warmth from the street; when I was young, we would drive to the cottage on Friday nights after school and from the backseat of the car, I could smell every chimney and every home. Walks after sundown are particularly special close to the Holidays, you can usually spot a few decorated Christmas trees in homes and apartments from the road, as if we have all, in our own way, agreed to participate in a Holiday exhibition in our neighbourhoods, towns, and cities. It is also a time to read, while I once had Summers off due to school holiday, I never read as much as I did in the cold months, and some things haven’t changed.
This year, I completed my Master’s Degree after submitting three essays and a dissertation. Much of my time reading was spent with academic works as I built up readings and arguments around course texts. While I didn’t spend much time with my own library, I still managed to reach and surpass my goal of twenty-six books in 2020. I pulled a few of my favourites from my bookshelves the other day, most are by authors I read for the very first time and almost half are by Canadian writers; a collection of voices, characters, styles, and narratives that I hold dearly, and a group of authors that will continue to hold their own significant place in my library.
Olive Kitteridge reminded me of the many Summers spent in Maine, the complexity of strong, difficult characters, and the sharp pieces that often constitute the mosaic of family and of community. I thought a lot about women walking in cities while reading The Portrait of a Lady, spending the month of March researching the flâneuse in nineteenth-century literature and her ‘sister’ figure in modern writing by Virginia Woolf – it was strange to think about urban wandering as the UK settled into its first lockdown. Small Ceremonies opened in the Fall: “September – Sunday night. And the thought strikes me that I ought to be happier than I am[,]” a short novel that accompanied me into Spring, sparking thoughts of creativity and originality, creative ownership and collaboration, and the rough knots that emerge from creative work being tied to close personal relations. Tessa Hadley centred female friendships and relationships, sexuality, and desire in Late in the Day, magnifying the fragile yet indelible bond between female characters as their pasts intertwine in complex family ties. How to Pronounce Knife drew together stories of the immigrant experience in Canada, more specifically, the experiences of individuals and families from Laos; this collection is razor sharp (no pun intended) with cutting and often heartbreaking narratives, it left me thinking about place, home, and belonging; Souvankham Thammavongsa won the Giller Prize for this collection and I was brought to tears when she won, truly well-deserved! The next collection of short stories on my list is by Madeleine Thien, longer works that gripped me from the very beginning about family, friendship, and the revelatory moments of memories, with one particularly brilliant story written in the second-person…if you enjoy Alice Munro’s work as much as I do, I highly recommend Simple Recipes. And finally, Deborah Levy’s Things I Don’t Want to Know, a work of non-fiction that has been sitting on my shelf for about two years now, an incredible first instalment in the author’s living autobiography tracing her childhood from South Africa to England, underlining the malleability and the strength of memory when moments are recalled and reevaluated later in life. I have since added a few more works by these authors to my shelves, hoping to spend many more hours with them over the coming months and years – despite everything, I think I’ve found a few ‘lifelong companions’ this year!
As I write this, snow is falling just outside my window, it began with just a few flurries but is whirling in the wind now, it feels as though someone has shaken up our little snow globe, and I am happily trapped at its very centre.
Sydney K Erickson 
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